Carrying the Lantern

Bill R.: In this time of so much despair, I believe there's a positive thread that ties together Katrina - 9/11 - Expatriates - Blogs - Podcasting.

I'm from the Washington D.C. area and was living in Paris from 2000 to 2002. My wife had daughter were with me but had just moved back to the U.S. in August 2001 (family health reasons). I still view our time in Paris as one of the true highlights of our lives. Unfortunately, I was living alone in a foreign land far away when 9/11 happened in that fall of 2001.

I heard about the first airplane at work, ran back to my office and called my wife. As she was telling me what had happened, through terrible sobbing, the third airplane hit the Pentagon - about 20 miles from our house. Neither of us could continue the conversation; I don't remember who hung up first.

As the hours passed, my cravings were for information. The event was certainly covered worldwide - at least it was in Paris on CNN International. While my French neighbors were great - very concerned about my state of mind, my family, and Americans in general - it still was gut-wrenching to be so far away and feel so helpless.

At that time - 2001 - blogging was in its infancy and podcasting merely a glimmer in someone's eye (guess who?) What I would have given back then to have information sources like these blogs: Wikipedia, The Interdictor, BoingBoing, and many others. Or podcasts like Daily Source Code, Open Source, Zip 71101, et al. My point is, at times like these I can appreciate how people feel when they are separated from their families, or too far away to help, or lonely, or just because of the humanity of it all.

Blogs and podcasting in these last four years have certainly evolved and now can help tremendously for us all to work through the grieving and get on with helping, healing, etc. I feel particularly sorry for our service men & women overseas, and other expatriates, who are from the Gulf Coast region and have not yet connected with the families they left behind. But blogs and podcasting sure can help in their own way.

Another small step for technology; but a huge leap for conversations in times like this.

- Posted by William A. Riski - 12:57:02 PM - comment []

A little while ago, Laurence Simon came up with the wonderful idea of what are the Ten Blogs I Would Take To A Desert Island. That turned into a huge meme, and well, I though why not take it a step further, and ask Mac Lovers - their ten most favorite apps. Forget, the Microsoft Office, or any of the applications that are bundled with an Apple. Instead, focus on small freeware and shareware applications that have helped you get the most out of your Mac.

I think it would be great if we wrote why we love these little apps (or scripts if you want to) and share them with everyone else. This would be a good way to discover some goodness which we might all be missing out on. So here is my list of apps, I love the most.

1. QuickSilver, a launcher on steroids.
2. Ecto, still the best blogging client in the world and well worth the $18 dollar price.
3. Net News Wire - a lot of pretenders out there, but when it comes to Apple like intuitiveness, this is my choice for a RSS news reader. You can get a freeware version as well.
4. VideoLan/VLC - the cross platform media player that is better at handling video files better than any other player. Of course the price is right.
5. BluePhoneElite, the perfect application to help you get the most of your bluetooth enabled phones. SMS, caller ID and a iTunes pause function, make it the most used application on my PowerBook.
6. Cocktail, a general purpose utility for Mac OS X. The application serves up a scrumptious mix of maintenance tools and interface tweaks, all accessible via a gorgeous graphical interface and toolset. Definitely a must have for us non-UNIX geeks.
7. CandyBar, the perfect way to spend your weekend, when all your friends are off doing ungodly activities like climbing mountains, biking or simply running. This is the perfect tool for pimping your Mac.
8. USB Overdrive X - turbocharge your multibutton mice for optimum productivity.
9. FolderShare - The simplest way to keep your folders synchronized between various Macs and even PCs. There is a free version as well.
10. Camino - Even as a beta product, it is still feels better than Firefox and better than Safari!

All right folks, lets this meme going!

- Posted by William A. Riski - 12:19:19 AM - comment []