As of today, Adobe's share price hasn't had a big recent drop.
Maybe insiders believe Google or Apple are really going to acquire them, just to get Flash.
Because looking at the latest release Adobe Reader knows Adobe is a disaster today. It's not just me, try Googling on "when did adobe go downhill"?
I'd guess they went off the rails a year or two before my adobe download manager post, so maybe January 2005. It would be interesting to know what happened then. Did some key people vest options and leave? What executive shuffle occurred?
I won't be installing Adobe Reader 9 anywhere. I removed Adobe products from my OS X machines about a year ago, and life has been quite a bit nicer since. (Sure Adobe's photo editing apps are sweet, but they also show doom. How hard would it be to QA the app as a non-admin user?)
On XP I'm on Adobe Acrobat full (no reader). Eventually the gross security measures will force a reader update, at which point I'll switch to an open source alternative for ISO-standard PDF. I'm sure Microsoft will supply something, they're in far better shape than Adobe.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Digitizing a large CD collection
First I've seen this: Your Tech Weblog: Need your CDs digitized? Rent ripping robot. Too late for us, but worth noting.
Now I need something similar for my photos -- a high-end bulk load print scanner I can rent.
Now I need something similar for my photos -- a high-end bulk load print scanner I can rent.
iPhone mystery: will Apple allow developers to do desktop sync?
I've been watching this for months. Despite all the SDK talk, there's no mention of whether Apple will allow app developers to sync with desktop apps (rather than with net apps).
This is a big deal for products like OmniFocus. Omni acts as though a solution is coming, but a week from go-live Mariner software doesn't know how this will work ...
This is a big deal for products like OmniFocus. Omni acts as though a solution is coming, but a week from go-live Mariner software doesn't know how this will work ...
Your Tech Weblog: Local firm making a spreadsheet for iPhone
... He also needs [Mariner] Calc for iPhone to sync with Calc for the Mac, and is talking with Apple on how that might happen, but he has no idea when this critical hurdle will be overcome....
I assume that Apple wants very tight DRM and security for the iPhone, and that this has created their synchronization issues.
I wish Android were doing better. It would be nice for Apple to feel more competitive heat. As it is, they look ready to rule. For better and for worse!
Precipitate: unify your online and local memories (files)
A few hours ago I wrote about my memory management meme.
Things are moving even faster than I'd thought [1], because somebody at Google went and coded Precipitate:
Official Google Mac Blog: Precipitate: search your local and online docs
... you're like me, some of your information is in the cloud and some is on your machine, and you don't always remember what is where. That can make it frustrating when you try to use your favorite local search tool to find something. Isn't the whole point of search that you don't have to remember where you put things?
That's where Precipitate comes in. After you install Precipitate, you can use Google Desktop or Spotlight to find files online (such as those in your Google Docs list) just as you would find files stored on your Mac...Yep, that's what I need -- a tool to help unify my distributed memory. Precipitate currently supports only Google Docs and bookmarks. When they integrate Google Custom Search (as in my blogs) I'll try it out.
[1] joke.
My new number one Blogger request: fix backlinks with whitelisted URLs
I used the think that my #1 and #2 Blogger priorities were enhancing the BlogThis! bookmarklet and full support for Safari.
That was yesterday.
Today I thought differently about what my blogs are for, and where they are leading.
I've created a new category called "memory management" that will expand this idea, both here and in Gordon's Notes. More on that as I get to it, but it has nothing to do with "Quarterdeck Extended Memory Manager" (geeks of a certain age just had chest pains).
"Memory management" involves personal memory management and corporate memory management, private memory management and (this is new) public memory management, and an early (ok, so I was re-reading Idoru this am) version of gordon-google mind-fusion (one decaying, one growing).
Enough parens there?
Which brings me to my new #1 Blogger request.
Fix the backlinks.
First:
Now you might think this is because Google never indexes my blogs -- which is how they claim to create the backlinks, but, honestly, Google is astoundingly quick to index all my blogs considering their negligible readership.
What I think happened is that the original purpose of backlinks collapsed due to fraud, webspam attacks, and search engine optimization. Google has given up on them for all but very high end blogs, and one of their defenses has been to block backlinks within blog domains (to reduce search engine optimization and link farm fraud).
Ok, that's fine, but backlinks are an aspect of what we used to call "backward chaining" in inferencing systems. In people-speak they allow one to explore semantic connections (insert obligatory semantic network, xanadu, memex, etc reference) to antecedent or precedent posts.
This capability is a strategic component of my personal memory management obsession.
So I want Blogger to create a new sort of backlink -- to posts that are within domains that I specify. I would create a set of whitelisted urls for my blogger account, and links from those urls to a specific posts would always become backlinks. I could remove them if I wished of course. To avoid linkfarm abuse Google would exclude this type of backlink from their value estimation algorithms.
This, then, is my new number one Blogger request: Create backlinks based on whitelisted URLs.
PS. As of first posting a search on "URL backlink whitelist" returns no meaningful hits. I wonder when that will change...
Update: 7 hours after the initial post the "URL backlink whitelist" search returns two meaningful hits -- this post and my secondary Gordon's Notes post. Actually it probably happened much faster than that, my embedded search had a typo in it. This sort of thing is really astounding, even though we increasingly take it for granted.
That was yesterday.
Today I thought differently about what my blogs are for, and where they are leading.
I've created a new category called "memory management" that will expand this idea, both here and in Gordon's Notes. More on that as I get to it, but it has nothing to do with "Quarterdeck Extended Memory Manager" (geeks of a certain age just had chest pains).
"Memory management" involves personal memory management and corporate memory management, private memory management and (this is new) public memory management, and an early (ok, so I was re-reading Idoru this am) version of gordon-google mind-fusion (one decaying, one growing).
Enough parens there?
Which brings me to my new #1 Blogger request.
Fix the backlinks.
First:
What are backlinks and how do I use them?Except backlinks very rarely appear on my blogs, and they NEVER include backlinks between posts on my domain.
.... Backlinks enable you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your posts. For instance, suppose Alice writes a blog entry that Bob finds interesting. Bob then goes to his own blog and writes a post of his own about it, linking back to Alice's original post. Now Alice's post will automatically show that Bob has linked to it, and it will provide a short snippet of his text and a link to his post. What it all works out to is a way of expanding the comment feature such that related discussions on other sites can be included along with the regular comments on a post....
Now you might think this is because Google never indexes my blogs -- which is how they claim to create the backlinks, but, honestly, Google is astoundingly quick to index all my blogs considering their negligible readership.
What I think happened is that the original purpose of backlinks collapsed due to fraud, webspam attacks, and search engine optimization. Google has given up on them for all but very high end blogs, and one of their defenses has been to block backlinks within blog domains (to reduce search engine optimization and link farm fraud).
Ok, that's fine, but backlinks are an aspect of what we used to call "backward chaining" in inferencing systems. In people-speak they allow one to explore semantic connections (insert obligatory semantic network, xanadu, memex, etc reference) to antecedent or precedent posts.
This capability is a strategic component of my personal memory management obsession.
So I want Blogger to create a new sort of backlink -- to posts that are within domains that I specify. I would create a set of whitelisted urls for my blogger account, and links from those urls to a specific posts would always become backlinks. I could remove them if I wished of course. To avoid linkfarm abuse Google would exclude this type of backlink from their value estimation algorithms.
This, then, is my new number one Blogger request: Create backlinks based on whitelisted URLs.
PS. As of first posting a search on "URL backlink whitelist" returns no meaningful hits. I wonder when that will change...
Update: 7 hours after the initial post the "URL backlink whitelist" search returns two meaningful hits -- this post and my secondary Gordon's Notes post. Actually it probably happened much faster than that, my embedded search had a typo in it. This sort of thing is really astounding, even though we increasingly take it for granted.
Blogger a mess with Firefox 3
I'm rewriting this post.
Every other post I've written over the past 3-5 days has had problems with lost line breaks. All my text runs together. It's as though Blogger had broken their age-old management of paragraph breaks. I've tried Safari 3, Firefox 3, ScribeFire, XP, OSX, Blogger-standard and Blogger-in-Draft.
My original post implied the problem was with ScribeFire, Blogger in Draft, and Firefox 3. Then I thought it was Firefox 3 and any version of Blogger. Now I think it's any version of Blogger with Firefox 3 and Blogger-in-Draft with Safari 3.
Basically Blogger is having a really lousy holiday weekend.
Be warned.
They'll fix this eventually. It's not hard to spot!
Every other post I've written over the past 3-5 days has had problems with lost line breaks. All my text runs together. It's as though Blogger had broken their age-old management of paragraph breaks. I've tried Safari 3, Firefox 3, ScribeFire, XP, OSX, Blogger-standard and Blogger-in-Draft.
My original post implied the problem was with ScribeFire, Blogger in Draft, and Firefox 3. Then I thought it was Firefox 3 and any version of Blogger. Now I think it's any version of Blogger with Firefox 3 and Blogger-in-Draft with Safari 3.
Basically Blogger is having a really lousy holiday weekend.
Be warned.
They'll fix this eventually. It's not hard to spot!
Friday, July 04, 2008
How to know it's time to stop reading a blog
"Mobile Opportunity" has been an occasionally fun read for a veteran of the Palm wars, but every so often it says something like this:
That's just too odd.
On the other hand his link to the Register's Psion retrospective is party redeeming. The story reminds me of the sad tale of PenPoint -- I keep that book next to my OS/2 architecture book.
Mobile Opportunity: Symbian changes everything, and nothingYou might think he was excluding the iPhone OS because it's derived from a desktop OS, or you might think he excluded OS X because it's bound to hardware, but I've been reading MO for a bit. He really has no interest in the iPhone as a mobile platform.
...Here's the weird thought for the day: Microsoft is the last major company charging money for a mobile operating system...
That's just too odd.
On the other hand his link to the Register's Psion retrospective is party redeeming. The story reminds me of the sad tale of PenPoint -- I keep that book next to my OS/2 architecture book.
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