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Linked List: January 28, 2007

Sunday, 28 January 2007

Have Another Mint // 2 

Looks like Mint 2 is launching “twomorro”.

The Best Tech Writing of 2006 

Steven Levy is editing the 2006 edition of Best Technology Writing, and is looking for submissions:

So now I’m asking for your help. The good people at Michigan are collecting nominees for the best writing on tech subjects in the year just passed. This could include magazine, newpaper or online articles and columns, and certainly includes blog postings. Don’t think of “tech” too narrowly– I won’t! Ideally, though, the choices will be grokable by a general audience, and no longer than 5000 words.

Google’s Mac Team Camped Out Overnight for the Macworld Keynote 

At 5:15 a.m. — four hours before Jobs took the stage — the line was already two blocks long. I’m going to say a little prayer of thanks here to the press pass gods.

Steve Ballmer’s Office 

I’ve heard of CEOs with humble offices, but this is really quite remarkable. Part of a series of photos accompanying this long New York Times profile of Ballmer.

A few other tidbits that caught my eye:

  • Ballmer uses a ThinkPad.
  • He gives about 120 speeches a year and spends about one-third of his time talking to customers.
  • He manages his calendar with an Excel spreadsheet. Is this an indictment of Outlook or an accolade for Excel as a hacking tool for non-programmers?
  • Check out the Mac on Bill Gates’s desk in this photo from the mid-’80s.
SFTP Client Speed Comparisons 

Not exactly a rigorous test, but sheesh, Cyberduck seems awfully slow:

Transmit 3.5.5: 39 seconds
Fetch 5.2: 39 seconds
Interarchy 8.2.2: 29 seconds
Cyberduck 2.7.2: 9 minutes 53 seconds
Manton Reece on Using VoodooPad to Produce Mac OS X Help Books 

This little write-up and screencast by Manton Reece really makes VoodooPad look like a terrific tool for writing Mac OS X help books.

Fake Scoble Blog 

Richard Scoobie:

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among the A-list blogs. Very few of them linked to my exclusive four-hour video tour of Intel’s new chip plant, preferring instead to briefly mention that Intel has invented a new type of chip.

Admittedly my video wasn’t very interesting at first, but if you look closely at the 2:13 mark, you can see a man in one of those bunny suits (think Intel ads rather than Donnie Darko!!!) walk past the window carrying some kind of high-tech tool. It’s not that clear because I dripped sweat on the lens again, but it’s there.

See here for context.

(Via Fake Steve.)

How to Disable Those Incredibly Annoying ‘Snap’ Previews 

You know those stupid “here’s a thumbnail preview of the site this link points to” things that are suddenly appearing on a bunch of web sites when you hover the mouse over a link? They’re from a company called Snap, and the second question in their FAQ gives you a way to set a cookie to turn them off.

And if you have these things on your site, turn them off. They’re stupid and distracting.

Microsoft Emails Reveal Envy Over Mac OS X Tiger Features 

The hits just keep coming from the internal Microsoft emails that are being released as evidence in the anti-trust suit in Iowa. This one is a thread of comments in the wake of Mac OS X Tiger’s unveiling at WWDC 2004. Lenn Pryor, former Director of Platform Evangelism, wrote:

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and … my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

Calvin Trillin Reviews the Self-Parking Lexus LS 460 L 

I love Calvin Trillin:

The Advanced Parking Guidance System works only if the spot is six and a half feet longer than the car — the sort of spot, in other words, that the average Manhattan parker comes upon about once every 14 or 15 years. The only parker who might need help from a guidance system to get into such a spot is a parker who is driving himself home from rotator cuff surgery. For Lexus to offer a self-parking system for a spot that size is the equivalent of some high-end kitchen-equipment manufacturer offering a self-carving system that only works on meatloaf.