I remember the first time in 2004 (high school!) that I became familiar with Firefox and its amazing add-ons (at that time called extensions). There was something magical about running a secure browser that was infinitely-expandable. Since then, the little browser that could has taken the world by storm, taking a near 30% market share - by most recent estimates.
Today, I am still an ardent Firefox user. And I still use many add-ons, though they have changed over the years to reflect my changing use of computers and technology in general. Yet I fire up Safari on a daily basis. Why?
It seems as though Safari - a browser that is as simple as they come - has one thing going for it: speed. And that speed comes from being lean, or not having any baggage termed add-ons in Firefox. Not even looking at any benchmarks, I can feel Safari’s speed - a definite “faster” than my add-on filled Firefox. This is especially true with Safari 4, but was also true in Safari 3: it just feels faster.
If nothing else, all this means is that perhaps Apple had a plan in mind in refusing to build in a plug-in engine into Safari. Sometimes… less is more!
At least Levi’s think so. Just take a look at that web ad: is it not made to grab the attention of horny web-surfin’ men?
I just received a reply on the Blubrry forums about the awesome PowerPress plugin. I’m planning on migrating the TechNest Weekly Report podcast to it since PodPress (what I use now to publish my podcast) is getting more and more long-in-the-tooth and has had its support wiki down for the last month (possibly more!).
More to the point, however, Angelo over on the forums informed me that the 0.8 revision of PowerPress is going to have one really cool feature that PodPress doesn’t have: additional fields to enter custom iTunes subtitles and summaries.
This is awesome for anyone that has remotely cares about show notes. It seems as though PodPress handles them correctly (which is what one could ask, right?) but FeedBurner gargles them up with   in place of a space and other cracked (to those who don’t know HTML) characters in place of apostrophes and quotations marks.
The ability to feed custom show notes for my podcast episode is awesome - just what I’ve been looking for. Why have I been waiting for this functionality? Well, if you don’t already know, I have a brand new tech podcast called TechNest Weekly Report. When I publish an episode, I type all the show notes (topics covered on the show, links to pages that I discussed) into the podcast’s blog post and append the podcast file to the post. The effect in iTunes is a summary that can get quite long. What I really want to do is place a link in the show notes that would direct listeners to a page that contains all the show notes. This way, I save bandwidth for myself and my listeners as well as give my dear listeners a choice: if they want to see the show notes, they can do so by visiting a link. If they don’t, well… they don’t. Plus it has the beneficial benefit of making the description area look very clean.
Hurray for the great folks over at Blubrry and PowerPress!
I’ve seen this more than a few times already: media and advertising are always seen together as categories in publications and at events. Even the NY Times joins the two topics under its Business Section. This is obviously because a lot of media is supported by advertising. The two seem to have a symbiotic relationship: media is created to serve as advertising or advertising is created to serve media. That much is obvious.
But how about the media that is considered “premium”: media for which the end user pays for? Probably the best examples of such “premium media” are movies and on-demand services (VOD, iTunes downloads, Netflix, etc.).
Still, I find the coupling of media and advertising to be interesting.
Was just browsing the various international stock market resources and came across this priceless quote from RTS (Russian Trading System) Stock Exchange:
“On New Year’s Eve “Russian Trading System” Stock Exchange introduced its new much-anticipated corporate brand.”
I’m Russian (by birth, culture, and other things), but I just can’t stand this kind of shit. Who - in reality - cares about a brand of a stock exchange? This really reminds me of PR speak that is done by someone straight out of high school and a blunt in their mouth, mindlessly click-clacking away at the keyboard.
The whole point of PR is to deliver a message that demonstrates how the organization brings the client value. Color changes on a web site, something that supposedly represents the beginning of a “new brand,” does not fit that criteria. In fact, it’s plain annoying. This kind of thing is done by organizations that have no respect for their clients or their clients’ time.
So answer me this, RTS: who was waiting for this “much-anticipated corporate brand?”
(nobody was)
Maybe I’m just too hard on these people. Let me know in the comments.
2010 Ford Taurus
The day before yesterday I wrote about the new Buick LaCrosse and how amazing it looks. Today is the day the embargo ends on the 2010 Ford Taurus, which means that - finally - it is okay to release pictures of the vehicle. I am just as stunned with the new Taurus as I was with the new LaCrosse: it is a beautiful design, a huge improvement over the outgoing model, and represents another (powerful) shot across the bow at the Japanese companies everyone and the media loves to love. Design wise, the full-size sedan segment now has a new leader, and this new leader is the new Taurus. Let’s think this through for a second: from the following list, pick the vehicle you would like to own:
- Toyota Avalon
- Chevy Impala
- Ford Taurus
- Chrysler 300
- Honda Accord (which is a half-assed competitor in this segment)
- Nissan Maxima
Clearly, the battle is now between the Maxima and the new Taurus. As far as I’m concerned, this vehicle will show the public what Ford is truly capable of, just like the new LaCrosse will demonstrate GM’s abilities to deliver highly-desirable (read: sexy and functional) vehicles. This should shut up the nay-sayers who think that American automakers can’t make (or haven’t though of making) such products.
I would love to compare this new Taurus with being just as “revolutionary” as the original 1986 model, but I wasn’t alive then, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to do so. Ya dig?
More pictures from autoblog here.
2010 Buick LaCrosse
The embargoes were lifted today for the new - 2010 - Buick LaCrosse and what a beauty it is! If you haven’t yet seen it, check it out at autoblog. It’s a Buick that I actually want to drive!
So get this: the American auto makers that everybody and their grandma loves to hate have the new Fusion and this new LaCrosse, and Toyota has the… Camry! Let’s take a look at the sales numbers in summer of 2010 and see what the best-selling mid-size sedan is!
Not to get too far ahead of myself, though, but perhaps consumers aren’t looking for four-wheeled transportation and all these American automakers are just caught up in a bad case of marketing myopia: they’re busy chasing Toyota and Honda, while the two Japanese makers are working on an invisible hovercraft and that stuff they use in Harry Potter… the invisible cloak and powder!
What do you think?
Has anyone ever thought about how the word chairman originated?
It seems as if it’s the guy person sitting in the chair.
So what does that make everybody else who is present? Standing? Nay! Kneeling!
I find that midly entertaining, if humorous. And I’m the one who came up with it! Yahoo!
Something magical took me to the podcasts section in my iTunes library today and somehow I hit the play button on… The Mac Attack. I haven’t listened to/watched it in quite some time (long enough, actually, to have had iTunes stop auto-downloading it). The screencast Steve (the host) did was about printing in OS X, and the first few minutes were dedicated to setting up printing - more specifically, adding a printer. To make a long (and sentimental) story short, it made me want to try one more time and reconfigure my “network-ready” HP all-in-one (AIO).
Why the one more time? Because I’ve tried a total of ten times before (yes, really - I’m not exagerating) to set this thing up to print via a LAN connection. It never worked. So this time I thought I might do something different…
And I did! It all works now! I’m in network-printer heaven right now, having disconnected that silly USB cable that ran from the printer/AIO to the iMac. And now I don’t need to keep the iMac on all the time!
Kudos to Steve Stanger for his inspiration, kudos to me for doing it, and more of the same to HP and Apple for figuring it all out and making it all work.
On second thought… I think that those ten or so times I tried setting it all up before I was using Tiger, not Leopard. Long live Leopard and its auto-IP detection!
Or something like that… Now only if I could scan from the LAN… Can I?
Specs, devices, & details:
- HP OfficeJet 6300 AIO series (with LAN port)
- iMac and MacBook (13″ aluminum) - both running Leopard 10.5.6
