Technology, productivity, and ideas

I’ve been increasingly alarmed by the noise-to-signal ration facebook creates in my life. I just posted two articles over at blognation explaining why I now think FaceBook is becoming an evil company and why they don’t get my attention anymore. I’m sure young Zuckerberg will still sleep well tonight and Ballmer’s not likely to take his investment back. Not the point.

The point is that this ongoing invasion of our privacy for the sake of profiteering has got to stop. Will what I posted kick up a sh*tstorm of protest. Who knows? Probably not.

But I just had a “Network” moment. Like old Howard, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Post 1: I’m Ready to Bail on Facebook – the New Face of Evil

Post 2:  Hey Facebook: Buh Bye!

A few of my Twitter friends think I’m overreacting. That this was all just a harmless mistake and one they’ve quickly corrected. I don’t think so.

Have you heard about Jing? It’s a project being run by the good folks at Techsmith (who make two of my essential Windows tools - SnagIt and Camtasia Studio). Jing is basically a free screen capture tool (still and video) for both Windows and Mac OS but with a number of twists. The new version adds the following features according to the Jing Project blog:

• Share to FTP
  • Both videos and images can be shared via standard FTP
  • The share and embed strings that are put on the clipboard can be customized
• Share images to Flickr
  • Existing Flickr users can have image captures sent directly to their account
• Streamlined sharing to File
  • You can now share quickly to your chosen directory with one button press
  • The share and embed strings that are put on the clipboard can be customized
• Usage reporting to help improve Jing
  • This is anonymous and optional
  • We use this to gather statistics about how these sharing methods are used
  • This lets us figure out where the Jing Project is headed

The Jing Project also offers a number of free goodies including a very useful wallpaper that has outlines of the most common screen sizes to aid you in setting up screen shots for your blog, web site, or other projects.

Originally posted on blognation USA

Here are a few interesting items that came across the transom this week for the Mac users out there.

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports that Office 2008 for the Mac (due in January) will include a feature that exports PowerPoint presentations to the iPhone or iPod. Using an AV cable, you’ll be able to connect your mobile device directly to a projector to deliver your presentation. That’s going to be popular I suspect.

Elinor Mills at C|Net (and others) report that a new version of Google Desktop for the Mac will be released tomorrow that allows Google Gadgets to be added to the Mac OS X Dashboard where they’ll reportedly coexist peacefully with Apple Widgets. That’s interesting as there are a lot of useful Google Gadgets but I’m curious how many folks feel the need for the extra disk grinding Google Desktop requires when Spotlight in Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.5) is so good.

AppleInsider reports that an open source implementation of Java 6 for the Mac is in development (a preview release is already available) in response to Apple’s decision to ship Leopard with Java 5. This decision has not been well-received in the Java community as you might expect and some fear that adoption of the Mac in traditional early adopter markets (education and scientific research) as well as potential growth markets (the enterprise) may suffer.

Panic Software and The IconFactory have teamed up for the release of CandyBar 3 for the Mac which should address two of the biggest complaints about Leopard – the bland and arguably ugly new folder designs and the 3D Dock. The new release of CandyBar – for Leopard only – integrates the formerly separate Pixadex icon manager, uses QuickLook to allow you to see the contents of an icon Container file with a press of the space bar and all the icon swapping and Dock and folder skinning you could ever ask for.

Rich Mogull at TidBITS provides a good overview of the RTSP vulnerability in current versions of QuickTime (that affect both Mac and Windows users) and offers some suggestions on how to protect yourself from this serious security hole until Apple gets things patched up. Short answer for Mac users – use the Little Snitch firewall enhancer from Objective Development. Or, if you want the free solution – be careful what you click on. Me? I already run Little Snitch so I’m covered. It’s a great product that watches for outbound traffic requests (the vector used by exploits that leverage this vulnerability) from your Mac and allows you to selectively block them.

Originally posted on blognation USA

So much for all the digerati condemning the Kindle to the scrap heap without having tried it or thought about how”real” people might have a different take on the future of books than their own parochial view of the world. The more of this punditry I listen to and read, the more irritated I get with how close-minded these so-called thought leaders are.

Amazon’s Kindle page now reports:

Kindle Availability
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. Because we ship Kindles on a first-come, first-served basis, please ORDER NOW to reserve your place in line. Your Kindle will not arrive by December 25th. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.

Pu that in your digital pipe and smoke it!

The Yahoo! Group is growing by leaps and bounds and everyone I know who really loves to read books and isn’t locked into rigid geek-think either loves it or wants one. I’m still betting that when the dust settles, a lot of people will be eating some serious crow over Kindle. I’ve now used mine for almost two weeks and I’m every bit as happy with it as I was the day I got it. As I’ve said, it’s not perfect but it is a game-changer.

I’m off to California and Washington next week and can’t wait to give Kindle its first road test.

No surprise – he likes it… mostly.

It feels historic. The Kindle is almost certainly the first bona-fide Internet appliance.

Buy someone a $399 Kindle and you buy them the Web, wherever they go, for life (well, as long as Amazon never cancels or changes the service). And give Kindle 10 points out of 10 for showmanship. It sports built-in search tools for both Wikipedia and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (real humans do a Web search and select the most relevant Web page to send back as an answer, in the form of a new “book”).

You can also load your own desktop documents onto the device via an e-mail conduit.

It’s just a shame that the Kindle isn’t a superlative device for reading electronic text. The experience is like a fast-food meal. It’s not great, but you’ll get it down just fine.

Classic Andy. Read the whole thing.

Mike Elgan a ComputerWorld nails it.

One of the best bits of advice for people who use a computer and looking to improve their productivity is to learn as many keyboard shortcuts (my productivity mentor David Allen calls them “speed keys”) as possible. It’s inarguably faster to press a key combination than it is to lift a hand from the keyboard, grab the mouse, and scroll all over the screen to select a menu item. Add the propensity of too many applications to nest commands on hierarchical menus and the ever-increasing size of the displays many of use and the difference is only made more dramatic.

Usingmac.com has posted a list of more than 200 keyboard shortcuts on their site. It’s a great resource that I’ve added to my deli.icio.us bookmarks and saved as a PDF (using Yep!) on my Macs.

H/T to Appletell for the link.

Great quote from an excellent piece about what the Kindle really represents:

The commitment that Amazon has shown to give Kindle the iPod effect it deserves is an enormous risk. Amazon has not only committed itself to becoming a device manufacturer (well, at least a branding an OEM manufacturer’s device), it has committed itself to digitizing and converting everything publishers will give them. The combined expense is massive and if it doesn’t show the right return, may deal Amazon a deathly blow that even an 8th Harry Potter book couldn’t fix.

The risk here isn’t just to Amazon. If Kindle fails, the ebook is over, the theory of the “iPod model” is wrong for eBooks, and publishing must face the reality that consumers just don’t want to read immersive content on electronic screens of any sort… but let’s not rain on this glorious parade just yet. I think Kindle and the inevitable rivals it will spawn are here to stay. The ebook is dead, long live the ebook!

Read Evan Schnittman’s entire post. H/T to Dr. Weinberger for the link. Also read his excellent article about eBooks (he thinks they are inevitable and I, of course, agree).

Update: C|Net has published a very fair, well-balanced, and thorough review by David Carnoy. Well worth reading if you’re looking for an objective discussion of Kindle’s strengths and weaknesses.

One of the small things (pun intended) I ‘ve missed since upgrading to Leopard on my Macs is the option ot compress a PDF file. Thanks to a post from Stowe Boyd at /Messaging, I’ve found a way to restore that feature. Now my PDFs destined for online reading are smaller, easier to e-mail, and all is right with world (well… Ok, that last was a stretch but hey, it’s Sunday and I’m relaxing!).

The folks at Mindjet were kind enough to invite me to participate in a series of vignettes they’re posting showing how people use Mindjet to be more productive in their work (and play). I’ve long been a fan of both Mindjet MindManager and Getting Things Done of course – in fact, I first encountered both when I began working at VanDyke Software back in 2001. Over the years, both have had a big impact on how I tackle the many projects I engage in. So the chance to talk about the intersection of both in my life and work was simply too good to pass up.

I provided a basic GTD mind map to the project which you can download from the MindManager page if you’re interested.