Yet another moving entry.

Redirect yourselves to my new home.

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This is why we must remember to turn off file sharing.

It occurs to me that the Mac world view is that the universe is good, and no one runs snooper apps when Macs log on to a public network. 😉 Look at all those Mac servers. Bonjour, indeed.

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More on the Asus Eee.

One of the Asus Eee’s clincher factors is its price. At approximately P19000 SRP, it’s cheaper than high-end phones – and you don’t need to squint too hard at the screen. I am really liking the screen; it’s just enough to be useful. Horizontal scrolling doesn’t bother me too much, but it might frustrate other users accustomed to visiting information-heavy sites. I visit at the most 10 bookmarked sites a day, most of them simply designed.

Skype is built in, although I hardly use the app, even on my Mac; I don’t really need to make international calls when IM’ing is practically free. The customized UI has tabs on startup: internet, work, learn, play, settings… Simplified, practically newbie-proof, and enough for what I do when I’m traveling or working out of the office.

I’m blogging from bookwormcafe at Serendra, waiting for a lunch appointment. So far so good. The Eee showed me Wifi options and I just clicked “connect.”

The 4 GB hard drive won’t hold images, videos or music the way I’m used to. Not that I intend to use this little one for editing, or huge presentations.

The Asus Eee came with a neoprene case, which I am now using as a placemat. Even with the case it didn’t add too much weight to my tote. So now I don’t have to bring two bags. I think women are a natural target for this ultraportable, and it shows in the color options Asus released. Baby pink! Pale yellow! I bought the white version, though. I don’t think I can stomach a baby pink PC.

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The wee but definitely not twee Eee.

The name leaves it wide open for sick rhymes, but the Asus Eee is quite the pint-sized performer. It is a superduperultraportable running on Asus’s modified Linux OS. The keyboard is almost too tiny to be useful; but with a modicum of hand-eye retraining, it works. The Asus Eee has a 7-inch screen, bordered by two speaker grilles. Atop the screen is a built-in webcam. Lid closed, it could pass for a pocketbook. It could even fit in an evening bag.

I got the white version. A computer shop near the house offered it in a package with an 80 GB external drive, and with 0% on installment I think it qualifies as one of the best tech deals this season. It is not a primary computer, not by any means. The 4 GB hard drive hardly qualifies as a hard drive. For frequent travelers and kids, it’s a fantastic option at an irresistible price point. (Street prices reportedly range from around P18,000 to P19,000. Most cards will let you pay in 12 monthly installments.)

It is impressive how Linux sits in it quietly and compactly, and does its Windows mimic well. I feel better about buying a PC preloaded with Linux; I can convince myself that I haven’t really strayed that far away from the cult of Mac.

More later.

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Grrr, Leopard Spotlight!

So Spotlight couldn’t find results. It creeped me out. I searched “the” and it said “no results found.” The.

What creeped me out further was Finder not finding anything.

This was like all the radio stations suddenly ceasing broadcast, the dead blankness on people’s faces right before the missiles launch themselves into the sky, my phone hanging but looking for all the world like it was still working.

Thanks to a Terminal tip, the world is safe once more.

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Blogging within Flock 1.0.

I received my Flock 1.0 beta invite the other day. “And you’ll never…surf…alooone!” The People sidebar is the most obvious difference between 0.9 and 1.0. I can see my Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr contacts (if I choose too) in the sidebar and interact with them as I browse.

When I select the Flickr icon on the sidebar, I can see if there are any new uploads from my Flickr contacts. “Budjette: Media updated 3 hours ago.” When I click on the Media link in Budjette’s tab, his images come up on the Flock Media bar, which is on top, instead of opening in the main browser window.

The YouTube icon brings up my media and my favorites, also in the topbar.

Twitter on the sidebar, if it can accommodate a refresh button and a public timeline button, would absolutely replace all my tiny tweetapps. There is a “post link” button, and friends’ tweets refresh once in a while. I can also tweet directly from the sidebar, saving me one tweet app or one main browser window. I used the feedback link last night to request a refresh button, and got not one but two emails reassuring me that the Flock team was looking into that very thing. Actual feedback from a feedback dialog box! How refreshing.

The Facebook tab lets me change my status, see my friends’ status updates, and lets me poke, share a link, send a message, see the media they’ve uploaded. I see Sette is redefining frolicking at the beach, for example, just by reading her status message and noting her profile picture has changed. (Grrrr. My turn will come, but when?)

The blogging feature has been around since the first time I tried Flock, but I’m only using it now that I’ve committed to WordPress. When I switched to iBlog 2, I found myself becoming overly concerned with how my blog looked. Too much time went to minding my <p>’s and <div>’s. This time around I desire a certain ease: the virtual equivalent of the frayed, holey shirt, the one I reach for when I want to write, not to appear noteworthy in meetings.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Flock1.0, blogging, iBlog 2, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook

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airpress: Looking good.

I’m betting on AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). Pownce was my first taste of what AIR programs can do. I was impressed by that, and now I’m quite amused by this: airpress. I must say that having a non-square application window makes me smile.

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The regular flavor blog…

…is here.
I have yet to make up my mind about WordPress. I love the ease; but iBlog RC 2 is looking spiffier than ever. We’ll see.

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Back at the ranch (i.e. my regular blog):

My Life As a Verb.

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I buy a P990. Then they announce the iPhone.

Oh, the injustice of it all.
Here it is.
It has no physical QWERTY keyboard. Instead, it has a touchscreen and a button. It has iTunes and Safari and an iChat-like window for SMS. Like my P990, it has a 2-megapixel camera. Unlike my P990, it runs on Mac OS X – which is the best part of it, for me. After suffering a week of “This unit has restarted to improve performance,” saved only by running Sony Ericsson Software Update (which only runs on PCs, so I had to borrow my assistant’s PC for 4 hours), I am only now starting to make friends with Hermione.

Multitap texters will have a harder time of it.

I should be grateful Cingular’s got a lock on the iPhone. I’ll have a year to enjoy my P990.

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