BrowserCam is a good idea. Might be a bit too expensive though for most folks to use it.

For the life of me, I can’t remember the name or URL of the site where I found this History of the Internet, but it is hilarious.

So I bought a new 12" Powerbook about a week ago. My old powerbook had totally died due to a video chipset issue. Aside from the video, the machine works fine, so I may have to do something funky with it. Back to the new Powerbook, I thought that I would feel like the 12" would be too small, but I didn’t want to spend the money for the 17" and buying another somewhat outdated 15" seemed silly. I was wrong though, I don’t feel like it is too small screen wise for my use of it. The fact that it is so small makes it easier to carry around, and I’m really enjoying it.

Today is my Mom’s birthday too, Happy Birthday Mom. I could write pages here about everything that you have done for me, the support you’ve given me when I’ve needed it , and the impact that you’ve had on me as a person.

I went to Nathan’s 30th birthday party last night. Lots of folks there that I hadn’t seen in a while, and a bunch of Atlanta blog types that I wish I got to see more often. It’s funny that you can live less than a mile from someone and still only see them once or twice a year. I’m going to have to resolve to have some get togethers so that I can remedy the situation, and maybe that will force me to accelerate the work that needs to be done on my house.

FeedDemon is an as yet unreleased Windows desktop RSS reader/organizer from Nick Bradbury. (Homesite, Topstyle)

Design Google a new logo?

Gizmodo reviews the Martian Netdrive

I find it very interesting that, in one of Apple’s spots for the iTunes Music Store, Bono mentions a Clash song. Robert then realizes that there are a couple of classic Clash albums he wouldn’t mind having again, and logs into the store when he gets back to net land. Aghast, he discovers that, whole almost all of the Clash’s albums are listed, exactly none of them are available in their entirety for purchase. For my money, all lot of the context that makes these works as great as they are is in listening to the record/CD/music as a whole work.

I hate to admit it on a couple of different levels, but I have to agree with Sunil. What did it for me wasn’t the Today Show or MTV, but the Heineken ad with a woman dressed as Trinity playing cocktail waitress. I’m still planning on seeing the movie opening day, but with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Good for EA for recognizing the strategic importance of owning the online real estate for gaming and not conceding it to the MSFT Xbox machine. On the other hand, this makes the decision about which console to buy for online gaming that much more difficult.

Figured I’d post this before it gets overexposed… Ok…you have to watch this..

I have gone into turbo-Matrix fan mode the last few days, reading articles and taking my copy of The Art of the Matrix out and re-reading parts of it. I have also picked up copies of Taking the Red Pill and The Matrix and Philosophy, both of which look very promising.

Another troubling observation about the new iTunes and the music store, but one that I had already made. I was also surprised that this particular limitation existed in there. The other thing I am concerned about now is the timeliness with which they will be putting up their new releases. I expect to be able to buy them on the Tuesday that they are released on, not to have to wait any extra time. It looked as if the new Jack Johnson was scheduled to be available a week prior to its release elsewhere, but that hasn’t actually happened, which is dissapointing. I think it would point out how popular this method of release could be.

So what have you bought from the iTunes Music Store so far? I’ve bought five songs and one full album.

The Flag

This knowledge base article denotes the differences between iPod software 2.0, which comes with the new iPods that start to appear in consumers hands tomorrow, and iPod software 1.3, which is the update they just released for the first and second generation iPods so that they could play the new AAC file format that the iTunes music store employs. This information, to me, is disturbing, and not just because I own a second generation iPod that is less than six months old. I would hope that Apple is not so short sighted that the new iPods are can’t use the same code for a simple alarm clock. It pisses me off because the 20Gb iPod wasn’t a small purchase for me, and I would expect them to continue to update the OS and firmware within a reasonable set of parameters. I can only surmise that this is another case of Apple being greedy because they did the absolute minimum for existing iPod owners. That refrain, for me at least, is getting more and more tiresome as time goes on. I’m at the crossroads, and I need to buy a new machine in the next couple of months, and I have to say that this stuff will factor into my decision.

Oh, I found a way to get my laptop working again. Oddly, it works fine without a CD in the slot loading drive. Good thing I have an external CD-R.

Damn, iTunes 4 is the jam. We’re listening to each other’s music over the LAN here, I’m checking out what’s on the online store, although they seem to be overloaded and about every other request is actually getting through. Leave it to Apple to find a way to do this right.

So it’s official. I will be without a Mac OS machine for the foreseeable future. I don’t see much point in replacing the motherboard on the two year old TiBook when it will cost nearly as much as replacing the machine altogether. I have a Sony Windows XP laptop that I will have to make due with in the interim, and I hope to be able to afford a new Mac in the next few weeks at some point. It’s really a shame that they soldered the video chipset onto the mobo like they did, it makes something that should be a couple of hundred dollar part, at the most, a critical point of failure for the entire machine. The only saving grace is that I have been using the Windows laptop for work extensively the last few months, and that I lost no data from the TiBook, which is essentially an external firewire drive now. I think that I will be purchasing a 17 inch Powerbook when I do replace it. Despite it’s largish size, I think it is a much better fit for me than the 12 inch, I use my laptop primarily as a desktop replacement, rarely on my lap, or on planes. I’m not really travelling for work at all. There is a part of me that got burned with the first generation TiBook, its crappy slot loading drive, low video memory, and lack of an internal cd burner, that wants me to wait for the second generation 17 inch before making a purchase. The difficulty with that is that there is really no way to tell when that will be released. I don’t want to wait for MacWorld this summer, or even until WWDC, for another Powerbook. If you have the scoop on this, I’d love to hear about it.