Monthly Archives: October 2005

Oct 22

My First Post From Flock

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I found a developer version of Flock was released today, and couldn’t help but explore.

The concept of Flock is seemingly complicated, but really quite simple. If you’re on the web often, “socializing” through blogs, Flickr, RSS, tagging (del.icio.us), etc., then this browser is built to make your life simpler.

Because of that, it includes a built-in blog editor (which I’m giving a whirl now), a quick way of tagging bookmarks (or “favorites,” as they’re called here) and updating immediately through del.icio.us, and fairly simple RSS aggregation in conjunction with your “favorites.”

It’s a pre-release version, so it’s not without bugs. For instance, I know that I will have to return to this post and manually change the category; Flock doesn’t yet support WordPress categories. Window management is a problem for me in Flock. There’s a great little feature called “the shelf” that allows you to manually select and drag web content that you like, so that you’ve got it later to blog about. It’ super slick…but also super easy to lose track of, as it disappears behind the browser window.

It actually would take a lot more energy than this to explain what Flock DOES, so I suggest that everyone go download their own copy, and share your reactions. 

Flock, browser, web

Oct 21

Consumers Suing Apple

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It’s clear that people’s iPod Nanos are scratching, except there are some people who are taking Apple to court over it.

Of course, I was immediately interested in getting a piece of this action, so I’ve done some due diligence of my own.

I researched the warranty that came with my Nano, along with the product information that I could find online, but wasn’t able to find anything that explicitly says “this Nano will not scratch during normal use.” That’s a bummer for us.

I pulled all of my other iPods out (we have three others, beside the Nano), and the only one that was scratched to all holy hell was mine. My wife keeps her Nano and her 4G Photo protected at all times, and the Mini doesn’t scratch. But after reading the article, it occurred to me that the scratches on my iPod might be a problem because “excessive, rapid wear renders the device unusable.” So I powered it on, played 2:21 of a random Dredg song, and listened closely for any problems. It sounds fine to me…so that’s not good.

In a move of desperation, I frantically created a pile of ALL of my gadgets. This took some time, as you might imagine…but it was worth it. Given that I’ve never dropped/damaged any of my gadgets, I started separating them into two piles: those that have scratches from normal use, and those that have no scratches. It took a while to finally add something to my “no scratches” pile, but I finally succeeded: my Agenda Linux handheld, which didn’t work for crap, didn’t get any scratches while sitting in its box. The rest of the gear had scratches…that doesn’t help our case.

Hey guys, get over it. Stop carrying your Nano in your pocket with your keys, if you don’t want it scratched. The Nano’s a pretty nice little unit…top of the line, even. You might compare it to, I dunno, a nice BMW. Of course, if people ran keys/pebbles/cell phones/dirty-ass-hands/pocket change all over the new paint job of a Beemer, and it ended up with scratches, they’d simply be chastised for stupidity – not involved in a class action suit with Apple.

This type of litigation is complete crap; your Nano works as intended, even if it’s scratched. The result of this will be increasingly stringent EULA’s and Terms of Service redundancy. Do us a favor, shut up.

apple, iPod, nano

Oct 18

Tours Really DO Work

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My praise of Dredg has been well-documented, and for good reason. They’re a household name in my household (read: everyone here likes them).

They’re coming to San Diego again on Thursday, and I’d known that for a while. It was only recently that I realized that they’re opening for Coheed and Cambria – a band I’d heard a few times on Alt Nation, but to whom I’d never paid much attention (+3 points for avoiding the dangling participle).

Since my brain says “I’d rather not pay $20 to see Dredg, and leave because the second band is crap (though I will), so let’s check out Coheed and Cambria.”

I imagine that if you took Geddy Lee of Rush (let me know if you can find a good link for Rush, and I’ll update this), gave him the guitar skills of David Mustaine, and a brown Sideshow Bob hairdo, you’d have a pretty close result to the lead singer/guitarist of Coheed and Cambria.

Not that any of that is his fault, or even a fault…because their album rocks. I bought the album after “liking” their single “The Suffering,” and am quite pleased.

See, Coheed? You sold an album because of DREDG. Some of you Coheed and Cambria fans out there ought to get out and buy some Dredg, and thank me for the recommendation in the form of gift cards.