On May 2, Daniel Hooper published a short concept video to YouTube describing a new text selection paradigm for iOS devices (See my previous post if you are unfamiliar with the video). Its usefulness was immediately apparent. Shortly after that video appeared, Kyle Howells released an implementation for jailbroken devices called SwipeSelect.
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A shadow has hung over me my entire adult working life. It was the shadow cast by the knowledge that a company like Apple couldn’t get the recognition it deserves in a world like this. That knowledge made me more cynical and seemed to make the world a darker place.
I’m giving Tumblr a whirl because my old blog is just completely stagnant. Its hard to get motivated (or find the time) to write out long form posts on any sort of semi-regular basis. So, I’m going to try this out and – who knows – if it seems to jibe with my erratic thoughts and multiple social service connections, then perhaps I’ll just move my personal website here.
The level of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) being spread about the iPhone is truly amazing. Once again, just as with the original iPod and the original Mac, the vision-less masses are shouting at the top of their lungs “there’s nothing to see here! Please pay attention to MEEEEE!”
If you’re Canadian and you own an iPod or other MP3 player, a 20 year-old-VCR, or one of those fancy new DVR or DVD player that records TV then new changes to Canadian Copyright law are set to make you a criminal. It also makes it illegal for you to make a back-up copy of that expensive “Lord of the Rings” DVD box-set you have, and forces you to buy them again if they ever become scratched. These new changes would undo decades worth of advances that have been made to ensure that Canadian consumers have the right to use the media they purchase in the manner most appropriate for them… so-called “fair-use”. Currently, consumers rightly take for granted that they have the right to record a television show or copy a CD for their iPod. If the pending legislation is approved, these activities – and much more – would become illegal.
“30 Days” is one of those very, very rare television programs that comes along not nearly often enough and allows us to get a glimpse of the incredible potential that people saw in TV during the 1950’s. A potential that we obviously lost sight of – what with our 24/7 “news” channels that keep us up-to-the-minute on celebrity sex lives (cause that’s news) while the remaining channels broadcast every waking moment of some idiot du jour whose only talent is being more obnoxious than anyone else. Through all this darkness, “30 Days” shines strong enough to give one hope that the dream of the promise of TV is not yet dead.
If your not familiar with Shoutwire, its one of these flavor-of-the-month social “news” dissemination services, where the users submit links to the interesting bits they find on the net and then other users vote for those links. The most voted for items are presented as a supposedly ferreted out list of whatever is hot and current in the websphere at the moment. Furthermore, they provide RSS feeds which users can subscribe to so the top stories pop-up automatically in their favorite newsreader. Good stuff so far (I’ll just ignore the fact that they appear to have stole the whole idea from Digg).