4 Days Remain

4 Days Remain in my "Evaluation Period" of MarsEdit.

So, we'll be saying "bye-bye" again very soon.

Enjoy it while you can.

Apple Mac is back in a big way on U.S. college campuses

Apple Mac is back in a big way on U.S. college campuses: "Apple Macintosh computers are experiencing surging popularity on college and university campuses..."

MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/

Hebe statue unveiled in downtown Roseburg

Hebe statue unveiled in downtown Roseburg: "City officials uncover replica of statue that once stood in downtown Roseburg in the early 1900's."

KPIC - News - Local & Regional - http://www.kpic.com/news/local

Adobe buys Web word processor Buzzword

Adobe buys Web word processor Buzzword: "Adobe Systems steps up plans to offer online collaboration with Web word processor and file-sharing service."

CNET News.com - http://www.news.com/

TV Networks NBC, CBS and ABC Discover Life Without ITunes

TV Networks NBC, CBS and ABC Discover Life Without ITunes: "NBC's spat with Apple over iTunes' distribution of its TV shows makes it clear that when it comes to online video, Apple does not hold all the cards. Like ABC and CBS, NBC is discovering that it has many other options for online video distribution.

"

Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml

Top Ramen

Top Ramen: "It's not just a cheap snack. Ramen was first introduced to Japan in the late 19th century by Chinese merchants who served Chinese-style noodles at restaurants in the port city of Yokohama. Over the years, the dish was adapted to meet Japanese taste buds, and spread to every corner of the nation with regional variations.

In recent years, a new generation of chefs have put their own unique twists "

Zeta Woof - http://grdurand.com/blogger/

Adium X 1.1.3 - Multi-protocol instant messenger client. (Free)

Adium X 1.1.3 - Multi-protocol instant messenger client. (Free): "Adium is a fast and free instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, QQ, Novell Groupwise, SIP/SIMPLE (Text), and Lotus Sametime. Adium supports beautiful WebKit message display, tabbed messaging, encrypted chat, file transfer, and more. Give it a try; you won't look back.
"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

Delivery Status 3.8 - Widget displays order status for many delivery services. (Free)

Delivery Status 3.8 - Widget displays order status for many delivery services. (Free): "Delivery Status... Can't wait for your packages to arrive? Don't waste your time checking the site constantly, just open this all-in-one delivery tracker and enter your order number or tracking number. The status will update automatically for you, and even count down the days! It also works with Growl to give you pop-up message, email notifications, and more, whenever your package status changes. If you have more than one order, just open another copy of the widget so you can keep an eye on them all at once!

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

DrDJ 3.1a2 - Cross fade songs for a party. (Free)

DrDJ 3.1a2 - Cross fade songs for a party. (Free): "

DrDJ 3.1a2

DrDJ is a little applications for DJ Wannabe's. It can play MP3s, AACs (and any audio file CoreAudio can play) and allows you to fade between songs. You're in controll of the transition, but DrDJ can do everything automagically too.

The on-the-fly playlist can contain an infinite (okay, so it's limited by the size of your computer's memory) number of songs, so you can fill it, let DrDJ handle everything and go enjoy your party! With the new support for your apple remote, you can even decide from a distance when to start the next song.

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

New owners plan to spruce up Roseburg Valley Mall to make it more enticing for shoppers

New owners plan to spruce up Roseburg Valley Mall to make it more enticing for shoppers: "What would you say if the Roseburg Valley Mall suddenly sprouted a second floor of shops?"

News Review - News - http://www.newsreview.info

Starlite Drive-in Theatre slips into the past with showing of 'Grease'

Starlite Drive-in Theatre slips into the past with showing of 'Grease': "Ten years have passed since Interstate 5 motorists last craned their heads for a glimpse of whatever happened to be playing on the old Starlite Drive-In Theatre screen in the Green area."

News Review - News - http://www.newsreview.info

Mail Scripts 2.7.14 - AppleScripts for Mail.app. (Free)

Mail Scripts 2.7.14 - AppleScripts for Mail.app. (Free): "

Mail Scripts 2.7.14

Mail Scripts is a collection of AppleScript Studio applications for Mail and Address Book offering additional features or simplified workflow. Mail Scripts consists of the following scripts:

• Add Addresses (Mail): Add addresses found in the selected messages (in the header fields 'From', 'To', 'Cc', and 'Bcc') to the Address Book. This is much more flexible than the 'Add Sender to Address Book' available in Mail and provides a convenient way for creating mailing lists.
• Archive Messages (Mail): Move messages from the selected mailbox(es) to an archive mailbox or export them to standard mbox or plain text files for backup purposes or import into other applications. You can select to move all messages or only messages sent within or certain period as well filter messages based on their read and flagged status.
• Change SMTP Server (Mail): Switch between different already defined SMTP servers or define a new one. This is especially useful if you are using your computer in more than one location and have to switch servers for several accounts at once.
• Create Rule (Mail): Create a new rule based on the first of the selected messages. This saves you the trouble of copy/pasting address or other info between the message and the rule window and provides a much quicker way for setting up a rule with multiple criteria/actions.
• Remove Duplicates (Mail): Locate all duplicate messages found in the selected mailbox(es) and move them to a separate mailbox for easy removal (duplicate matching is based on the unique message header 'Message-Id').
• Schedule Delivery (Mail): Allows you to send individual messages at predefined times (this script uses iCal for scheduling message delivery).
• Send all Drafts (Mail): Immediately send all messages in the 'Drafts' folders for all accounts. This saves you from having to open each draft in order to send it.
• Open Mailbox, Open Message (Mail): Two small faceless scripts which will open mailboxes with new messages or the new messages themselves when run as a rule action.
• Filter Sent Messages (Mail): Another faceless scripts which will apply your rules to the messages in the 'Sent' mailbox.
• Export Addresses (Address Book): Export addresses from the Address Book into tab-delimited text files. You can select which groups and which fields you want to export.
• Search Addresses (Address Book): Find all addresses inside the Address Book matching one or more criteria. As opposed to the 'Search' function built into the Address Book, this lets you search in any field as well as for empty and non-empty fields. As an example, you might use this script to search for all phone numbers with a certain area code in order to update your contacts after an area code change.

Mail Scripts are fully localized in English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Brazilian Portuguese, and Norwegian.

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

Parrot and Multi-threading

Parrot and Multi-threading: "

By Tim O'Reilly

Over on the O'Reilly Network, Kevin Farnham has an interesting blog post about the connection between Parrot and the arrival of multi-core processors (Radar posts.) Kevin makes a number of good points, especially how changing fundamentals can help a technology to 'arrive.' (Think of how Ruby on Rails made Ruby suddenly the language of choice after ten years as a second-stringer, or how multicore is renewing interest in languages like Erlang and Haskell.) Kevin is also absolutely right about how multi-core will affect even home computing.

Sometimes a technology is invented, and the time simply isn’t right, the need at the moment for solutions that apply that technology is nearly non-existent, though many people readily admit it’s a ‘wonderful’ technology. I wonder if this might apply to a certain extent to Parrot prior to the age of many-core computing?

In a few years, inexpensive PCs will have 8, 16, or more processing cores. Some people doubt that the average home or office user is going to have any use for all these cores. I think that’s like saying ‘no one will ever need more than 640K of RAM.’ Once it’s possible for the average home or office user to apply algorithms and image analysis and video processing and stock market simulators that were previously available only on high-end workstations in data centers, you cannot tell me they won’t want to do this.

'...

I doubt that applying conventional low-level threads is going to be an efficient way to accomplish this in terms of programming time (I’ve worked at this level for a long time).
But on the other side: no one is going to want to convert the mass of existing software platforms/applications that could potentially apply these computation libraries, into C++ or C. A convenient means to enable a broad spectrum of languages to call multithreaded C++, C, and Fortran libraries is going to be needed. Otherwise, again we face enormous software development inefficiency, as a separate interface has to be constructed for each library for each calling language. That’s not a solution that is going to fly, in my opinion.

It seems to me that Parrot is an excellent candidate for addressing this problem. If this is the case, the Parrot team may soon find itself lent increasing support from independent developers, and possibly from companies who recognize the need for this capability with respect to their own applications.

I don’t think this need was really there when PC performance could be improved simply through ever-increasing clock speeds. Single-threaded software that did a few simple calculations was fine then. Multicore, however, changes everything. As highly-scalable multithreaded computation / simulation libraries become available, and people realize they want them, and developers realize they need to be able to call these libraries from every language platform, Parrot’s time may arrive.

Kevin's suggestion that Parrot may solve a big problem for multi-core programming also suggests that the wait for Perl 6 may not have been in vain. (I've always hesitated to count out Larry Wall, one of the true geniuses of programming, and he's backed up by some other great programmers.)

Disclosure: a couple of people on the Parrot team, including Allison Randal and chromatic, work for O'Reilly.

"

O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/

Groundwork being laid for new Public Safety Center

Groundwork being laid for new Public Safety Center: "Foundation work proceeding quickly as crews ready the ground for construction at Douglas and Stephens Streets in Roseburg"

KPIC - News - Local & Regional - http://www.kpic.com/news/local

Microsoft Extends Windows XP Availability as Vista Stumbles

Microsoft Extends Windows XP Availability as Vista Stumbles: "In response to customer demand, Microsoft will continue selling Windows XP through June 2008, five months past its original deadline. The life extension applies to both retail sales and bundling by the company's manufacturing partners.

"

Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml

Fowl Play: Adult Swim's Low-Budget, High-Geek, Stop-Mo Hit Robot Chicken

Fowl Play: Adult Swim's Low-Budget, High-Geek, Stop-Mo Hit Robot Chicken: "Robot Chicken, the Adult Swim network's hit series, is about as far, far away from mainstream TV as you can get. The show's 15-minute episodes are packed with silly superhero riffs and abundant fart jokes acted out by carefully posed action figures. Plus, a peek behind the scenes.

"

Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml

New Safety Center on its way in downtown Roseburg

New Safety Center on its way in downtown Roseburg: "Foundation work proceeding quickly"

KPIC - News - Local & Regional - http://www.kpic.com/news/local

Mac OS X Hints: An Automator backup workflow tutorial

Mac OS X Hints: An Automator backup workflow tutorial: "Learn how to create a one-click backup utility using five simple actions in Automator.

"

Macworld - http://www.macworld.com/

Apple preps 3 new iTunes Visualizers in Mac OS X Leopard

Apple preps 3 new iTunes Visualizers in Mac OS X Leopard: "Apple has added three new visualizers in the version of iTunes that is built into..."

MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/

LightSpeed 2.1.4 - Multi-user Point-Of-Sale system. (Demo)

LightSpeed 2.1.4 - Multi-user Point-Of-Sale system. (Demo): "

LightSpeed 2.1.4

Xsilva LightSpeed 2 is a ground-breaking, next-generation Point of Sale (POS) system that improves retail operations by providing stores with comprehensive and easy-to-use retail tools in an iTunes-like Browser.

LightSpeed features include an innovative 'floating' POS interface designed for high-speed, error-free checkout and a tightly-integrated Web Store module to help stores take their product catalogs online.

Xsilva LightSpeed harnesses the most powerful Mac OS X and SQL-based technologies to provide retail customers with unparalleled performance and reliability under a crisp, polished, and easy-to-use OS X interface.

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

ComicBookLover 1.3B782 - Comic viewer, collector, organizer. (was ComicBookViewer) (Shareware)

ComicBookLover 1.3B782 - Comic viewer, collector, organizer. (was ComicBookViewer) (Shareware): "

ComicBookLover 1.3B782

ComicBookLover enables you to easily view, collect and organise digital comics. Find comics by browsing cover art. Create smart lists. Edit information quickly. View comics in full-screen mode, on laptops and external displays. Supports CBZ, CBR and PDF comic archives.

View Comics:

• Read in Single page, Western and Manga double page mode


• Full screen mode with support for external displays
• Auto-sense oversized pages and auto-resize facing pages


• Scale and rotate display


• Adjust colours, sharpen images


• Bookmark and re-order pages


• View details of all page images including EXIF tags


• Drag pages to Finder to export page data

Collect & Organise Comics:

• Import your comic archives


• Browse cover artwork


• Create lists and smart lists of favourite comics


• Search and find comics quickly


• Edit comic information in any language

Comic Archives supported:

• CBZ, CBR, ZIP, RAR and PDF archives


• Folder of comic pages

Original Comic Files Are Unchanged:

• Comic related information is stored in ComicBookLover's internal library.


• Cover artwork can be set as the icon for the comic file in Finder

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

News: AOL offers new Desktop software for Mac

News: AOL offers new Desktop software for Mac: "AOL is offering a new version of its Desktop software for Mac for the first time in five years.

"

Macworld - http://www.macworld.com/

Creative Notes: More image editors for the rest of us

Creative Notes: More image editors for the rest of us: "In the second part of his series on low-cost image editors, James Dempsey likes what he sees in Pixelmator.

"

Macworld - http://www.macworld.com/

Navy Identifies 'Alien Life Force,' and It Is You

Navy Identifies 'Alien Life Force,' and It Is You: "The U.S. Navy is skeptical about making its recruitment numbers from the MySpace generation, a demographic it describes as a 'somewhat alien life force' and as 'coddled, narcissistic praise junkies.'

"

Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml

Apple Updates iWork '08 and Intel Mac Firmware

Apple Updates iWork '08 and Intel Mac Firmware: "

Continuing its recent update spree, Apple released incremental versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers (collectively iWork '08), iWeb, and firmware revisions for Intel-based Macs. The updates are available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads. Unsurprisingly, the company doesn't offer much detail about what's changed other than performance improvements: Keynote 4.0.1 (a 31.1 MB download) also addresses issues with builds; Pages 3.0.1 (a 27.8 MB download) updates the change tracking feature; and Numbers 1.0.1 (a 26.1 MB
download) addresses issues with tables.

The EFI firmware updates 'improve the performance and reliability of Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fixes issues with Boot Camp' and are available for iMac (3.9 MB), Mac Pro (2.8 MB), MacBook (1.7 MB), MacBook Pro (2.8 MB), and Xserve (1.5 MB) computers. Each installs an application in the Utilities folder (which is
located in the Applications folder) that will update the firmware. Remember that doing so can lead to a dead computer if something goes wrong, so be sure you have a backup of your data; downloading Apple's Firmware Restoration CD 4.1 utility and making a disc from it isn't a bad idea either (although I had no trouble on my MacBook Pro).

'

DealBITS: Get the word out about your product AND generate sales!
It's easy: give away a few copies and offer a discount to entrants.
A DealBITS drawing is quick to set up and can easily pay for itself.
For more info and rates, visit <http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/>.

'

..."

TidBITS - http://www.tidbits.com/

iLife '08 Updated, iMovie Improved

iLife '08 Updated, iMovie Improved: "

Apple released updates for iLife '08 earlier this week, fixing bugs in most of the applications but also significantly addressing some of iMovie's shortfalls (see 'A Few Important iMovie '08 Notes,' 2007-09-07). The updates are available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads; they all require iLife Support 8.1 (a 7 MB download), which updates shared components.

Some of the changes in iMovie 7.1 (a 44.6 MB download) restore features found in iMovie HD 6 but didn't cross over to the new iMovie (which was created from scratch). It can now create still frames from video, select multiple clips, set a custom duration for audio fades, and perform frame-level trimming. Other improvements simply make sense, such as changing the duration of still photos or transitions without going into the Preferences dialog, controlling the level of ducking (dropping the audio volume to make way for other overlapping audio), and displaying the current playhead time when Playhead Info is activated. Apple also claims performance improvements when
switching between Events.

iMovie 7.1 also restores timecode to the application. Previously, footage was referred to only in increments of tenths of a second, which I suppose is more comprehensible to video editing novices and also seems to be the approach favored by tapeless camcorders. But the rest of the video world uses timecode, which expresses footage as minutes:seconds:frames, with each second comprising 30 frames for NTSC video or 25 frames for PAL video. A new Display Timecodes setting in Preferences activates the feature.

iPhoto 7.1 (a 59.3 MB update) fixes issues with stability and moving photos between Events, and adds new greeting card themes in anticipation of the holiday season. iDVD 7.0.1 (an 18.6 MB download) appears to be just a bug-fix update. GarageBand 4.1 (a 46.1 MB download) addresses problems with third-party audio software, display issues, and the Magic GarageBand feature. iWeb 2.0.2 (a 17 MB download) addresses upgrading iWeb 1.x sites and fixes 'some common publishing
problems.'

'

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers a
major interface overhaul, new prefs, text clippings, improved
JavaScript, new Ruby/SQL/YAML/Markdown support, code folding.
Over 160 new features in all! <http://www.barebones.com/>.

'

..."

TidBITS - http://www.tidbits.com/

PixelWalker 0.8.1 - Fast, lightweight image browser. (Free)

PixelWalker 0.8.1 - Fast, lightweight image browser. (Free): "

PixelWalker 0.8.1

PixelWalker is a fast, lightweight image browser. This application is useful to quickly navigate and browse images which are stored in folders (such as a cd) rather than in a photo management application like iPhoto. PixelWalker is much more productive than manually using the Finder and Preview applications, and PixelWalker provides support for integration of both of those programs, as well as any other image application on your system. Features include dynamic window modes, fast navigation, full keyboard control, thumbnail views, PDF and Multi-Page Tiff support, external editor launching, automatic JPEG rotation, extensive zoom and pan, and more.

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

Mobile phone as personal tour guide

Mobile phone as personal tour guide: "PARC develops mobile software that suggests things to do based on where you are, time of day, your personal preferences and past behaviors."

CNET News.com - http://www.news.com/

Arts & Letters Daily (28 Sep 2007)

Arts & Letters Daily (28 Sep 2007): "

You can take the human being out of the savannah, but you can't take the savannah out of the human being... more

In her first assault on Hollywood, Joan Collins slept with so many men she was known as the British Open... more

'The Bible,' sighed Voltaire, 'is what fools have written, imbeciles command, and rogues teach.' Was he being too rude?... more

"

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/

Amazingly realistic models of major buildings from Minimundus

Amazingly realistic models of major buildings from Minimundus: "Precisely engineered reproductions of the world's great architectural feats are on display at Austria's Minimundus park."

CNET News.com - http://www.news.com/

OmniGrowl 1.4.5 - Framework for Growl notifications. (Free)

OmniGrowl 1.4.5 - Framework for Growl notifications. (Free): "

OmniGrowl 1.4.5

OmniGrowl is an expandable framework for sending Growl Notifications for applications that do not natively support Growl, generally which have to be polled for changes.

• Built-in support for upcoming iCal events, To-Dos, Birthdays, etc


• Built-in support for Address Book Birthdays


• Built-in support for iTunes track changes (off by default)


• Built-in support for news headlines


• Customizable support for log monitoring


• More!


• Source code included, expandable framework

More information

"

MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

Starlite Drive-In's final showing

Starlite Drive-In's final showing: "First opened in 1954, beloved drive-in will project memories one last time Friday"

News Review - News - http://www.newsreview.info

Arts & Letters Daily (27 Sep 2007)

Arts & Letters Daily (27 Sep 2007): "

Jorge Luis Borges knew the risks of perfect memory. He wrote of a man paralyzed by it. Google's memory is perfect... more

Critics should make readers feel uneasy about their ignorance of art, music, or literarture. Alex Ross is such a critic... more

Spring of '66, and radios were blaring Bob Dylan's song about 'a minority of, you know, cripples and orientals and, uh, you know, and the world in which they live'... more

"

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/

I love my iPhone, but...bah, no Jaiku!

I love my iPhone, but...bah, no Jaiku!: "

By Tim O'Reilly

I recently switched from a Nokia E61 to an iPhone. The difference was night and day: out of the box, everything on the iPhone just worked. I spent weeks trying to configure my E61 for internet access via T-mobile, and never got big parts of the internet functionality to work. Apple's insistence on controlling the user experience really does pay off, versus the fragmented, siloed experience of most phone applications -- with the phone manufacturer, the carrier, and the app developer all hobbled by the business firewalls of the carrier's making.

But I also keenly feel the downside of the iPhone. The fact that there are no third party applications means no jaiku, Jyri Engestrom's brilliant hack to add presence to the phone address book. On the surface, jaiku looks a lot like twitter -- a broadcast messaging platform to a social network (although it predates twitter), but it's far more than that. I'm not that interested in seeing trivia updates from my contacts, or sharing mine, as a generalized news stream, but I love seeing this kind of information right before I call them.

In addition to showing someone's latest Jaiku, the smart address book also tells me where people are (with location picked up from the nearest cell tower, and crowdsourcing used to name the towers and tie to recognizable locations), and shows their phone's status. Pictures below from the jaikido blog:

Phonebook

Status

Conversation

I love the idea of knowing where people are before I call them, as well as other details of a phone's status. And that's where Jaiku shines. How often have you woken someone up in the middle of the night because they were in Europe instead of Silicon Valley?

This is the way a phone address book ought to work. I continue to think that the address book is one of the great untapped Web 2.0 opportunities, and that the phone, even more than email and IM, and certainly more than an outside-in, invitation-driven 'social networking application' represents my real social network. On the series 60 phone, Jaiku was able to embrace and extend the address book. That's just not possible on the iPhone. I emailed Jyri with my lament, and he replied:

The mobile site at http://m.jaiku.com is probably the best way to access Jaiku from the iPhone at the moment. It's still a bit tricky to make a native iPhone app, and even though it's possible to hack something together, distributing it would be hard.

And that's sad. Maybe Apple will copy Jaiku's Live Contact List, but how much faster would they improve their services if it were possible to build a real third party application developer ecosystem for the phone?

Returning to my theme of the smart address book, it strikes me that this is the single biggest Web 2.0 opportunity on the phone. When I talk to companies about Web 2.0, I always ask them what their data assets are, and in particular, do they have any databases that grow and get better the more people use the service. This should be the foundation of their Web 2.0 effort. (See my posts What Would Google Do? and Social Network Fatigue and the Web 2.0 Address Book for a bit more on this topic.)

Building a Web 2.0 address book solves a huge business problem for the phone companies. Think about all the user-hostile things they do to keep people from switching. Long contracts, pernicious switching fees, etc. Meanwhile, all they would need to to to keep users committed would be to create user-facing services backed by their call history databases. How silly is it that my phone remembers only my last ten calls, when my phone company remembers all of them? How hard would it be to use heuristics to figure out whose calls I return, and whose I don't, who I call frequently, and who I never call, and build dynamic lookups that would make it easy for me to manage my real social network? Add in features like Jaiku's live contact list, and you'd have a killer phone.

Apple might get there yet with the iPhone. But it would be much sweeter if they worked with companies like Jaiku to get there rather than doing it all themselves.

"

O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/