Media on Miro's World

Webbits 2007-04

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:56:40 -0500

It is Friday again, time to clean up the link cache. I'll try to make this a Friday affair and stick with weekly schedule.

The DRM is having hard time: after Steve Jobs article about how DRM is bad, EMI announcement of considering dropping the DRM, another of Net celebrities - cryptography legend Bruce Schneier (of Applied Crypography and Blowfish fame) wrote an article for Forbes Why Vista DRM Is Bad for you. He makes several good points, it is good read.

Webbits - 2007-03

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:46:44 -0500

How to extend the life of the Vista trial period to 120 days: Technically, if you try to use Ultimate Edition (which is legally allowed to use in VM) nothing really can prevent an unscrupulous user to keep using Vista for free - for the price of re-installing the VM every 120 days ...

Few Mac goodies: Adium is out in version 1.0 - get it here - more details on http://adiumx.com/

Last build before Leopard is out - http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0702.html. Btw, did you know that Apple UK has their own Mac guy and PC guy ? I love their accent, but I still think that John Hodgman is the best :-)

Webbits - 2007-02

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:38:11 -0500

Time to clean up the link cache once again.

Obviously, most of the news on Techsites are Vista related. Web Worker's daily gives you 10 reasons why to upgrade to Vista and 10 reasons why not. MacHouse comments on complicated upgrade paths and Brian Briggs offers decision chart for the updgradees.

General spirit - compared to the launch of Windows 95 - is fairly cynical. The italian Mac bloggers sums it up: Niente di nuovo in Vista. So does this one. This site shows some real innovation :-). Despite it is Vista launch, Steve Jobs and OS-X seems to get almost as much publicity as Vista and as few bloggers commented - Microsoft does not take it easy - see Bill Gates TV appearance.

Statistics are fun

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 23:42:10 -0500

I have discovered recently the nice feature of Wordpress - Dashboard which shows number of visits, but also shows incoming links and search phrases the people used to land on my blog. Sometimes, they provide really interesting and surprising insights. Of course, I do not see who they are or where the visitors are coming from - so no privacy concerns.

Because of my first name (which is btw abreviated form of Miroslav), I am getting some visits from the people interested in the works of Joan Miró - spanish/catalan artist. Must be quite a disappointment for them, sorry. Nothing to do with visual arts here - unless you count art of coding ;-).

Surfmania

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:19:35 -0500

Few good links I've received from friends:

- Interesting satelite images of Earth;

- New way how to discover / browse music - http://www.musicovery.com/

- All Web 2.0 sites directory, implemented Web 2.0 way

- On-line media conversion tool. Great for converting MP3 to ringtones :-)

- If you fly often, the SeatGuru will help you choose good seats and avoid bad ones

- interesting slow motion videos - http://www.redlake.com/gallery/videos/RDT.aspx

- animated knots

- nicely done Web2 (laszlo based) tool for selection of matching colors

Disappearing act of computer magazines

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:30:24 -0500

On my way home from the office (yes, I know, technically it was Sunday) I stopped at my favorite Chapters store just to check what is new. First stop is always magazines, partially because it is right next to the entrance, partially because it is on the shortest path to Starbucks counter inside Chapters. For many years, there used to be two shelves with computer magazines. Now there is only one. And half of the magazines are about Photoshop, iPods and digital gadgets. Not that there was anything wrong with Photoshop and iPods - I love my iPod and have deep respects for Photoshop capabilities (albeit I can hardly use the Elements). What I miss are good old fashioned developers mazines which have dimisnished almost completely.

Weekend special

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:47:37 -0500

Weekend time again. As few times before, here are few discoveries from the Web:

Google is pushing Internet Explorer 7. Their own version, using new Internet Explorer Administration Kit. It is not really different version - just configured with Google as default search engine and Google toolbar. Nothing that little more experienced user would not do himself. I am not sure how successfull this will be - but I am pretty sure that this was not what Microsoft had in mind how this tools should be used for.