It’s a bit easy and tired to say that Apple is leading the way in terms of digital content. But, in one hour’s time, a visitor to the company’s website can easily see the visionary power of this singular company shaping the universe of content online. Apple just seems to be doing everything now, and everything right.
There are hundreds of brand new (and free) courses at iTunes U, allowing anyone with a pretty good connection (and the free iTunes application) to learn from educators and researchers at schools like Penn State, MIT, Otis College of Art and Design, and Duke. You can also take a look at Apple TV, which is going to very soon have total access to YouTube. The trailers on the Apple site load more quickly (and have far better quality) than any other sites out there; their large, high definition trailers are incomparable to anything I’ve seen. The massive Worldwide Developers Conference is coming up in a few weeks in San Francisco and predictions are wild that Apple’s new Leopard operating system is going to functionally and visually blow Microsoft’s Vista and the current Apple operating system out of the water. Let’s not forget that the iPhone is coming out soon, and though I’m still doubtful people will be willing to pay $500 for a phone, the product has the potential to forever change the way they interact with mobile devices. Oh, and yesterday, Apple announced the launch of iTunes Plus, which will allow consumers to buy completely DRM-free music, play it on any player, and own it forever. I’m convinced that other music online music stores will be forced to follow this model. And if you go to the iTunes Plus page within iTunes, the application will tell you, automatically, how to update your music library to DRM-free (but .30 more costly) songs.
I risk the mild ridicule of technologists and the knowing smirks of Apple afficianados, but all of this, to me, is very impressive for one evening’s visit to one company’s one website.

Mean but funny, Conan visits Intel HQ:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvv28t8WR4E]

I read today that Tom Hanks does not like or does not use computers. He prefers the , that great-great-great grandfather of our lowly keyboards. I don’t know why he prefers the typewriter, nor do I care. I vastly prefer being able to have a lightweight keyboard and screen on my lap or on my desk; the integrity of the writing process is better maintained, for me.
But I had a realization: I belong to the last generation that actively used a typewriter for writing. I think I’m it. Anyone a little bit younger than me would have learned to type on a TRS-80 or slightly newer computational device. I learned to type on keys, having to push hard on the letter “s” with my adolescently weak ring finger while getting that little thrill of throwing the carriage back, from the right to the left side.

I read today in the Times that Sony, sometime next month, will introduce something called Minisodes. These little 3 to 6 minute television shows will consolidate older, out-of-play dramas such as Charlie’s Angels and T.J. Hooker. I quite like the idea.
Afterall, though I’d like to wax nostalgic in front of The Bionic Woman or The Love Boat or Love, American Style, thinking back to my pre-pubescent thoughts, it’s more likely that I would take a gander at a five-minute, heavily edited, perhaps slightly kitchified version of it on my computer screen. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

I wanted to write up a post about how I think Microsoft is completely wiped out because no one is interested in Vista, no one wants to use Microsoft Office anymore unless they have to, no one likes Internet Explorer too much, etc. But then Paul Graham beat me to it with his Microsoft is Dead.
Oh well. I’ve been even more powerfully interested in tides. Tides. According to my source, the moon controls the rising and falling of the water on the surface of the earth. Yes, the moon. The moon! I’m saying, “the moon.” That huge-ass object in the sky that smiles cruelly down on us, its bone white teeth shining on some occasions, then disappearing behind our own bright shadow on others. The moon controls the water surrounding us. Inevitably, it must control us, subtly, sometimes mechanically, sometimes with fierce command. The moon. The Moon. How come we’re not all worshipping the moon?
The moon.

Man, this is cool. Google never ceases to amaze.

About ten years ago, there were a number of good to great magazines about technology that I would actually look forward to getting. These included Wired, of course, but also Info World, PC Week, Mondo 2000 (further back), and other sprightly ones like Upside, which a lot of people hated because of its sappy up-with-technology optimism.
It appears that Information World, the print magazine that has followed me for the past seven or so years, will no longer be printed. In the past year, the magazine has tried to become more gadget-focused, more Mac-happy, and more relevant to non-CIOs. It was a valiant effort and I enjoyed getting every (free) issue. The magazine didn’t always have directly relevant information for me, as its focus was on the alphabet soup of ERP, CRM, KM, and IT applications and news about outsourcing, interoperability, enterprise solutions, and innovations (and competition) in business information. But, through the print magazine, I gained a solid understanding of the big picture of technical innovation and how the larger tech players were advancing and receding. It was also good toilet reading—bite-sized, informative, well-written and cogent.
Alas, no more, no more.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I’ve spent a little bit too much time over the past three days researching and re-researching what the repercussions are of Microsoft’s decision to use its Word product, instead of Internet Explorer, to render HTML emails in the new Outlook. There are a few good blogs posts about the issue, which will increasingly affect many people who are starting to use Outlook 2007. Most of these come from the fine folks at Campaign Monitor, an email delivery company I’ve been with almost from the start (I dissected a Coudal email way back to see who they were using). And the ball really got rolling thanks to Kevin Yank’s great article on Sitepoint.
In order to see what kind of damage Outlook 2007 does to Web standards-based HTML emails, I tried a new online application by SiteVista. You can see what the MANOVERBOARD Telegraph, the email newsletter I send out semi-regularly, looks like with Microsoft’s Outlook 2002/XP and its newly released Outlook 2007.
Long story short: I’ve been trying to come up with a nice, pithy, easy-to-use statement about what this means for the few MANOVERBOARD clients for whom I designed and created HTML email newsletters using Web standards. (And, let me say this: Despite excellent support from and a valiant effort by Campaign Monitor, I consider myself fortunate that, as a designer, I only have a few HTML email clients.)
Thus, after a lot of thinking and work, here is my brief statement on the issue:
Using Web standards to create HTML emails is no longer possible because of Microsoft’s decision to use Word rather than HTML as its rendering engine in Outlook 2007. You can still create HTML emails with poor/complex/table-based code and they may look fine. Or you can send Web standards-based emails and just give up on anyone with Outlook 2007, as those folks will see a terrible mess. Or you can just send plain text emails, which are great (and superbly legible), except you’ll get poor reporting on your campaigns because good reports rely upon HTML and images being embedded in the emails you send.
All of these are bad solutions with the last one being the least bad, imho. This is what I will recommend to my clients who need or want an email newsletter, for now.
Postscript: My new understanding of all of this is that many of us designers and developers were trying to apply the beauty and elegance of Web standards to a medium (e.g. email) that has very competing needs (communication, marketing, file sending, and news) and stakeholders (email users, technology providers, ISPs, and software developers); a longer and more complex technological history than the Web browser; and, no governing organization or consortia (including the W3C) that have the teeth or cojones to police, enforce, or cajole companies to agree on standards for the rendering of emails.

I so want to do what journalist Tom Hodgkinson did. He just told everyone he’s done with email. End of story (more or less). No spam, no checking email at night and in the early morning. No anticipation of emails. No file size attachment issues. No longing for past contact with people electronically. Just the phone, the mail, and the sweet sound of silence.
P.S. I’m not actually going to do this. Unfortunately, that sound of silence would also be the sign of starvation.