Things I think about – Page 21

OS X Leopard mauls Little Snitch

Check it out. Looks like Apple’s at it again, this time ripping off independent Mac developer Obdev and their excellent Little Snitch firewall app in Leopard, Apple’s next version of its OS X operating system.

I mean, does it get any more blatant than this? Even over-simplification can’t save you from the fact that you’re clearly pushing out derivative work without crediting sources…

With Coverflow, hey, you guys did the right thing. You bought all the IP and, if I’m not mistaken, gave the guy a job. I don’t know the full story here, but if Obdev contributed to your thinking here, a little hat tip seems apropos.

Microformats + Flash: Who knew?

One aspect of microformats that’s not been widely discussed or perhaps even considered is their interaction with Flash apps like YourMinis… you might be guffawing there, but fer real — it’s not just shiny shiny!

Ok, so check this out. Go grab the YourMinis extension (recently updated!) and install it in Firefox. Restart, as usual, and now, whenever you’re on a page with microformatted content, you can launch the extension to “suck out” the data and toss it into your app of choice…

It only gets better from here as YourMinis can be used to unify your experience across sites… So if you thought that semantic web is only good for HTML, well, guess again… especially with the Adobe-Mozilla deal in place, expect more very interesting developments in the microformats-slash-rich-interface department very soon.

ConceptShare nearing launch…

Our friends from the great white north are nearing the launch of ConceptShare — a collaborative design product that looks very complementary to apps like Basecamp and Bugzilla (if only I had this when I was at Flock!). They’ve finally released a video tour of how it works — and it’s looking awesome. Oh — and don’t forget to wish Scotty Brooks a happy birthday (Nov 13)!

The end of Web Two Dot Oh (drink!)

With the New York Times calling the beginning of Web 3.0 (not so much, say the trademark holders) and one of the few interesting diggers in the valley getting canned (see meme — did Winer really break this one?) in favor of dollars and cents over T & A, I have to wonder whether the short period of Web 2.0-ness that began with the launch of IE7 has already come haltingly to an end.

I mean, when the personality assassin of Silicon Valley wants to go after the “audience with less interest about trivial scandals and far more interested in the financial impact Silicon Valley has on the world”, I guess, well, we all have to realize that it’s no longer about us, but about them. And about the money. And about the same boring drivel that made the last bubble so disgusting and soulless.

So, whatever, we’re not in a bubble. We’re just in a fucking hamster wheel, racing against time in perpetual beta, waiting for someone to unhook the wheel and let us escape to freedom. Or something.

Bon chance, Darling Nickie-boy!

Synergy for iTunes will add Audioscrobbler support

Based on a bug I submitted nearly a year ago, Wincent is finally adding support for Audioscrobbler reporting, one of the primary features that was attracting me to rival iTunes controller Menuet.

As a great mood indicator and part of my micro-presence attention stream, my Last.fm listening stream gives quite a bit of insight into where my head’s at. Not having to run a separate app to send this information to last is certainly a nice addition to an already indispensable tool.

Pieces of me: disintegrating online micro-presence

…Just came upon Jaiku, the latest in micro-presence aggregation apps, thanks to ex-roommate Andy Smith, who’s now working with them — in one of his first gigs post Flock.

They recently went through a redesign and I have to admit, it looks pretty good.

It makes you wonder though, just because you can pull in the pieces of your multi-faceted identity into one place, should you? (With more variants of this idea popping up regularly, there’s clearly a trend here.)

I mean, in theory, horizontal integration may lead to a fuller picture of you, but the reality is that folks might only be interested in certain verticals of your life, and not the whole kaboodle.

And even when I was sketching out Rhyzomatic to solve my own problem of decentralized identity, my thinking was along the lines of bringing together links to the original sources, and letting people choose which pieces interest them most. Admittedly, I’ve merged in a few Flickr updates here and there with daily Ma.gnolia updates, but that’s as far as I’ve gone (even then I asked permission and some folks derided my choice — though I can’t find the post now).

So I’ve got Twitter, I’ve got Plazes, I’ve got my blog (more than one), Flickr, YouTube, and on and on. I should be better about maintaining it, but I’ve got ClaimID pointing to these and other sources as well. Along comes Jaiku and allows me to bring these things all together into one river, and well, I like it, but without the original context, how does it represent me? This may be a case where the sum is not greater than the parts — and that, for online identities to work, you have to allow people to break off the pieces of people that actually interest them most.

This is curious to me, and perhaps to other side of single sign-on and unified identity. Maybe you like my screenshots but find my blog boring. Should I force you to consume all of it just because I think it’s interesting? Somehow that flies contrary to the best aspects (pun intended) of this, the modern web.

The solar-powered gadget-recharging nomad bag

I got an email from Andreas today letting me know that Sakku has been released and is now shipping to the US.

The Sakku is interesting because, unlike most other messenger/laptop bags on the market, it serves an excellent utilitarian purpose by charging your iPod, cellphone or digital camera while you’re out in the sun. The sakku akku features an integrated recharcheable battery for those foggy San Francisco days.

Besides that, Sakku also has a focus on general sustainability, first, relying on solar power, and second, using recycled sails from sail boats for the bag material.

From a design perspective, my biggest concern is size, as it appears much larger than the Timbuk2 bags I’ve had and now use. The FAQ is pretty comprehensive, though, and you can check out more photos in the Sakku Flickr group. Oh, and unfortunately, according to the FAQ, the solar cells don’t produce enough power to charge laptops. Bummer.

Though I probably won’t be ordering one just yet, if you’re interested, they have an online form for ordering. At 230€ for the akku and 180€ for the direct, it’s a bit out of my price range, but I can see how this technology could be extremely useful for hikers, bikers and other travelers who need power and can’t rely on their accommodations for juice.

As is the trend lately, I’ll disclose that I wasn’t paid to write this, won’t receive any compensation and have commercial interest in this product. It’s just interesting, uses solar power, and is worth letting people know about it to make up their own minds.

What dreams are made of: Pzizz 2.0 is out

As you might know, I’m a fan of Edward Laing’s Pzizz nap app.

Well, he’s finally launched version 2.0, offering new features, ways of customizing the soundtrack ending experience and a much improved interface, but apparently the launch process hasn’t gone perfectly.

Still, a hearty congrats to Edward and team — I’m eagerly looking forward continued improvements.

Bush Force Quits Rumsfeld (finally!)

Brilliant.

Check it out on Tailrank. Track it as the story grows.

Gang warfare, Web 2.0 style

Summary: Adobe + Mozilla + Google are ganging up to take down Microsoft to become the definitive future web platform.

I’ve been reading with great interest and intrigue about Adobe’s substantial contribution to Firefox’s codebase in the form of open sourcing Flash Player 9’s virtual machine.

On the one hand, I’m tempted to go and congratulate Adobe for their good will and desire to support “sustaining innovations“.

On the other, more cynical, hand, I know enough to read between the lines and see this for what it really is: business as usual, with the good grace of open source being used as a context for making this appear “nicer” than it really is.

But don’t get me wrong — this is a good thing for the web, for web denizens, for web developers, open source and for innovation. So that’s not what I’d like to point out here.

Instead, I’d like to offer a theory that this is a calculated move by at least Adobe (if not Mozilla and Google collectively) to go at Microsoft’s jugular just when it’s starting to regain its some of momentum as the dominant web platform after releasing IE7. (Note that my intimations are purely conjectural and not based on known fact. Whether intentional or not, this announcement spells out an alternative future, and it’s worth teasing out what it might look like, even as the story is developing.)

So let’s state some baseline assumptions and assertions:

Adobe PDF is Adobe’s crown jewel. Their virtual monopoly on this rich format provides them a huge amount of business through their Acrobat product (now in version 8) — and they’ve moved to protect it before.
Adobe Flash Players are installed in well over 90% of client browsers, making it the most widely deployed browser plugin anywhere (note the tie-in to Flash video — and who’s the biggest consumer here? YouTube much?)
JavaScript and ActionScript (Flash’s programming language) are very close cousins — pushing EMCAScript and ActionScript closer through a faster virtual machine inches Flash ever-closer to subsuming the browser.
Apollo offers to wed the best of Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax and PDF — hell, you can even build a browser with this stuff

Contrary to Liz Gannes’ take, I think Adobe might, somehow, be positioning itself very wisely to help shape the future of online publishing, data interchange and rich web experiences. In fact, by nuzzling up to Mozilla and offering more and more open betas (though still with obnoxiously unruly EULAs), Adobe is starting to have the sheen of an open source player.

So let’s think about this: Microsoft is set to release Vista soon — and just as the delineation between web and desktop is finally evaporating — Adobe and Mozilla strike out with a bold partnership that firmly implants Adobe’s engineering technologies into the core equation between browser and desktop. And, given the large number of XHTML and Flash gurus in the wild, this seems like the death nell for XAML before the shrink wrap has even been removed. This isn’t about Flash becoming the web OS; this is about Adobe protecting and promoting it own delivery platforms and formats as it tag teams with Google to suck the “Live” out of Microsoft before it even has a chance to counter.

Adobe wants to be front and center in every browser; it’s smart enough to recognize however, that, like Google, the core threat to their position in the market is Microsoft’s Live platform technologies. An Adobe browser couldn’t dent Microsoft’s platform share, but two open source browsers can by creating the de facto web publishing environment and tools for the future of the web-centric desktop.

An interesting development indeed.