podcasting goes mainstream

Podcasting is one of those simple ideas that doesn't really seem like much until you think about it, and then you realize it's pretty revolutionary. But up to now, it's required finding and installing new software, much of it not very well developed. But now that iTunes 4.9 provides direct support for podcasting, and now that established media outlets are providing content (my favorite is http://www.kcrw.org/podcast/) it's poised to take off quickly.

Intel on the Mac

It makes sense. Mostly it's about the power consumption to processing ratio - the PowerPC simply isn't keeping up.

It's a bit sad and scary to see Intel take one more niche (Sun next?) but it seems like the right decision for Apple.

It's worth watching Jobs' keynote presentation at the Apple Developer's Conference, to hear him explain his reasoning and the transition plan. Besides, it's always fun watching a master showman. He reveals that Apple has been building OSX for Intel for the last five years, "just in case". He describes what it will take for developers to create a "universal binary" that will run on both processor platforms, and demos a dynamic binary translator ("Rosetta") that will run PowerPC apps on the Intel platform.

Almost none of this is about OSX running on non-Apple platforms (which Apple will certainly discourage) or Windows running on Apple platforms (which Apple will allow and might be an incremental plus from the transition). I believe the party line on this - it's about Apple choosing the best processor technology going forward.

It sounds like Apple has a good plan, let's hope they can execute.

Sometimes, it just works!

This is a Presentation Pilot (tm) Pro, sold by Interlink Electronics. It lets you control a PowerPoint presentation. To use it, you plug in a USB dongle, press one button, and then you can change slides up to 50' away via the 2.4 GHz spectrum. No software install, no set up, just plug it in, turn it on, and go. It fits comfortably in your hand, it's light, it looks great, and it just works. It's wonderful when people get it right.