For those of us who would prefer to buy vinyl, but find it a hassle to rip from vinyl to our portable music players, I've loved Merge Records plan of giving the consumer mp3s of the album whenever they buy the vinyl version. I'm no businessman, so I dunno if it works as a business model, but it fits my needs completely.
For ages I've been trying to find a laptop sleeve with backpack straps. Does something like this even exist? Basically, I want the most minimal of padding, which one would get from a sleeve, with no extra pockets or bulges with backpack straps that allow it to stick close to my back and won't let the laptop move around as I bike to work. Any suggestions?
A nice thing that I think is common in Japan is giving gifts which are edible / perishable. Finely wrapped, they can be as beautiful as a 'product', as useful and, once consumed, occupy no space at all afterwards. Of course, giving expensive melons to the spouse might not go to well in all cases. She might be happier with the addage that nice things come in small packages. Yes, I'm still talking about fruit!
Just because of the Dell's form factor and price? The shuffle fulfills a different kind of need to the user than this player. Heck, before I got a shuffle I didn't even know that I had a need for a simple way to hear my music in random order and that I actually liked listening to my music that way because it's something I rarely do (Usually I listen to playlists in the order I created them or I listen to full albums). Apple predicted it and it's selling like hotcakes. This player is just like any other player with a screen and the UI that goes along with the screen and its associated controls. Which means that it should be compared with, say, the nano instead.
So, can a company like MSFT basically name their products whatever they like without fear of copyright just becase they have the $$$ and lawyers to kick anyone else down? I'm sure there are plenty of companies or products with close ties to 'vista' and software. http://vistasoftware.com/ is just the first one that Google turned up for me.
I've found great productivity improvement at work from just not checking my email as often. I don't have any of those popup "new mail" notifiers or icons and just check my email every 45 minutes to an hour. In the past just making a quick email check, even if there's nothing there, sets your brain off-task and it takes a few minutes to ramp back up. Like the article says, this adds up considerably throughout the day.
For me, where Firefox really shines is when you start using extensions. As a web developer, things like Colorzilla and Web Developer are essential. Unfortunately, Firefox on OS X has some faults. I've managed to fix the main concerns (scrolling, using the delete key to go back in history, trackpad issues on the powerbook) but the most glaring problem is that you can't use the up/down arrows or home/end keys to get to the beginning/end of a line in any text box. A horrible UI oversight. It's the only reason I'm every tempted to go to Safari, but like I said, those extensions are too awesome.
Unfortunately, it looks like Apple still hasn't put in ability to queue up songs on-the-fly, i.e. passing around an ipod at a party and having guests queue up songs while it's playing. Dunno, maybe they could add a double-click to the play/pause button to enable queueing.
Stories like this keep cropping up, but what can we do to prevent this kind of abuse of the patent system? Contact our representatives? Do they care? What's in it for them?
While I don't think the mod is really aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't seem to be very user-friendly either. So he got the thing to charge? Great. He doesn't show in his pics the cord he has to connect to the audio out of the iPod because I bed a plug sticking out the top would be pretty ulgy. Also, he doesn't show himself USING the iPod. It doesn't look like it'd be easy to reach forward and control the little controls/display from the drivers seat while driving. Not only bad design, but unsafe too.
Uncle Steve is gonna milk this for all he can, no doubt. I can't wait to hear which early 90s band will be revived to be on the soundtrack to the commercial. I hope Varadarajan got a free iPod.
If you're in the greater Sacramento area check out KDVS 90.3 FM. Last I checked (when I worked there) it was the last fully freeform station west of the Mississippi and throws out a continuous webcast.
Personally, I haven't received one of these spam ads, but if I had I would be far more likely to buy a $10 toy car which seems interesting over most of the other spam I get, which advertise products far more expensive and/or less tangible objects (i.e. trips, home surveillance, penis enlargement)
It may be letting out a Pandora's box, but if some ad popped up onto my screen selling me something pretty inexpensive (say, a bulkpack of screen wipes for cheap) that impulsively I thought I would have a use for (no comment) I may actually buy it. The only thing stopping me would be that they would obviously want my personal information, and there's no way I'm giving ANY personal information to a company that makes its business using popup ads.
Funny that this person's question was one I have been thinking about for a while. However, he didn't really say exactly what he wanted to do and ask which program was best suited for that.
I'm also a graphic designer who wants to get into 3d, but my requirements are more into creating things like product architecture diagrams, logos and technical graphics. I'd like to be able to do basic animations, but nothing much more complicated than what I can already do in 2D in Flash.
So what I'm NOT interested in is "molding" things or creating arbitrary shapes. I like numbers, coordinates and precise positioning. If anyone has reccomendations I'd be very grateful. I work on a PC.
I recently bought an iRiver iFP-180T mp3 player which does what you're asking, but no timer function. 128M memory, mp3/wma playback, microphone, FM tuner and the abiliity to record off FM (I believe it records at 32kbps).
So far I really like it, though I think the UI could be a bit better. Around $150.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of us who would prefer to buy vinyl, but find it a hassle to rip from vinyl to our portable music players, I've loved Merge Records plan of giving the consumer mp3s of the album whenever they buy the vinyl version. I'm no businessman, so I dunno if it works as a business model, but it fits my needs completely.
For ages I've been trying to find a laptop sleeve with backpack straps. Does something like this even exist? Basically, I want the most minimal of padding, which one would get from a sleeve, with no extra pockets or bulges with backpack straps that allow it to stick close to my back and won't let the laptop move around as I bike to work. Any suggestions?
A nice thing that I think is common in Japan is giving gifts which are edible / perishable. Finely wrapped, they can be as beautiful as a 'product', as useful and, once consumed, occupy no space at all afterwards. Of course, giving expensive melons to the spouse might not go to well in all cases. She might be happier with the addage that nice things come in small packages. Yes, I'm still talking about fruit!
Just because of the Dell's form factor and price? The shuffle fulfills a different kind of need to the user than this player. Heck, before I got a shuffle I didn't even know that I had a need for a simple way to hear my music in random order and that I actually liked listening to my music that way because it's something I rarely do (Usually I listen to playlists in the order I created them or I listen to full albums). Apple predicted it and it's selling like hotcakes. This player is just like any other player with a screen and the UI that goes along with the screen and its associated controls. Which means that it should be compared with, say, the nano instead.
So, can a company like MSFT basically name their products whatever they like without fear of copyright just becase they have the $$$ and lawyers to kick anyone else down? I'm sure there are plenty of companies or products with close ties to 'vista' and software. http://vistasoftware.com/ is just the first one that Google turned up for me.
I've found great productivity improvement at work from just not checking my email as often. I don't have any of those popup "new mail" notifiers or icons and just check my email every 45 minutes to an hour. In the past just making a quick email check, even if there's nothing there, sets your brain off-task and it takes a few minutes to ramp back up. Like the article says, this adds up considerably throughout the day.
For me, where Firefox really shines is when you start using extensions. As a web developer, things like Colorzilla and Web Developer are essential. Unfortunately, Firefox on OS X has some faults. I've managed to fix the main concerns (scrolling, using the delete key to go back in history, trackpad issues on the powerbook) but the most glaring problem is that you can't use the up/down arrows or home/end keys to get to the beginning/end of a line in any text box. A horrible UI oversight. It's the only reason I'm every tempted to go to Safari, but like I said, those extensions are too awesome.
Unfortunately, it looks like Apple still hasn't put in ability to queue up songs on-the-fly, i.e. passing around an ipod at a party and having guests queue up songs while it's playing. Dunno, maybe they could add a double-click to the play/pause button to enable queueing.
The jakob nielsen drinking game
Stories like this keep cropping up, but what can we do to prevent this kind of abuse of the patent system? Contact our representatives? Do they care? What's in it for them?
While I don't think the mod is really aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't seem to be very user-friendly either. So he got the thing to charge? Great. He doesn't show in his pics the cord he has to connect to the audio out of the iPod because I bed a plug sticking out the top would be pretty ulgy. Also, he doesn't show himself USING the iPod. It doesn't look like it'd be easy to reach forward and control the little controls/display from the drivers seat while driving. Not only bad design, but unsafe too.
Uncle Steve is gonna milk this for all he can, no doubt. I can't wait to hear which early 90s band will be revived to be on the soundtrack to the commercial. I hope Varadarajan got a free iPod.
If you're in the greater Sacramento area check out KDVS 90.3 FM. Last I checked (when I worked there) it was the last fully freeform station west of the Mississippi and throws out a continuous webcast.
KDVS
Personally, I haven't received one of these spam ads, but if I had I would be far more likely to buy a $10 toy car which seems interesting over most of the other spam I get, which advertise products far more expensive and/or less tangible objects (i.e. trips, home surveillance, penis enlargement)
It may be letting out a Pandora's box, but if some ad popped up onto my screen selling me something pretty inexpensive (say, a bulkpack of screen wipes for cheap) that impulsively I thought I would have a use for (no comment) I may actually buy it. The only thing stopping me would be that they would obviously want my personal information, and there's no way I'm giving ANY personal information to a company that makes its business using popup ads.
Funny that this person's question was one I have been thinking about for a while. However, he didn't really say exactly what he wanted to do and ask which program was best suited for that.
I'm also a graphic designer who wants to get into 3d, but my requirements are more into creating things like product architecture diagrams, logos and technical graphics. I'd like to be able to do basic animations, but nothing much more complicated than what I can already do in 2D in Flash.
So what I'm NOT interested in is "molding" things or creating arbitrary shapes. I like numbers, coordinates and precise positioning. If anyone has reccomendations I'd be very grateful. I work on a PC.
I recently bought an iRiver iFP-180T mp3 player which does what you're asking, but no timer function. 128M memory, mp3/wma playback, microphone, FM tuner and the abiliity to record off FM (I believe it records at 32kbps).
So far I really like it, though I think the UI could be a bit better. Around $150.
And I use it to record NPR.