Jeff Carlson (.Thought)

Hobbies

This short film is great: all about the frustration that hobbies can bring. (Better quality QuickTime version here, but it might not stay at that URL, so I've linked to the YouTube version below.)

NBC Yanking TV Shows from iTunes

Macworld: iTunes Store to stop selling NBC shows in September

NBC: "Thanks to Apple and iTunes, we're making money we otherwise wouldn't have made, so now we're greedy bastards."

I suppose some people might be compelled to try the new Fox/NBC Hulu.com service, which I read somewhere will require that you're online to watch. But I'll bet this action is going to push a lot of people — people willing to pay honest money for the convenience of downloading from iTunes — to the P2P services to download pirate copies. (It's not encouraging that the Hulu page includes an image for the series Drive, which Fox cancelled after four episodes.

I give it 9 months before NBC announces a return to iTunes.

Coffee Drinks Illustrated

This is a great, simple-to-understand diagram of popular coffee drinks: Coffee Drinks Illustrated. Click to view the whole thing.

This would make a great poster.

Goodbye Gonzales. Dems, Don't Screw This Up, Too

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation today (effective September 16), eliciting a collective sigh of relief across the nation. The term "incompetent" gets thrown around too much these days (and isn't that a statement on the political climate we're living in), so I'm not going to say that Gonzales was incompetent - he was just horribly, embarrassingly bad at his job. Or rather, his second job. His first job and main priority over the years has been to protect George W. Bush, which he's managed to do in spades, to the incredulity of nearly everyone. It's just that he was terrible at his second job, which was to serve the American people.

Within the last few weeks, Bush's brain trust (I use the term loosely) has started to unravel. Rove is exiting, Gonzales is headed out, not to mention all of the other administration lackeys who've suddenly realized that they need to spend more quality time with their families. It's surely a blatant attempt to head for cover now that there's real heat in the air (subpoenas, and all those pesky facts that have been suppressed for so long which are now finally emerging), in the hopes that they'll be passed over and people will forget all about it.

So, subpoena-power wielding Democratic legislators, once again we're at a point where your country is begging you: don't fuck this up. Don't go easy on these law-breaking bastards in the name of attaining some higher level of political consciousness. Defend your Constitution, and punish people for the crimes they've committed. Political goodwill is fine when you're dicking around with minor partisan matters, but we've reached a point where the current administration has clearly and unashamedly undermined the Constitution, the government, and the American people in its pursuit of power (and don't kid yourselves thinking that it hasn't been a giant six-year power grab by the Republican party at every level of government it can get its hands on). Do you want to stay in power yourselves? Do the right thing and crack down on the law breaking and corruption (and that includes members of your own party; you've seen what covering up for criminals and pedophiles in their ranks has done for the Republicans).

iMac Review at Hot News

My latest Seattle Times column on Apple’s new iMac appeared on Saturday, and today a friend pointed out that Apple is featuring it on their Hot News page:

“The very model of a modern Macintosh”

iMac, “the very model of a modern Macintosh,” may have evolved over the years into “this new aluminum fighter-jet of a personal computer, but the same idea is retained: You can put everything you need in a computer into an all-in-one design that actually looks good on a desk,” reports Jeff Carlson (Seattle Times). [Aug 21, 2007]

As a writer who covers the Mac, there are times when I wonder if I can come up with something clever enough that would prompt Apple to feature it in their marketing, the way Pogue and Mossberg get big slides during Steve Jobs's keynotes. At the same time, of course, I'm not trying to come up with glorious things to say just to get quoted (journalistic ethics and all that).

The funny thing about this review was that I was completely and utterly blocked for how to open the column in an interesting way. Then, I spied the old iMac we own on the floor in my office, which hasn't been functional for months (maybe even more than a year). The rest of the column came pretty quickly after that. I needed to get it done and turned in to my editor, who had given me an extension because the machine didn't arrive until what would normally be my deadline. So the rest of the article was just banged out and sent.

(Oh, and I may have unconsciously stolen the "very model" line from my friend Andrew, who wrote in a review of the Xserve, "Apple's Xserve is the very model of a modern Intel-based 1U server, with a few caveats." However, I get alliteration points over his version.)

Do I ever have my work cut out for me

Last week, Apple dropped a bomb I knew was going to arrive at the most inconvenient time: the release of iLife '08. For the last few years, the peak event for my professional life has been Macworld Expo in January, where Apple typically announces new hardware and software. One of my major book projects has been my iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide, and in general Apple has revved the software each year.

But not this time around. Apple threw all of its focus onto the iPhone last January, without a peep about iLife. I was still plenty busy with projects, but suddenly my iMovie/iDVD book became a moving target. Months passed, and I heard rumors that perhaps iLife contained features that were specific to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but then Leopard was delayed until October. A few weeks ago, a rumor site named August 7 as the introduction of new iMacs and iLife, which incredibly turned out to be true.

Normally, I'd be happy (and I am, really - when you're a freelance writer, having work is good). The timing isn't so great in terms of other projects I'm working on now, but okay. It wasn't until I was following along with online coverage of Apple's special media event last Tuesday that I started hyperventilating.

iMovie '08 is a completely new application. Not just we've-cleaned-up-the-code new. No, the old iMovie HD has been shelved in favor of this new version, which sports a completely different interface, a few completely different ways of working (some good, some bad), and lots of features missing from its predecessor. I wrote about it in TidBITS last week (see "New iLife '08 Revealed, .Mac Upgraded," 2007-08-13), and also wrote the First Look article for Macworld, which starts out:

Take what you know about iMovie, put it into an imaginary box, and store that box in a corner of your brain for now. When Steve Jobs unveiled iLife ’08 (Best Current Price: $69.98) and mentioned that Apple is “completely replacing one of the key apps with something that takes it to a whole new level,” he wasn’t exaggerating. iMovie ’08 is a completely new video editing program that just happens to have inherited the iMovie name.

I've also written the First Look for iDVD '08, which was posted today:

If you watch Apple’s webcast of its August 7 product announcements for news of iDVD ’08, it may take you longer to jump ahead to that point in Steve Jobs’ presentation (the 54-minute mark or so) than the 33 seconds Jobs spends on the DVD-authoring component of iLife ’08 (Best Current Price: $69.98). That gives you a clue to how important DVD creation has become at Apple.

What all this means is that I need to basically rewrite a huge chunk of my iMovie book (it also affects a couple of the other projects on my plate). I was scheduled to write the full review of iMovie '08 for Macworld, but had to beg off when I realized that the laws of time and space wouldn't provide enough time to do it.

Now that I've stopped hyperventilating, I'm not really complaining (much), because this also represents a good challenge to create new material. That's exciting. But it also means that me and 2 a.m. get to become close friends again for the next month or two.

My iTunes Feature

Apple yesterday released a feature called My iTunes, which generates code for a Flash widget that you can put on a Web page. The widget displays information such as recent iTunes purchases (with links to the items at the iTunes Store, of course). It would be nice to be able to sample a song directly from the widget, but oh well. This seems to be a clever way to express your musical taste (or lack thereof). Here's one:

I've also added a skinny one to the sidebar at left.