Adobe axes GoLive, Freehand.

"Product Evangelist" is meant to be a metaphor!



Joy Of Tech, Product Evangelism, Humour

How much I want this.



So pretty. So lovely. It is...my precious!

iPod, iPod Speakers, retro-cool

Wired Magazine (geez, remember when they were cutting edge?) has an article this month on "Crowdsourcing", and the first example they give is the impact of iStockphoto.com on professional photography.

"Harmel isn’t the only photographer feeling the pinch. Last summer, there was a flurry of complaints on the Stock Artists Alliance online forum. 'People were noticing a significant decline in returns on their stock portfolios,' Harmel says. 'I can’t point to iStockphoto and say it’s the culprit, but it has definitely put downward pressure on prices.' As a result, he has decided to shift the focus of his business to assignment work. 'I just don’t see much of a future for professional stock photography,' he says."

Crowdsourcing, Photography, Stock Photography

...know thy product, and you will be unstoppable.

(With apologies to Sun Tzu).

This article over at Wired.com is something I've noticed, too. I'm one that loves the gadget-heavy phones (mmmn, Crackberry), but all my wife wants is a small, simple, easy-to-use phone that just works, and I don't think she's alone in that desire. It's fun being an early adopter, but there's something to be said for cash cows, two.

Cell phones, Wired, gadgets

1. Canon to leave the film camera business? No surprise, there.
2. Preview likes it RAW.
3. Microsoft wants to kill off JPEG? Sure, like we've every reason to trust Microsoft, right? They'd NEVER use their power for evil...

Apple, Canon, Microsoft, photography

ungenius does a great job at pointing out the flaws of Dell's new retail strategy, (via daringfireball) but I'd like to add one more:

Apple stores are built from the ground up to reflect the Apple experience. You walk in, find what you need, get help when you need it, and walk out with your solution.

Dell won't be actually selling physical computers. You walk in, look around, place your order on the web, then...

Wait.

Wait for your computer to be delivered. This is what Dell wants to emphasize in their store, the amount of time it takes to actually get your new computer?

I give them 2 years, tops.

Dell, retail, Apple Store

Imagewell : Free, powerful photo editing for OSX.

The possibilities with this and Automator are very interesting...

Imagewell, OS X, Lifehacks

Honestly, the only album of theirs I've bought was "Ten" (and what an album it was!), but they've led the way in democratizing the music biz, with their refusal to play at Ticketmaster-only venues and similar actions.

And now they're releasing a music video under a Creative Commons License.

Cool.

Pearl Jam, New Media, Creative Commons

Gaffer's Tape Wallets.

Wallets. Made from gaffer's tape.

I *love* this country!

gaffer's tape, perfection, wallets

The new Intel Macs don't run Classic, so it makes sense that Apple isn't listing the OS9-only QuickTime Virtual Reality Authoring Studio.

Pity.

I cut my VR teeth on QTVRAS, and still like it. Gonna be a shame to see it go.

QTVRAS, VR, Apple

The speed of that Paralells is churning out new versions of their virtualization software for Intel Macs has me thinking. Maybe they're trying to gain marketshare in advance of WWDC. It wouldn't suprise me to see Apple come out with their own virutalization software for Leopard (AKA 10.5).

Virtualization, Apple, Parallels

Seth is wondering if blogging is the next CB Radio.

My Dad owned a truck stop during the CB radio/trucking fad, so I can definitively say that CB's weren't just a toy for the professional trucker. They served a vital communications role in the pre-cell phone days of the 70's. They may have been a fad for everyone whose knowledge of trucking was limited to listening to "Convoy" and watching "Smokey and the Bandit", but for those who realized their usefulness, they were invaluable.

fads, blogs, cb radio

RIP, PowerBook: 1991-2006.

Powerbook, laptop, goner

Ummn, wow. The black one looks trés cool. Pity about the graphics card, though.

Apple, ibook, macbook

1. Fox buys MySpace.
2. Shortly thereafter, they're using MySpace to sell episodes of "24".

Neat idea.

New media, myspace, 24

"We do stuff".

humor, marketing, huhcorps

So all I have is this neat little organizer/to-do idea, and a plug-in for Address Book that works with Google Maps. Makes me wonder how long it'll be before Microsoft does the same with Exchange/Outlook and Windows Live Local.

"Windows Live Local"? Doesn't Microsoft know we're in a whole new world of web names now?

GTD, Google Maps, lifehacks

Macworld News: Adobe aims to ease AJAX programming.

Neato. I've been wanting to dabble more into AJAX, maybe this will help speed things up.

(On an unrelated note, it's going to be a while until I get used to saying "Adobe Dreamweaver").

AJAX, Adobe, Dreamweaver

Yes, I stole the title of this post from Nicholas Negroponte.

Daring Fireball is a must-read for me now, and he's got a nice little piece of advice for photographers trying to make a buck in the digital world.

"At SXSW this year, I spoke on a panel about making money from weblogs, and one of the main points I emphasized is that people are more willing to spend money for atoms than for bits. I.e. people will happily pay for things they can actually hold in their hands, but you can’t touch ones and zeroes."

Back in the days of film, this was easy: Shoot an extra couple of Polaroids for the client to take with them, or better still, if it's a lifestyle shot, have them jump in on the set and snap off a few pix.

With digital, though, that went away. Handing a CD over to the client just isn't the same, and cycling thru images in PhotoShop doesn't give the same thrill as squinting thru a loupe on a lightbox.

But how much is a book from MyPublisher of the best shots you did over the past year for each of your best clients? How much client goodwill would that bring you? What about a fast printout of the best shot right after the shot's wrapped from a cheap photo printer? Or what if your Christmas cards had a thumbnail of one of the shots you did with the client printed inside? Even a t-shirt from CafePress with your logo would be a nice, tangible add-on to your clients.

Being digital doesn't mean being invisible to your clients.

Marketing, photography, client relations

Jeff Jarvis makes mention of how Wal-Mart and other companies backing an online auction for TV ads.

Two things:

1. This is a seismic shift in the client-agency relationship. Gone are all the leeches media buyers in ad agency, instead, the client is in charge of how much and how often their ads appear.

Hmmn, where have we seen that before?

2. The networks now have a second ratings system. They know Wal-Mart's customers, and they know how much Wal-Mart is willing to spend for an ad on "Lost". Ergo, they know how important "Lost" is to the average Wal-Mart customer.

Yes, the ground is moving. The only question is, who is moving with it, and who will stand still and get shaken to pieces?

Television, marketing, paradigm shift

A friend of mine was one of the first to be invited to Squidoo, and like most people, I thought it looked intriguing.

But not intriguing enough to make my own "lens". And now Michael Arrington is poking at the carcass of Squidoo to see if there's life in it. I'm not as down on Seth as he is because of Squidoo's, um, underwhelming performance, as no one bats 1.000. But it may be the first big Web2.0 bubble to burst.

Web2.0, Seth Godin, better luck next time

Heh.

Memo to Blue Security: Avoiding a Denial of Service attack by throwing Six Apart to the wolves is a very bad idea. A lot of people in the blog world use TypePad, Livejournal, etc, and are now upset at you. The deer now have guns, and you've placed yourself squarely in their sights.

Via Daring Fireball.

Updated and Bump: Turns out it wasn't really BlueSecurity's fault: What started out as one attack that wouldn't have brought down SixApart escalted due to the DDOS'ers actions. My bad.

Security, spam, Six Apart

CBS is granting any TV station that syndicates "Two and a Half Men" the right to stream it online on the TV station's site, for free.

Another step in tv-web integration, and one that sucks much less than Star Trek 2.0.

tv, reruns, new media

First, the bad news: Daily paid circulation for newspapers are in a free-fall.

Now, the good news:

"Newspaper Web sites hit record levels in Q1, according to the NAA, with more than one in three of all Internet users visiting a newspaper Web site over the course of a month".

And I'm one of them. I haven't subscribed to the Arizona Republic in years, but azcentral.com is a must-read for me each day. Jeff Jarvis nailed it: Local news is the future of the newspaper. I get my national news from any one of a dozen sources, but I rely on azcentral.com for the local stories.

newspapers, media, circulation

I'd never heard of Gall's Law before, but I *really* like it.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."

aka Why Microsoft's attempts to beat Google are doomed.

Microsoft, complexity, Gall's Law

Cox Cable May Adopt TiVo.

I've got Cox Cable at home, and while my friends in other states complain about their cable service and switch to satellite, we've had nothing but great service and reception with Cox.

Cable TV, Cox, TiVo

Daring Fireball also links to a nice little way of re-thinking design, um, challenges.

"If I could give one piece of advice to the designer just getting into client work, or even some who's been doing this for a while, it's this: The next time you want to say 'no' to a client, boss, or colleague, say this instead: 'Why?'"

design, client relations, business

Lileks points out something I've noticed, too. Mac users tend to be really happy about there computers. PC users describe their computers as "fine" or "really nice", every once in a while "screamingly fast".

"I love the ads for the fury it will encourage in the hardcore PC world – the guys who’ve modded their cases with neon and smokepots, who run some OS so cool it doesn’t have an icon on the developer’s page because that would violate the collaborative ethos, and who spit thumbtacks when you point out how seamless and cool the Mac experience is."

Cool. When was the last time an HP was called "cool"? And this is a Dell rumor site? Lame, compared to what there is for Apple rumors.

Maybe there is something to "Happy Macintosh Developing Time", after all...

"You kids and your music these days! Why, back in my day, we had great music to listen to, not the garbage you have now!"

In my Dad's defense, he never said that to me. He may have thought it, but never said it...

But while cruising Wikipedia's page on the year in music for 1984, I can see why the music of my youth has stuck so hard with me. There were some exciting, innovative bands making fantastic records back then.

Fistful of Metal - Anthrax
All Over the Place - The Bangles
Steeltown - Big Country
Tonight - David Bowie
Heartbeat City - The Cars
The Top - The Cure
Some Great Reward - Depeche Mode
The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall - The Fall
Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man - Guadalcanal Diary
I Often Dream of Trains - Robyn Hitchcock
Zen Arcade - Hüsker Dü
How Will the Wolf Survive? - Los Lobos (Oh, crap, was that really 22 years ago? Sigh.)
Meat Puppets II - Meat Puppets
Double Nickels on the Dime - The Minutemen
No Remorse - Motörhead
Hajimemashite (How Do You Do) - Miyuki Nakajima
From Her To Eternity - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Learning to Crawl - The Pretenders
Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution
The Works - Queen
Reckoning - R.E.M.
Let It Be - The Replacements
Hyaena - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Hatful of Hollow - The Smiths
The Smiths - The Smiths
Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads (Best. Concert. Movie. EVER!)
Soul Mining - The The
Into The Gap - Thompson Twins
The Unforgettable Fire - U2
When In Rome Do As The Vandals - The Vandals
Couldn't Stand The Weather - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking - Roger Waters
Pagan Place - The Waterboys
Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. - Dwight Yoakam

Technorati Tags: Music, eighties, 1984

Technological think tank Gartner Inc. reports that Windows Vista won't ship until Q2 2007.

That's looking at it hopefully, too, I believe.

And their comparison of Vista to Win2k is spot-on, except that 2k had the relatively clean code of NT to build off of, while Vista has the nightmare that is XP.

Windows, Vista, bug city

Japanese researchers invent completely transparent material.

The Noctilux-M (the gold-standard in low-light lenses, IMO, though I loved my old 35mm f2) might have a lot of competition soon.

lenses, optics, photography

Wireless hotspot providers are starting to wake up to the fact that there's competition.

wi-fi hotspots T-Mobile

Looks like Apple is coming out swinging.

Good. Maybe they'll do something about how they're getting more popular, too.

Apple, Ads, marketshare

While this article on Apple's new agreement with the major recording labels isn't about pricing web design or photography, it's still a good read on how pricing affects customer expectations.

"The answer is that pricing sends a signal. People have come to believe that “you get what you pay for.” If you lowered the price of a movie, people would immediately infer from the low price that it's a crappy movie and they wouldn't go see it. If you had different prices for movies, the $4 movies would have a lot less customers than they get anyway. The entertainment industry has to maintain a straight face and tell you that Gigli or Battlefield Earth are every bit as valuable as Wedding Crashers or Star Wars or nobody will go see them."

Pricing, itms, Apple