Making a MacWorld cover…
Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.
Even the iPhone has to be retouched…
Facebook want to launch an IM service. D-Day for MSN?
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According to TechCrunch, Facebook want to launch an instant messaging service, now I know that almost everyone I know is on Facebook, and as such the service has the potential to completely change my online social experience.
According to TechCrunch, the service will be embedded on the Facebook site and available as Jabber chat for programs that support it, like my personal favourite Adium but I happen to know everyone I’ve ever met has used Windows Live Messenger, and as we know that doesn’t support plugging in anything really.
So this could end up being as lame as GTalk (no friends on GMail), MySpace IM (Came too late and was Windows only), or it could be something new, revolutionary, and exciting. It will be interesting to see if people can cope with an instant messenger in the browser (since I doubt many people are going to know how to plug into its jabber capabilities).
We’ll see.
In other news AOL, who just bought social network of-two-years-ago Bebo.com have announced they want to integrate their Instant Messenger AIM into the service. In my opinion it’s a bit late to start invading Europe with your messaging service.
Finding the perfect Mac Diary Application
I used to have a diary, a paper book to take notes left for a future version of me to peruse at some later date, but the thing was it was never always there, so if you were ever to look into my diaries you would see huge gaps where I hadn’t written for the few months it was stuck under the bed.
So the natural question is whether to blog it? I spend a lot of time on the computer, obviously. Now while it can work (there have been several entries before here where I have tried, most days really aren’t that interesting, and to be honest there are some things I’d like to write in private without the constant fear of some unintended member of the audience reading something about them or their friends. (Purely negative, obviously)
So I often wondered if there was a way to keep a diary on the computer without having to publish it somewhere. Turns out there is.
A quick Google research brings up several ‘free’ diary applications which upon thorough inspection were no longer free, and ironically by the time you read this it may also be true of the application I am touting… Sorry!
The application I found is called Journler, and it’s surprisingly awesome…
It has lots of additional capabilities, like recording video audio and taking photos and it is certainly an amazing application, grab the free 2.5 (.4 for Leopard) version while you still can, if not 2.6 is a shareware application for about £18 ($35…) or if you’re a student (like me) it’s just £10.13 ($19.95). I love the exchange rate hehe.
Anyway it’s free for a few more days, so don’t miss out!! Download Journler
OS War: The votes are in… who won?
Thank you readers for voting in my little poll on the side there, today is the expiration date and I’m not likely to get many other votes…
What a surprise! I personally voted for Undecided/Other, as I don’t want to decide yet. However, even without my help, it seems there was a decisive victory for Mac OS X towards the end of the polling period, XP coming second and Linux and Undecided coming third.
Surprisingly no one opted for the next generation Windows ‘7′, the next major version of Windows, and unsurprisingly, none voted for the much maligned Vista.
Thanks for taking part!
Holy Crap: I just got Dugg!
I always figured you needed to submit your own content to digg if you wanted to get dugg, but it seems over night something I did got dugg, without me even knowing about it.
I edited down this clip from Tekzilla with Kevin Rose and Patrick Norton explaining whether people should switch to the mac about 2 days ago and I check today and it had 11,000+ views, I didn’t know if this was normal, but after some further investigation, check it out, I got dugg, majorly, like 719 diggs. (One was me, like, the last one).
The face of digg is obviously Kevin Rose so I should have known this would be popular, but I only uploaded it for a friend to see if I could convince him of the greatness of the mac.
You know it just goes to show that the best way to get appreciated is to steal other people’s content. Ha. Joking aside, I think this would have caused a lot of Kevin Rose fans and those who hadn’t seen the show to check it out, so I figure no harm no foul.
If you’re interested in the video, feel free to check it out below…
Tekzilla is a programme produced by revision3, and is available as a podcast from the Tekzilla homepage, it’s very good quality and loads of the commenters on youtube thought it was from TV. I hope you check it out!
Video on Digg (Digg it!)
My YouTube Channel (What on earth will this nut post next? – Subscribe!)
Wild Speculation: Did Apple leak their new cinema displays?
Without wanting to turn my site into the lamest Apple Rumour blog in history, I did today find this image on the site for the new Mac Pros released today…
Certainly, they look just like the cinema displays we know, but that Apple logo is black. Like the new iMac… and unlike the current displays and the top frame seems to be taller than the old ones. Obviously this isn’t an exact science (there may be perspective involved), but I’ve made an image to show what I’m on about.
If that is extra space up there, are there iSight cameras photoshopped out?
Anyway, I just thought I’d post this, in case I’m right, I’ve also submitted it to 9to5Mac in the hope they think it has merit. If it turns up there, I’ll post a link.
Macworld is a week away! So not long to find out!
Apple’s Mac Pro Graphics Page (where I found the image)
UPDATE 19:33 GMT: 9to5Mac got in contact with their opinion on this display thing…
“I think your case is good but not good enough…plus we’ve heard the new displays are going to be black”
Well, I thought it would be cool to share my findings anyway, 9to5mac knows more about Apple than I ever will, but I’d like to remind readers that Apple just launched a new set of silver Mac Pros.
Time will tell on this one.
My Desktop of the Month (Jan ‘08)
Hope you like it…
UPDATE (8/01/2008): Details
Dock/Icons/Theme: Icons of the Library (by AiOlorWile on DeviantArt)
Wallpaper: British Library Inaugural WP (by AiOlorWile on DeviantArt)
iTunes HUD Controller Application: TotalTunes Control (a great free alternative to CoverSutra)