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Sorry for the delay; it’s a bit dusty in here but hopefully we can get it cleaned up before your allergies kick in. [ read as very dry humor ]

There are two components to design or we should say creativity. The first component is to actually create something; draw, paint, dance, sing and so on and the other component is to evaluate the thing created to determine if it passes for something we wish to display to others. Both things require skill and both are subjective. Here’s what I have observed about both laymen and designers; they have trouble being really honest about their work. In terms of graphic arts some will opt for “good enough” rather than measure up to the level of professionalism exhibited in many publications and on consumer goods we purchase.

A singer must realize whether they can actually sing a listenable version of a song as opposed to just liking to sing. I like to put it this way: “appreciating talent in someone else is not the same as having it yourself.”

The key to doing great work is to be brutally honest about what you did and with courage doing whatever is necessary to fix it. Even if that means you have to leave it to more skillful hands.

Netvibes Offices

As more and more consumers hit the digital highways
entrepreneurs are are hard at work providing new and innovative ways to get more from the online experience. Netvibes is a free service that aims to be your one stop hub for browsing the internet, getting email and interacting with your friends and family.

From Netvibes

Netvibes pioneered the personalized startpage, an alternative to traditional Web portals. With millions of users in more than 150 countries, Netvibes lets individuals assemble all in one place their favorite websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, widgets, and everything else they enjoy on the Web. Founded in 2005 by Tariq Krim, Netvibes has offices in Paris, London and San Francisco.

Although there are other services that offer similar services; Netvibes does not lock you in to one service and it really is the content you wish to see. Around the middle of February Netvibes will launch a new upgrade to their service called Ginger. The new features should bring a new level of convinence to the end user and save time browsing from site to site. I highly recommend that you check it out for yourself, as you the end user are the final measure of a products success. If you have thoughts, experience’s with Netvibes please drop us a comment.

There’s a tremendous amount of pressure to create buzz around ones blog these days. This is understandable, what with all the blogs there are to choose from but I can’t seem to bring myself to post something just for the buzz unless that buzz can be turned into a harmonious sound.

I found a little clip on YouTube that I think is worth your time. It consists of a short tribute to Paul Rand, designer of such iconic logos as IBM, NEXT, and ABC to name a few. You can find it here; you should watch it at least twice.

First a little housekeeping. I’ve found blogging to be a fun, rewarding and illuminating experience. It also takes a lot of time, especially if you wish to do it well. I don’t think I am there yet. I’ve said I was going to write about certain things with a certain frequency and that just didn’t happen. What I hope to do in the future is to make reasonable progress. Now on with the show.

Over the last year I have met and visited with many talented photographers from around the country and to their credit they have inspired me to stretch my thinking when it comes to photography. We live in the age where all kinds of things are re-purposed, or re-packaged. That’s what the photo below is all about. I shot this about a year ago and decided to re use part of it. First I cropped in the part that I wanted to focus on and then turned it into a black and white image and applied a few adjustments and filters in Photoshop. I was thinking about what to call it and somehow the idea came to call it a “route 66 stop sign”. If you didn’t have the joys of traveling the “mother road” back in the 50’s and 60’s the Diner thing might not mean as much but in those days these Diners served up some of the best roadside fare you can imagine. This is part of the sign for a place called Metro Diner. The Diner has since been demolished to make room for university housing. While Metro was built after the route 66 hey day it was designed and built in the classic diner style of years gone by. For more of this gem you can view it here.

The photo within a photo.

…taught the Mac to Play; games that is….huh! My how things change. I remember back in the day when Apple and Macs we’re not taken very seriously in some circles and the complaint went something like; “yeah Macs are only good for games and graphics”. Now if you really want to get something done you need a PC…. all of this coming from people who knew nothing about Apple and what they were doing or trying to do. Well, geeks grow up and now I hear that gaming is coming back to the Mac. What apparently was seen as flaw has now become a benefit. Which means that grown men are playing World of Warcraft; women of course no better, oh the irony. What all of this points to is that with the rise of things like PSP, X-Box and Wii, gaming has become [respectable?] no, it’s a huge billion dollar industry. Computer platforms aside, it’s all about entertainment and the battle for how that entertainment is delivered.

I could go into a long diatribe of the pros and cons of entertainment being the parent of more teenagers than I can count on one hand. I will leave that discussion for another forum but will say that when it comes to entertainment, “choose wisely”. Not everything that comes on a plastic disc is healthy.

Don’t be fooled folks; there is real entertainment out there if you need it, accept no substitutes….

Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

I, like many Mac/Apple fans am sitting on the edge of my virtual seat of WWDC trying to scoop the show and have some fun in the process. Like many bloggers I read the news, forums and whatever in order to get a pulse on what is happening with Mac’s and tech in general. That said, I must say that much of it is UNREAL. It’s unreal for two reasons one is that there is always “spin” which is crafted to  elevate one idea over  another and second is some of it just plain opinion, educated as it may be. Most of the things I write is opinion and some of it is even informed but mostly because I like to speculate. It keeps the synapse firing on all cylinders. It’s always good to view these things with an eye towards what is real which usually we only know as we look back historically. Today we’re probably wrong about some things and right about others; we just don’t know which is which. Fun Huh!

If you find any of this slightly interesting you can read more at another of my blogs, SomeMacBlog.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been at this internet thing for almost twelve years now and it is amazing how much things have changed in that span of time. More amazing is the fact that I find something new almost everyday; some new piece of software or technology comes across my radar. Truly the old prophecy about “run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased” has come to pass. Of course we all have the same problem can I find what I need and then be able to afford the cost so that I can be more productive. That is probably why most people look for the “free” stuff. We all like free and if it’s really useful then we’re really happy.

I thought for this post I would simply give a rundown of what kinds of things I am turning up and then let you decide for yourself whether it’s something that will work for you. So If I ramble a bit, stay with me and if I don’t make sense just click on the links.

We’ll start with Flickr; used by hundreds of thousands and either loathed or loved but none the less a huge social network of people uploading everything imaginable and in some cases unimaginable. Along with flickr itself there has risen quite a little cottage industry of add on tools based on flickr’s API that make it possible to do different things with your photos.

Here are a few.

flickrleech
fd flickrtoys  [many tools at this site]
greasemonkey [Firefox Plugin]
Flickr inspector [Find Public info about Flickr Members]
Flickr storm [Cool way to find pictures]
Most Interesting Pictures by: [Based on Flickr's interestingness algorithm]

I am sure this only scratches the surface but you get the idea.

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I just learned today that when you hold down the option key while starting iPhoto or iTunes a window will pop up and ask if you would like to create or use a different library. So If you wish to further segregate your music or photos this is an easy way to do it and it’s built right in.

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My phone camera experiment has been proceeding nicely; here a few tips. The basic rules of taking pictures apply no matter what camera you use. If your subject is moving or it’s fleeting moment, you will need to work fast. You will probably only get one shot because when you snap then you have to save and by then the moment is gone. Don’t use the zoom. Try all the different settings; some have white balance and night mode. You can even adjust the exposure up or down. For best results using a low resolution camera you will need to do some post processing but this can net some really great images. Oh and by the way you will probably want to omit the flash; try it and you will see why.

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Getting Things Done or GTD as it is called is seemly ever on the rise. What we all deal with and have to do has been turned into a whole industry by Mr. David Allen author of Getting Things Done. What Mr. Allen and others have done is to create a system by which we can accomplish all the tasks that pile up in our lives and our in-baskets. There are perhaps hundreds of sites that write about this topic or specialize in it and so I won’t try to list them all but will share a few.

The big tip is this: Settle on a system that works for you and use it. It’s less about what system or software you use than it is about just consistently using the system. Make it work for you and get stuff done!!!

Here are a couple more:

iGTD [ free software for getting things done, Mac ]
43folders
The Ultimate GTD Index

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We’ll make this Part One and In Part two we will look at some of what’s ahead.

Right now we’re all focused on the iPhone, Mac OS 10.5 aka. Leopard and what are the “secret features”. Will the iPhone actually work, will it be as cool as it looks, will the demand exceed supply, all fascinating stuff and we’ll know soon enough. Having followed the Mac since 1984 one thing I can predict for sure, there will always be surprises and disappointments. Here are a few guidelines when thinking about new technology; any version 1.0 thing will have some cool features and it will also need some things fixed. Beyond that there will be a “getting used to” phase followed by a reinterpretation of how it can be used plus the emergence of new ideas fostered by the last wave of technology. Which is a round about way of saying, stuff changes.

Much of what we write will be wrong in a few months but fortunately we will escape our critics because the excitement of what is really going on will overshadow the mistakes in our predictions. At least for the most part.

What is really going on is that Apple is on a path and part of that path includes a 25th anniversary Mac and whatever technology that must be developed to make that happen is already in the pipeline. So what we see in the next few months will be part of what gets us there. Will we be running OS 11.5 in 2009 or will it be some new thing we’ve never heard of. My guess we’ll still be using UNIX but is there life beyond UNIX probably but it’s a ways out there yet.

What may be more important than any of this will be if someone can teach a greater number of people to become power users. We’re still in the “blinking clock on the VCR” era of computing. Under the hood of OSX there is a huge amount of power coupled with some really great software but these systems have gone from complex to simple to complex again. We’re doing more because we can do more and with that comes needing to know some arcane stuff that we tried to get away from in the old command line days of dos.

We have the tools and the computing horsepower now what we need is some help teaching workflows to those who neither have time or the inclination to hook all the pieces together.