Is this the much anticipated iPod Video? Well, not likely. But it looks cool, doesn’t it? I would buy one in a second.
[ via TUAW ]
Month: July 2005
Not that there’s anything wrong with that
I saw this image on the Apple Start Page. Is it just me, or does this look more like “coming out”, vs. going inside Apple. In the words of Seinfeld… “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”.
Show me the Money
Do you like the stories I post here at one digital life? Do me a favor and help support the site by buying products from the merchants that I am affiliated with. It’s very simple, and won’t cost you a thing (extra that is).
I’ve added a list of merchants to the sidebar (more to come). If you’re planning on buying something from any of these merchants, please come here first and use my links to access their sites. That’s all there is to it. See, simple!
Here’s how it works. I am signed up as an affiliate with these merchants. Using my link to enter their site tells them that I sent you. They’ll pay me a commission for everything you buy during that visit. NONE of your information is transmitted to me. The merchant simply informs me that a sale has been made, and the commission amount. You get your latest and greatest gadget, and I make a little beer money… everybody wins!
Why does Internet Explorer SUCK so bad?!?
So, it’s been a while since I’ve tested this site in Internet Explorer on a PC. This morning, thanks to a tip from a friend, I found out that I do have some anomalies.
The header and footer images are slightly off from the body of the page. That’s not too big of a deal, I could live with that. The real problems are in the sidebar. The image on the left is how the sidebar looks in IE6 under Windows XP Pro. The image on the right is how it looks under Safari 2.0 under Apple OS X 10.4. Notice a difference?
The weather icon is a png file with an alpha channel. I totally forgot that IE doesn’t really display png w/ alphas very well. Why, I do not know. You would think Microsoft would be able to do that by now, png’s aren’t exactly a new thing.
Next, the spacing between the menu items is obviously a little off in IE. Why, I don’t know that either. It seems to display properly in every other browser, on both platforms. I think it stems from Microsoft’s inability to conform to CSS standards. I know that’s why the dividing line between the weather information and the search field is missing in IE.
Lastly,Why oh why can’t Microsoft make IE anti-alias the text on a web page (make text look smoother)? IE on the Mac was able to do this… Maybe it’s a general shortcoming of the Windows Operating System?
All this leads me to one question… Why does Internet Explorer suck so bad?
If your on a PC, and you’re using Internet Explorer… please STOP! There are much better browsers out there, like Firefox, or Mozilla. They will improve your web-viewing experience. Better yet, just switch to a mac. All your friends are doing it.
Thanks for the heads up Todd.
UPDATE (a little while later): OK, I replaced the png files with jpegs, and I fixed the spacing between menu items. There’s still some spacing issues, but at least it’s presentable now. Damn IE!
Now Better Tasting?
Is it just me, or could they have worded this a little better? Maybe something like “Great New Taste”? And why are there plugs going into the slogan? Does the better taste require a peripheral of some kind?
I personally miss the good old days when they were just “Nacho Cheese”, without the “ier!”, and they came in a clear bag, so you could see the chips inside. Remember that?
Convert Your Digital Camera to Infrared
Image © 2003 George Lepp
Want to shoot digital infrared images? For $350 – $500 IRDIGITAL.NET will convert your Canon D30, D60, EOS1D, Digital Rebel (300D) and D100 digital SLRs to IR only cameras. Once converted these cameras capture only true IR B&W images.
I’ve never used the service, but it seems like a cool idea. The IRDigital website seems a little, uhm… crappy though. Maybe it’s the designer in me, but I don’t always trust companies with bad websites.
[ Via Where is Ben? ]
Play Windows Media files in QuickTime
Are you a mac user who wants to play, or edit, Windows Media files in QuickTime Player? Well now you can. Introducing WMV Studio. I came across this little gem recently, and it totally saved the day. I was working on a project that required me to have the ability to edit wmv files on my mac, and be able to convert the files back and forth from QuickTime to Windows Madia(wmv). WMV Studio does exactly that, and it works really well.
WMV Studio is not a stand-alone application. It consists of a QuickTime component, and a system preference pane. They provide 4 variations of the product depending on your need…
WMV Player (Play Windows Media in QuickTime Player) $9.99
WMV Player Pro (Import Windows Media for editing) $49.00
WMV Studio (Import, Export & Play Windows Media) $99.00
WMV Studio Pro (All of the above plus Hi-Def encoding) $179.00
WMV Studio works great. The one thing I wish it had was a little utility for batch processing. It is supposed to work with Discreet Cleaner, but I personally found this a little slow, and buggy. Enter QTAmateur, a freeware application that can batch export QuickTime files. It’s a great little app that works really well. I highly recommend these two products.
[ WMV Studio ]
[ QTAmateur ]
Modern Birdhouses
I came across this story a while back over at Inhabitat. It’s a company called Modern Birdhouses. I think the name is pretty self-explinatory as to what they do there. I don’t really have any feelings one way or another about birdhouses, but I’m always interested in seeing examples of good design. The biggest thing that interested me about this company, was it’s founder’s ability to combine two things they loved, architecture and birdhouses, into a new career. I really love it when people find a way to do that. In a perfect world, work would be a pleasure… not a chore.
The Chapin Sisters
A few weeks a ago we went to see our friend Matt Bauer play at the Café du Nord. It was a great show as always. That night we were also introduced to The Chapin Sisters, an all-girl folk trio from LA. They were awesome!. Here’s a blurb from their site…
Their musical style blends traditional folk harmonies with an Indie rock/Emo moodiness (think Crosby Stills and Nash meets Cat Power.) Their lo-fi originals are gorgeous and melancholy, while their covers of Britney Spears “Toxic” and The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” are haunting and strangely unfamiliar – all Chapin Sisters music can be habit forming.
Abigail and Lily are daughters of folk singer Tom Chapin (brother of Harry) and Jessica (having grown up with Tom) is writer/director Wes Craven’s daughter. And though they officially started performing with Tom as his special guest, it started years earlier in the back seat of the family car. Basically, they’ve been singing together for years – and it shows.
The Chapin sisters are currently recording with producer Michael Fitzpatrick and performing a limited amount of shows in Los Angeles.
At the show I picked up the girls homemade demo CD. It’s really good, but it is limited to cover songs. They played some really awesome original songs at the show, and I hope they release them on CD soon. I highly recommend checking them out if you live in the LA area.
See PSD Layers in Tiger’s info box
I came across this great little tip on creativebits. The author called it useless, but I don’t agree at all.
If you get info on a layered Photoshop file in Tiger, you can see all the layer names contained in the document. The dialog has other useful info for other types of files too, like the exif data for jpegs. Very Cool!