The new iPod shuffle by Apple.

The new shuffle now features the ability to talk to you as well, which is a clever/necessary/gimmicky (take your pick) way to offset the fact it has pretty much no interface. I’d be interested to see how well this works, or if it’s just annoying. The new shuffle now comes in silver or black aluminum.

From what it appears, you must use the earbuds that come with it, because the controls are on the earbud cord itself. I’m not sure what I think of this. Lots of people have a very personal relationship with their earbuds, and I think it’s key to allow people to use earbuds of their own choosing. I’ve got to give credit to Apple, though – when they do something so bold as to force you to use their own earbuds exclusively, they at least give you a compelling reason why you should. It doesn't hurt that forcing the use of the iconic white earbuds is a marketing coup for Apple as well.

There is an ironic thing about the direction Apple is going with some of their UI, though...they are eliminating buttons, but adding all sorts of clicking schemes to offset the lack of buttons. Short click, long click, double click, click and keep holding...is that really better than just having a couple more buttons? It’s funny to me, because the reason Jobs & Company always said they wanted the one button mouse is because two buttons confused the user...they never knew when to use which button. Well, at least in that case they could see the options...if you don’t read the manual (and who does), I’m sure lots of people will not even realize what various types of clicks this new controller has, because they will assume it has only one button, when in reality, it has multiple buttons, depending on how you click it.

I thought this new iPod thimble was pretty cool, and then, when I told my wife “Hey, Apple announced a new iPod Shuffle like the one you have, except this one is even smaller.” She responded immediately with a simple “Why?”

I still haven’t come up with an answer to her...

[code lang="applescript"]
set userHome to (text of word -1 of (path to home folder as text))

display dialog userHome
[/code]

This has worked well for me to be able to purge the script's property settings whenever the script gets passed on to someone else (otherwise it seems to keep the property assignments on the new computer as well. Also, it's set up just in case I ever need to fork code for a particular user if their computer setup happens to have something that just won't work with the way the rest of the other computers are set up (hopefully that will not be necessary, but you just never know).

edit:
Well as usual, there's an easier way:

[code lang="applescript"]
set userHome to (short user name of (system info))

display dialog userHome
[/code]

I've considered before trying to "converge" all my various tech devices into one device. I had previously melded my previous PDA and my iPod into just the Palm TX, since it does a great job (for my uses) as a music and video player. I've always thought the Treo was too big for a phone, and didn't compare to the quite large screen of the TX, which is great for viewing videos in widescreen format. I have been using my TX daily at work to listen to several Podcasts a day, and to watch downloaded TV shows on it while I'm on the bike or treadmill at the gym (the only thing that's successfully convinced me to stay on a treadmill for 45 minutes).

As soon as I heard about the Centro, it intrigued me like no Treo ever had. It would allow me to combine my phone, PDA, and audio player into one device that is just barely larger than my current flip-phone. It will still work with my Bluetooth Stereo headphones, so I won't have to dodge earphone cords all day while listening to my podcasts.

The only real tradeoff will be having a much smaller screen, especially being used to the extra screen space the TX allows. I'll probably still use the TX for video watching at the gym, but otherwise, I'll happily have one less thing in my pockets.

However, one thing I am very unhappy about is slow but steady slide toward "the new Apple way" - and making iTunes more of a proprietary experience, instead of an open experience with the iTunes store as an added value. This is especially apparent in how iTunes 7 handles Audio books.

Apple has done a good thing by separating out Music, Audio Books, Movies, TV Shows, and Podcasts into their own separate areas. However, Apple alone has decided what goes in each of the new "categories". They make up their own rules, instead of allowing us to decide which files show up where. For instance, by default, my large collection of audio books are now split up between the Audiobooks tab and the music tab. I have a lot of older audio books that are still .mp3 files - Apple decides that only files with an extension of .M4B (a bookmarkable AAC format, the same they use for their own store) should count as audio books.

Doug's Applescripts has a handy script that will take the files that aren't showing up in the audiobooks tab, covert them to .M4B files and remove and re-add them to your iTunes library, which will then show up in the proper tab.

However, I would much prefer a way to choose where my Audio Books show up (that is the point of the Genre tag, after all), than by forcing me to convert all of my files to a different format.

Huh?

That's like saying "We're not going to call it a ball any more...now it's called little ball."

Since websites have such a large number of links associated with them, it is common to create multiple navigation areas, loosely grouped by priority and/or intent. It is well documented from extensive user testing that online users “scan” a webpage to find what they are looking for as opposed to “reading” it. Also, from past experience the typical user expects to find links either along the top, left, or bottom of the page.

As a list of links becomes longer (more than approx. 10 items) it is much more difficult to “scan” the list and find a particular link – the desired link gets “lost” visually, like trying to pinpoint one particular word on an entire page of text – it can be done, but you might pass by the word a couple of times before finding it. Simply put, it is easier to find what you are looking for in two groups of 5-10 links each instead of one long list of 10-20 links.

Larger sites (like msn.com or major news sites) have so many links that they have no option but to have long lists, but even then they try to group them as best they can.

On smaller sites, often there are three groups of links:

1. the main “category” links (the main information-based sections of the site) - typically on the left or at the top of the site
2. utility links (action-oriented or interactive areas of the site) - usually at the top right of the site, smaller than the main category links
3. Footer/legal/corporate links (often including links such as “corporate info”, “employment”, “contact us” etc. as well as legal info)

It should also be noted that a user with a specific goal in mind (like coming to the site just to send a comment or look for job postings) will typically look a little harder for a particular link than someone who is just looking for info. This allows you to emphasize the more general info links, and group them more prominently, and slightly de-emphasize the “specific goal” links. The end result is a site that is much easier to navigate by both types of users.

He decided to buy a 12" Powerbook after using mine a few times. He has various Macs he uses for his business - 2 G4 towers, 2 Wallstreet Powerbooks, and a Bondi blue iMac. He's resisted upgrading for understandable reasons:

• he knows OS 9 (and has few problems with it, at least in his perception)
• he uses two large format inkjet printers with various papers, and has all the needed settings figured out (which took a while to get straight)
• the Point-of-purchase software he uses to manage the business stopped development at OS 9. The software does everything he needs, and he is not interested in spending the time and effort to migrate to a new system

The funny part is that now that he has made the upgrade, he has ended up with a newer version than me! Tiger came with his new computer, and I'm still using Panther.

He's starting to get it. It's neat to see. On the phone today he asked me if Dashboard was new to Tiger. I told him it was and he replied "it's pretty neat." I knew it would be perfect for him to check stock prices whenever my grandfather called to ask how his stocks were doing. He's already using it for that, after only three days.

Pretty cool.

To me though, it's more like getting a tattoo when you're young. I sure hope you'll still like what it looks like (and says about you) many, many years from now. Soon after a site is created, it's pretty much a permanent fixture of the web, and there's not much you can do about it, which means be careful what you say, and be ready to stand by it from that point onward.

While it's intriguing that I can see almost every iteration of the first website I ever maintained, it's also quite scary. I look at that archive now and think how temporary I considered all of those pages to be at the time. I keep thinking "did I ever post something on that site I wouldn't like seen now"? Probably not, but oh how easy it would have been at that point in my life. However, just like a tattoo, I'm not sure I would want the same things in public view today that I would have then.

At different points I have developed sites meant only for the eyes of a select group of friends or family. I've had to work hard and be very careful to keep them out of the search engines. Even with all the time researching and implementing robots.txt and such, one late night goof while meaning to submit a different site to google still has the home page to one of those sites in it's database - even with "no-index" and robot exclusions in place. But what if I hadn't been so web-savvy even then, not to mention overly protective of the personal info of me and my friends? All it would have taken was for another friend to have put a link on their site and all of my precautions would have be for nothing (good thing all my friends didn't have their own blog back then).

Recently at work I made one of those goofs. As I was getting ready to leave work one day, my boss IM'ed me to say that the login for a seldom-used portion of our site wasn't working. It seems a change by our hosting company broke the method I had used for password protection. I thought it would be safe enough to remove the password protection for the night and figure out how to fix it in the morning. Well, an extremely busy morning the next day caused me to forget all about it. I discovered my oversight a few weeks later when testing out the search engine placement for a new site we developed for a client. The second and third results for the client's business name were for the comps we showed the clients during development! Several redirects later pointed all traces of those comps to the client's homepage instead. I had to do this for two other clients and their comps as well, but in one of those cases a comp page had been cached by Google already. Not a big deal in this case, but wow could it have been.

I think of all the blogs I've read where people at one point discussed all sorts of opinions and personal topics, only to later decide they didn't like being so open after all...how do they feel about all that info still being out there?

Boy was it an experience.

Here are just a few of the characters I met along the way:

• The Ticket Counter Worker: I was very late for my initial flight out of Nashville. This man sped my through the check-in process, and walked me over to the other security line, knowing it would be shorter. I made it to the plane 5 mintes before take-off, thanks to him.

• The Car Rental Manager: This guy was very helpful, even if he didn’t honor the deal that I had gotten from a schiester website. He worked with me for an hour, called the website’s customer service, let me get on his computer to cancel my insurance with that company, and set me up with a different rental.

• The Crackhead Car Rental Shuttle Driver: She was quite a hoot, making fun of all of the rental-car drivers getting in her way, and complaining about the world in general. She talked non-stop during my entire ride. Okay, so she wasn’t a crackhead, and was actually quite nice, but boy, what a character.

• The Homeless Tourguide: As I made my way from the MARTA station trying to find the Omni Hotel, a man who I came across asked what hotel I was looking for. When I said the Omni, he said, “shoo-oot, you got off the wrong train.” He walked me 2-3 blocks to show me where the hotel was, informed me of the better way to get there via MARTA train, and which stations and trains to take later when I went back to the aiprort. He asked if I was in Atlanta for the volleyball, and chit-chatted about that. When he asked where I was from, he said “man, this is gonna blow your mind,” and informed me that he was from Columbia, a town near where I’m from. I actually gave him $5 for his help. I’ve never given money to a homeless man before, but hey, he actually earned that money. He was helpful, polite, and actually talked to me, instead of just begging for money.

• My Mentor: While at the tournament, I ran into my mentor, who originally taught me (as well as many others in my area) how to play volleyball. It was good to see him. I had kept in touch occasionally through the years, but had recently lost touch with him via email, and had not seen him in more than ten years. It was good to see him again, and better yet, to reconnect him with a couple of the other “old school” players from my area that were at Nationals.

• Old Friends: I kept running into more and more old volleyball friends at Nationals each day I was there.

• The CNN Talent: While waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts in the CNN Center Foodcourt, the guy standing behind me turned out to be an on-air personality, acting like a total jerk. Huffing and puffing, pacing, etc for having to wait. Poor thing. I’m sure he was thinking “I bet Larry King doesn’t have to get his own coffee.”