April 2007

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Gems from the Web:

• 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Appealing | I’d Rather Be Writing - When making blogs, here are 10 simple principles to follow.
• Open source film making - Raw footage (my rushes) will be made available so that the public (or even organisations that the programme could be legitimately attacking) can cut their own versions.

Up to last year, Apple has released a new version of its powerful editing programme every new NAB. Thus, expectations are even higher as to what they will present today. There doesn’t seem to be a live feed available, but the nice people at MacRumors will have a live text feed.

I wish there was a QT version somewhere - it is just not the same reading about it, or seeing/hearing it. Especially when it comes to Apple presentations.

Gems from the Web:

• Get a Mac - TV Ads - Apple just published a couple new ads from their campaign.
• Shoot onto iPod - Catapult allows capture of video footage from DV or HDV video cameras directly to iPods or virtually any USB drive, and begin editing immediately. A battery powered device not much larger than a Blackberry.
• Bella Corporation - The Professional Series 3.0 is the ultimate line of editing keyboards, delivering features, speed, and flexibility right at your fingertips.
• Magic Bullet Colorista v1.0 - An alternative 3-way colour corrector, $199. Be interesting to see how FCP addresses colour correction in their next version…
• KB Covers Final Cut - A (for me) novel way of converting your keyboard/laptop into a FCP station
• How TiSP Works - Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.
• 25-signs-you-might-have-a-problem-blogging - Fun list to check whether you live in reality or blogoland… <i>I get 9 out of 25</i>.
• Apple - Hot News - iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned.
• Top secret features suspect in Apple’s Leopard delay - “We believe the extra time Apple is allocating is for developers to test secret features that will likely be revealed at its WWDC 2007 conference starting on June 11, 2007.”
• Television’s Future: Decentralized Distribution - Programs will continue to primarily be launched during the 8-11 p.m. hours, but online is where they will be marketed to their fullest potential and become profitable.
• The Vista budget vacuum - I estimate each Vista user will cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That’s each and every Vista user. After all, if Apple’s higher cost has been the factor keeping your company from trying a Mac, that factor just washed away.
• The Dilbert Blog: The Butler?s Dilemma - ?do you have a moral obligation to steal anything you can get your hands, if you can use the stolen property for the greater good?
• Why 24 Sucks: 5 Ways to Make 24 (Season 7) Better - Anyone can bitch. But it’s so much more helpful to come up with a solution for a perceived problem. This Easter morning, I began to explore what could resurrect 24 from, what I see, becoming a failing franchise.
• Evaluating website accessibility - How to evaluate the technical accessibility of a website. In 3 parts.
• Web Page Analyzer - free website optimization tool - The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time.
• SpyderBlog: Do your customers want you to have a web site? - “I don’t need a web site,” the business owner states. But who ever said a web site is for you, anyway? A web site, as we’ve said before, is not primarily for your business. A web site is for your customers.
• Grunge Textures - Free Stock Photos, Images, Backgrounds and Digital Art
• CBS News Fires Producer for Plagiarism - A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal.
• Yamji - Supreme Cinemecca - Some people like movies. We obsess over them. But we hate out-of-touch film critics, one-way conversations and big gobs of unmanageable ads. At Yamji we think about movies the way you do.
• Next-gen Apple mouse may dump scroll ball for touch housing - “If the mouse is being held in a first hand position, the mouse performs according to a first mode of operation, whereas if the mouse is being held in a second hand position, the mouse performs according to a second mode of operation.”
• Apple filing shows modular “media center” with unified interface - This is what Apple TV should be.
• AppleInsider | Apple delays Leopard release until October - Well, so it’s not only Microsoft… but at least the delay is measured in months, not years
• 101 Essential Freelancing Resources - The web is such a big and wonderful place, packed with tools and resources which you all too often don?t know about.
• Video Search Optimization - 72% of people watch videos online and 76% are sharing videos in a viral way. Video consumption so moving away from TV and it?s moving more into search.
• Ta-da Lists. Ultra simple, ultra useful, sharable to-do lists - Very cool (and simple) to do-list, which you can (or can not) share online. Free, too.
• Less Accounting - because Accountant isn’t your job title - A new approach to accounting; online
• PunchyTime - Time Tracking for People Who Hate Tracking Time - Cool online time tracking tool - with creative people in mind.
• CSS: Advanced Formatting and Organization - Part of the challenge of witting good CSS is not just learning the correct properties to use, but formatting and organizing your document in a way that allows for easy maintenance and speedy display bug fixes.
• Confessions of a blogger - Why do so many bloggers live such seperated lives? Why do our real lives not intersect with our online ones? Why doesn’t everyone I know know that I blog?
• Papillion - Geek Life and Times » Say it with video! - Cool new service that lets you send short video messages via e-mail. Easy, too!

I recently had the great honour of filming His Royal Highness Haakon, the crown prince of Norway.
It was very exciting filming in the Royal palace in the center of Oslo, where Monocle had been granted an exclusive interview in the crownprince’s private office.

The greatest challenge was finding a good solution despite a number of limitations: Read the rest of this entry »

As previously promised to Hans, here are finally some shots from my vacation in Gran Canaria.

The first few days were raining. Read the rest of this entry »

…and it’s a Friday, too. Anyways, here are today’s Gems from the Web:

• My favourite quotes - “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein
• Wacky laptop tricks - While you are waiting for your MacBook, here are some things that you can do with your laptop.
• Apple Macintosh G3 tossed over a 45-foot cliff - Total destruction, unsurprizingly. But why would anyone want to do this?
• TechRepublic Photo Gallery - Chaoscope fractals showcase the beauty of chaos
• Securing OS X 10.4: Tips from Apple and the NSA - Apple and the National Security Administration (NSA) have published a security guide for Mac OS 10.4 with key highlights on network administration, securing Safari and the importance of physical security.
• Microsoft naysayer bandwagon gets crowded - Goldman Sachs removed Microsoft from its “conviction list,” the equivalent of a super-duper buy list.
• Lawmakers pushing iPods flew on Apple’s dime - Two state lawmakers backing a controversial plan to buy iPods for every schoolchild in Michigan were among a group of politicians who made a trip to California that was paid for at least in part by Apple, the maker of iPods.
• Welcome to Prisma - Imagine, an international company, and their sitemap is not clickable! Hmm…
• Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ - News - Red camera supports the /i Technology, developed by Cooke Optics. /i Technology enables film and digital cameras to automatically record key lens and camera data for every film frame shot and provide it to post-production teams digitally.