This is not your practice blog

Literacy is over

A guy I know named Kenneth got a letter recently from AOL. He lives on East 3rd Ave. in San Mateo, California.

The letter was addressed to

Kenth -
xxxx Eatern 3Rd Av
Fan Mateo, CO. 94401

I guess AOL is outsourcing to Idiotville.

Bay Area Geeks Had Lunch

My experiment in transcoding Orkut into meatspace (requires Orkut membership) had its second instance yesterday at the Sourdough Eatery in San Jose. Crusty veterans and game newcomers alike braved the wilds of sorta-downtown San Jose for sandwiches and camaraderie.

iTunes 4.5 is out

iTunes 4.5 for Macintosh and Windows is out right now, with new features. Did somebody jump the gun by posting it before Steve Jobs's talk with analysts this morning? (I hope it wasn't anybody I know and like [CVR, this means you ;-) ]).

New features include: importing unprotected WMAs, lossless encoding, CD insert printing, wish lists, radio charts, publish your own playlists, links to videos and movie trailers, and more.

We interrupt this blog

Standard posting routines have been disrupted by family illness. Normal patterns are expected to prevail by tomorrow. Thank you for your many notes of concern.

Ecto

This is a test post with little content so that I can try out Ecto, a standalone blogging tool that Richard Scorer told me about. Whee!

Ecto lets you insert images, although the UI is more complicated than the built-in TypePad one that was just added a few days ago.

Ecto lets you make href links automatically from the clipboard. Very cool!

Ecto can tell you that I'm currently listening to Sunrise from the album Feels Like Home by Norah Jones on iTunes.

Ecto has built-in preview, apparently using WebCore, the guts of Safari. Neat!

I think I'll use it for a week or so to give it a full workout.

Apple Shareholders Meeting

Yesterday I went to the Apple Shareholders Meeting with my friend Deb, who had never been to one before. As usual with these things, it was pretty uneventful, although it was a Steve Jobs Performance. The most interesting thing that happened to me was the security guards taking away my phone because it has a camera: the Cone of Silence was in full effect. Which is weird, because there was zero news or confidential information.

In the old days, Apple took advantage of the gathering to make major product announcements at these meetings. They awkwardly combined the formal, boring business of a shareholders meeting with the excitement of cool new stuff. Then Apple figured out how to create (or co-create) its own events for new products. That's not just Macworld Expo, but also the Apple //c introduction event in 1984, which included a 6.1 earthquake -- how did Steve arrange that? -- and Apple World Expo in LA in 1987, which featured the Macintosh II intro.

Fake porn

This might be the silliest thing ever -- suggestive-looking pictures that are really just folded-up fingers. Sort of safe for work.

They Might Be Giants

Hey, fellow They Might Be Giants fans! Don't miss this little movie. Also, the music to this Strong Bad e-mail is supposed to be by They.

Phones name tunes

If you have an AT&T Wireless phone, you can try the new service that identifies songs. You just dial #43, then hold the phone up to the music (seriously!) for about 15 seconds. The service sends you a text message with the name of the song and artist!

Anybody with an AT&T phone, please try this and leave a comment about what happens.

Defacing books with ink

I'll be at the Apple Company Store in Cupertino signing copies of Mac Toys with John Rizzo. It's this Friday, April 23rd, from noon to 1:30 PM. Come on down, shop for Apple t-shirts and wacky chotchkas, and say hi.

This book signing is a John Vink Production.