If You Cite Compete Or Alexa For Anything Besides Making Fun Of Them, You’re A Moron (via TechCrunch)

Apple HTML5 microsite touts standards, but only works on Safari

Apple just threw their critics a bone with this one. To show how much they love the new web standards, they’ve launched a site to showcase some cool examples utilizing html5, css3, and javascript and how these standards are “open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient.” The problem is, the site only works on Safari which draws a few implications. The big one being the theory that Apple wants to lock the web behind its walled garden and force you to visit it through its products. Unfortunately these open technologies contradict this idea.

A Thin Line Between Greats: Kanye West vs. Steve Jobs

technista:

By Technista


Steve Jobs and Kanye West are from different generations and have very different careers,  but a recent exchange between Valleywag’s Ryan Tate and Steve Jobs has me thinking about their commonalities. There’s something about these lovable megalomaniacs that make them similar, proving once and for all there’s a thin line between greats.

10. Known the Importance of Design

The two have an obvious affection for style and design. If you visit Mr. West’s www.kanyeuniversecity.com or watch any of his musical videos, then you know about the rapper’s artistic eye, and no need to look much further than a Macbook or iPod to understand Job’s commitment to beauty and design. A few classes at the American Academy of Art helped Kanye West explore the design process, and an interest in a college Calligraphy class was instrumental in the MAC’s typography. Steve Jobs and Kanye West worked with Jonathan Ive and leather’s company Louis Vuitton, respectively.


9. Frequently Parodied for their Egomania

The two men have inspired some of the best comedy around. Dan Lyons took on the faux persona of the Apple Executive for a blog “The Fake Steve Jobs,” and nearly everyone in America had fun with Kanye West’s “I’mma let you finish…” Taylor Swift outburst interruptus.


8.  Unique Fashion

Kanye is known about town for his fashionable threads, and Steve Jobs is known for predictable wardrobe of a mock black turtleneck, levi’s and New Balance.


7. Both Are Prone to Acting Out

As a youngster, Steve Jobs was reportedly known for tantrums calling his colleagues “dumbshits”   before being placed on the night shift at Atari. Kanye West is known for his tirades against music industry that doesn’t recognize his “genius.”


6. Both are College Drop Outs

Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College because he saw “no value in it,” and Kanye West left Chicago State University because he “wasn’t learning fast enough.”

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(this post was reblogged from technista)

[Mashable] Google Throws in the Towel on the Nexus One Web Store

I think it’s premature for google to remove the Nexus One site. First, they’ve just released this phone. Marketing it will take some time and this site along with their wireless partners will help those efforts. Second, they need this site as a launch pad for their larger wireless strategy. If they want to sliver into the wireless market, they need to establish a home base. Last, they need to sell more subsidized phones. The only benefit to this site, if you can call it that, is you can buy an unlocked phone. Unfortunately, to do so you have to pay almost three times the what the subsidized version cost on T-Mobile, Verizon, or Sprint. So unless they are assuming there is a large group of die hard early adopters on AT&T who don’t want an iPhone, they can’t expect heavy traffic to this site.

It’s clear there’s going to be lots of competition for mobile payments in the next coming months. Square looks to be the only one with a marketing push.

Google adds file transfer to gchat

Mashable is reporting Google has added swapping files to gchat’s capabilities.

The iGoogle and Orkut file transfers will work for photos, documents and presumably small video files. In addition, web users can exchange files with users of Google Talk — the more robust desktop version of Google’s chat client — without any hiccups.

Scrrreeeeechh. Yes, that’s right - only iGoogle and Orkut(I don’t know anyone using it either). Google assures us after initial deployment, Gmail will soon follow. Still, I spend most of my time instant messaging using my beloved Adium unable to even use Gchat’s A/V capabilities. I guess the larger goal, besides world domination, is to get users to ditch their desktop apps for one of the more powerful browsers.

just ordered these. pretty sweet eh? Click for high-res photo

just ordered these. pretty sweet eh?

Pleaserobme.com

Tin Foil Hat

Last week, pleaserobme.com became the talk of blogs for aggregating “check-ins” of location based users that services like Four Square. The outrage across the internet came from the assumption that these public check-ins alerted criminals your home was abandoned and safe to rob.

As usual, the threat was over-exaggerated. Most check sites list your current location and not your home location. So figuring out where you live based on your current location would take a remarkeble amount of triangluation and tracking that I’m assuming wouldn’t be worth the reward of stealing your 18” Sanyo television.

I come down hard on these people because the viscerale reaction to something so harmless can distract from real threats. Like clicking on any of the dubious facebook applications that steal your password and send viagra messages to your friends.

I still don’t understand what’s going on here. When I hear this melody, I always associate it with a pretty good cinnamon gum. Unfortunately, that’s doesn’t translate well to choosing a wireless provider. The clear winner here is Wrigley, the company who produces Big Red. I’m sure Verizon wrote them a sweet check in addition to the subliminal although free promotion.

Problem:Solution 12.8.09

Problem: At the job, I’m responsible from converting Adobe InDesign files of articles from a monthly magazine to XHTML to be inputted into a content management system. This takes about a week and a half and involves me export content from InDesign, cleaning up the code, and copying and pasting. The problem is this consumes value time that could be spent working on more interesting project.

Solution: While the first 2 steps would be difficult to automate, I was able to create an application using Applescript that rapidly speeds up the the input process.

The script analyzes a selection of text in BBEdit. The selection is usually 5 lines separated by returns and includes the article reference name, the page number, the title, the author, and the article description. Also, you have variables for the URL of the issue folder and the publish date. Once the script has all the information it needs from BBEdit and the variables you’ve updated, it goes to Safari where the information is pasted into it’s respected fields. Note: I would love be able to do this with Firefox or even on Chrome but Applescript has its limitations.

To determine which field is the right one, the script uses the Javascript function “getElementByID” or “getElementsByName” to find the specific input fields and update their values.