Tue - December 13, 2005

Best products of 2005 



Business Week has a list of the Top 40 Best Products of 2005

Anything on this list you want to ask Santa for?

I don't know much about cars, but this one looks pretty cool to me.


 

Posted at 11:19 AM    

Mon - December 12, 2005

sitting at the cool kid's table 


The five rules of cool
By Harris Collingwood
Comment
December 13, 2005 - 12:00AM 
 
Almost since its founding in 1976, Apple Computer has enjoyed a prominence out of all proportion to its rather modest share of the personal computer market. That prominence can be measured by the attention lavished on the company's every move as well as every attempt to analyse its strategy and tactics. 
Consider the uproar from Macintosh purists when Apple launched its brief attempt to license its operating system to other hardware companies. When Apple reversed course and opted to keep its operating system to itself, another camp bellowed just as loudly. 
Whenever a journalist suggests that Apple might be something less than the most perfect organisation in recorded history, the poor sap is deluged with emails and phone calls from self-appointed "Mac Marines." 
The general perception of Apple as an exceptional entity rather than a profit-making enterprise is no accident. Apple's leaders have assiduously cultivated the image of a corporation that is hip, stylish, humane: the maker of "the computer for the rest of us," the company whose epochal 1984 advertisement promised a machine that would liberate humankind from the tyranny of large, impersonal computer companies. 
The effort has paid off handsomely. Despite some hooting and hollering on weblogs, the majority of the business press and the buying public don't seem to object when Apple, say, takes legal action against some of the biggest fans of its products. When Microsoft, for example, is accused of bullying its customers and rivals, or reverses itself in public, it's criticised in the mainstream press, flamed on online tech forums such as Slashdot, and sometimes even sued by usually laissez-faire antitrust enforcers. 
Similar accusations regarding Apple are ignored, minimised, or laughed off, while the company's earnings soar past Wall Street's expectations and iPods fly off the shelves at a rate of more than 6 million per quarter. It's as if the entire company has ingested some magical elixir that immunises it against bad publicity. Envious CEOs can only ask, "Where can I get some of that stuff?" 
Consider the reaction to the shorter-than-expected battery life that plagued some early iPods. Forrester research notes that a mere 12 per cent of iPod owners aren't satisfied with the device's battery life. Or consider the reaction of iTunes customers when RealNetworks launched a rival service. Did customers flee to Real, which offered them the freedom to use a wide array of music players? No. They stayed with Apple and its market-leading iPod/iTunes combo, even celebrating their captivity (iTunes is built to connect only with iPods). "I already had my choice, I chose Apple, I chose iPod, and I chose iTunes," said one post on a message board set up by RealNetworks. 
Such sentiments are the mark of a true believer in the Apple story. Harvard Business School Professor David Yoffe points out that Apple's long-standing image - a valiant David who outwits the various Goliaths of the computer industry - persists even though the company controls about 80 per cent of the legal downloadable music market and about 75 per cent of the market for MP3 players. 
Apple's success can be boiled down to five simple rules that apply not just to Apple but to other companies as well. The rules aren't foolproof (for one thing, they tend to work better when Steve Jobs is running the company), but they may be useful to other CEOs who want to place their companies outside the mainstream—and out of the range of critics. Of course, your products had better be as good as Apple's too. 
1. Excellence trumps everything 
Forrester analyst Ted Schadler has a two-word explanation for Apple's hard-to-dent public image: "Great products." 
Much of the credit goes to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, says Donald Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and former head of Apple's Advanced Technology Group: "He has always had great product taste." Even the occasional misbegotten computer, online service, or device - the Cube, for example, or the not-ready-for-prime- time Newton - only serves to reinforce the edginess that is a major element of the Apple brand identity. 
"Great designers will have great products and great failures,: Norman says. "Otherwise, they're not trying hard enough." If you want your company to mimic Apple's success, you really do have to think different(ly). Part of that is being willing to move on—from either a failure or a success. The Mini was the best-selling entry in the iPod line, but instead of letting the new Nano stand alongside it, Apple close to replace it. "We decided to burn the boats and go for it," Greg Joswiak, Cupertino's vice-president of worldwide product marketing for iPod, said at the Forrester Consumer Forum in New York. 
2. Decide on your story, then stick to it 
Apple's corporate narrative has key elements that resonate with consumers - and, just as important, with business journalists who need a way to dramatise the competition they cover. "People like an underdog," says Forrester's Schadler. To judge by the durability of that meme, Apple's famed "1984" advertisement may be the most effective commercial ever made. Apple paid to air it only once, during the 1984 Super Bowl broadcast. But thanks to repeated free rebroadcasts in news shows and documentaries, the "1984" ad succeeded in implanting in the business press the image of Apple as the fearless upstart fomenting revolution against the gray overlords. 
The continuing appeal of that story was on vivid display at the D: All Things Digital conference in June. Sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, D annually features sometimes confrontational interviews with moguls such as Bill Gates and Barry Diller, onstage before an audience consisting mainly of computer executives. At the 2005 session, the PC industry's top players faced tough questions from Journal staff members and the audience about marketing misfires, missed forecasts, and product shortcomings. But the rules changed when Apple CEO Jobs was in the spotlight. 
The first audience question Jobs faced had nothing to do with Apple's tie-up with Intel—then at the rumor stage—or the company's then-recent decision to seek a restraining order against the Think Secret website, run by Apple über fan Nicholas Ciarelli, to prevent it from reporting on Apple's internal deliberations and pending products. 
No, the first audience question was a solicitous inquiry into the health of Jobs, who underwent surgery in 2004 to treat pancreatic cancer. For his part, Journal technology writer Walter Mossberg, who flung high hard ones at other guests, was noticeably more gentle in his treatment of Jobs, throwing hanging curves, if not softballs. 
Since the "1984" ad, Apple consistently has claimed to be a different kind of company. Repetition pays. Judging from Jobs' reception at D, Apple's narrative of difference has firmly established itself in the minds of the press. Say what you are. Stick to it, again and again. 
3. Choose your friends well 
Part of Apple's brand identity derives not from the products themselves but from the people associated with them. Sounds elementary, but few marketers are as aggressive or audacious as Apple in claiming kinship with the celebrated. 
The list of famous Apple fans ranges from U2 front man Bono, who recently told an interviewer that the iPod is "the most beautiful object art in the music world since the electric guitar," to the makers of Sex and the City, who frequently showed the show's star clicking away on her iBook. Such endorsements are fervent, but they're a fairly ordinary gambit in the corporate image-making playbook. What's unusual to the point of singularity is Apple's chutzpah in claiming the imprimatur of notables who died before the PC existed. The "Think Different" ad campaign enabled Apple to shelter under the penumbrae cast by maverick geniuses such as Einstein and Gandhi. 
4. Choose your enemies better 
Apple has always been lucky, or smart, in its choice of enemies. The company unveiled the first Macintosh during the peak of IBM's dominance of the computer market, and its implicit portrayal of Big Blue as a tyrant convinced many individual computer buyers (though not the corporate ones). 
Likewise, in the mid-1990s, when US and European antitrust regulators were circling around Microsoft, Apple's supposed corporate attributes stood out in relief. In the context of the accusations that landed Microsoft in antitrust court, Apple's 2.5 per cent market share looked less like a sign of weakness and more like an emblem of virtue. 
5. Let your allies play bad cop 
Apple rarely bashes its competitors directly, not even Microsoft - at least not since 1997, when the Redmond, Washington, giant bought a $US150 million ($A199 million) stake in Apple and announced it would continue to develop software for the Macintosh. Why bother to attack when surrogates can do it so much more effectively? 
Although he recently bowed to commercial pressure and signed a deal with Microsoft, Sun Computer CEO Scott McNealy, a longtime Apple booster, has been cracking on Microsoft in general and Bill Gates in particular for the better part of two decades. As late as 2002 he was quipping that he couldn't retire and "leave my kid to a world of Control-Alt-Delete." Such remarks plait neatly into the narrative of Apple as a force of liberation. No need to mention Apple directly. Apple can be everything Microsoft is not, without ever explicitly claiming a difference. Show, don't tell. Let others tell. Such a strategy also keeps bad blood to a minimum, making it easier to align with Microsoft when it suits Apple's and Microsoft's strategies. 
Steve Jobs is a legendary salesperson. His ability to persuade people of, well, anything, as long as they're in his presence, even has a name: "the reality distortion field," a science- fiction term borrowed by original Macintosh OS developer Bud Tribble. Jobs and Apple's other marketers have applied their skills to pitch the Macintosh and the iPod. 
Their most effective marketing, however, may not be on behalf of a particular product but, rather, a brand. Apple has created a special place for itself in the public mind. By studying how Apple has done so, CEOs can learn a lot about the power of great design, and even more about the power of a great story. 
The 2.5 Percent Solution: Why bigger isn't necessarily better for Apple 
Hard as it is to believe today, when Apple Computer's Macintosh line clings to a mere 2.5 per cent share of PC sales, Apple machines once challenged for dominance of the PC market. In 1981, IBM PCs and clones held 2.5 per cent of the market; the Apple II, 15 per cent; the Atari 400/800s, 21 per cent; and the Radio Shack TRS-80, 18 per cent. 
Fortunately for Apple, those heady days are long gone. Mac fanciers still rue the strategic missteps by Apple's management that resulted in the rise of the Microsoft-Intel alliance and the decline of the Macintosh as a serious competitor in the corporate computing market. 
But as executives at Microsoft can attest, perceived monopoly control over the PC business isn't without its headaches. The 2001 settlement with the US Justice Department required few changes to Microsoft's basic business model, and Windows-based machines are still the PCs of choice around the world. But those machines are the prime target for viruses, worms, and other malware precisely because Windows is in such wide use. Apple machines, in contrast, have been the target of only one high-profile malicious program in more than 20 years. 
Larger market share could make the Macintosh a more attractive target to the bad guys. Besides, a 2.5 percent market share helps Apple maintain its image as the lovable upstart battling the monolith, which comes in rather handy now that Apple controls about 75 per cent of the U.S. market for MP3 players. And that share is growing. 
Harris Collingwood is an executive editor of Forrester Magazine, a publication of Forrester Research, where this article was first published. It is reprinted with permission; copyright rests with the author. 

This article isn't as good as I hoped it would be, but it does illuminate certain things about a brand of computer that gets far more attention than it should, considering it's tiny share of the market. I'd stop at rule #1, because without it, everything else doesn't matter.

The five rules of cool
By Harris Collingwood

December 13, 2005 - 12:00AM 
 
Almost since its founding in 1976, Apple Computer has enjoyed a prominence out of all proportion to its rather modest share of the personal computer market. That prominence can be measured by the attention lavished on the company's every move as well as every attempt to analyse its strategy and tactics. 
 
Consider the uproar from Macintosh purists when Apple launched its brief attempt to license its operating system to other hardware companies. When Apple reversed course and opted to keep its operating system to itself, another camp bellowed just as loudly. 
 
Whenever a journalist suggests that Apple might be something less than the most perfect organisation in recorded history, the poor sap is deluged with emails and phone calls from self-appointed "Mac Marines." 
 
note: the "Mac Marines" line made me laugh, but really, who are these annoying people? Why do these "self-appointed" morons feel compelled to display blind loyalty? Then get militant or infantile about it? These are the nuts who amplify Apple's "Cult" image, which hurts more than helps. This must drive columnists crazy, always having to qualify analysis or criticism by adding "mac fantatics, please don't bomb my inbox". We could all do without supporters like these, it's not a church, it's not a tribe, it's not a special club, it's a consumer product, okay? Subject to market forces, tastes, attitudes, and criticism--fair or unfair--just like any other product.  
--MD 
The general perception of Apple as an exceptional entity rather than a profit-making enterprise is no accident. Apple's leaders have assiduously cultivated the image of a corporation that is hip, stylish, humane: the maker of "the computer for the rest of us," the company whose epochal 1984 advertisement promised a machine that would liberate humankind from the tyranny of large, impersonal computer companies. 
 
The effort has paid off handsomely. Despite some hooting and hollering on weblogs, the majority of the business press and the buying public don't seem to object when Apple, say, takes legal action against some of the biggest fans of its products. When Microsoft, for example, is accused of bullying its customers and rivals, or reverses itself in public, it's criticised in the mainstream press, flamed on online tech forums such as Slashdot, and sometimes even sued by usually laissez-faire antitrust enforcers. 
 
Similar accusations regarding Apple are ignored, minimised, or laughed off, while the company's earnings soar past Wall Street's expectations and iPods fly off the shelves at a rate of more than 6 million per quarter. It's as if the entire company has ingested some magical elixir that immunises it against bad publicity. Envious CEOs can only ask, "Where can I get some of that stuff?" 
 
Consider the reaction to the shorter-than-expected battery life that plagued some early iPods. Forrester research notes that a mere 12 per cent of iPod owners aren't satisfied with the device's battery life. Or consider the reaction of iTunes customers when RealNetworks launched a rival service. Did customers flee to Real, which offered them the freedom to use a wide array of music players? No. They stayed with Apple and its market-leading iPod/iTunes combo, even celebrating their captivity (iTunes is built to connect only with iPods). "I already had my choice, I chose Apple, I chose iPod, and I chose iTunes," said one post on a message board set up by RealNetworks. 
 
Such sentiments are the mark of a true believer in the Apple story. Harvard Business School Professor David Yoffe points out that Apple's long-standing image - a valiant David who outwits the various Goliaths of the computer industry - persists even though the company controls about 80 per cent of the legal downloadable music market and about 75 per cent of the market for MP3 players. 
 
Apple's success can be boiled down to five simple rules that apply not just to Apple but to other companies as well. The rules aren't foolproof (for one thing, they tend to work better when Steve Jobs is running the company), but they may be useful to other CEOs who want to place their companies outside the mainstream—and out of the range of critics. Of course, your products had better be as good as Apple's too. 
 
1. Excellence trumps everything 
 
Forrester analyst Ted Schadler has a two-word explanation for Apple's hard-to-dent public image: "Great products." 
 
Much of the credit goes to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, says Donald Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and former head of Apple's Advanced Technology Group: "He has always had great product taste." Even the occasional misbegotten computer, online service, or device - the Cube, for example, or the not-ready-for-prime- time Newton - only serves to reinforce the edginess that is a major element of the Apple brand identity. 
 
"Great designers will have great products and great failures,: Norman says. "Otherwise, they're not trying hard enough." If you want your company to mimic Apple's success, you really do have to think different(ly). Part of that is being willing to move on—from either a failure or a success. The Mini was the best-selling entry in the iPod line, but instead of letting the new Nano stand alongside it, Apple close to replace it. "We decided to burn the boats and go for it," Greg Joswiak, Cupertino's vice-president of worldwide product marketing for iPod, said at the Forrester Consumer Forum in New York. 
 
2. Decide on your story, then stick to it 
 
Apple's corporate narrative has key elements that resonate with consumers - and, just as important, with business journalists who need a way to dramatise the competition they cover. "People like an underdog," says Forrester's Schadler. To judge by the durability of that meme, Apple's famed "1984" advertisement may be the most effective commercial ever made. Apple paid to air it only once, during the 1984 Super Bowl broadcast. But thanks to repeated free rebroadcasts in news shows and documentaries, the "1984" ad succeeded in implanting in the business press the image of Apple as the fearless upstart fomenting revolution against the gray overlords. 
 
The continuing appeal of that story was on vivid display at the D: All Things Digital conference in June. Sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, D annually features sometimes confrontational interviews with moguls such as Bill Gates and Barry Diller, onstage before an audience consisting mainly of computer executives. At the 2005 session, the PC industry's top players faced tough questions from Journal staff members and the audience about marketing misfires, missed forecasts, and product shortcomings. But the rules changed when Apple CEO Jobs was in the spotlight. 
 
The first audience question Jobs faced had nothing to do with Apple's tie-up with Intel—then at the rumor stage—or the company's then-recent decision to seek a restraining order against the Think Secret website, run by Apple über fan Nicholas Ciarelli, to prevent it from reporting on Apple's internal deliberations and pending products. 
 
No, the first audience question was a solicitous inquiry into the health of Jobs, who underwent surgery in 2004 to treat pancreatic cancer. For his part, Journal technology writer Walter Mossberg, who flung high hard ones at other guests, was noticeably more gentle in his treatment of Jobs, throwing hanging curves, if not softballs. 
 
Since the "1984" ad, Apple consistently has claimed to be a different kind of company. Repetition pays. Judging from Jobs' reception at D, Apple's narrative of difference has firmly established itself in the minds of the press. Say what you are. Stick to it, again and again... 
 
the full article can be found here: 
 

Posted at 12:38 PM    

Sun - November 27, 2005

that bling bling thing everybody wants for Christmas 





Why the vague title? From past experience I've found that putting the name of this product in the title is guaranteed to draw an unbelievable amount of unwanted traffic to this site. It's a console game machine. It's made by Microsoft. My wife works in that division at MS, so we got one for free last week, the day they came out. I haven't had time to set it up yet, but I look forward to taking it for a spin. I've not been following the development of this box as closely as true gamers (I'm a console player only when I have a broken leg, am stuck on the counch, and literally can't do anything else) but I have been watching with great interest the sheer power of what's inside the box. For under $500, with its multi-core IBM G5 processor, it's arguably the fastest graphics-rendering entertainment machine on the planet. The video card alone has more speed and power than most desktop computer systems did five years ago. This monster is twice as fast as any computer in our house, and both of our cars put together. And it's not even hooked up yet.

On the downside, there's not many games available for it yet. The only game I've ever really embraced is Halo, the most popular, best-selling game on the previous edition of this multi-billion dollar game console undertaking. This one doesn't yet have a 'killer game' associated with it yet. From asking around, I understand the closest thing is Call of Duty 2, a WW2 game, which I plan to try sometime in early 2006. In the meantime, it's tempting to take this thing apart, just to look at what's inside. Fortunately, I don't have to. These guys have done it for us.




In other gadget news, I also recently got the new iPod. (my wife works at Microsoft, I work part-time at Apple, it's not surprising that in our spare time we're running a home laboratory for cool new multimedia gadgets, it's an occupational hazard)The one that plays video. Sure enough, the experience of watching video on that tiny screen is far better than I expected. Like most people, I thought "who on earth would want to watch a movie on a screen that small?" As I discovered, this misses the point. For two reasons.

One, it's not movies that will ultimately be the entertainment of choice on this device, I suspect an entirely new kind of content will emerge, one that's tailor made for this emerging medium, something that's not quite a movie, not quite a TV show, and not quite news, not as we know it now. Podcasts are a tentative experiment in the direction. It's still an immature medium, but I'll be interested to see how it develops. And with iPods selling in the millions (enriching stockholders in the process, as well as creating a whole new market for the makers of iPod accessories) we can be certain that the medium will continue to develop.

And two, even feature-length Hollywood movies are more engrossing on this small, thin, portable device than I expected, for a reason I never would have considered. A lot of what makes watching a movie a real cinematic experience isn't the picture at all. It's the sound. The best movies have great sound design. On a normal TV, unless you have a surround-sound Home Theater, most of this is richness and detail is completely missed. We rarely get the full benefit of movie sound and soundtracks are unless we're viewing them on a system that can deliver it. Watching a big-budget Hollywood on a 50" wide-screen $5000 Plasma TV with mediocre sound, I'd argue, is a less engrossing experience than watching the same movie on a teeny tiny $299-$399 screen with rich, full, finely-detailed sound. The kind of sound an iPod is designed to deliver. I know it sounds strange, but that's my impression so far.
 

Posted at 07:40 PM    

Fri - June 10, 2005

Unlikely? Inevitable? The Apple/Intel Alliance


There's a reason this was big news in the computer world. For decades, Intel's chips have been tightly linked to the software of Apple's archrival, Microsoft, and Apple has touted as superior the IBM PowerPC chips that powered the Mac. Plus, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, probably the most charismatic business leader in America, attracts attention for anything he does, even though his Macintosh has a tiny share of the PC market.
But what does Apple's move mean for the average consumer, who just wants the best computer for the job?
In the long term, the change will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it. That's because Intel's processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM's products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life. The first Intel-based Mac is due in spring 2006.
Even consumers who use Microsoft Windows, which runs on the vast majority of computers, will benefit, because the Mac's impact on the industry is vastly greater than its market share. Apple is the most innovative major computer maker, and the only one largely dedicated to serving consumers instead of large corporate customers. Almost everything it does is later copied by the Windows PC makers, so keeping Apple strong and innovating is good for Windows users, too.
In the short run, however, the chip changeover should make little difference to average consumers. For all but the techiest techies, changing the processor in these machines will be a nonevent, sort of like changing the engine in next year's Lexus cars. As long as the new engine is at least as fast and smooth as its predecessor, few drivers would notice or care.
What makes a Mac a Mac isn't the processor under the hood. It's Apple's elegant operating system, OS X, which won't see major changes for 18 months, and the company's stylish hardware designs, which it will continue to produce. When you peer at the screen of the first Intel-based Mac, it will look just like today's PowerPC Macs, only it should run faster.
Of course, if Apple fails to execute the switch well or the Intel processors don't meet expectations, the Mac could be in trouble. And users would lose if too many third-party software developers decline to spend the money and time to convert their products so they run on the Intel chips.
Here are answers to a few common questions I've received about the switch.
Should people hold off buying a Mac that uses the IBM PowerPC processor, which Apple will soon abandon, and wait for the new Intel Macs?
No. If you need a new computer and the Mac was the right choice for you last week, it's still the right choice. Today's PowerPC Macs are, in my view, the best consumer computers on the market, and Apple plans to roll out additional PowerPC models this year.
Plus, all new software for the Mac will continue to run on PowerPC models for at least a few more years, the likely life of any Mac you buy now. That's because Apple has created a tool for software developers that easily creates "universal" programs capable of being run on either the PowerPC or Intel models.
Now that Apple will be using the same processor as Dell, H-P and other competitors, will people be able to run the Mac operating system on these non-Apple machines?
Unless some hacker does a masterful job, the answer is no. Apple intends to keep its operating system and hardware tied tightly together. The new Intel-based versions of the Mac's OS X operating system will be designed so that they cannot run on non-Apple hardware, and Apple has no plans to license OS X to other PC makers.
Will users be able to install and run Microsoft Windows on the new Intel-based Macs?
Apple's official position is that it won't block the use of Windows on its new machines. Unofficially, however, the company says people won't be able to just buy a copy of Windows XP and install it on an Intel-based Mac. That's because Apple is unlikely to build in all the standard under-the-hood hardware pieces that Windows is designed to mate with. And it won't supply any special software called "drivers" to help Windows use the unique under-the-hood hardware Apple will use.
However, I expect some third-party company to supply the missing drivers and otherwise make it possible to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Microsoft itself might even do this. That would allow Mac users to run Windows programs that lack Mac equivalents at speeds comparable to a Windows computer's.
Will Mac prices fall due to the switch to Intel?
There's no way to tell now, but I doubt it. Apple's lower volumes, higher quality and unusual designs will likely keep it out of the very basement of the market.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

A lot has been written about this in the last week, but the opener of this article by The Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg says it all:


The war in Iraq rages on, the European Union is fraying and North Korea may have nuclear weapons. But if you read the business and technology news this past week, all of that seemed to pale before an event variously described as seismic, epic and stunning: Apple Computer has decided to adopt processors made by Intel for its future Macintosh computers...

Posted at 08:06 AM    

Fri - May 20, 2005

Curiously strong homemade iPod case



There's a whole slew of articles about this--customizing Altoid boxes for use with portable tech gadgets-- here for example, and here. It looked easy, so I thought I'd try it myself. All that was required was a power drill, some packing foam, a piece of ribbon, and an Exacto knife. A completely trivial thing to do, but fun, and practical for disguising and protecting a small portable music player. Here are my results.




It would take a normal person about 20 minutes to fashion one of these things using these tools, but I had a few false starts (wrong kind of interior padding foam material, styrofoam doesn't work) so it took me about an hour to get it right.




I wasn't aware of how many uses there are for Altoid boxes until after I completed my own sample, and went looking on the web for other examples.

Posted at 01:50 PM    

Tue - January 11, 2005

Apple drops the bomb



The long awaited headless mac, $499




The rumors were true. Announced at MacWorld Expo, only a few hours ago. About time Apple entered the low end of the market. For those who've either hated apple for being precious and too expensive, or have been curious to try one but have dismissed it for price reasons, and even for those who already own a mac and just want an extra one, I predict this little box will rock the world in the coming months. At the very least, it will give the steely-eyed skeptics and budget shoppers one less thing to complain about. Apple finally addressed the one remaining hole in their product line. Bravo! If I'd bought stock in Apple a year ago, I'd have more than doubled my investment.



It's expected to rise further, but I'm not sure how far. It is, after all, only a computer, and if you look closely at the specs, not a spectacular one. But as cheap computers go, it's respectable and attractive enough to be just right.





Pros? Compact, versatile, plug-and-play, plenty fast, and cheap. Cons? Weak graphics card, stingy on memory, non-upgradable. But all these things are normal in bottom-budget pcs. Why did Apple wait so long? My guess: timing is everything. The parts to make these hit the right price, Apple had to get its pipeline ready to compete in this market, and millions of iPod users are already paying this much money for a portable digital music player. The idea of a computer that costs as much as a high-end iPod will absolutely attract new users to the platform. If you build it, they will come. In fact, they were already lined up, and waiting. The long wait is over. Cheap gear is a good thing.




Posted at 01:44 PM    

Wed - December 22, 2004

iPod-crazed youths invade London station



"The point is that there is no point, we do it for fun, we do it because we can." explains Ben Cummins, a musical artist who with his friend Emma Davis organised this and other Mobile Clubbing events in the UK.

Emma (28) wants to dispel the myth that this is about trendy metropolitan London twenty-somethings. "We have had families turning up at events. We have had older people and we have had suits but everyone has fun and there is no trouble." she explained.

The people who attend these events are diverse for sure but they are not sad, they have friends and are mainly intelligent and articulate people.

I bumped (literally) into Beth Parker, a trendy metropolitan twentysomething from West London, who told me: "I enjoy dancing and had fun at a previous event at Liverpool Street Station." She's listening to James Zabiela & Sasha's Breakbeat. She floats off with the rhythm, unfazed by the attention from the media and from frowning commuters.

I meet a pair of middle aged ladies who would not have been out of place on Strictly Come Dancing. Mary from Norwood and Penny, originally from Hong Kong but now of Streatham Hill met at a dance class. They have been dancing partners ever since and told me about their repertoire of Argentinean Tango, Charleston and Samba dancing. Mary whisks me away and before I know it she is leading me in a Tango. Aware of my rapidly increasing heart rate, I rapidly disengage and thank the two ladies for their time.

"We need more men," she declares.

All around the main concourse there is a polychromatic array of multicultural mixed sex, mixed aged groups doing their own thing. The common denominator seems to be a sense of fun. Many of the stranded travellers are snapping pictures with their mobile camera phones, some even get into the spirit and join in. The majority look on in bewilderment.

The station staff and the police, who have clearly been tipped off, look on. They are prepared for the worst case scenario but the event passes without incident and with the minimum inconvenience to commuters. In the corner I see the British Transport Police interviewing Ben and Emma but even they have to admit that while there was a potential public safety issue, they could not fault the conduct of the hundred or so participants.

Ben was happy with the result.

"Everyone had a good time and there has been no trouble." he said.

Asked about the next event Ben explains: "It will just happen, we don't do this to seek publicity, the whole point is that anyone can come along and have fun."

Check out http://www.mobile-clubbing.com for future events

...Welcome to the world of Mobile Clubbing. Simply, mobile clubbing is turning up at a pre-arranged public place on mass where you begin to dance to the sound of your own personal stereo. It is unclear where the concept of Mobile Clubbing originates but one thing is clear and that in the world of spontaneous mass public gatherings, it has replaced Flash Mobbing. Throughout the UK, events are organised on the Internet, informally among groups of friends and the word passes via chat rooms and news forums. But what is the point of meeting on mass and dancing to the sound of your own personal stereo?

"The point is that there is no point, we do it for fun, we do it because we can." explains Ben Cummins, a musical artist who with his friend Emma Davis organised this and other Mobile Clubbing events in the UK

.

Check out http://www.mobile-clubbing.com for future events...

Posted at 06:15 AM    

Thu - November 18, 2004

and you thought your mailbox was full


Microsoft's Bill Gates gets millions of spam daily


The Associated Press

SINGAPORE — If you didn't think anybody else could possibly get any more spam than you, then think of Bill Gates.

The Microsoft Corp. chairman receives 4 million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it junk, said Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive.

"There are two people who probably are the number one spam recipients in the world," Ballmer said. "Bill Gates (is first) because he is Bill Gates."

Ballmer did not name the second most-spammed e-mail account, but said he also ranks among the world's top spam recipients because he hands out his e-mail address — steveb(at)microsoft.com — whenever he travels or speaks.

One of Gates' addresses — billgates(at)chairman.microsoft.com — appears on the periodic mass mailings he sends out to customers, though there's no word on whether he actually checks that one personally. Gates is known to have other, more private addresses.

Thanks to technology developed by Microsoft, Ballmer said, only about 10 junk e-mails make it through to his inbox each day.

Microsoft makes anti-spam technology part of its free Hotmail service and its Outlook e-mail software. It is also leading an effort to develop protocols for helping Internet mail servers verify the identity of senders in hopes of eliminating a common spam technique in which a sender's true origin is disguised.

The Associated Press

...If you didn't think anybody else could possibly get any more spam than you, then think of Bill Gates. The Microsoft Corp. chairman receives 4 million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it junk...


Posted at 10:34 AM    

Sat - December 20, 2003

Location-aware technology


Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs
By AMY HARMON

n the train returning to Armonk, N.Y., from a recent shopping trip in Manhattan with her friends, Britney Lutz, 15, had the odd sensation that her father was watching her.

He very well could have been. Ms. Lutz's father, Kerry, recently equipped his daughters with cellular phones that let him see where they are on a computer map at any given moment. Earlier that day, he had tracked Britney as she arrived in Grand Central Terminal. Later, calling up the map on his own cellphone screen, he noticed she was in SoHo.

Mr. Lutz did not happen to be checking when Britney developed pangs of guilt for taking a train home later than she was supposed to, but the system worked just as he had hoped: she volunteered the information that evening.

"Before, they might not have told me the truth, but now I know they're going to," said Mr. Lutz, 46, a lawyer who has been particularly protective of Britney and her sister, Chelsea, 17, since his wife died several years ago. "They know I care. And they know I'm watching."

Driven by worries about safety, the need for accountability, and perhaps a certain "I Spy" impulse, families and employers are adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and prisoners. New electronic services with names like uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for cellphone users — physical location — harder to mask.

But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk. And some users say the technology threatens an everyday autonomy that is largely taken for granted. The devices, they say, promote the scrutiny of small decisions — where to have lunch, when to take a break, how fast to drive — rather than general accountability.

"It's like a weird thought I get sometimes, like `he definitely knows where I am right now, and he's looking to see if I'm somewhere he might not approve of,' " said Britney Lutz. "I wonder what it will be like when I start to drive."

Still, personal location devices are beginning to catch on, largely because cellular phones are increasingly coming with a built-in tether. A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts. Analysts predict that as many as 42 million Americans will be using some form of "location-aware" technology in 2005.

Wireless companies and start-up firms are weaving the satellite system known as G.P.S., or Global Positioning System, which was begun by the United States military in the 1970's, into the cellular phone network and the Internet to sell products and services that provide location information.

After fixing an individual's location relative to a network of G.P.S. satellites orbiting 12,000 miles above the earth — or, more crudely, by the time it takes signals to bounce off nearby cell towers — personal locator services transmit the constantly updated information to a central database, where customers can retrieve it through the Internet, telephone or pager.

Until recently, one of the main civilian uses of G.P.S. was in devices issued by the criminal justice system to track offenders as a condition of their parole or probation. The new generation of tracking devices has moved well beyond that population and now takes many forms, from plastic bracelets that can be locked onto children to small boxes with tiny antennae that can be placed unobtrusively in cars.

"We are moving into a world where your location is going to be known at all times by some electronic device," said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. "It's inevitable. So we should be talking about its consequences before it's too late."

Some of those consequences have not been spelled out. Will federal investigators be allowed to retrieve information on your recent whereabouts from a private service like uLocate, or your cellular carrier? Can the local Starbucks store send advertisements to your phone when it knows you are nearby, without your explicit permission?

Because the new electronic surveillance services are still in their infancy, there are few answers, but the debate over the boundaries of privacy in a more transparent world is already taking shape. Teenagers in particular tend to be skeptical of the new technology's value.

"Cellphones would lose their appeal if they became tracking devices," said Nate Bingham, 16, of Seattle. "I think if your parents really care that much they should just put a leash on you."

Mr. Bingham's parents use an AT&T service called Find Friend that lets them see his general location when his cellphone is on, based on the company's nearest cellular tower. He said his mother had at times asked him where he was and then used the service to see if he was telling the truth. He admits to turning the phone off occasionally when he doesn't want to be found.

That won't work in the Pratt household, in Garden City, N.Y., where Jason, 13, and Ashley, 11, were given new Nextel cellphones on the condition that they be kept on at all times. With uLocate, Tom Pratt set up his account on the company's Web site to establish a "geofence" around his home and his children's school. Every time the kids leave a 400-foot radius of either place, he gets an automatic e-mail alert: "Ashley has exited Home at 08:18 AM," read a typical message last week.

Jason Pratt said there were advantages to being watched. He no longer has to call his mother to let her know where he is. Instead, she can press a "locate" button on her phone and see for herself. So long as Jason's phone is running the uLocate software, it transmits his location information every two minutes. Jason's 17-year-old brother, Matthew, however, kept his older cellphone — even though it had poor reception — rather than submit to the new deal.

Howard Boyle, president of a fire sprinkler installation company in Woodside, N.Y., presented his employees with no such choice. The five workers who have been given company phones with the G.P.S. feature have not been told that Mr. Boyle can find out if they have arrived at a work site, and whether they are walking around in it or sitting still.

"They don't need to know," said Mr. Boyle, who hopes the service will help him determine the truth when clients claim they are being overbilled for the time his employees spent at their location. "I can call them and say, `Where are you now?' while I'm looking at the screen and knowing exactly where they are, just to make sure they're not telling me they're somewhere else."

But it is not just the unnerving effect of uncovering small lies that has some users of the technology worried. Like caller I.D., location devices lift the curtain on a zone of privacy that many Americans value, even if they rarely have anything serious to hide.

"Think back to when you were a teenager and your mom or dad said, `I don't want you do to this,' and you said, `yeah, yeah, yeah,' because you knew you could do it and they wouldn't know," said Graham Clarke, president of National Scientific, which makes several G.P.S. tracking devices. "Those days are gone now, because they actually can know."

Mr. Clarke recently installed a tracking device called Followit in the Jeep Wrangler of his 17-year-old son, Gordon. It alerts him if Gordon has exceeded 60 m.p.h. or traveled beyond preset boundaries.

Advocates of location-aware technology insist that its safety benefits — like locating a 911 caller or a stolen car — outweigh the privacy issues.

And for Donna Phillips, 66, whose husband, Hubie, has Alzheimer's disease, the ability to lock a G.P.S.-enabled bracelet from Wherify Wireless around Mr. Phillips's fanny pack when he goes out has meant an end to panicked searches when he fails to come home. Now her granddaughter can help her find her husband on the Wherify Wireless Web site, which displays the location information transmitted from the bracelet when an authorized user logs on.

About two weeks ago, Mr. Phillips, 90, boarded a bus near his home in Rancho Park, Calif., and traveled several miles before switching to another bus. Because he was moving too fast for his wife to catch up, she called the police, who were able to pinpoint his location through the Wherify Wireless service to pick him up.

Critics of the new technology do not dispute its usefulness, but worry that it will become ubiquitous before legal guidelines are established.

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission turned down a request from the cellular phone industry's association and privacy groups for guidance on such matters. For the moment, the questions of trust and tracking are being raised largely in the sphere of family and personal relationships, rather than in the public arenas of government and business.

Jerold Surdahl, 40, an administrator in a building management office in Centerville, Ohio, said he started using the uLocate service to communicate with colleagues. Now, he is intrigued by the possibility of stashing a location-tracking phone in the trunk of his wife's car.

"I'm not expecting or hoping or wanting to find something, but I would just like to explore the possibilities," Mr. Surdahl said. "I'd tell her about it later."

Your cell phone knows where you are. Is this a good idea? The New York Times' Amy Harmon explores the question

...personal location devices are beginning to catch on, largely because cellular phones are increasingly coming with a built-in tether. A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts. Analysts predict that as many as 42 million Americans will be using some form of "location-aware" technology in 2005...

Posted at 06:37 PM    

Mon - November 24, 2003

You're on candid camera


Camera cellphones banned from change rooms
Last Updated: Nov 19 2003 08:14 AM MST

Calgary -Gyms are reviewing their privacy policies after a Calgary Y banned cellphones equipped with digital cameras from its change rooms.
"I think in an open area, where there is a lesser expectation of privacy, versus a change room setting, a washroom setting, I would think that would be the litmus test," Tim Chander, spokesman for the Alberta Privacy Commission, said. "But you have to take these on a case by case basis."

The YWCA said no one, as far as anyone knows, has been photographed in its change rooms. But it wants to make sure that pictures of its patrons don't end up on the web or in someone's e-mail inbox, and are asking that they be turned in to the front desk.

Mobile phones that can also take digital pictures and send them anywhere in the world are becoming more popular in Canada.

"A lot of people buy it because they can take a picture and post it up on a website within seconds," said cellphone retailer Preston Pardy.

The camera-phones have spawned a new form of personal website called moblogs, short for mobile web logs, which feature photos sent instantly over cellphone signals, along with the author's commentary.

The camera-equipped cellphones are more common in other parts of the world, as are rules on their use. In parts of Britain, Australia and the U.S. the phones aren't allowed near facilities.



Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism

But futurist Howard Rheingold says the ultimate democratization of the media will not be about technological advances; rather, it will entail upholding old-fashioned standards to earn viewers' trust.

Howard Rheingold
Posted: 2003-07-09

Editor's Note: On July 5, a few dozen mobile bloggers -- Web publishers who post photos, video and text to the Web from cell phones and other mobile devices -- gathered in Tokyo for the First International Moblogging Conference . The event was particularly resonant for author Howard Rheingold, who predicted in his book " Smart Mobs : The Next Social Revolution" that advances in technology would soon give everyone the tools they need to publish independent reports of news events as they are happening directly to the Web and other platforms.

"The moblogging conference is evidence that the culture of street bloggers I anticipated has sprouted in the real world," Rheingold writes. "I love watching a preposterous prediction materialize with baffling swiftness, especially when I was the fool who put the forecast in writing in the first place."

We asked Rheingold to pull together his thoughts on moblogging and how it will change journalism: Does the nascent moblogging movement mean journalism will eventually become more democratized, or is moblogging a fad destined to only ever be chic among a geeky minority?

Will the next Tiananmen Square uprising, the next shuttle crash or Rodney King beating be broadcast from thousands of citizen reporters' phones? Will average citizens eventually be part of the media machine, regularly contributing to and creating their own news reports, instead of just consuming them?

Rheingold's prediction: The answer is being formed today, and moblogging "is one of the leading indicators to watch as the shape of the new mediasphere becomes visible ... Because the winners and losers of the era of mobile media aren't decided yet ... the uncertainty of the situation presents an opportunity: Informed action in the near future could influence the way this nascent media culture develops -- or fails to develop -- for decades to come."

Smart Mobs Revisited
By Howard Rheingold

Although I could not be physically present at the First International Moblogging Conference, I was happy that it happened and delighted that it happened in Tokyo, if only because it vividly conjured the reality I had conjectured in "Smart Mobs" in October 2002: "What if smart mobs could empower entire populations to engage in peer-to-peer journalism? Imagine the power of the Rodney King video multiplied by the power of Napster. ... Putting video cameras and high-speed Net connections in telephones, however, moves blogging into the streets. By the time this book is published, I'm confident that street bloggers will have constructed a worldwide culture."

I quoted Justin Hall in "Smart Mobs" regarding the scenario that became technically possible in 2001, when one of the first mobile videophones fell into our hands and we wandered Tokyo, wondering what, exactly to do with it.

Hall, who was one of the conference attendees, wrote in 2002: "With the technology in place, it's only a matter of time before an amateur news video is directly distributed to the Web, or to 10 friends in video mail in a news chain letter. When that happens, this new form of news distribution will become the news, and then, ultimately, it will be no big deal."

As I write this, the world is in transition from my prediction and Justin's -- a moment when it is obvious that a new social phenomenon is emerging but it is not yet clear whether we are seeing a fad that is destined to be assimilated, commoditized, and/or disinformated, or whether we are witnessing the emergence of a powerful new medium for collective action, like the literacy that was enabled by the printing press and Internet.

Because the winners and losers of the era of mobile media aren't decided yet and the boundaries between domains have not been negotiated, the uncertainty of the situation presents an opportunity: Informed action in the near future could influence the way this nascent media culture develops -- or fails to develop -- for decades to come.

Once the new media regimes harden into place, individual or even collective effort to reshape them will be far more difficult, if not impossible. I think moblogging, and whatever it may evolve into, is one of the leading indicators to watch as the shape of the new mediasphere becomes visible -- and offers one of the most important leverage points for action.

The moblogging conference is evidence that the culture of street bloggers I anticipated has sprouted in the real world, although that name for the activity never occurred to me -- Adam Greenfield, one of the conference organizers, coined the term " moblogging " in November 2002.

Greenfield decided that the word should be pronounced with the "mob" part sounding like the word "mobile," but others, like Joi Ito , another conference attendee, pronounce it to sound like Smart Mobs. Because the name was invented in print (and online), the legitimate pronunciation can't be known until one emerges from common usage.

As far as Justin's forecast goes, sending still pictures from cameraphones to Weblogs is almost "no big deal" among teenagers in Tokyo, Helsinki, London, Rio de Janeiro. However, instantaneous street video of world-class breaking news beamed directly to the Web has yet to occur.

A pivotal moment like this, balanced on the inflection point between the deskbound regime of the PC era and the necessarily more fluid and untethered mobile-and-pervasive era, is the perfect time to ask whether the inevitable media incident will necessarily lead to peer-to-peer journalism. As futurist Paul Saffo notes, "Don't mistake a clear view for a short distance."

I would only add, in regard to many-to-many media: "Don't mistake the tool for the task." The right tools for global, instantaneous, multimedia production and distribution are necessary, but not sufficient, to achieve the goal of democratizing journalism.

... the most important remaining ingredient of a truly democratized electronic newsgathering is neither a kind of hardware nor a variety of software, but a species of literacy ...

Certainly in regards to the production tools, the sudden expansion of availability approaches the scale of democratization of knowledge enabled by the printing press. A high-quality digital video camera, equivalent to the $50,000 camera used by big league news crews years ago, can be obtained for $1,500, and that price will drop to $150 within 10 years. Another few thousand dollars today buys a digital editing tool that can double as a laptop computer and is equivalent to the editing facilities that used to rent for $100/hour. Wireless broadband Internet access and easy-to-use publishing tools like blogs have brought the means of distribution of journalism within financial reach of entire populations, as well.

But a dozen early adopters does not a movement make. Now that access to the means of production and distribution is no longer a barrier, the most important remaining ingredient of a truly democratized electronic newsgathering is neither a kind of hardware nor a variety of software, but a species of literacy -- widespread knowledge of how to use these tools to produce news stories that are attention-getting, non-trivial, and credible.

Journalism, if it is to deserve the name, is not about the quality of the camera, but about the journalist's intuition, integrity, courage, inquisitiveness, analytic and expressive capabilities, and above all, the trust the journalist has earned among readers.

Good journalists discern compelling stories in events, cultivate and mobilize networks of sources, double check and triple check facts, develop reputations that can only be won by getting the story right week after week, year after year.

The most famous pioneer in the earliest years of the democratization of journalism, Matt Drudge , did not establish a sterling example of new media's promise. Now that savvy and respected newspaper journalists like Dan Gillmor have become enthusiasts of what Gillmor calls "we journalism," some of the necessary professionalism has begun to correct the imbalance of Drudge's example. The Drudge Report serves as a cautionary tale for those who would fall victim to the magical thinking of assuming stronger democracy is the necessary result of the democratization of publishing.

Blogs, RSS syndication , RSS aggregators, metablogs and reputation systems like Technorati and NewsMonster now offer a dynamic and rapidly evolving collective editorial filtering system. Some of the sites that are linked by the most people and thus rise to the top of Blogdex or Daypop on a given day contain important breaking news, some of them are bizarre or even repulsive anomalies, some are obvious or covert hoaxes.

But the opposite of Saffo's dictum can also be true when innovators race each other: Never underestimate humble beginnings. The first personal computers with 16 kilobytes of RAM were useless. But today, we can hold in our hands computers and media players that are a million times more powerful and a fifth the price of the first PCs.

Evolutionary biologists sometimes speak of "arms races" where predators and prey rapidly co-evolve more effective offensive and defensive traits. The emergence of a filtering and reputation layer in the blogosphere is driven by the arms race between the need for useful information and the increasingly undifferentiated barrage of good, bad, ugly and incomprehensible words, images, sounds and software.

Now, by subscribing and linking to online sources we trust, the consumers of blog content are becoming a kind of collective editorial system. The more attentively we sift and analyze and share our discoveries online, the more the writers of blogs (and whatever blogs evolve into) can grow a social intelligence: personally tunable but collectively produced sense-making and way-finding. At least that's a plausible ideal.

For all its entertainment and social networking value, the most important promise of blogging is that it could help revivify the moribund public sphere that is as essential to democracy as voting. The petitions, letters to the editor, pamphleteering that preceded the American and French revolutions were essential enabling institutions for the experiments in self-government that followed.

But the arrival of political public relations and the "massification" of mesmerizing media have degraded the public sphere to the point where vituperative talk radio has married the brutal fascination of television wrestling with the verbal venom of online flame wars.

There are signs that after more than a decade of political insignificance, the democratic potential of the Internet is being realized by more people every day.

In Korea, Ohmynews helped tip an election and elect a president. Worldwide, Indymedia provided ad-hoc counter-media at the scene of political protests. During the worldwide demonstrations against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the BBC Web site showed stills from cameraphone shots sent to them directly by participants in demonstrations from Stockholm to Rome. In the United States, the Howard Dean campaign emerged to the surprise of the majority of pundits because it used Internet-based organizing media such as a blog, Meetup.com , for early Dean enthusiasts to self-organize, and online fund-raising political e-commerce to the tune of $700,000 in one day. The 2004 election looms as a watershed event for Internet-based media. Moblog the conventions!

Moblogging is at a convergence of technical capabilities with the insatiable human thirst for new ways to learn, create, and communicate, and the political necessity for a truly effective peer-to-peer journalism as a counter to "disinfotainment" cartels. Here's hoping that the pioneers will be joined by millions of others, that the Matt Drudges will be forgotten as the Dan Gillmors emerge by the dozens. Once upon a time, reporters were heroes. Maybe moblogging will help revive the endangered and vital tradition.


Moble blogging, or "moblogs' are probably the main reason camera cellphones are increasingly being banned from fitness club change rooms. Taking a picture in a place you're not supposed to is one thing. Uploading it to the web is another step. How is it being done instantly? I wondered how they did that. Now we know...

Also...I wrote a few days ago about moblogging and my remark: "...there may not be much to it except a bunch of hyper-excited cell phone users flipping pictures on the web taken with these miniature portable camera devices, simply because they can" caught the attention of moblogger Shawn Honnick.

Shawn writes "There's a lot more to it!"

...which made me wonder if there is more to it. Since I'm uninformed about moblogs, I did a quick search to find out what's being written about the trend. Here's the first in a series of articles about moblogs. From the Online Journalism Review Howard Rheingold writes...

Posted at 07:42 AM    

Sun - November 23, 2003

Pal Pix



My friends Karen Moskowitz and Michael Cozzi were here this afternoon to borrow a DV camera. I took this camera-phone snapshot of the pair of them, and a pic of Karen and me. This is why Karen is a professional photographer and I'm an amateur one.


Posted at 06:00 PM    

Moblogs!



I knew this would happen. I think of something I think is new and unique, and it's already been happening, somebody's already doing it. Okay, not zillions exactly, but, let's say, lots. There's a whole subculture on the web devoted to uploading pictures taken with mini phone cams. Moblogs, they're called. I found the link accidentally through xeni.net It's a subsection of her website, which is linked through a group of Wired magazine contributors, the top blog dogs at boingboing.net (like I'm going to discover something before the hipsters at Wired?)

I've only browsed the top layer of this community , and there may not be much to it except a bunch of hyper-excited cell phone users flipping pictures on the web taken with these miniature portable camera devices, simply because they can. That's good enough reason for me. Almost all the pictures you see here were taken with my sony ericsson T616.


Posted at 12:44 AM    

Fri - November 21, 2003

Customized Themes



Ever since I got a Sony Ericsson T616 cell phone, and discovered that its look-and-feel is highly-customizable, I haven't been able to leave it alone. Besides having a built-in camera, I find that the ability to transfer image files wirelessly from my phone to my desktop via Bluetooth is enormously convenient. I enjoy a lot of the PDA-like features that I thought I'd ignore. But the main thing I do is create customized mini-screensavers. Many of the images you see here are actually created first for my phone, then re-used as category icons for this website.






While 90% of the images I currently use are original cartoons, illustrations, and photos, a few images were drawn from a variety of sources (mostly on the web) and clearance to use them for anything other than my own personal amusement is uncertain. As soon as I get a 100% fully-original series together, I'm thinking of offering them to fellow Sony Ericsson hobbyists on a download page somewhere. In the meantime, I collected the miniature icons (the page you'll see says 'original', it just means I prepared them for my personal phone, most of them are home-made) web-gallery here .

Posted at 05:25 AM    

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