A little musical entertainment: The Buckinghams were on ABC 7 News This Morning, and after the broadcast, they recorded a couple of songs for you.
December 2008 Archives
It was bound to happen. The writing's been on the wall for a long time. Apple announced today that its appearance at next month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco will be the company's last at that forum. Not only that, but according to CNET, Steve Jobs won't be delivering the keynote.
There once was a time when the San Francisco Macworld Expo was the center focus of the Mac community. But so much has changed. Apple now has hundreds of stores around the world, especially in the United States. People all over can touch the products, and talk to knowledgeable sales people. As Apple points out in its press release, its been pulling back from other trade shows, such as the National Association of Broadcasters show. Macintosh is no longer the only focus of Apple, and many of the most ardent Mac faithful came to resent the role the iPod and the iPhone have come to play at the expo.
Other companies have disappeared. I don't think Adobe was at the last Macworld Expo I went to. Oh yes, there's that too. The last couple of years, I haven't felt the same passion I used to, to fly to San Francisco and immerse myself in all things Mac. There's enough immersion elsewhere. Every day, I can read a half a dozen great sites covering all things Apple in minuscule detail. Although I wasn't present for the last couple of keynotes, there was nothing too surprising in them.
I suspect this will be the end of the Macworld Expo altogether. Not so long ago, there were two Macworlds; the other in Boston, then New York for a few years, then back to Boston. Apple pulled out, and after that, the Boston expo was abandoned.
One other bad thing about this, Steve Jobs' failure to participate is bound to stir up a whole new batch of rumors about his health. I expect Apple's stock price (which closed at 95.43 today) will be a bit rocky tomorrow.
Its too bad. Because Apple's decision to leave Macworld makes nothing but sense.
These lyrics were written by John McHugh, to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."
Posted here without permission; if Mr. McHugh wants me to take it down, I will reluctantly comply.
Get packin', Rod Blagojevich
The state's in disarray
The Tribune wants you unemployed
At least by Christmas Day.
The TV pundits want your head
Could there be pay to play?
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Good riddance Rod Blagojevich
Your Elvis look's inane,
The Senate's mad, so's Lisa's dad.
You drive us all insane.
Our transit's broke, the state's a joke,
The Tollway's one big pain.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Good luck old Rod Blagojevich
The feds have quite a place.
Fitzgerald's poked his nose around
And if he has a case,
George Ryan's moving stuff around
Creating extra space.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Well, I got in to Playstation Home without a problem on Friday. Wish I hadn't. Its dull and hopelessly juvenile. About 10% of the people have names that include misspelled genitals, and much of the talk among Home's inhabitants seems to be based around misspelling other foul language, so as to fool Sony's language filter.
The technical achievement is pretty impressive. Inside the theater, after a download, you can see movie trailers and music videos, all while walking around, changing your perspective, and interacting with other Home inhabitants. Its just, why would you want to?
For the first day of the open beta nightmare, see my previous post.
Considering my obsessive fanship of The Beatles, I haven't listened to all of Paul McCartney's new collaboration with Youth, Electric Argument. Its the third album by the duo, known as "The Fireman," and by far the most accessible. It's been getting generally great reviews, and from the part I've heard, its much more interesting than Paul's previous effort (although I enjoyed that one too).
But what really has me exicited is a series of digital packages that are available. Although I had already bought the CD, Macca's marketing mind has suckered me in to spending another $90+, including shipping and handling. But its good for the budget conscious as well. Read on for more!
On the Fireman Music home page, you can listen to all of the tracks on line for free. That's a pretty good start. But go to the purchase page, and it's clear that Paul McCartney (and Youth) are not ones to fear piracy.
For $8.99, you can immediately download the entire album in non-DRM, 320Kbps LAME-encoded MP3 files, about as good as MP3 files can get. And, if you click the little links right below it, included will be lossless files in your choice of FLAC and Apple Lossless. That's a damn fine deal.
For four dollars more, get the downloads right away and they'll ship you a CD with a full colour (I love the British spelling) 48-page booklet. Shipping prices begin to get a little outrageous, but what can you do?
Vinyl collectors can pony up about $30 and they get the downloads, the CD, and a specially mastered audiophile quality LP.
And for me, the most exciting package, is the Digital + Deluxe Limited Edition. It won't ship until January, but in addition to the immediate downloads, the CD and the LP, you get another CD with bonus tracks and outtakes, a DVD with high-definition recordings of the music, an art print, a booklet, and... wait for it...
A DVD with multitrack session files of some of the album tracks, allowing weirdos like me to remix the songs with our own sense of creativity. It's $80, but I can't wait to mess with Macca tracks.
When I bought my PlayStation 3
But when I learned about Playstation Home, I was intrigued. It seemed like a neat idea, and it seemed to be coming soon.
Well, today Sony made Playstation Home available as a public beta. It had been available previously only to a closed group. I was unable to find it when I got home around 1pm today, so I started checking the comments of the masses on Sony's Playstation blog page. No one could find it.
After about an hour, it turned up. You only have to restart the Playstation 3 to download it. Yippee! It downloaded fast, and loaded smoothly.
Wish I had more to say about it. I can't log in, and the aforementioned masses commenting on the aforementioned Sony blog tell me I'm not alone.
I've seen "Request timed out," "Network Error," "Read error," you name it. I've been presented with the EULA several times. But I've not been able to log on.
They say there's no place like home. More like Home is noplace.
Update 5:52pm: There's a great forum at Sony where everybody's keeping track of their inability to log in.
I saw Jerry Taft tweeting about vlingo, so I thought I'd check it out. Vlingo, available for the iPhone and Blackberry, is described on the company's website as:
a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services.
Basically, vlingo is supposed to allow you to use spoken commands for a limited variety of services on your smart device. It's a great idea, but its far from perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.
I played with it for a while on my iPhone 3G. The interface is clean and attractive. In the middle of the screen, various examples of commands are shown. Below that, is a smaller button that leads to more detailed instructions. Below that, a very large button that you use in a push-to-talk manner. And an icon bar at the bottom allows you to select different types of searches.
One example of a search vlingo can attempt is a google search. Hold the button, and say "Google vlingo." It really only works with Google and Yahoo! I tried using it with Wikipedia, and it simply did the search on Google.
The real trouble is, it doesn't understand much. I've developed a newfound interest in fountain pens. But when I said "Wikipedia fountain pens," vlingo thought I said "wiki pedia elgin cams." Elgin is a town near my home of Chicago, so I give it credit for proximity! A second attempt got "wiki pedia function test," which sounds closer. A third try got to fountain pens.
The application did better with phone requests, usually successfully finding my contacts. But if I only specified a first name, the program only presents me with the first match. It would be nice if it would be able to see which contacts are on my iPhone's favorites list, and check that first.
Lastly, I tried posting a tweet to my twitter account. Twitter starts posts with my name, so to finish the sentence, I said "hates to admit it, but his Macintosh is not feeling well." Vlingo rendered it as "hate to admit it but his mcintosh is not feeling well" . So no punctuation, a dropped S on the first word, and even though this is a geeky tool, it doesn't go to the proper noun Macintosh. So I had to edit the post. It would have been easier to type the tweet in the first place.
The app is free, so if you feel like playing around with primitive voice recognition on your iPhone, the price is right. But don't expect this to become a regular part of your iPhone toolkit.
