Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Inventor of the modern airplane: Sir George Cayley -- Comment()
See the three-part article titled On Aerial Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. This was written in 1809 and 1810. [via Wired]

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Apple store tops 25 million tunes: "Apple's online music store hits a new high, having sold more than 25 million songs since its launch in April." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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Dialog vs. Exposition and Saying vs. Writing: "I realized something the other day. When it comes to explaining things, I really need a good mix of dialog (2 way communication) and exposition (1 way communication) to really get it right. The problem is that I tend to be quite bad at balancing the two. The same appears to be true for the acts of saying something and writing it down. I need to do both." [Jeremy Zawodny's blog]

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Seth blog: "I missed that Seth has a blog. He's been right about many things, but I think he's wrong about one thing: blogs are not just for talkers, for talkers have no time for links. The best blogs synthesize, and reflect. Not just news, but a way to triangulate, as Dave describes it. I hope he rethinks." [Lessig Blog]

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A look back: The best of 2003 from Apple Computer: "Columnist Yuval Kossovsky picks the evolutionary -- and revolutionary -- products from Apple in 2003. Some of them may surprise you." [Computerworld News]

Three best products of the year 2003 -- Comment()
Here are my choices for the best products of the year 2003:

Apple iTunes Music Store, which made a revolution in distributing music on the net with reasonable terms
Apple PowerMac G5 dual 2 GHz, which is (arguably) the fastest desktop on Earth, and made 64-bit computing a reality in the workplace
Apple iPod music player for Mac and Windows, which is the leading mp3 player, and forms the leading image of digital lifestyle

Of these, I personally use daily an iPod. I currently have about 17 GB worth of music on the iPod, which is most of my cd collection. Unfortunately, iTMS is not available in Europe. And I don't currently need the G5 speed, my 1 GHz PowerBook works just fine.

Perhaps I should also mention these excellent products, which I use, but which did not make my top-3 list: Apple iSight camera and iChat AV software, and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).