Tao of Mac

Nov 15th 2006 · 2 min read

Halibuts and Shrimps

Never mind the title - I've had a pretty tough week so far. Although there is a world of interesting stuff out there to keep track of, I'll stick to five things (as usual) and call it a night.

  • My filtering setup has shielded me from the barrage of Zune news, but I have to say that the CNN video (YouTube) where the female anchor whips out an and the two male anchors completely diss the Zune's functionality and (lack of) design is more than enough of a hint that it's not going to be a wild success. Then again, the Xbox wasn't a wild success, either. Let's wait and see what the Zune360 is going to look like (I'm betting it won't be brown, for starters), but so far it isn't an killer - more on the suicidal side, if you take my meaning...
  • There's a bunch of new, "credible" rumors. I honestly won't give a damn until I see one on .com, and pity the peddlers for not being able to find decent news in what seems to be a rather quiet week.
  • I've been trying to figure out whether or not I want to upgrade to Flash 9. Sure, sure, the release notes go on about security issues, but... most of it is Windows stuff. Decisions, decisions... What I don't get is why the Intel version is a 4MB .zip file and the PowerPC one a 1.8MB .dmg - hasn't Adobe grokked Universal binaries yet? Ah, , you say?
  • Skype has a new beta out for (version 2.5.0.38, sporting SMS support and a rather less hysterical UI). I still haven't gotten used to using it after all this time, mostly because I don't need a different client for yet another flavor of VoIP and that not everyone uses (hint: get your act together, guys, and go Jabber with an MSN transport).
  • There's also a new beta out that I'll be playing around with (I keep getting asked to pull some KML stunts, and it's been a while since I upgraded). I like the way it's turning into a sort of authoring tool as they move more features to the free product, but KML needs some easier-to-use geometric primitives and better interaction features (dare I say JavaScript? Can I try to coin the expression "Geo 2.0" and get away with it?).