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Steve Job's keynote just finished (MacWorld New York.) New 17 inch flat panel iMac (1440x900). 256 megs ram, 80 gig hard drive, Superdrive (DVD player/burner; CD player/burner), Gforce 4 mx graphics.

$1999.

Clearly the most powerful consumer machine in the $2000 range. Only an incremental improvement, but it's very impressive nonetheless. As a first computer there isn't a better choice.

Also, the 5 gig iPod drops to $299, the 10 gig to $399, and a new 20 gig (!) is $499. Oh, and they work with Windows now. Still can't make playlists on the fly though. :(

Lots of Jaguar (OS X 10.2) previews. Out August 24th. $129. Looks great.

iTunes 3 is out, with only minor revisions. But my most wanted feature was added, so I'm very happy. iTunes will now automatically normalize the sound levels of all songs across your collection. This was a nightmare problem for me making playlists for the restaurants. I had to go in by hand and tweak the levels on all the songs because some CDs are so much louder than others. But no more. Nice.

iCal is the new (free download of course) calendar app. Looks very slick. I'll be quite interested to see how open the data format is.

More to come on iSync and Rendezvous. Certainly Palm and bluetooth phone owners will be happy with the much improved integration. Looks like I might have to get the Sony/Ericsson T68i.

- jim 7-17-2002 7:09 pm [link] [5 comments]

For my next trick I will try to download and install the new Quicktime 6 just released by Apple. If it doesn't completely fubar my system I will report back.
- jim 7-16-2002 7:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

I think it's great that NYC PBS has been showing episodes of The Prisoner Sunday night at midnight. Still, I failed again last night to make it through to the end. The plots are interesting (and the location is amazing) but there is something very methodical about it. Almost hypnotic. Does anything every happen? I'm usually asleep by 12:20.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:58 pm [link] [6 comments]

Looks like Salon is the soon to be named mystery partner about to bring "thousands of blogs" (first item) online through a partnership with Userland.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:11 pm [link] [add a comment]

From Dave Farber's Interesting People list:

On 7/14/02 6:04 AM, "vint cerf" wrote:

even if WorldCom enters chapter 11, I am confident that UUNET and the MAE Systems will continue to operate normally.

vint

Just in case you were worried.

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone"

--Bjarne Stronstrup (originator of C++ programming language)

We went to see De la guarda last night. This is an Argentinian show put on in a beautiful old bank building right off Union Square. To start, everyone is herded into a dark room. A low fabric ceiling hangs above. The walls are dark fabric. The crowd is just standing around in the low light, not quite sure what is going to happen. It's not clear if there is a stage, or a direction to face, or an optimal place to stand in the shoulder to shoulder crowd.

And then you notice some rising ambient music. Like sounds of the jungle. And then you notice lights flickering up above the fabric of the ceiling. And other strange sounds. Is that water falling on the other side of the ceiling?

And then more lights flickering above. And then the shadows of people. Swooping. Flying up above your head, their shadows racing across the fabric roof above you. The music gets louder. The flying becomes more frantic. And then eventually the people above start to tear through the fabric of the ceiling. The music explodes. People are yelling. The whole ceiling comes down and the night of acrobatic bungie jumping Argentinian dancers running and flying and looping and spinning overhead begins. They literally dance up and around the walls. They pick a few people up from the crowd and swoop around with them overhead. Neat.

Lots of drumming. Lots of water (you get a little wet.) Lots of crowd participation. Pretty cool gimmick.
- jim 7-15-2002 6:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

Went to a party in Booklyn last night (the 7th Ave stop on the F.) Absolutely amazing views from the Verrazano all the way around to Queens (which includes the entire New York harbor, Statue of Liberty, Red Hook in the foreground, Manhattan in the background, etc...) We were treated to a great sunset as well.

Of course I didn't have a camera. That G1 is great, but it's too big to just throw into your bag. And since I wasn't even carrying a bag last night it was definitely out of the question. Clearly I need one of those casio wrist watch cameras to fill in the gaps.
- jim 7-14-2002 6:38 pm [link] [1 comment]

David Reed breaks it down for the FCC.

My argument is based on a simple but crucially important technical fact: the useful economic value in a communications system architecture does not inhere in some abstract �ether� that can be allocated by dividing it into disjoint frequency bands and coverage areas. Instead it is created largely by the system design choices � the choice of data switching architecture, information coding scheme, modulation scheme, antenna placement, etc.

The most important observation about the impact of systems architecture on economic value is this: there exist networked architectures whose utility increases with the density of independent terminals (terminals are end-points, such as cellular telephones, TV sets, wireless mobile PDAs, consumer electronic devices in the home, etc.) Network architectures provide tremendous gain in communications efficiency on a systems basis � I call this cooperation gain, because it arises out of cooperative strategies among the various terminals and other elements in a networked system.

(emphasis mine.)

This is of little consequence (unlike the rest of the oh so important posts on this page) but I can't be the only one to have noticed that the New York Times has a reporter on the high tech beat whose byline is Jennifer 8. Lee. She's written lots of columns over the past 6 months or so. Check the front page of today's Circuits section. My question, of course, is what's with the middle initial?

First of all, I didn't think your could have a number for a name (I remember reading about somebody unsucessfully trying to change their name to a number, but maybe that was an urban myth.) But beyond that, why the period? Is her middle name really 8675309 or something? Because if it's just 8 then there shouldn't be a period. And if it's a longer number that starts with 8 - well, I don't know - shouldn't it be Jennifer 8... Lee? Or is that only if it repeats?

Or maybe it's a pseudnym for an otherwise last named Jennifer who had to perform some oval office type acts on...

Oh forget it.

Now don't get me started about the umlauts in The New Yorker.
- jim 7-12-2002 12:46 am [link] [6 comments]

older posts...