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Archive for June, 2004

Plain Layne

Friday, June 25th, 2004

File under “totally irrelevant to 100% of the world” (actual percentage obscured by rounding error): The author of ersatz true-life blog-opera “Plain Layne” has unmasked himself. But is this just another persona?

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Moose and Squirrel

Friday, June 25th, 2004

Blog and wiki? WikiAndBlog.

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smoothista

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

Neologism from the Chronicle (though I can’t say I’ve heard it in common usage in Houston, it does have an excellent ring to it): smoothista.

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Oh, well

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

Oh, well, I didn’t win the What Would Steve Do? contest with my “iFi” home stereo component (local iTunes library, DVR features, etc). Sigh.

Update: Here, why don’t I just post the entire concept, and just get it out there.

From: dan sandler
To: applecontest at engadget.com
Subject: WWSJD? plausible product: the iFi

Admittedly, it’s a bit farfetched, Apple having just announced the AirPort Express. But the recent creation of a whole iPod division tells me that Steve wants to make the iPod brand as well known—or, frankly, better known—than Macintosh. (It’s already started to become a generic tradename, of course…)

So my “guess” is that Steve will introduce a home AV component to the under the iPod brand family: a slick metal box that fits right in with your living room instead of your office. It even has a cool, seventies-retro name.

It is the iFi.

It attaches to your fancy Dolby Digital surround decoder and streams your iTunes over your forest of living room speakers, not unlike the Express, but that’s where the similarity ends. The iFi has a remote control and on-board LCD display, allowing a “music surfer” full control over playback. In fact, it acts more like an iPod than anything, having its own hard drive which synchronizes music from iTunes on your Mac (or PC!) rather than streaming it.

“But wait, there’s more.” It will do for the digital video recorder “market” what it did for the personal digital audio player “market”: drag it out of obscurity and into the mainstream. (Look out, TiVo—your days are numbered.) The iFi hooks up to your television, and your cable or satellite; Apple’s iFi Listing Service (part of the iTunes Music Store? .Mac?) provides television listings (synched over the Internet; none of this “phone home” modem business) and video-on-demand (movie trailers, streaming radio/video, download-and-play content).

Of course, the iFi will stream your iMovies and iPhotos too, displaying them on your TV. That’s just a given.

The iFi can burn playlists to CD, obviously—it’s essentially an iTunes kiosk, putting Apple brands and technology in prominent display in your house, right where your guests will gawk at it.

The iFi is the first “appliance” powered by OS X; the industrial designers will, predictably, have a *field day* as there are very few of the traditional Apple form factor constraints (power consumption, size, weight, etc.). It will be the “must have” gadget of the year, and the margins will be much fatter than those of the iPod. Finally, a product that doesn’t need subsidizing.

As with Apple’s most successful products, not all the ideas are new (see TiVo; the Home Audio Reference Platform (HARP) from Be Inc.; Apple’s own iPod; etc.) but never before have they all been available in one coherent, seamless package to discriminating lifestyle geeks.

All this will come to pass. I promise it!

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on weblogging work stuff

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

Some thoughts on blogging work stuff at Microsoft. On that note, PalmSource’s earnings are out. “Net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2004 was $2.9 million, or $0.23 loss per share. Net loss for the same quarter of the prior fiscal year was $3.4 million, or $0.34 loss per share.”

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Armand?

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

(Posting pictures of your cats is a time-honored tradition of the Web.)

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Random insight:

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

Random insight: I have finally established quite firmly in my mind that the thing I love about the web, and Wikis (collaborative densely-cross-referenced sites, with rapid editing right in the browser) in particular, is that they tickle a bunch of HyperCard-loving neurons that were deposited in my brainstem long, long ago. (The comparison between Wiki and HyperCard has been noted by others.)

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