Status-Q

[Original Link] This looks like a nice accessory for people using Apple’s iSight camera. And here’s a portable version.

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I’ve long considered whiteboard images to be valuable documents and have captured them using my digital camera. Usually I then de-skew and tweak them in Photoshop. Since I moved to the Mac I’ve been meaning to write a program to make that process easier. Fortunately, Rob Frohne beat me to it.

[Original Link] The new Blackberry has an interesting keyboard layout.

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I’m a bit late on this one, but it’s interesting anyway if you haven’t seen it. It turns out that a very large number of high-security bicycle locks are rather easy to pick. And no, it doesn’t require a complex bent bit of spring steel, or a sophisticated skeleton key. Something much easier to come by…

More information also on BikeForums.

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This is a really nice RSS reader for the Mac, which is attractive to look at and makes good use of the Mac user interface. I also like NetNewsWire, but I’m going to try this for a while, mostly because it’s prettier. The fact that I can just drag subscriptions to it from NNW makes it even easier…

Thanks to my pal Phil Ashby for the link

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I’ve spent the last couple of days sorting, tidying and generally getting things in order. Those who know me will tell you that this is a newsworthy item!

It’s inspired, I must confess, by David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done“. I normally abhor these ‘Self-Improvement’ books, (mostly because I hate to admit that I find some of them useful), but I had started to see quite a few references to this one around the web, not least through Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders blog. Try a Google search on ‘getting things done’ and you’ll see that Allen has definitely put his mark on the phrase. So I went to Amazon, where I noted the rather large number of 5-star ratings in the readers’ reviews. Amazon was sold out, so I went to a UK online bookshop and ordered the book.

Later that evening, John came round and said that he’d been wanting to download the audio version (via iTunes) but couldn’t because it was only available from the US bit of the iTunes Music Store. Rose has a US credit card, so I was able to download it for him, and I’ve been listening to it on my iPod in the car ever since.

Now, here’s the bizarre thing. Despite the book being shipped fairly promptly, the Royal Mail, a poor shadow of it’s former self, has failed to get it to my door yet. However, thanks to my iPod, I’ve already ‘read’ it before it even arrives. Oh, and it gets 5 stars from me, too!

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I’m not a great sports-watcher, but I did see the women’s 10,000m final and was very annoyed by the BBCs unswerving devotion to Paula Radcliffe, who didn’t even bother to finish her race. They seemed to think it was just fine that she should give up when she realised she wasn’t going to get a medal. I call it very bad sportsmanship. I think if you start a race, you should finish it, even if you come last. She certainly wasn’t in a state of extreme exhaustion; she simply decided it wasn’t worth it.

I also felt very sorry for Kathy Butler, who came about 10th but ran a good race, and who actually finished, and who was almost completely ignored by the commentators. It’s not as if we have such a plentiful supply of athletes that we can afford to ignore them. Anyway, I appreciated this Times article by Giles Smith.

The more time I spend in the States, especially in the run-up to an election, the more grateful I am for the UK’s Liberal Democrat party. Not because I expect them to win many seats, nor even because I’m likely to vote for them, but because I think having a third party is immensely important.

• It reduces the extreme ‘us or them’ polarisation that we see in the US.
• It means that most policy decisions are not simply black and white; and when there are only two options on a particular topic, you’ve got an odd number of entities and hence a two-to-one split rather than simply ‘my word against yours’
• A ‘central’ party starts to become attractive if either of the others goes too far to the left or right; this keeps them in check
• It allows for greater movement of voters. It’s much easier to feel that you’re moving a bit in one direction or the other than to ‘cross over to the opposition’

[Original Link] This ZDNet leader asks about how the US political situation may be harming Microsoft. There are some wonderful examples of small cultural slips having big bad results in this quoted article.