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My review of Weet at The Technology Charge.

Weet’s high configurability and robust feature list set it apart in a crowded market. Loren Brichter was supposed to release Tweetie 2 for Mac months ago, and continues to cryptically hint that an update will come one of these years. That’s not enough for me, and I doubt it is for anyone else. There are other solid alternatives, like Nambu and the skinnable Kiwi, but neither combine beauty, speed and power in the same manner as Weet. Even more impressive is the fact that the app has reached this level of refinement in such a short amount of time. That’s as good a sign as I know.

Desktop of the Month: December 2010

My desktop changes often. It’s a problem I have. I can never have the same basic “setup” in OS X for more than a month at a time, so I decided to start documenting the always-changing environment of my MacBook Pro. So from now on, every month, I’ll post a screenshot of my current desktop, and let it speak for itself.

Awesome deconstruction of the best TV show since the invention of television.

Late last night, a notice popped up on my phone telling me it was ready for the Android 2.2 update. The update, in addition to Froyo, promised 720p video recording and 3G tethering capability, both of which I was looking forward to using. As of now, I’ve only managed to test out tethering, and I’m sorry to say that it’s a huge disappointment.

From what I read on the web before the update, Froyo’s tethering was supposed to bypass carriers’ pesky subscription requirements for the feature. Tethering was accessible to me before the update, but through Verizon, and that meant shelling out extra dough each month. The new feature looks devoid from carrier intervention when setting it up on the phone (which is wonderfully simple), but that all changes when you try and use the connection.

Once the password was in order, the connection was up and running. I proceeded to point my browser to twitter.com for a quick test, and instead of twitter.com, I got this. Prices to use tethering would cost at least $15 extra per month, according to Verizon. I thought this was what the update was supposed to change; is this what Google calls ‘open’? Carriers taking what is supposed to be free and charging for it? ★

Shocking revelations, brought to light by Fast Company:

Although it is not due to be released for another ten days, the report says that an employee misread pressure data, giving the go-ahead to replace the drilling fluid with seawater. As a result of using the lighter liquid, natural gas shot up the pipeline and exploded on the rig, killing 11.

★

Latest article over at The Technology Charge. Here, I share my thoughts on Apple’s recent multitouch desktop patent filings.

Is the Mac dead? No. Conventional computers will always do the dirty work — tasks that require the precision of a pointing device and the power of a quad-core processor. Think Steve Jobs’ pickup truck analogy. But is the Mac dead in its current iteration? Probably.

ridikulouz:

Very interesting.

I suspect stories like this will become much more prevalent over the next generation. Here’s hoping to the eventual disappearance of firm gender roles in society.

A short story I wrote for school back in March has been published on Teen Ink magazine’s website. It’s some pretty trippy shit, so I can’t really give you a summary; you’re better off just reading and reflecting. Here’s a peek:

Claudius Cipher is an actor, and life is his play. And as a performer of life rather than a liver of life, he will do anything and everything he can to make the story more interesting and his presence felt.

If you enjoy it (or the opposite), don’t hesitate to give it a rating and maybe even a comment. If it gets enough praise, the editors might select it to be published in their monthly print magazine, which would look very nice on my college applications…

lonelysandwich:

Photographer Dmitri Kasterine’s best shot: Kubrick filming A Clockwork Orange

This picture (featured in The Guardian’s My Best Shot series), moments before the camera platform he’s under started creaking and collapsed, Kubrick dashing out of the way “like a bolting rabbit”, is a real beauty.

via Sharon Linne Faulk

The closest thing to that elusive idea of the “American Dream” that I’ve ever seen. And it wouldn’t be possible without Obama’s stimulus package. (via Devour)

I recently came up against an issue in Safari where the background colour of an element seemed to ‘bleed’ through the edge of the corners when applying both borders and a border-radius (see the image above). After seeing David Cole tweet about the same issue I resolved to find a solution,…

You’ll never guess what this is.

To find out, check out the entire gallery at Photography Served.

My latest piece on The Technology Charge. Apologies for being a couple of days late on this one; I’ve been pretty busy.

Given that the iPod nano got a video camera last September, the iPod touch is in dire need of some form of photographic ability. I can understand why Apple waited this long; adding a conventional camera one year and a FaceTime camera the next would be silly and unfair to everyone who would have bought the version with one camera. Stuffing two cameras into one update saves production costs and makes the new hardware that much more compelling.

I used to have a 2nd-generation iPod touch, which I adored, but some prick stole it right out of my bag at a basketball game. I’ll most likely get the new one for my birthday in November, and if the rumors are true, it’ll be worth the wait.

Jacqui Cheng:

The ability to perform multitouch gestures on my desktop Mac is welcome. The less precise nature of using a trackpad instead of a mouse is not so fun sometimes—it’s tolerable, but annoying. Apple’s design is, of course, sleek and well-done, so at least the device is large enough to be useable without being too large. At least half of my childhood complaints about a trackpad on a desktop were addressed with the Magic Trackpad, though the addition of multitouch gestures do push it over into favorable territory for me.

Oh, and how about that article title? Brilliant, and provided by one of Cheng’s Twitter followers, nategri.

Nice, long interview conducted by Silicon Alley Insider. Here’s a peek.

We were originally thinking we’d bring this to the web, but in thinking about this, it was clear that a tablet—and the iPad rumors started to pick up pace—it was pretty clear that betting on a tablet, and form faster, would be the idea. So we started designing for that, hoping and praying that something would actually happen there. And lo and behold it did. And then when the iPad came out we really just bet the whole company on it. So we designed something really specifically for the iPad and that really captured this idea.

 Surprise: their main engineer used to work at Apple.

So I’ve been thinking about “Antennagate.” First thought: stop fucking calling every scandal “-gate,” for Christ’s sake.

Next thought: so what’s the scoop here? Biggest problem in the history of all of mobile phones, or minor issue blown way out of proportion by the tech media? Neither, of…