A pill

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

Hate the sin, not the sinner.

On the new iPods

Personality is back in the world of iPod. While some may opine that the iPod is too popular, too conformist and losing appeal, Apple Computer seems to have deliberately let the iPod line run out of steam and flat-line in sales before releasing a revamped version in a variety of colors (5 including the original black and white). This comes after almost 10 months after releasing the original iPod nano.

A common theme with Steve Jobs' marketing strategy is to limit the amount of unecessary choice for the consumer and concentrate marketing efforts. Give them a great product. Differentiate later. This applied to the original iPod (white, then black), the minis (three-then five colors), as well as the original iMacs (one, then many). The original iMac came only in one color.

Finally, I wanted to note that the new shuffle fulfills the promise of an artist's conception of what was to be the budget under $100 iPod that led to some disappointment upon the announcement of what Apple actually released.

SOURCE: Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet Ginger via digg, new iPod nanos

Don't judge

While waiting for the bus the other day, I noticed a man wearing his iPod headphones oddly. They didn't protrude properly from his ears. It turns out that he had them switched--the left channel was playing in his right ear and vice-versa. I tried this and found it to enhance the volume of the sound.

Too bad they don't stay in my ears either way. My right-ear is not receptive to earbuds.

Arial vs. Helvetica

I'm on my new iMac 17" and thought the following might be interesting to analyze:

The goal for me is to be able to spot the difference between the classic Helvetica font from the Microsoft version, Arial.

Top 400/600 Image Labeler

A couple days ago, Google launched a beta product called Image Labeler. It asks people to dedicate 1.5 minutes at a time to tagging images so they become easier to find. It's like a game because you work with an arbitrary partner to cooperate on the task. When you both tag the picture with a common keyword, the picture is matched and you get a new picture. The more images you can successfully tag, the more points you get (as you can see here):


The only bummer is that it's hard to find compatible partners. Dead-beats that give up half-way are frustrating to encounter, but it was good partnering with you, nzodd.

added some context 5:15 PM 9/3

More than speculation

It turns out Schmidt isn't the only one who's cross-directing between Apple and Google. The New York Times also raises a good point (that I heartily agree with) about Schmidt's addition to Apple's board of directors--he's an outsider who can bring an (relatively) independent and trusted mind to a board whose credibility is hurt by the options backdating exposure. Interestingly, he refused the 300,000 options automatically granted directors of the company. That seems more of a gesture than a conservative action.

SOURCE: New York Times and StreetInsider [via digg and digg]

Remake of All the King's Men!

I saw an interesting trailer for a modern remake of All the King's Men! It's based on the story of Huey Long, a fascinating Democratic politician from Louisiana. You can get the old version on Vongo.