NetNewsWire feature request
I emailed this to Brent Simmons, the developer of NetNewsWire, but I would like all of my readers who aren’t really there to read this, too.
NetNewsWire, my RSS reader of choice, is probably up there with Safari, Twitterific, and Mail for my most-used app. Here is my main feature request for it.
Here’s the main window of NetNewsWire, with the Daring Fireball feed selected. It has five unread items.
Here is what happens when you arrow over to read the items. It selects the newest one.
I would like a preference to select the oldest unread item instead.
Now what I have to do is select the feed I want and click on the oldest unread item. It works fine, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to take my hands off of the keyboard.
Sorry
I haven’t been posting much here (as you can tell), but I should have a post coming up soon about the iPhone 3G and App Store. I’ll try to post more often, from now on.
American Idol
I was looking through the top ten songs on iTunes. Here are the artists.
1. David Cook
2. David Cook
3. David Cook
4. David Cook
5. Coldplay
6. Rihanna
7. David Archuleta
8. Natasha Bedingfield
9. Leona Lewis
10. David Archuleta
Six of the top ten songs on iTunes are from American Idol. I just thought I’d mention that.
I’m also wondering if Coldplay will have more than that when Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends comes out.
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Well, Coldplay has released two of the twelve songs off of their new album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. Here’s what I think of them.
Violet Hill: I like the beginning (It was a long and dark December / From the rooftops I remember / There was snow / White snow). After that, I think it goes downhill while there is that crazy background beat. I like it again near the end (I took my love down to Violet Hill). Overall, I think it is a pretty good song, but not up to Coldplay standards.
Viva la Vida: I like this song a lot. I wouldn’t probably put it in the top five Coldplay songs, but it could be in the top ten. It has a background beat like Violet Hill, but I think it fits in with the song a lot better. I also love the lyrics.
From what I hear, this “white noise” is a theme of the album. I don’t know what to think about that. I might miss the old Coldplay, but this could be something different and refreshing.
You Look Nice Today
Sorry about the long streak of non-update. My trials on MarsEdit and ecto ran out, and it was a bit hard to log back in to WordPress. Anyway…
You Look Nice Today is one of my favorite new podcasts. It’s kind of interesting, because Merlin Mann, Scott Simpson, and Adam Lisagor manage to talk about nothing for 45 minutes to an hour a week.
Sorry for the short post, but I should have a follow up post to Bad Grammar after I was informed that I shouldn’t be critiquing grammar.
Much better…
I always though that Apple could use a better web address for their US store. I also thought it was kind of strange that it had a phone number in it. I guess I got my wish. As far as I know, it is new.
Now, when you load the Apple Store page, for just a brief second it displays http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-Apple/WebObjects/AppleStore, before it redirects to http://store.apple.com/us.
Bad grammar
In a Growl notification box in Mac OS X, I think I see a grammatical error.
Nick Munce would like you to share their screen.
It should be…
Nick Munce would like you to share his or her screen.
Yeeeeeeeesssssssssss…
Sofware bundles
Software bundles like the MacUpdate one or the MacHeist one (I’ll be focusing on the MacUpdate one for this post, for no real reason) often cause a controversy. On one side are the consumers. They are getting amazing deals. The one I linked to costs less than a quarter of the price if you would buy all of the apps individually. On the other side, there are some developers that say it devalues the software.
First, let’s look at the consumer side. I can see an amazing deal here. For one app,Leap (which I hear is amazing, but I never have actually used it myself), the price from Ironic Software is $60. For $5 more, you can get it, and nine more apps. I know most people would look at this deal and think it is unbeatable. And that is hard to argue against.
Now, for the other side of the argument. Some developers say it devalues software, and is not a good idea to get in to. Just think about this. You decide not to buy the MacUpdate bundle. Now you want Leap. It seems like a bad idea to buy it now that it costs $60 instead of $6.50, doesn’t it? You might never buy software on the expensive (not hundreds of dollars, though) side because you just don’t see software being worth more than $10.
I can kind of see iLife being like this. When you are getting five apps for $79 (and free with every Mac), it seems like a great deal. iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand seem to be the main components for me (although I use Aperture instead of iPhoto, and don’t really care for the new iMovie). I don’t run my blog off of iWeb (obviously). And iDVD is good for what it is used for, but what it is used for is relatively limited. But just think about this: you are basically getting all of these apps, which are fairly high-end for what they do, for not even $20. Apple really doesn’t sell them separately, and they are made by the same company, but it seems kind of like a bundle. If you do the math, if iLife sold separately like individual apps in a bundle do, an individual app in iLife would be sold for over $30. Would you really buy, say, three of the five apps after the (fictional) promo was over for $90, when you knew that just a week ago you could have gotten two more apps for $10 less?
Well, I guess I’d better have a conclusion, telling you where I stand. I definitely don’t think it is bad for a consumer to buy a bundle. But if you are a developer just getting in to the market, I’m not sure it would be such a good idea to participate in a bundle. It could get your app into the hands of consumers and maybe make you some money from paid upgrades, but there is no question in my mind it would devalue your product, and most likely, products to come.
TechTV
I have been thinking lately… Was the death of TechTV (actually the being bought out by G4 and having pretty much everyone fired) a good thing for the geek community?
It would be nice to still have geeks on broadcast TV, but think about all of the stuff that probably wouldn’t be around if TechTV gave them a schedule or hours to work or whatever.
Here are the people that used to work at TechTV according to Wikipedia: Leo Laporte, Kate Botello, Patrick Norton, Chris Pirillo, John C. Dvorak, Adam Sessler, Kevin Rose, Martin Sargent, Morgan Webb, James Kim, Sumi Das, Stephanie Siemiller, Erica Hill, Victoria Recano, and Jim Louderback. The only people remaining from that list still working at G4 are Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb.
It’s TWiT (Leo Laporte), live.pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo), dvorak.org/blog and Cranky Geeks (John C. Dvorak), Diggnation (Kevin Rose), Revision3 (Jim Louderback), and more vs. a broadcast TV station.
I think TechTV would still be a cool thing to have around, don’t get me wrong. But looking at all of the things that probably wouldn’t be possible if those people still worked at TechTV makes me glad of the merger. I don’t like G4 at all, but I don’t watch very much TV, so that’s fine.
I think the internet is better than TV for distribution of content (I think everyone in their right mind agrees with me), especially for things like this. Geeky things.
