Jon Udell scores a half-hour technical interview with Gates

I haven't listened to it, but I'll add it to my iPod sometime. Udell is brilliant, and the topics of the interview are not the usual pablum. I'd like here Gates answers.

Jon Udell: An interview with Bill Gates from PDC 2005: "Today's half-hour podcast is an interview with Bill Gates, following a morning of keynotes at the PDC. Topics of discussion include:

* The relationship of Office 12 to Vista and .NET
* How the .NET CLR and runtime will become widespread
* High-level semantics: CLR objects or XML?
* LINQ, or language-integrated query, Anders Hejlsberg's long-term ambition now coming to fruition
* The RSS data web, notification, SOAP/REST synergy, enterprise syndication
* WPF/E, aka Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere, aka portable Avalon
* Why, given the downleveling of the original Longhorn 'pillars' to XP, enterprises would still want to upgrade to Vista."

My favorite Nano review -- the register

Apple iPod Nano | The Register

Why it probably makes sense to buy the 2GB model:

The Nano ships in two capacities, 2GB and 4GB. I went for the 2GB because 4GB isn't anywhere near enough for me to store all my music, and besides that's what my 20GB iPod is for - so my rationale is that you might as well save 40 [pounds], since you're going to have to pick and choose your tracks no matter which capacity you go with. Apple reckons that the 2GB Nano will store 500 songs, with the 4GB holding 1000. Of course, how much you actually get onto any device depends on the bit rate at which you encode your music and the codec you use. Like all iPods, the Nano supports two codecs AAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless and Audible.

Alas, we're on the zero gadget growth rule at our house. In order to buy the Nano, we have to find something to get rid of. That's not as easy as it sounds -- I don't have any gadgets that I don't rely on. I'm not ready to give up a digital camera in order to add a Nano.

Kitchen and small book case speakers

Monitor Audio USA :: As close as it gets.

Now if only I could find a compact receiver to go with them!

Turn your $3000 laptop into a $100 audio recorder

Via MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh.

I actually like this sort of application. It's on my list to try.

Recorder.xhead 4.0 is an audio recorder and player intended primarily for voice recording. It supports major audio formats (including AIFF, AAC, MP3, and WAV) and can record from any internal or external sound input device including a built-in internal microphone, iSight camera microphone, digital video camera microphone, or bluetooth headset. This release adds vox recording, which monitors the input source, activates recording when the input volume reaches a specified level, and stops recording once the audio level drops below a specified threshold. It also adds automatic saves at specified intervals, FTP upload, pitch control on playback, and support for RSS and for iTunes Store tags to publish podcasts. Recorder.xhead is $10 for Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.4."

Nisus Writer Express - a real alternative to Word on the Mac?

Nisus Writer Express Features

One feature caught my eye: "Inheritable Character, Paragraph, and Note Styles".

I like Pages and this sounds good too. So two Word alternatives. I want to test the two out with my wife.

Update 9/9: The main thing Emily needs is something that handles Word documents seamlessly. Pages doesn't do the trick because it translates first to pages, then you have to export. Too confusing. AbiWord is another option; it uses its own file format (which I hope/pray is the OpenOffice format) but if you open a Word document it saves and edits as Word.

I'm not sure what Nisus does here but I think Pages may not work for Emily.

Update 9/10/05: AbiWord worked pretty well, but I'm very impressed with Nisus writer. Default format is RTF, but if you open a Word document it saves it as word. Good trial policy but you can't print without a watermark on the last page. Nice outliner styles, even though it's not really an outliner. Much as a like much of Pages I don't like yet another file format. Apple hasn't made it an open spec as far as I know.

On reflection I'm thinking Nisus might be ahead of AbiWord. Interestingly the two share some code, I think they use the same open source code for word document management.

Mac OS X: How to remove and recreate an inaccessible keychain

Solving keychain problems in OS X.

Mac OS X: How to remove and recreate an inaccessible keychain: "Mac OS X: How to remove and recreate an inaccessible keychain"

Mac OS X: How to recover a home folder

Mac OS X: How to recover a home folder (directory)

Via Macintouch. What to do when you archive someone's home directory and want to restore it afterwords.