(Note: I left the links as is, even though neither the Eclipse 4 link or my blog are available any more.)
Woot! Eclipse 4 is out! Everyone involved put in a huge amount of effort to pull it together so that we could ship on time. WTG, all!
If you’re looking for more info, check out the rather lengthy blog post I wrote on my “official” Eclipse blog. There’s a good overview of the the cool features, and (of course) a plea for your participation. 🙂
Now I’m going to go get some sleep…
As a result of some new hiring we’re doing, we’ve finally gotten around to re-organizing our office layouts. I ended up in a nice office, with an interesting shape, that used to be the one Nick was in. Unfortunately, Nick ended up on the “puny” end of the office lottery as a result. 🙁 Sorry, Nick.
Here’s a pic of my new space…
And I even have enough room for my couch (just off camera to the right).
I saw this link this morning, and I though I’d pass it on:
To me, the critical point is that (as it says in the article title) they do not allow “digital locks” to block your fair use rights. Just so everyone is aware, this is not true for the new Canadian copyright law that is currently being introduced.
(I know this is the kind of thing that we tweet, in this modern age, but I wanted to keep the link around for future reference (and I still like the “link of the day” concept).)
I’m talking, of course, about this…
… bit of lame-and-obvious marketing that appears in the top right corner of my home page — the Google search page.
Now, it used to be that I could click on the close box on this ad and it would set a cookie that prevented it from re-appearing until the next time I reset my local browser state (or it may just time out; I don’t know). In any case, that meant that I’d only see it once every few weeks or so which was unpleasant but bearable.
In the last few days, either Google has changed the code, Safari has changed in some incompatible way, or my local configuration has been corrupted somehow, but whatever the cause, the result is that I now see the add every time I open the page.
To be blunt, I can’t take it.
I. Use. Safari.
I guess I’ll go set my home page to Bing for a while. Somebody let me know when Google figures out that alienating their consumers isn’t smart.
For those who don’t know what they are, here is what the iPad Camera Connection Kit looks like:
[Picture no longer available]
It’s basically just two plastic doingles with iPod connectors on one side and a USB port and SD card slot (respectively) on the other. Not exciting, and presumably not particularly difficult to make.
So, why is it that still, months after the iPad was released, these things are basically impossible to find? I just polled the Rideau Apple Store, Carbon Computing and Best Buy/Future Shop. Result: Nada — and several places indicated that there was a waiting list when they did show up. Even the online Apple Store is saying 4..6 weeks delivery. WTF?
Maybe Apple misjudged the popularity of this add on initially, but surely in the first few days it must have become obvious that nearly every person who has an iPad wants one.
I’m too sane — now, be nice — to believe that there is some kind of conspiracy here, but maybe Apple just doesn’t want us to have these, for some reason. In any case, I’m tired of waiting, so if anybody sees aftermarket versions out there, please let me know.
MacFixit has a nice little workflow for simplifying the task of getting a document onto your iPad for offline reading. It’s not surprising what’s going on — you just create a PDF and then copy it to iTunes to make it available in iBooks — but did you know it was trivial to add a “Save PDF to iTunes” menu item in the standard print dialog?
Easily save Web pages, documents in iTunes for use with iOS devices
(Link no longer works.)
This morning I saw something that made me happier, and more proud, than just about anything that’s ever happened to me: My son graduated from high school.
Here’s the important bit…
Apologies for the blurry-cam, cell phone video. It’s hard to hold it steady when you’re clapping that hard. 🙂
After changing my Apple ID password (which is used by MobileMe, iTunes, developer connection, etc.) I found that I could no longer publish pictures to MobileMe from iPhoto. Even though I was logged into MobileMe — sync was working; iDisk was available — iPhoto would tell me that “an error occurred with the publication of an album” because my “MobileMe account information is not correct”.
If you’re hitting this, the fix is:
Next time you restart iPhoto, all should be well.
As I’m sure everyone knows by now, Apple finally announced the new iPhone yesterday. There are much better sources than here for all the details so, just for grins, I’ll point you at Gizmodo’s summary.
(Link no longer works.)
Some of the more interesting points:
The device will, of course, be running the new version of the iPhone OS, which has been renamed “iOS”. I suspect this was in keeping with the rumours of the new Apple TV box, which is purported to be running this OS. They probably have dreams of running it on other devices that don’t look anything like phones.
The good news about iOS 4 is that will be a free upgrade for any iPhone/iPod that can run it, and should be available June 21. The bad news is that won’t be available for the iPad until “this fall”.
For those who aren’t following Deb’s twitter feed, the latest round of random, gratuitous Windows glitches/crashes that have afflicted her old Dell laptop has led to some great news:
New laptop – PC to Mac. Good thing I’m sleeping with the IT guy!
Yes, our last hold out has switched. We’re now all rocking MacBook Pros:
Overall, this should make the home network IT tasks a lot simpler.
We’ve got her contacts, calendar and favourites all moved over, as well as her email account set up so new mail goes there. I haven’t looked at moving her old mail over, but getting it out of Outlook 2003 is probably going to be no fun. Oh well, that’s tonight’s task[*].
Unfortunately, it seems like there are still a small number of Windows apps that she will have to run, at least until we can find Mac replacements. The good news is those replacements appear to exist, but our budget has already taken quite a beating, so we’ll have to buy those incrementally. In the mean time, a copy of Parallels should keep her going.
* Btw, if anyone has any words of wisdom about how to get mail from Outlook to Apple Mail, let me know.
