Via Daring Fireball: Some dude creates a Homer Simpson using text and CSS. Fan-freaking-tastic!

Tags: css, homer, simpson

I'm a big fan of Writeroom for the Mac, even though it took me over a year after buying it to start using it. I use it to write my longer blog entries, as well as writing correspondence.

If you're looking for the same type of functionality on Windows, check out Dark Room. It's free, and it works just as well as Writeroom. Seeing how Writeroom is not free, it's actually a better deal.

Tags: freeware, writeroom, dark room

Photos of the Blackberry clamshell are now out in the wild. Gotta admit, it's probably the sexiest crackberry I've ever seen, but I still think I'd rather drink Apple's iPhone Kool-Aid.

Tags: cellular, blackberry, rim

If you're looking for virtual desktops on Windows, and the XP Powertoy isn't cutting it, consider Dexpot, which is freeware.

If you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket and want some additional whizziness, Otaku Software has a couple of apps that might tickle your fancy. TopDesk gives you the functionality of Expose that you see in Windows, while Deskspace gives you the same functionality as Dexpot, except with a spinning cube, a la Compiz on Linux.

Tags: deskspace, topdesk, dexpot, freeware, shareware

David Chartier gives a review of the state of Evernote, as well as an exclusive preview of the iPhone client.



The more I use the new Evernote, the more I love it. I haven't had a chance to test run the Windoze or Windoze Mobile versions of the beta yet, but that should happen soon.

The biggest problem with the new Evernote for me right now is the need for filtering the tag list. When you select a notebook, only those tags that apply to that notebook should be visible. On the whole, however, I'm ready to become a paying customer for the sync feature as soon as its available. The fact that they have a synchronized tool with such broad platform support makes them a killer app in the note-taking space... competitors be damned.

Tags: evernote

SFGate has an interesting profile of chef Michael Mina.

Tags: michael mina

Tags: macbook, air, lenovo

Torontoist has a good bit on the terse Rogers iPhone announcement.

Tags: iphone, torontoist

Conde Nast is selling signed prints of Massimo Vignelli's updated but timeless New York subway map.



Vignelli was profiled in the Gary Hustwit's documentary, Helvetica. It's an amazing documentary about Helvetica, the font, and about typeface design in general. While the film's appeal may be limited outside of font nerd circles, it provides amazing insight into one of the most ubiquitous and perfectly designed sans serif fonts ever created.

Tags: documentary, helvetica

The iPhone is apparently coming to Canada. For real this time.

This better not be a hoax, Mr. Rogers! I've been waiting a long time for this, even if it means scrapping my overpriced, one year old, piece of junk Windows Mobile phone.

Tags: iphone, rogers

A hyper-modified Eee is being sold on eBay for over $3000. Hard. Core.

Tags: asus, eee

Zoho, a popular source for applications on the cloud, is now offering macro and pivot table functionality to their spreadsheet app.

Tags: zoho, pivottables, macro

Valleywag is reporting that Salesforce.com is going to become a Mac shop. Nice.

Tags: salesforce.com, mac

With Microsoft's most recent misstep in Vista, some opportunities have opened up in the desktop OS space. Apple has had one of its best quarters, and now Canonical has put its best food forward with its latest release of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron.



OSNews has a roundup of reviews of Hardy Heron, while Lifehacker offered a detailed and well written primer to getting started with this popular distribution.

While not a perfect distribution by any means, there is a lot to impress. It runs snappily on obsolete hardware. It definitely felt faster than XP on my Eee, and that was with the visual effects turned on. Where Ubuntu, and ultimately Linux on the desktop fails, is driver support. I have yet to have a painless experience getting wireless to work on the Eee, and that's even after switching out the wireless card to a more compatible broadcom version.

Ubuntu has as slick a GUI as I've ever seen in a Linux distro, although the interface designers do need to come to the realization that brown is not the new black.

In any case, if you're just looking to get up and running, without a lot of customization, Ubuntu can fulfill most surf and mail requirements. Once you have to dig a little deeper to tweak the system, you'll definitely be in need of a little more patience. I do believe that the goal of a viable Linux based desktop is well in reach.


Tags: linux, ubuntu, linux, freeware