NilPerOs

Assuming you know what the latter is, let me tell you all about the former. Silverlight is an internet browser plug-in created by Microsoft that allows you to view a variety of rich media including audio-video, vector graphics & animation. Sound familiar? Well it should, because that’s pretty much exactly what something called Flash does, and that’s owned by a company called Adobe. Flash is why we have things like YouTube & all manner of web-lovely stuff for you to waste your precious time on. Silverlight came in with a view to being a direct competitor with the Adobe product, but has thus far failed to live up to the hype. Why? Well quite simply, if it ain’t broken… and Flash ain’t broken.

Anyway, times must be pretty hard over there in Microsoft as they have just launched a campaign to encourage people to download and start using Silvernight with their browsers. So how do you encourage people to install a piece of software that pretty much no one uses and can only really do something that another piece of software already does very well? Sex… apparently. Through a partnership between Microsoft and Bondi Digital Publishing, Playboy Enterprises has put 53 back issues of Playboy on the Web, viewable through Microsoft’s Silverlight viewer.

OK, call me crazy here, but I’m guessing that they’re going for the computer-savvy, teenage boy market here (with apparently no age verification required on the site), hoping that it’ll tumble up through the rest of the online community.

The early signs thus far (and it is only a couple of days since this was launched) is that this is failing. It would seem people object at being told what technology to use, particularly when it’s merely an ineffective clone of an existing product.

The funny thing is that in last 48 hours I have read multiple blog posts about this campaign, and it’s amazing how often the same phrase keeps popping up, especially in the posts’ titles. I suppose it grabs your attention, and I’m a half guilty of doing it here. The phrase is ‘Sex Sells’, and it’s one of those tired old clichés that always gets banged around in advertising circles. It reminded me of the scene below from Mad Men. If you are not watching this program, you’re really missing out on something amazing. It is without doubt the best looking and best written thing on television right now. Anyway, here’s Don’s take on the aforementioned expression when working on a campaign for an airline. It’ll make ya feel good about working in advertising, just on the off chance you don’t already. Put that in your book…

I remember the first job I had after graduating from college was for a company called Dakota Print. As the name might suggest, it was a printing factory, but as the name might also suggest, it wasn’t in the central United States, but rather on Botanic Road in Glasnevin, Dublin. As I recall, the day I started I wore a luminous orange shirt with a luminous green tie that my mother & sister had convinced me we quite the rage in early nineties, pre celtic-tiger Ireland. They were of course wrong, and it clashed terribly not only with the psyche of the company, but also with the early eighties decor of chocolate brown carpets, cream painted walls and mock-mahogany desks. We had computers, but no real network to speak of, and I certainly don’t remember sharing any files across it. Tucked away in a dark corner, surrounded by shelves that ran from floor to ceiling bursting with cardboard folders, that in turn burst with computer printouts on pin-stripped green and white paper, was a rather unimpressive looking dumb terminal. The green CRT tube would singe and tarnish the air around it and doubtless emitted an array of electrons to make even the most experienced radiographer a bit nervous. The huge chunky pieces of plastic on the keyboard had a reassuring click akin to a light switch when you pressed them. It was on this majestic beast, and only here, that one could send electronic mail.

I think only myself and Cormac ever used it, being the only two people under the age of thirty in a clear two mile radius. It could only display text, and in a single unchangeable font and a single unchangeable green. I had a friend that was traveling in Australia at the time and we used to correspond semi-regulalrly on it. He once attached a photograph, which was sufficient to cause the whole system to come crashing down around our ears. We had to call an engineer to fix it. And I mean a proper engineer, with a blue boiler suit and a set of orange screwdrivers that swept in a neat row across his breast pocket. As he passed and disappeared into a room somewhere at the back of the factory, he cast a disapproving eye in my direction over the top of his bottle-bottom glasses. That, to me, was the internet. I used to think “Well, it’s all very nice for keeping in touch with Colm, but it’ll never take off”.

I have to give a presentation to management next week on an internet related subject, and as a consequence I’ve been sort of forced into thinking about what the internet is to me now. So where do you start? Available to me now is a satellite image of more or less the entire surface of the planet. I can zoom in and see my own house. I can look at a 360 degree photographic view from a good proportion of the earth. There’s a 3D rendering that makes it possible for me to fly through the Grand Canyon or walk down the Las Vegas strip. This is all over-layed by every motor-way, road, street and lane name and number. I have at my fingertips a encyclopedia more detailed and vast than the very best leather bound edition of Britannica ever, and it changes and updates constantly. That same friend is back in Australia now, and he can turn on his computer and time and see me sitting at my desk and chat as if he were beside me. He only has to think to do it and he can. I’m constantly updated on what my friends and family do and where they are doing it. I can get any song I can think of, that’s ever been recorded and achieved some modicum of popularity, and have to keep forever in a matter of seconds. Films. News. Books. Opinions. Videos. Education. Politics. Communication.

Stephen Fry is one of the best human beings alive for reasons too obvious to go into. He’s one of those people that if you could have any four people to dinner… He’s a keen user of technology, has an amazing blog and fantastic podcasts. He’s also a dedicated and regular user of Twitter, and I follow his tweets. If I were to go into my local coffee shop this morning and see him there, I imagine the conversation would go something like this; ‘Oh, hi Stephen. How are you? Fine thanks, all fine. So just back from Madagascar then? Saw the video of the baby chimps. Very cute. And the photos of the spiders. Arrrgh! How did the speech go at the V&A last night? Good, good. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?! So you’re out to dinner with your producer tonight, right? At The Ivy? Excellent. Well do enjoy. Must dash. Up to my eyes at the minute. Toodles!.’ Because of the internet, I think I’m mates with Stephen Fry. Ridiculous.

If someone had told me all this as I sat there having my head x-rayed some twelve odd years ago, I would have laughed in their face. The internet is unbelieveable, incredible and amazing. And yet we find in believeable, credible and are continually not amazed by it. The phenomenal is normal.

Why is that?

Quite simply amazing.

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

I’ve moved the management of the main RSS feed from the native Wordpress system to Feedburner. If you have subscribed previously, please now change the URL to the new Feedburner Feed.

Reason? Mostly boredom, but there is a relatively good case for doing so, as put forward in this 2 year old post from Marshall Kirkpatrick. Never type ‘Why use feedburner?’ into Google. Suddenly you care. I doubt I even have a single subscriber. Thankfully.

I have a real weak spot for great applications. The twin worlds of the open source community and the indie software developer really fascinate me. I have been known to subscribe to their sometimes rather technical blogs, most of which I don’t understand, but I love tracking the development process and problem solving. I sort of like the idea of being locked away in a room and tinkering with code until you’ve honed a useful, intelligent, intuitive and polished application that’s ready for release to the world. Of course I lack the education, patience and work ethic, but hey, a guy can have nerdy dreams. On the flip side though, as a user, I get to enjoy the fruits of the labour of some really brilliant people, sometimes for free, and sometimes for a fee that I’m more than happy to pay to ensure the future of a developer that is producing some really good apps. (I’m not sure I like the abbreviation ‘apps’. Ever since the launch of Apple’s ‘App Store’ it seems to be abused and overused to the point of becoming embarrassing, and maybe just a little too cool for school. I think I’ll revert back to ‘application’ from now on). Given limitless processing power, limitless memory and limitless funds (none of which are immediately likely) I think I’d make the collecting of applications a hobby. I regularly have to stop myself from hitting the ‘Download Now’ button, trying to remember that one day too many applications are going to do some serious damage that I’ll definitely be too lazy to clean up. Anyway, here’s a list of my current favorite applications. There’s a few things to remember though;

1. They’re all Mac applications. I’m sure there’s PC versions of some of them, and I’m sure there’s better PC applications, but I use a Mac. So they’re all Mac. So there.

2. They are (mostly) from open source, indie software developers or small software companies with the right attitude. There are lots of applications that I use every day that I’d be lost without that are made by huge corporate companies. They are great, and you know all about them, so there’s no need to bang on about them.

3. They are in no particular order.

4. All paid applications cost less that US$30

I wanted an Airport Express for ages. It made total sense to me as a natural tool for getting the best out of my wireless network, and it really annoyed me having to run an audio lead from my laptop to my amplifier. I couldn’t however justify the €99 at the time, so when my sister asked me what I’d like for my birthday last year I let it be known that I wouldn’t be overly disappointed if I were to get a little box from Apple. Being the generous soul that she is, she duly obliged. I’m not sure why Apple decided to limit the audio to iTunes content only, but it soon became apparent that this was going to become a point of annoyance. Airfoil fills this irritating gap in usability really well. With it I can stream the audio from any application to my Airport Express, opening up a whole beautiful world of Web 2.0 aural loveliness. It’s maker, Rouge Amoeba, make some other cool applications that if I start to get into now then we could be here all day. It costs US$25, and when you combine it with the free Airfoil Speakers, you really can live the dream of a single music library that you can enjoy in any room in the house.

Nobody reads this blog, largely due to the facts that I don’t tell anyone about it and that it’s crap. I don’t care if anybody reads it, I get a great deal of joy out of writing it and that’s what’s important. The joy of writing it has lately been due in no small way to MarsEdit. I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but this really is the very definition of everything that I’m talking about in this post and probably the reason I wrote it in the first place. I just finished my 30 day trial about a week ago, and I was more thank happy to part with the US$30 for my full license. There was an opportunity for feedback when I was purchasing, so I passed on my thanks and praise. The guy emailed me to thank me for my comments and say how much he appreciated the feedback! How cool is that? Can you even begin to Imagine Adobe doing something similar after they deprive you of about a million euro for CS3? Not a chance in hell. This is compatible with Wordpress, which is what I use, and a lot of others by the sounds of it. If you have a blog and a Mac then just do the 30 day trial. I can guarantee you won’t want to let it go at the end and won’t want to live without it. It’s that good. He’s also got one of the aforementioned interesting blogs.

I used to get all my RSS feeds through Safari. Yes, I know, schoolboy error, but I’m pretty old you know? And relatively new to this intimate relationship with the internet. Anyways, I was pointed in the direction of NetNewsWire by my good friend, Nes. I’m sure a lot of what I find indispensable about it could be said of a lot of other feed readers, but this really is a great piece of software. It’s transformed the way I use RSS, and is a constant source of torture trying to keep up with everything that’s coming in! It just works, and works well. The join with MarsEdit is seamless for reposting blog entries (not that I do that very often, but nice to be able to) and it has the look and feel of an application that’s written for a Mac by a Mac user and all the loveliness that comes with that. And hey, it free. What have you got to loose? Never again will you have to deal with that clunky web interface on your aggregator service.

Right, Part II tomorrow, unless I get too comfy in the pub after work. It is Friday after all.

An interactive designer working in London, Paul Neave has the best internet version of Frogger ever. My work productivity has gone from not very good at all to practically non-existant. This is also just a brilliant site to illustrate how good Flash can be when it’s done well. Very much worth a look.