Where do we eat?
How about where your friends eat? You could ask them, make lots of notes, or just sign up to TrustedPlaces. A new web service where you recommend, tag and rate restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars.
Yoo get a Google map showing the location (and you can zoom out on the map to see other trusted places nearby). There’s a “People who liked this also liked…” function. You can add pictures and tags, put up your own review or send an invitation to friend to go to the restaurant with you.
It all works very nicely. The design is clean and simple, and speed is ok (I hope it scales with more users!)
The site mostly UK yet, but you can add other cities and even countries easily. One thing that doesn’t work outside UK, is the map function. You can enter the address of the restaurant, but TrustedPlaces only shows a UK Google map. I talked to Sue, one of the people behind TrustedPlaces about this:
…although the map function isn’t working correctly as yet for some locations outside the UK, people can still join up and load reviews and we will ensure that they are mapped correctly in the very near future.
Check out new features and other tidbits at the TrustedPlaces blog. One of the things you can read about is how TrustedPlaces members have started bumping into each other in bars.
If you know me, I’m Oyvind at TrustedPlaces. Feel free to invite me as your friend!
When the nice meal is finished, you’ve visited the trendy bar recommended, and you come back to hotel, do remember to hide a secret in the hotel room (yes, you can wait until the next day).
Joost invitations
I have two four Joost invitations I would like to give to you.
Post a link to brilliantdays.com or one of my articles on your blog/site. And put the link to your site in the comments below. I’ll pick out two next week. Hint: One of them will be for best post…
Update
Click through to the comments to see the details on the invites!
Read the rest of this entry »
OmniFocus icon
What do you think of the icon draft Omni has posted for OmniFocus?
I’m not sure. I think the other Omni icons are way better. Here they are, presented with the three “main” competitors OmniFocus have:
If I were in charge at Omni, I would have followed the style of the two other apps, a slanted document with something in the lower right corner. A checklist with a magnifying glass was my first thought. The color is ok, so keep that, but change just about everything else. Maybe keep the clip, which looks good.
The other three apps all look great when they are this big. At smaller sizes, Ghost Action look the best. Clear and simple. Actiontastic is a little to complicated for smaller sizes, but the concept is fun: Hit those tasks with a hammer.
OmniFocus out soon
I think OmniFocus is pretty close a release. This is the status message GTD guru Merlin Mann of 43 Folders sported yesterday:
“That thing you want? It’s almost done, I swear.”
Could be he’s knitting some amazing productivity wool socks for his friends… But I think it’s OmniFocus he’s referring to.
Multitouch software development
Shannon asks in an IM message:
“Saw your posts about multitouch. How do you think this interface technology will impact software engineering and what kinds of applications can be developed?”
Good question! I’m not sure it will impact software engineering much at first. It’s the end user that will experience the biggest revolution. I guess Apple would have to make a set of tools for software developers, and these wouldn’t have to be much different than the ones used today for trackpads and other input devices.
Applications? I have mentioned a few examples at the end of the “Multitouch will revolutionize your computer” post. With examples how multitouch could change (a lot) existing apps in Mac OS X.
New applications? I’ll have tgo think about that. Give me a day or two. And if you have any suggestions, feel free to use the comments.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test showing slower results
We have been installing a new Xsan system the latest days (more about that in a later post). When testing the performance we use two different tools, and they have very different results, 186 MB/second vs 136 MB/second.
The first one is Xsan tuner, that comes with Xsan:
Speed is calculated to 186 MB/second.
We use DeckLink Extreme HD cards in the Macs (10 bits uncompressed SDI). Blackmagic also has their own test tool for disk speeds, the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test:
Now, the same disks show 136 MB/second.
Which one to trust? BlackMagic make dead solid products, but on this one I hope their tools show the wrong results…
If you need to test your drives for speed, whether you use BlackMagic cards or not, download the DeckLink drivers for Mac OS X or Windows XP, and you’ll get the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test application when you install it. If you don’t need the actual drivers, just “hide away” the app, and uninstall the drivers again.
Xsan tuner can be downloaded from Apple.com.
Why a difference?
Do you have any idea why the two apps show different speeds? 136 MB/second up to 186 MB/second is almost two more streams of uncompressed video in realtime. Less rendering, more done.
Grab all pictures from a site
DeepVacuum let you grab all pictures from a site. Or all movies. Or entire pages, all of them or a few. Could this be what you were looking for, Lars?
Go bananas with your selfportrait
It’s friday. Kick up your feet, fire up Photoshop and go crazy with your selfportraits. Don’t show your kids. They’ll have bad dreams.
Multitouch will revolutionize your computer
Giles Turnbull at O’Reilly has a short update om Jeff Han, who makes the amazing multitouch interface. Jeff has founded the Perceptivepixel company. The website is just a front page (with lamp graphics in multitouch) and not much else.
O’Reilly also has this video that shows how much cooler multitouch has become in just a year. Go back to my original multitouch post and have a look at the video there. Now, Multitouch is a whole wall.
(Click through too se the video)
Why does Gates worry?
Interesting thoughts from ITWire:
Well if Gates believes that Apple’s claims about Vista and Macintosh are a pack of lies he obviously thinks that they’re powerful lies because he appears worried. And why wouldn’t he be?
The part about a Vista upgrade being major surgery and the PC guy offeing to donate his peripherals if he doesn’t come through it has some real elements of truth.
Refering to the new I’m a PC, I’m a Mac ads (also in HD).
DRM is a stupid idea
While Bill Gates is busy making a total fool of himself, Steve Jobs has been thinking about music and DRM. In a (quite unusual) post on Apple.com, named “Thoughts on music“, he shares his thoughts on DRM and the music industry.
Like the fact that 90% of all music sold is infact without DRM. It’s called CDs.
And that there are three options for Apple when it comes to DRM: Continue as today (with DRM in iTunes), license FairPlay (not an option, says Jobs) or third: Get rid of the whole DRM thing:
Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.
Impressive. It will be very interesting to see if any music industry leaders react to this. Do they even put their thoughts online like this? Also interesting to see Steve Jobs doing it. It has been a rather strict Apple policy to not “blog”.
Note to Eirik: Steve is on your side. 
Update: Gruber
And as always, John Gruber has an excellent analysis:
In other words, the music industry wants a magical DRM format that gives them — not Apple, not Microsoft — complete control over all digital music. And a unicorn and a rainbow.
GTD app: Ghost Action
The race for the best Mac GTD app is still on! A new app is in the race: Ghost Action.
(Ghost Action screenshot. The app looks slightly different than this screenshot, as I use Uno).
I still have big hopes for OmniFocus, but Ghost Action looks clean and simple, and very similar to Actiontastic. It looks like it’s made using technology by Omni, the same way Actiontastic does.
Ghost Action syncs with iCal (both ways), something Inbox doesn’t do yet.
I had some problems when entering text into new actions. The text just disappeared after hitting Return. This happened twice on about 20 actions. I’ll try it out for some days. One “fun” thing is to see what happens with tasks already in iCal, synced from Actiontastic. Do the two apps live nicely together?
Bill Gates losing it
I’m admiring Bill Gates for his new project, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Rich people everywhere should learn from him: Give away all (or most of) your money.
But I seriously think Bill should leave Microsoft now. Why wait until July 2008? Now he’s just making a fool of himself. This is what he told Steven Levy of Newsweek the other day:
NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, “Bill, why upgrade to Vista?” what would be your elevator pitch?
Bill Gates: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that’s got photos. As I went through, they’d think, “Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?”
That’s it? You have a sidebar with widgets, sorry – gadgets. You can search things, photos too? You have parental control? You can edit in HD? You can make DVDs? Come on. That’s it?
Lying in front of people
Bill also thinks Apple got all their ideas from Longhorn:
NEWSWEEK: In many of the Vista reviews, even the positive ones, people note that some Vista features are already in the Mac operating system.
Bill Gates: You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts. If you just want to say, “Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along,” that’s fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with [the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?
What an utterly STUPID thing to say! I’m speechless. This must be the most stupid lie Gates ever has told. “Security guys break the Mac every day?” Plain lie.
I’m sure Vista is much safer that XP. And if it’s safer than Mac OS X, then a big applause! Good for computers, good for people. But the CEO of one the world’s biggest companies can’t lie to Newsweek.
I’m a PC, I’m a Mac
Then Gates talks about the “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” ads.
NEWSWEEK: Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?
Bill Gates: I’ve never seen it. I don’t think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.
I can understand that lots of people don’t like the ads (and some of them ARE lame). But they’re not about PC users! They’re about the machines!! There’s a clue here. The ads always say “I’m a PC”, not “I’m a PC user”. Bill Gates doesn’t get it.
PC users are not klutzes. And not dullards. But PCs are more complicated to use than Macs, even though I understand that Bill Gates can’t admit that.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball and Peter Cohen at MacWorld came to the same conclusion: Bill Gates is lying.
Or simply FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. My dictionary on FUD: “fear, uncertainty and doubt, usually evoked intentionally in order to put a competitor at a disadvantage”. Exactly. Joy of Tech is spot on.
Why Vista
I have a Windows Media Center with XP. Is there any reason why I should upgrade to Vista? The PC is wicked, so that’s not an issue. Are there any really good reasons to spend lots of money upgrading the Media Center?
Aperture to Final Cut Pro
I love it when someone solves a problem, just before I need it solved! This happened yesterday. Eirik and I have been looking for the ultimate photo archive solution. I have been using iPhoto since getting my first digital camera some years ago. iPhoto is a great product but has been missing some more advanced features, like a better tagging system, and more advanced editing.
Aperture
And just the other day I was putting “figure out how to export lots of pictures from Aperture to FCP quick and easy” in my todo-list. Then comes “Aperture to Final Cut Pro” from Connected Flow. Check. Great work, Fraser! There’s a dead-easy manual online and the price is nice (read: Free).
Also check out the excellent Flickrexport for iPhoto and Aperture.
Lego iPhone
Why wait until June? Make your own iPhone today.
Buy the Oscar movies
Apple has put up a great page with all the nominees of the 79th Oscar awards. With links to trailers in HD, soundtracks in iTunes etc.
Now, mr. boss of huge movie company: Let me buy the movies! I have my credit card ready. I’m willing to let my computer download all night to get the movies in HD. I would even tolerate DRM (but would prefer not). I find it absolutely amazing that here we have an industry that doesn’t want to make money.
And when (if ever) you start putting whole movies in HD in iTunes… check your atlas. Or wikipedia. There are 6.5 billion people on earth. 300 million in the US. You do the math.
