Monthly Archive for September, 2005

The lighter side of blogging

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/9/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging and Technology
. 7 Comments

The cartoon below by Alex Gregory appeared in the New Yorker on Sept 12th and is now doing the rounds of the blogosphere.
blog cartoon © Alex Gregory-cartoonbank.com

Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker and president of the Cartoon Bank service, which is owned by the New Yorker said of this cartoon:

While many cartoons on blogs have been submitted and rejected by The New Yorker, this one, seemed to us, to perfectly capture the irony inherent in a communications phenomenon that permits so many to say so little about so much. I think it will become a classic

I don’t get it.

;-)

Via BusinessWeek

Record labels getting desperate!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/9/2005
in Technology and iPod
. 2 Comments

Record labels - the only companies more reviled than insurance companies, are obviously getting desperate now. They are looking enviously at the income coming to Apple from iTunes music sales and from Apple’s iPod sales and want for a larger slice of the action.

Now they say Apple should share the revenue from iPod sales with them! No seriously, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman contends that if if Apple is “artificiallyâ€? keeping the price of downloads low to promote sales of iPods, then as he sees it, the labels should get to “share in those [iPod] revenue streams.â€? Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

I think what they are really afraid of is that someday the artists will go directly to iTunes, bypassing the labels, for distribution - the sooner the better!

Cool iPod Nano pics

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/9/2005
in Technology and iPod
. 5 Comments

There are some cool iPod Nano pics on Seog’s site - they really put the size of the Nano into perspective. I especially like the picture of the nano beside the credit card.

Try not to get too upset by the fact that Seog listens to Will Smith and Glen Frey!

One reason NOT to get an iPod Nano!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/9/2005
in Technology and iPod
. 7 Comments

My normally rampant gadget envy is currently being held in check by my scratch resistance!

That and the fact that my bank manager told me that after buying the new house I can’t even spend Christmas!

UPDATE:
I see News.com have picked up this story now as well.

Netvibes.com trounces Start.com!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/9/2005
in Mac and Technology
. 13 Comments

I have complained, both here and on the Start.com blog, about Start.com’s stubborn refusal to support the Mac platform - this is a short-sighted move on Microsoft’s part as they appear simply to be “preaching to the converted” rather than trying to win new customers.

In any case, it didn’t matter too much for me, as there was always the alternative from Google which works perfectly on the Mac (although it might not be as pretty!).

Thanks to Loic though I stumbled across Netvibes.com’s offering today and I am well impressed (see below).
Netvibes.com customisable home page

Hard to see from the image but Netvibes allows you to customise the title of your page - in a bold stroke of originality I decided to call mine “Tom’s Title!” One day soon I’ll get an imagination!

More usefully though, the site displays feed content in boxes which can be re-arranged around the screen - similar to Google (and allegedly similar to Start.com!) - these content boxes can include content from your own feeds. I imported my opml file and added my feed from this site to the bottom right hand side of the page, for instance.

Also, Google is unable to display the weather for Cork - Netvibes wins out on this score giving a four day forecast for the region.

Netvibes allows you to sign in so that you can view your customised Netvibes page from any location.

Finally, Netvibes allows you to read your Gmail - see the top left hand side of the image for my Gmail account!

The only downside of Netvibes is that it is not yet working in Safari but as Firefox is my browser of choice on the Mac, this matters little to me (I prefer Firefox ‘cos it warns me if I am about to close a window with multiple tabs open - I can’t tell you how many times this has saved me!).

Windows based Treo launched!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/9/2005
in Technology and Windows
. 1 Comment

I see that the Windows based Treo I speculated about a couple of days ago has been released - Engadget has a first look at it here.

This has to be bad news for the Palm OS - that’s one down (Palm) for Microsoft and one to go (Symbian)!

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