Category: Contemplation

Ellen Isaacs, Alan Walendowski, Steve Whittaker, Diane J. Schiano & Candace Kamm about the character, functions, and styles of Instant Messaging in the workplace:

We found evidence of two distinct styles of use. Heavy IM users and frequent IM partners mainly used it to work together: to discuss a broad range of topics via many fast-paced interactions per day, each with many short turns and much threading and multitasking. Light users and infrequent pairs mainly used IM to coordinate: for scheduling, via fewer conversations per day that were shorter, slower-paced with less threading and multitasking.

This cNet article claims to have sources saying Apple is going to charge for its free iApps and/or iApp upgrades. This potentially will encourage developers to come up with cheaper alternatives, but I think the free iApps was one of the striking arguments for PC users to switch to Mac. In the end developers AND Apple will pay a higher price for the customer base that doesn’t grow.

Apple users are bothered with the noise of the new G4 desktops (five fans scream at a noise of 63 dB at you). They created a website to push Apple to reduce noise in their machines.

Memento mori photography exhibition:

»A memento mori is a form of image that urged a European person of the late Middle Ages to “remember thy death.” To do this, a memento mori might represent death as a human skeleton — perhaps as the Grim Reaper gathering his harvest — or it might depict human bodies in an advanced state of decay. Its purpose is to remind the viewer that death is an unavoidable part of life, something to be prepared for at all times. Memento mori images are graphic demonstrations of the fact that death was not only a more frequent, but a far more familiar occurrence in medieval Europe than it is today.«

(via schockwellenreiter)

I really wonder who bought this town in California for 1,7 million dollar at eBay.

According to the Register, Microsoft is lining up to buy Macromedia. Dave Winer thinks that it’s Flash they want. That would really be a push back.

This is very good! Versiontracker and MacUpdate were the sources of choice when a Mac user wanted to get updates on new software.

I decided to change this site to a news items site for a while. I’m going to test NetNewsWire Pro to add comments. I use NetNewsWire to track news and the new version includes a weblog editor that allows me to directly post without using the browser or Radio Userland.

EspressoBlog is an application for Mac OS X 10.2 »Jaguar« (there is no Windows version, and will not be one) written in Cocoa (Screen Shots). It allows a user to post to a Movable Type-powered weblog from the comfort and convenience of their Mac. Theoretically, it would also work for those who use Blogger, but Blogger’s implementation of their own API has been down for months. (via schockwellenreiter)

Slashdot: “Defending its decision to concoct recommendations to steer customers to buy items at Amazon’s new Apparel Store, a spokeswoman said Amazon “felt it would be evident to people that since the store was so new, we wouldn’t have the transaction history to create database similarities.” But in this just-published patent applicaton, Amazon earlier told the USPTO it’s able to use product viewing histories to determine the similarity or relatedness between products for which little or no purchase history data exists. So which claim should you believe?”

Version 2.0 now available: “Bochs is a portable x86 PC emulation software package that emulates enough of the x86 CPU, related AT hardware, and BIOS to run Windows, Linux, *BSD, Minix, and other OS’s, all on your workstation.” […] “Macintosh users will be happy to find binaries for MacOSX and MacOS9. Also we now support plugins for several platforms and cleaned up and improved the documentation.”

This study examines the effect of reputation on profits on eBay.

People do funny things with Flash.

Cynthia L. Webb (Washington Post): “Blogs, or online Web logs of news and views, were the hot story of 2002, the year when blogging caught the eye of the mainstream press in a big way and pundits began to recognize blogs as useful tools for everything from venting about politics to raving about a favorite band.”

“Interested in spam filters? Come join us in Cambridge in January at the first conference on spam filtering. Speakers at the conference will include many of the leading spam filter developers.”

There is another effect deriving from the weblogging trend: free content management systems. This month the weblogging tool pMachine will be released. A while ago Movabletype appeared. Bricolage seems also to be a very interesting alternative – free as well.

Testing…