P.S. (Pretty Sweet) » Technology

iMac

allie — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:09:33 +0000

Apparently the new 27″ iMac can also be used as an external display — and at $100 less than the non-LED 30″ cinema display, this almost sounds reasonable. But wouldn’t anyone else like to see a standalone 27″ cinema display also at a price point closer to $1k? Just seems wasteful to have a whole (brand-new) computer that I don’t use.

Finally!

allie — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:10:26 +0000

I don’t often use Word for Mac and think to myself, Gee, what a delightful computing experience! (Usually, the sentiment is closer to, *&$#, are you ever going to finish “optimizing font menu performance”?!) But I recently upgraded to Office 2008, and I had to convert a DOC to PDF today — something I usually dread because PDFMaker fails, oh, about 90% of the time and I end up using Preview to convert to PDF and then putting in hyperlinks manually in Acrobat. Today, I thought that I’d skip PDFMaker altogether and go straight to Save As, and there, waiting to greet me, was a format of PDF. Hallelujah! Does this have anything to do with the fact that PDF finally became an open standard last year?

Name That Movie

allie — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:53:07 +0000

We need a Shazam-esque app for movies. How many times do you turn on the tv and flip through to a movie and have no idea what you’re watching? If I’m at home I can use a guide, but I’m usually watching movies on tv in hotels or similar places. Sure, I can get onto IMDB and look for Clooney’s movies from the approximate era of the one I’m watching, but isn’t that the film equivalent to Googling a line of song lyrics?

I Heart Wordpress

admin — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:57:15 +0000

I never thought this day would come, but I’ve migrated this little bloglet to Wordpress. Farewell, MovableType — it’s not you, it’s me.

First Jotting

allie — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:17:42 +0000

I say, “Call hotel that’s holding Josh’s shirts hostage.” Jott transcribes, “Call hotel that scolding Josh is truth toss it.” (!?)

SDK

allie — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:27:36 +0000

July 11 cannot come soon enough. To-do lists, AIM and Flickr apps running natively on my iPhone, among others. Fifteen days and counting.

Butterfield

allie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:18:39 +0000

“Over the decades as the company grew and expanded, first into dyes and punches, into copper, corrugated steel, synthesized rubber, piping, milling equipment, engines, instruments, weaponry, and so on, I still felt at home, because tin was the core of the business.” Whoa.

iPhone Goodness

allie — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:52:18 +0000

I cannot even express how excited I am that I can set a custom icon for any iPhone webclip. There are things that I buried on the second (or third) page of my iPhone menu just because they’re missing icons. Oh yes, it’s true. Other iPhone goodies found today: 17 useful bookmarklets, some icons (Graphr), some more icons (Ikony) and even more icons (AisleOne).

Dilbert

allie — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:40:52 +0000

“Your philosophy is better suited for rock carving than web design.”

Ryan Allis

allie — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:37:05 +0000

How is Ryan Allis the same age as me? Handsome, well-spoken and wildly successful… a dangerous combination.

iPhoneness

allie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:57:14 +0000

This is, of course, the week of the almighty iPhone (25 hours to go, for those who are keeping track), and amongst the many reviews, parodies and articles, Gruber’s response to David Platt is my favorite written piece while David Pogue takes the video award.

Photosynth + Surface

allie — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:02:35 +0000

Microsoft has been quite busy lately trying to keep up with the Jobses: Photosynth (very cool demo, although demos like this always leave me wondering how the software really performs with average user-input data) and Surface.

Ecobook

allie — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:23:18 +0000

Sexy and sustainable: the Asus Ecobook. Clean bamboo exterior, recyclable interior.

Microsoft = Nero

allie — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:02:31 +0000

In Nietzsche-like fashion, Paul Graham declares the death of Microsoft. “I’m glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus — evil in the way only inherited power can make you.”

Beautification

allie — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:08:56 +0000

An algorithm that makes your (photographed) face just a little prettier. Can’t wait for them to get a demo running so I can alter some MySpa—I mean, test it out.

Gender and Web Conferences

allie — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:27:04 +0000

The state of gender diversity at web conferences, courtesy of Kottke. The only conference with more than one-third female presenters is the BlogHer Business 2007 event despite an excellent list of female speaker candidates that was published in October of last year. (On a related and important note, BlogHer has 100% female speakers, which I find equally offensive to those with 100% male speakers.)

Mactactic

allie — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:09:41 +0000

Thinking about buying a new Mac? Check Mactactic first to see if you should snatch one up or hold out a bit longer.

Most Anticipated

allie — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:48:54 +0000

Ranking of the 50 most anticipated unreleased web applications based on bookmarking in del.icio.us. It would be interesting to apply this technique to lots of different kinds of sites.

The Web: From 0 to 2 in 5 Minutes

allie — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:10:08 +0000

If there was a commercial for the Web 2.0 movement, this would be it. Very well done.

Getting Inside MySpace

allie — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:51:37 +0000

Looking at MySpace’s underlying technologies, it becomes clear that neither their egregious error rates — often coming in at 20% or higher for certain times or geographical areas — nor their poor infrastructure and design demonstrate a lack of effort. “For example, the seventh 1 million-account database MySpace brought online wound up being filled in just seven days.”