I am currently trying Callwave. The main reason I’m trying it out is I want to get voicemail to my email. So I was setting up a GMail filter to deal with it.
When I try and add a “Voicemail” label to GMail, it won’t let me…
Interesting…
Skipped a beat…
So I was minding my business the other day strapping some babies to roombas (more on that another time), when all of a sudden a twitter popped up…
Hm, that is an interesting twitter (sorry to hear that Daniel). I was supposed to find out if I got my student scholarship to WWDC that I applied for at around this time. I went to #macsb and asked Daniel why he would say something like that. He said that a friend had told him he had gotten his acceptance email earlier that day. But wait a second. All my email goes to gmail and:
Ok, at this point I’m a little scared. What if I don’t get this scholarship? Did I screw up the application? Did I accidentally type “screw your mother” into one of the application answers (the “screw your mother” key is so close to the “t” key). Ok, at this point I started to calm down. Gmail probably just didn’t check my other mail over POP yet.
Two days?? Man, that is stupid. I manually checked the mail and waited for a very long time for Google to chew threw the 141 emails I got in the 2 days. It was only a few minutes before an email from ADC popped up…but it felt like an hour…
Oh thank god.
Leopard Delayed
Well, poo. I have to wait until October for a final Leopard?
Here is why I think this is bad:
Apple could have had the high ground on getting an OS out the door. Look everyone! We got Leopard out in only a year and it took Vista 37 years! Now they are delaying Leopard publicly.
Here is why I think this is good:
At WWDC 06, we got wind of some “Top Secret” features in Leopard. Here was the problem…those features wouldn’t be tested by seed tester people unless they weren’t top secret anymore. So apple would unveil some of those features through a rumor site. They would hate that. Now they have the opportunity to keep them under wraps a little bit longer.
Now they will unveil these features at WWDC 07 aside the iPhone. Maybe it will be called “Leopard Developer Release 2″. Then they will have developers test these new features for the October release date. Get ready for a drought of seeds while they fork all these features…
Jobs and Music
So Steve wrote up a little thing on the current state of DRM and how record labels should agree to have their music distributed sans-DRM on the iTMS. Good! I agree!
Then Gruber posted an interesting analysis of it which I also agree with.
One thing I think that Apple could do that Gruber didn’t really think could happen is partially un-DRM their music. If indie record labels would agree (which they have said they would), Apple could make it a big deal that they have un-DRMed music. Maybe even make it a special section of the store and put a big “No DRM” tag on each song. This really could put pressure on the big 4 record labels to offer their music in the same unprotected format.
Fake Steve Jobs has some things to say about what his real counterpart said:
Thoughts on Thoughts on Music
More Thoughts on Thoughts on Music
Even More Thoughts on Thoughts on Music
Update: I wrote an article for my school’s newspaper about it here.
Discovery
- Die Hard 1
- Die Hard 2
- Die Hard 3
- Die Hard 4 / Four Rooms
- Fifth Element
- The Sixth Sense
- Lucky Number S7evin
- ???
- The Whole Nine Yards
- The Whole Ten Yards
- ???
- Ocean’s Twelve / Twelve Monkeys
- ???
- ???
- ???
- 16 Blocks
Come on Bruce…fill in the rest.
iPhone
http://apple.com/iphone/
Absolutely awesome. I was thinking about all the product announcements I have seen from Apple and what my reactions to them were. They would come out with a Mac and my reaction would be something like “Oh man, that would be nice to have! I wish I had the money for that.” But this is different. I really want this thing…
Here is my only beef.
I CAN’T WRITE APPS FOR IT!!!
I have a billion and a half ideas for this thing and it is closed. Why would “Apple Inc.” do that? It seems that they could sell a lot more units if we could make totally amazing software for it. No doubt that if they opened it, it would have a bunch of crap applications on it…but that isn’t a reason to close it. Maybe they are afraid of some kind of Skype or Gizmo that would screw with their deal with Cingular. But you have to buy 2 years anyway so I don’t understand. People at least want games for this, but Apple doesn’t even have those…
rdar://problem/4917169
and
rdar://problem/4917800
My Hat Being Thrown
So I might as well my opinioin on something that everyone else has… A pretty large event in the history of Mac Shareware (is that overstating it?) has just concluded: MacHeist. And there is a lot of press associated with it. So basically it is the whole event was a series of odd, sherlock holmes style mysteries. You would track down some guy who was supposedly a renowned cracker in the Mac community and if you followed the wild goose chase all the way to the end, you got a prize. It was usually a free license to software.
What happened:
So MacHeist was a huge ‘success’ and generated a lot of profit for its organizers. It ended up bringing in around $760,000. Yeah, read that again. $760,000. Assuming that the MacHeist crew payed each developer $5,000 and maybe a little bit more for a few of the products, MacHeist walked away with 760000 – 200000 – 60000 = $500,000. Half a million dollars for being a vehicle and nothing else. There are vehicles in the show business world (agents) and they only make around 10%.
What I think should have happened:
MacHeist should have definitely donated to charity, no doubt about it. I also think that 25% is a very valid amount to donate. So lets give the 25% to charity and 10% for the ‘agents’ for making it happen. Now we have 60% to divvy up amongst the devs. Isn’t that what the MacHeist called “week of the independent developer” is all about? Now we are talking about 6% for each dev. Maybe a little more/less. Now this means that the developers have a stake in the success and they can now make some real money. MacHeist would just have to sell 1700 bundles for the developers to “break even” on the original offer, and they would. They sold 16,000 bundles or so. So now MacHeist would have made a more reasonable $76,000 and the developers could have made something like $45,600 instead of $5,000.
Imagine how hard it is going to be for MacHeist 2 to get developers who know that they are going to sell at least 10,000 bundles. Now imagine how hard it would have been in the second scenario… Sometimes there are more important things than making a boat load of money. Sometimes it is better to build the community and build some loyalty. We could have been having MacHeist 30 in a couple years.
Decemberists vs. Colbert
Um, f-ing A? So two favorite spheres of my life (politics and music) and my favorite representatives from both are about to totally collide. Steven Colbert called The Decemberists out a week back or so, for kind of lifting his Green Screen Challenge idea. The Decemberists did a music video in front of a green screen and allowed their fans to fill in the background. Colbert faux criticized them in his new “Who’s riding my coattails now” segment. Most bands would maybe say something funny on their website about it, but mostly just blow it off. Not The Decemberists. Their response on pitchfork was, and I quote, “We’d like to announce the very first ‘Decemberists vs Stephen Colbert Guitar Solo Challenge’. Put down the pen, Colbert, and pick up the axe! Let’s see what kind of a man you really are– let’s SHRED”. They challenged Colbert to a guitar solo competition!! So now the stage is set and on December 20 (Colbert was nice enough to give The Decemberists homefield advantage by having the context in December…), the two will face off on The Colbert Report. I’m definitely having a watch party.
Update: You have to check it out.
Finals Tips
Tips on a successful final’s week:
- Study many days early and don’t think much of it. Then rest a lot and think about while relaxing a bit. For a hilarious take on this strategy, see this episode of “the show”.
- Get plenty of sleep the night before.
- Take the whole test time to write a crapload of explanation for your answers. You don’t get to go to the professor on this exam to explain yourself, so make it count.
- Don’t eat Taco Mayo (think nastier than Bell) before a 2 hour final.
Good luck! Of course, you probably are done. In that case, you probably failed because you didn’t have this stellar advice. My bad.