Michael Geist: Canada's Wireless Crisis

Michael Geist on Canada's wireless crisis:

Canadian wireless market is hopelessly behind the rest of the world with limited competition, higher prices, and less choice.

Ars Reviews Hardy Heron

As we have come to expect, Ars produces a nicely detailed review of Ubuntu's latest release, Hardy Heron.



The verdict?

Ubuntu has achieved Linux desktop dominance by offering a significantly better experience and more usability than competing distributions, but with the others are starting to catch up in those areas, this is a bad time for Ubuntu to be stumbling. Fedora 9 and openSUSE 11 are both right around the corner and they might finally give Ubuntu a real challenge on the desktop.

UrlGreyHot: A Great User Experience Resource

UrlGreyHot is a great web site for application designers. There are a lot of useful resources for information architects, web designers and more.

Information Design Patterns

If you're an information design buff, niceone.org has a nice reference for common patterns.

Torontoist: Sue Johansen Retires

The Torontoist is reporting that legendary Toronto media personality Sue Johansen is retiring.

OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Released

OpenOffice 3.0 has been released for beta testing.



Some notable items... Office 2007/2008 files are supported, and this is the first native Mac version.

Personal Password Algorithms

There's a good article on Lifehacker on how to create and memorize unique passwords across various services.

New Site Section for Evernote Users

A little bit of administrivia: I've added a new section to the website that should be self-explanatory.

As a heavy Evernote user, I've decided to add a section to this site that is geared towards providing tips, reviews and news related to Evernote. I won't be posting any more Evernote bits on the main page, so if you'd like to subscribe to the Evernote feed, you can do so from the Evernote section.

Three Fields: Getting More Out of Evernote

Evernote is a deceptively powerful application. At first glance, Evernote is simplistic note taking tool. You have notebooks and notes. A notebook is not very different from a folder in your filesystem, and a note has three only fields — a title, a tag list and a rich text body field. Pretty boring, but if you think about it, you can do a lot with three fields.



By thinking out-of-the-box, you can do some pretty neat things. Here are ten ways that I've been using Evernote.

I create a notebook for each of my Evernote "applications". In terms of selecting how to use the Title, I had to think about how I prefer to sort those types of items. Feel free to adapt these applications to your own personal work style. Most of the field uses below are self explanatory, but in some cases, I've provided some examples to get you started.

1. Software License Manager
Title: Name and Version of Application, e.g., WriteRoom 1.0
Tags: Platform and usage of the software, e.g., mac, word_processor
Body: Insert key and other required information here

2. Job Hunt Manager
Title: Company - Title - Application Date, e.g., Apple - CEO - 20080501
Tags: Keywords and Status, e.g. executive, rejected
Body: Job description, research, links, contact and activity log

3. Source Code Clipper
Title: Short but Descriptive Function of Code/Algorithm, e.g., Quicksort
Tags: Language, keywords, e.g. java, recursion
Body: Source Code

4. Reading List
Title: Book Title, e.g., Hackers
Tags: Keywords, e.g., steven_levy, computers, technology
Body: Online bookstore link

5. Meeting Minutes Tracker
Title: Meeting Date
Tags: Project Name, e.g, big_software_project
Body: Minutes

6. Movie/Music/Book Tracker
Title: Book, CD or DVD Title
Tags: Keywords/Categories
Body: Location, CD Sleeve #, Lent To, IMDB information

7. Password Manager
Title: Web site, e.g., Gmail
Tags: Function of web site, other keywords, e.g., e-mail
Body: Password, using Evernote's built-in encryption (not supported on all platforms... yet)

8. Issue Tracker
Title: Issue
Tags: Status, Assignments
Body: Issue body

9. Weekly Work Log
Title: Week of {Friday's Date}
Tags: Keywords of things you worked on
Body: Breakdown of things you worked on by day

10. Expense Tracker
Title: Date (yyyy-mm-dd is the best format for sorting dates in titles in Evernote)
Tags: Expense category, Location, Vendor, e.g., travel, gas, shell
Body: Scanned image or textual information on the expense

Good Brad Bird Interview

GigaOm has a good summary of an interview with my favorite Pixar mind, Brad Bird.

What Does A Departing TechCrunch Blogger Write About?

Duncan Riley is leaving TechCrunch, and interestingly enough, his blog post covers his favorite apps/services.

At the top of his list? Evernote! Interestingly, number two is an app that I also have mucho respect for - Things.

Clearly, I'm not the only one who is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs Evernote.

Opera Releases Dragonfly

From TechCrunch:

Dragonfly will also show the most up-to-date document object model (DOM) of a page, not just its initial construction. This means the effects of dynamic changes to a webpage, whether Ajax-driven or not, will now be much more transparent and traceable.

This should make debugging DHTML heavy a heck of a lot easier.

Wired Explains High Gas Prices

Not that new, but still relevant. Wired has a good outline on the sad outlook of gas prices.

It definitely makes the premium on hybrid cars look palatable.

HTC Diamond Hands On

Engadget has a hands on (with video) profile of the upcoming HTC Diamond, with an addendum.

An interesting tidbit on the OS:

HTC has made hiding WinMo away something of a priority; CMO John Wang stated, "You wouldn't even know this device was Windows Mobile. You would just think it's TouchFlow 3D."

Gee, I wonder why they don't want you to think it's running WM6?

Non-Confirmed Blackberry 9900 In The Wilds

The guy at crackberry.com is one lucky Canuck.



He ordered a pre-release 9000 off eBay from the UK and got it. He's got his first thoughts up on the site now. The kicker is that the phone hasn't even been confirmed by Blackberry yet.

The display looks amazing. Almost enough to get me to stop drinking the iPhone Kool Aid. With a list price expected to be around $900-$1000, I think I'd rather buy 2 iPhones instead.

7 Linux Distros Compared

Information Week has a shootout of 7 popular Linux desktop distros. The winner? Not surprisingly, Ubuntu.

From Win32 to Cocoa, Part 2

Part 2 of an Ars series on a "Windows user's conversion to Mac OSX" is now up.

I have to say, that even as a Mac supporter, I didn't think that Peter Bright's comment (in Part 1) that "writing software for Windows is a pain" is all that fair. I tend to think that Microsoft has done a fantastic job with its development tools in terms of making life easier for Joe programmer. With a little bit of effort, anybody can write a Windows application.

It must be said, however, that not everyone is cut out to be Joe programmer, which is why I think Bright's observation (also from Part 1) rings true:

The third-party software ecosystem for Windows is big, no doubt about that. But it's also incredibly shoddy. Most Windows applications—from both major software companies and minor ones alike—are ugly, poorly-thought-out, clunky pieces of crap. While there are a few artisan developers for Windows, most Windows devs just don't care.

It is also true that on average, the typical "indie" Mac application has been developed with more careful thought in terms of design and user interaction than a comparable Windows application. I tend to think that this is simply due to the fact that developers realize that Mac users have higher expectations of applications, and that the higher degree of difficulty that comes with Mac programming also attracts a different breed of programmer. Quite often, you see Windows enterprise software carrying price tags of over six figures that don't look or run better than shareware apps developed by weekend programmers.

Using Evernote as an example - I've been using Evernote for a couple of years on Windows now. I love the utility (and the price) of the Windows app, but the GUI always felt a little Mickey Mouse to me. Evernote 3 is the first time Evernote builds a native Mac client, and while not perfect, it has a very polished and efficient design, reminiscent of iTunes and iWeb. These design improvements have now been migrated over to the Windows version of the application. As a result, the Windows application is now significantly better than the 2.x iteration of the product.

If you're interested in understanding the difference between software development on both platforms, this series is worth a read.

Tesla's First Dealership in LA

The first Tesla dealership will be popping up in Los Angeles.

Jason Calacanis was talking about his experiences with his new $100K electric roadster on this week's TWiT. He said that on a $4 charge, you can go about 250 miles. He also mentioned that in Tesla's product roadmap that a $50K 4-door is on its way, and even further in the future, there should be a $30K vehicle.

Sweet.

Lenovo's Zexy, Shiny Ideapad U110

The boys at Engadget have a nice overview of the Lenovo U110. They've also got some video of this glossy notebook.

HTC Diamond has VGA Screen

The upcoming HTC Diamond looks to be a pretty nice device. The biggest draw will be the 2.8" VGA resolution screen. The dealbreaker will be that its operating system is Windows Mobile 6.1.

Where's my iPhone, Mr. Rogers?

Eee 9" Screen on 7" Unit

Some guy has ripped out the 9" Eee screen and tested it on a 7" unit, and it works. Sort of.

Maybe there will be a grey market for screen upgrades on the 7" unit.

What's the Deal with John Cusack?

I am calling bs on John Cusack's indie cred. When he's good, he's really good (High Fidelity, Say Anything). But do all the people who give John Cusack indie cred simply forgive him for the mainstream dreck he's been in?

I saw Martian Child this past weekend, and it is probably one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Watching this movie reminded me of how bad Serendipity was, and well, it was really bad.

As chance would have it, I was flipping channels yesterday evening, and while waiting for King of the Hill to start, I was subject to the last few minutes of another Cusack trainwreck, America's Sweethearts.

Lucky me.

Some Printables

I had to print some graph paper recently, and found a couple of good links for some printables.

For graph paper, incompetech lets you roll your own templates.

For ruled paper, you can check out a recent posting on Lifehacker.

MediaLink 1.5 Released

Nullriver has released Medialink 1.5, their software for streaming media from your Mac to your PS3.

The main new feature is Aperture support. Would be nice if they published a more detailed changelog on their web site though.

Next Toronto Apple Store: Fairview Mall?

Looks like the next Apple store in the GTA is going to be Fairview Mall.

Too bad, because I know we could really use one in Markham or Vaughan.