iconogeek » Computers

Twitter. Seriously people?

jason — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:49:07 +0000

So I was having this conversation with a good buddy of mine the other day about some of our friends getting on the Twitter bandwagon. I was very happy to find another individual that felt the same way as I did.

Internal dialogue. That’s essentially what goes on. 140 characters or less of random babbling about:

This girl on the train is hot. (not gonna happen buddy)
Man, this sandwich is tasty. (congrats tool, your keyboard now has mayo on it)
I’m late for class. (stop typing and get to class dumbass)
This rash is spreading. (glad you’re far away)
Other bullshit. (see above)

Fortunately some talented people decided to put together a video that sums up how my buddy and I feel about it. I’m sure that some will say ” either you get it, or you don’t” or “it’s not for everybody” in some assinine condescending fashion, and you know what? I’m glad I don’t get it. Scientoligists probably say the same shit.

So… really?

Wait.

No, really??

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Hey Steve, we’ll keep the light on for ya.

Chuck — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:03:25 +0000

So the news of Steve Job’s medical leave of absence has circulated and I just have to say that our thoughts are with Steve’s family and friends and we wish him a speedy recovery.

I will admit that I’m a fanboy, I make no bones about that. I credit Steve Job’s and Steve Wozniak with creating the method to my madness. I’ve always been into computers, having learned Basic on a PET and had a VIC20, Commodore64, and then my Dad’s Leading Edge which I programmed Lotus123 and dBase on. I mention the Leading Edge (which was MSDOS, BTW) because when he went down to the local computer shop to buy it, I was drawn to a Macintosh Plus (running MacPaint and connected to a LaserWriter) sitting right by the front window. Oh, it was beautiful. It didn’t look like any of the other computers, and It was the first time I’d seen a GUI, hell the first time I used a mouse. Even so, I sat down and within minutes had drawn out a rather impressive looking pirate that the salesman let me print out and take home.

From that point on, I wanted a Mac. They were too cost-prohibitive at that point for a teenager who needed a car, so I waited. I bided my time on the Commodore and then PC’s through college. SUNY Cortland (my alma mater) had a Mac lab, but it was only for a select few who knew the password. I was an art student and you just didn’t use a computer for art back then unless you were a photographer (I wonder what they’d think of Joshua Davis or Erik Naztke now) – and even then it was only used for plate making for Lithography. So I watched them through the glass like Ralphie watching his Red Rider BB Gun.

When I graduated college, I knew I needed to get a Mac, so I collected my funds from summer construction work and got myself a Mac IIvx. Thus lead the slow and steady slide into eschewing the pencil and plunging headfirst into digital design. I’ve grown nostalgic for pen, ink and paint; but when you begin to think Command-z will erase that line on the paper you’re just too far gone.

As I got deeper into the MAc, I proceeded to attend the east coast MacWorlds in Boston, NY, then Boston again and would make it a point to see the keynote every time. Steve just embodied this amazing enthusiasm for Apple and the work they were doing and I found it inspiring. The roar of the crowd when he stepped out on stage was exhilarating. The thought that this guy was a rockstar was crazy, he’s a company CEO, a geek. But nonetheless, he held the stage, commanded it, and you watched and hung on every word.

So will Steve be missed for the next 6 months? Sure. After all, it was Steve’s dream, chutzpa, charisma, and talent that helped propel Apple to what it is today and helped to create some of the most elegant software and hardware around. But it’s Apple’s cadre of super-talented people that enable Apple to do this. The notion that Apple will fail without Jobs is ludicrous. The great products will continue to flow and Apple will continue to drive the industry with innovation. Of this I am sure.

So Steve, rest up and get better. We’ll see you at the next WWDC.

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Awesome new Vista feature…really

Chuck — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:34:43 +0000

Seriously, I stumbled upon this while looking at FuckedCompany.com which unfortunately seems to be down right now. For those of you unfamiliar with FC (really? you haven’t heard of it) it’s a great site started by Philip Kaplan that has been documenting fucked companies since the dot com bust (stuff like layoffs and interesting C-level memos). But I digress, I followed a link over to Ask Pud (Kaplan’s blog) and he posted a rather cool video about a new Vista feature he discovered. I thought I would share: http://ask.pud.com/2008/09/10/wonderful-new-windows-vista-feature/

Here’s the vid:

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Get Lyrics and album artwork for your iTunes library

Chuck — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:23:47 +0000

If you’re like me, you’ve been slowly trying to organize your massive amount of music in your iTunes library over the past couple of years. If I’ve got 15 minutes here or there, I’ll go and get some album artwork and lyrics. The only problem is that it takes FOREVER…FORever…forever.

I’m also a huge fan of automation, I’m big on Photoshop actions to make my life easier, so when I found Doug’s Scripts for itunes, I was suitably interested. Essentially, this guy has written a shit ton of automated applescripts for iTunes and boy I found a doozy for my lyrics and album art hunger. First, you need to get “Needle Drop” and install it- what this does is let you play the tracks in your library for a specified amount of time, then move on to the next, and so on and so on.

Next step is to grab “GimmeSomeTune” from Apple’s site. This is the program that allows you to download art and lyrics for a playing song (among other things). Together, these two apps let you quickly run through your library and download the lyrics and artwork if the song doesn’t have any.

Here’s what to do:

Install Needle Drop – just follow the directions
Run GimmeSomeTune, you’ll see a musical note show up in your menu bar
Click that music note and choose “Preferences” and click on the “Artwork/Lyrics” button
Click the “Fetch Cover Artwork…” checkbox (I chose to keep the album art with the audio file. Not sure the difference, other than increased file size, which at current storage prices really doesn’t matter)
Click the “Fetch Lyrics…” checkbox
Close the Preferences window
Look for the “S” logo between the Window and Help menus in iTunes – that’s where you access the Needle Drop script (and any other scripts for that matter). Click it and select Needle Drop
Choose “6″ seconds for the duration of the play and “0″ for the starting time.
Watch and enjoy.

Mines been running all day, just make sure you check on it every once in a while, the GimmeSomeTune app seems to stop running for no reason (maybe it’s sleep, I’m not sure yet). But, it’s performing as promised, very cool

********************* UPDATE 10/12 *********************

OK, I came across a bug when doing this. All of the artwork while displaying correctly in iTunes, was all wrong on the iPod. Sometimes is would match and sometime sit wouldn’t. Even on artwork I had previously set myself and for purchased items. I re-synched but that didn’t help. The solution, I found, was to restore the iPOd to the factory settings (just dock the iPod, select it in the left hand column in iTunes, and click “Restore” on the Summary page). That did the trick!

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Why should I hire you to be my Vista salesman?

Chuck — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:51:50 +0000

Look, I don’t have as much ire for the Microsoft ads starring Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates than everybody else seems to. I did get a chuckle out of them. If taken a face value (and in a world where Justin Long and John Hodgman don’t exist), they were OK. Not $10 million OK, and not kick off a $300 million campaign OK..just OK.

Trying an image campaign like this is tough. Apple has succeeded in making Windows Vista look like a pathetic mess through its MAC/PC ads. Curiously enough though – Microsoft Office seems to fair pretty well in image from those commercials. This campaign is obviously trying to play on the hipness of the MAC/PC campaign, but it just can’t match it. When it comes to marketing Apple has always been the lead horse – ever since the 1984 ad, they haven’t stopped (They couldn’t, their market share was so small relatively – and still is – that they needed to separate themselves to survive). I am sure Cesar or Jason (my Windoze-using fellow iconogeeks) will chime in here about the virtues of Windoze, but me and Brett (my fellow MAC-using iconogeek) know the truth…if you use a Mac, you’re just, well, “cooler.”

Trying to make Microsoft look hip by admitting it is out-of-touch with real people just makes it seem desperate. Microsoft is an enormous company with tons of bad-will over the past years and to get past that by dropping Seinfeld in the mix just doesn’t make sense. The fact that Microsoft pulled the ads and is now laying some bullshit about an intended “teaser campaign” is ridiculous. They yanked them because they aren’t working. It doesn’t matter if I felt they were kinda clever, the bottom line is that they didn’t work, and they won’t work. Maybe Microsoft should just concentrate on releasing an OS that doesn’t suck, instead of dropping $10 million on a latex salesman.

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Johnny Lee getting some airplay.

jason — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:05:10 +0000

We had mentioned Johnny Lee a few weeks back and he seems to really be getting some recognition these days. (I’m not claiming we had anything to do with it.) He gained quite a bit of notoriety with his Wii hack videos and TED.com now has a new video posted where he gets into some of his concepts. Can’t wait till he gets some funding, I’m sure he’ll be working on my robot slaves or something equally important within the next few years.

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Finally an affordable MacBook Air.

jason — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:29:02 +0000

So the folks over at bling-my-thing.com have outdone themselves this time and made a Macbook Air for the rest of us. Created using over 12,000 Swarovski crystals and 24k gold this baby is only about $40,000 dollars.

If you want the solid state drive with that the price goes up to about 4.3 million.

*Editor note: I’ve just been informed that $40,000 dollars is actually MORE than the base price for the Macbook Air. Who would have guessed?!

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Yummy tasty things over at the iPhone SDK Press Conference

Chuck — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:19:20 +0000

Our friends at Engadget have the play-by-play. (picture courtesy of Engadget)

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Great news! Our computer overlords are almost here.

jason — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:31:49 +0000

So some researchers over at IBM are in the process of building a computer that can RUN THE ENTIRE INTERNET.

Seriously, that warrants caps.

Read the full article for a bit of explanation as to how they plan to make this machine capable of hosting the entire web as an application.

I for one welcome our computer overlords and offer forth my services as a liaison between them and the human ~~plague~~ race. In exchange I would like to be paid in robot slave girls. Oh, I’ll require an office with a hot tub as well.

Thanks.

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Shit, my iPod’s dead and all I got is this onion and some Gatorade…

Chuck — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:31:47 +0000

An onion charged with sports drink electrolytes! Enough juice to charge your iPod! No Shit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfPJeDssBOM

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Air review on Engadget

jason — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:26:25 +0000

The good folks over at Engadget have put up a pretty in depth review of the new Mac Air. It’s a mixed review bringing up a few points that may sway you if you’re on the market.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/25/macbook-air-review/

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