January 2004

Bullshit!

January 18, 2004

There is a great show on Showtime called Penn & Teller Bullshit! On the show the pair known for their slight of hand magic shows bring to light the claims of flim-flamers everywhere. There is a very good show from season one that profiles alternative medicine and puts the spotlight on scams from chiropractic medicine, reflexology, and magnet therapy. Among the best moments are the "healing powers" of the "magnetic" bracelet (so it was really a kids toy and contained NO magnets. All this goes to prove the mind is a powerful thing.

Tunesatwork.com

January 15, 2004

From the website TunesAtWork looks to be a pretty good solution for sharing your iTunes library with yourself across the net.

RMIUG Meeting

January 13, 2004

I went to a great RMIUG meeting last night on launching startups in the current economy. Three speakers were all quite good. I'll post a link to the notes when they are posted.

Also a question... Why do people sign up for user names using invalid email addresses? Especially when the sign-up page says you'll be emailed. I just don't quite understand. Oh well. they're easy to delete.

Study finds farmed fish polluted

January 9, 2004

A study in the current issue of Science reports that the levels of PCB's found in farmed salmon were greater than those of wild salmon. An article in the New York Times does not mention any findings about lead or mercury contamination. What does this mean for those of us who use fish oil in supplement form in an attempt to reduce exposure to some of these toxins?

The West Wing

January 8, 2004

Dave Winer comments on last night's West Wing. As he says they change the names of ex-presidents so its tough to say who Lassiter was modeled after. Winer asks if it's Carter or Reagan. Interesting I assumed immediately it was Nixon. GIven the California location for the presidential library and all the extensive travel. I do agree though, it was a great show... as most of the series is.

New iPhoto

January 7, 2004

The possibilities suggested by Apple's new iPhoto announced yesterday is great. I'm wondering, though, will iPhoto have to be running to share photos? Will it's server (almost certainly doing http at some level) run only when iPhoto is running? This is the case with iTunes and it's too bad. It greatly reduces the usefulness of the the application.

iLife 04

January 6, 2004

Apple's iPhoto got a major overhaul today. The demo given by Steve Jobs had over 20,000 photos, great performance, date based organization, easy rating of photos, better slide shows and photo sharing through Rendezvous. iPhoto jumps to version 4.0.

Next Jobs went on to demo iMovie 4. New features include iSight importing, new titles, audio scrubbing and enhanced exporting.

Not to leave out any part of the "i" suite Jobs also revealed the new iDVD 4. Throughout all the applications the Cube transition, as seen in Apple's fast user switching is everywhere. Possibly that indicates the reintroduction of the Apple Cube?

It's cooooold!

January 6, 2004

It's cold out. Like Colorado winters used to be many years ago.... the kind we haven't seen for a few years. There is an interesting change when people read negative numbers. When a weather forecaster on the radio gives the expected low temperatures they normally say 25 and 29 degrees or something similar. When the forecast involves negative numbers they reverse them. They state the low will be between 0 and -6.

Blogs and other media

January 3, 2004

Dave Kopel has a worthy editorial in today's Rocky Mountain News. Coyote Gulch discusses it a bit further. Dave Winer's Scripting News has a consistent theme about the presidential candidates' "embracing" new media but not really understanding it or figuring out new and innovative ways to use the internet. The failure of Colorado's challengers for Campbell's senate seat to find this innovation will be a deciding factor in Campbell's reelection.

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