Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I’ve been a Mac user since 1991, so it’s inevitable that I’d have this as a category.
This is odd — sometime over the past day or so, NetNewsWire has suddenly stopped displaying images. Images on pages show up fine in Safari, but never load in NNW.
I’ve checked all the preferences I can find in NNW, and can’t come up with anything that might be doing this.
Has anyone else ever seen this, or have any idea how I can troubleshoot this further and figure out what’s going on? I’m stumped at the moment.
“King Crack” by Dax, Danielle from the album Blast the Human Flower (1990, 2:10).
Ars Technica has a great review of Delicious Library, the new book/movie/music/game cataloguing software from Delicious Monster. I’ve downloaded the demo and have started to poke around with it…so far, quite enjoying what I see.
The second page of the review does a wonderful job of going into just why we Mac people are Mac people, and how nice it can be to get software also made by and for Mac people.
There is simply a “climate of excellence” on the Mac platform. Any developer that does not live up to community standards is looked down upon, or even shunned. Commercial, open source, freeware, shareware, it doesn’t matter: pay attention to detail, or else.
Windows users, think about what your typical download and installation experience is like. How many dialogs are you presented with? What do the file names and icons look like? Do you have to run an installer? What kind of manual clean-up is required afterwards?
Linux users, when you look at the carefully laid out disk image contents in the screenshot and links above, think about how far “desktop Linux” has to come before it can even begin to think about details like how single-icon drag-installed applications are arranged in their disk image windows.
Yes, I know, all of this is “pointless” and “dumb” because looks are meaningless. It’s the software that counts—the code, the bits, not the packaging, right? And so we come to an important difference between Mac enthusiasts and other computer users. Mac users understand that the packaging counts too (and are willing to pay for it). Happily, you get a lot of nice things “for free” on the Mac platform these days: composited windows, large icons, rich disk image and application bundle standards, etc.
So very true.
I thought I was going to need help figuring this out — turns out I’ve got more iTMS link-fu than I thought. :D
Earlier this month, I was accepted into the iTunes Affiliate program. All well and good, except that at that point, I couldn’t find a way to link directly to individual items with my Affiliate ID — I could put up the generic iTunes badge (which now resides towards the bottom of my sidebar), or I could put up Apple-designed ad blocks (which, aside from the Björk ad on my original post, I’ve yet to do, mostly because they apparently need to be rotated out manually), but I couldn’t link to any particular track.
As of today, however, Apple now provides a tool to let me do just that, in the form of an addition to the iTMS Link Maker. This is most definitely a Good Thing — however, it’s still a lot more cumbersome than I’d like things to be. While it will be serviceable when I want to mention a particular track or album during the course of a post (for instance, right now I’m listening to William S. Burroughs’ spoken word album Dead City Radio, a must for any WSB fan), what I really wanted to be able to do is use ecto‘s ‘now playing’ feature (which I use to insert the currently playing iTunes track information into the bottom of posts I make at home) to autogenerate iTMS search links that include my Affiliate information at the beginning.
Back when the iTMS first debuted, some enterprising people figured out the URL structure that would allow you to create links to iTMS searches — in theory, all I should have to do is slightly adjust that URL structure to match the URL structure of Affiliate links, and I’d be good to go. As it turns out, that theory was right — for instance, here’s an iTMS search for U2 that passes through my Affiliate information.
Full gory details are in the extended entry…
It’s certainly not much of a surprise, given the ever-increasing number of attacks against Windows of late, but more and more people are moving to the Mac platform after getting hit by one too many Windows security problems.
USATODAY.com – Mac or PC? Windows’ security issues help some users choose: “Cultishness aside, though, people are switching because of the security issue. In Austin, computer consultant Brad Hudelson was once a high-level manager at Dell, the leading maker of Windows PCs. Hudelson says he”gave up after Sasser (virus attacks) last year and replaced all my machines with Apples and Mac OS X.\”
Physician Thomas Essman switched for the same reason. So did Bryan Crawford, a biology professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. “I’ve been in computer heaven ever since,” Crawford says.
Here’s a particularly good one: Daryl Forrest is a developer of software for Windows. “I have moved all non-work-related computing to a new Apple Power Mac G5,” he writes. “I like Windows XP, but the risks are too high these days. It’s sad that it has gotten to this.”
On and on it goes, one e-mail after another.\”
On a personal note, Prairie’s dad is one of these people (indirectly through me — I helped convince Prairie to switch, though she’d already been considering it, and her dad got hooked when he got to play with her iMac during a recent visit). Another one bites the dust…;)
(Via MacMinute.)
Rabid Mac fan I may be, but I do have to admit that I’m not quite rabid enough to get an Apple-flavored tattoo.
However.
If I were to get such a tattoo, I really think that the sticker design on this Powerbook would be it. That’s just a thing of beauty.
(And yeah, this is another test of Flickr’s ‘blog this photo’ feature. We’ll see if it works any better than yesterday’s attempts.)
(Originally uploaded by Pete Barr-Watson)
Earlier this week, I tossed a link to my linklog to Apple’s new iTunes Affiliate program, but didn’t write up anything more about it, as at that point, I didn’t really know much at all. While I was there, though, I went ahead and tossed in an application…and what do you know, last night I got my e-mail telling me that I was accepted into the program (a little amusing, as they turned down my favorite online soap opera, As the Apple Turns!).
So far, it seems to be fairly straightforward. Basically, once you’re accepted into the program, you’re given a selection of Apple-approved and created text links and banners that can be placed into web pages or e-mail messages that have a special ID in them, so that any sales initiated by a click on one of your links sends a few pennies your way. So far, so good — rather like the Amazon Associates program, in fact.
The one aspect of it that I haven’t figured out yet is how to make links to individual items or searches within the store that tie to my Affiliate ID. Either that part of the program isn’t active yet (since this all just started up this week), or I just can’t find the information on how to do it anywhere. Linking into the store without an Affiliate ID is already easy enough — right-clicking on items in the store gives you their target link, and there are ways to link to iTMS searches — but neither of those includes my Affiliate ID to track the sales.
Once I figure out that part of the process, then it will be extremely similar to the Amazon Associates program — any iTMS link on my site that prompts a sale will send a few pennies my way, and every little bit helps. For now, even though I’m not able to set up links directly to individual items, I have added an iTunes logo in the lower right of the sidebar, and small iTunes links to the “what I’m listening to” line at the bottom of posts. Hey, I may be selling out to The Man and including advertising on my site, but I’m at least making an effort at making it as unobtrusive as possible! ;)
One minor criticism, though (hopefully nothing that’s going to get me rather suddenly dumped from the program): as a web geek, it really bugs me that the provided HTML code to create the links is a little dodgy. No width or height arguments in the img links, un-escaped ampersands, and for some reason, the img tag is capitalized (as IMG), even though all other tags are correctly left lower-case. Nothing that’s terribly difficult to fix, of course, but it is a minor little grumble.
Anyway, that’s that. Should you feel like going shopping at the iTMS, I wouldn’t complain at all if you kicked off your shopping spree by clicking through one of my links…
“Last One” by Days of the New from the album Days of the New (1999, 4:42).
Y’know, it’s really a shame I don’t go to Florida State University. Turns out that they’re working on setting up a special deal with Apple…
In an effort to prevent illegal file sharing on campus, Florida State University is on the verge of finalizing a deal with Apple Computer, Inc. — a deal that would provide free iTunes software to students and allow them to download music for 99 cents per song.
I’ve gotta say, that’s one hell of a deal. iTunes for free — and individual songs for just 99 cents!?! Amazing!
\</sarcasm>
iTunes: “Come With Me” by Information Society from the album Hack (1990, 4:22).
The new G5-based iMac is up on Apple’s site. Haven’t spent a ton of time on the site, yet, but first impressions are that it’s a damn impressive piece of engineering, packing all that into such a tiny little space.
But it’s not nearly as cute as the last generation.
More thoughts later on, most likely.
Update: Actually, no update. No further thoughts. Nice new iMac, not as pretty as the last one. That’s about all I’ve got for this one. Just wanted to say something, since I’d expected I’d have more to say.
iTunes: “Hey Jupiter” by Amos, Tori from the album Boys for Pele (1996, 5:11).
Terrence has a review of his Nomad Zen Xtra mp3 player posted, and while it’s essentially a positive review, one line stood out to me. After having had the unit for six months and using it on what sounds like a near-daily basis, he mentions that he has “basically mastered the controls.”
Yowza.
I pulled my iPod out of the box, and had the controls mastered in about six seconds.
This isn’t at all to disparage his purchase — as I said, he seems to be quite happy with it — but it really stood out to me as one major reason why the iPod is such a success.
iTunes: “Sacred City” by YelworC from the album German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. IV (1992, 4:51).