January 16, 2006  

Less than a million little pieces

Some things I’m liking lately. (I swear this is all true.)

  • iTunes 6.0.2 contains a barely-documented feature (see image near bottom) that I am really loving. iTunes can now stream music wirelessly to multiple Airport Express units running firmware 6.3 or, if you have only one, it can play music from your computer simultaneously with the remote speakers. Shoulda been possible originally, but hey I’ll take it. This is basically the Sonos system without the custom network, custom controller, and powered speakers in every room.
  • Gigabit Ethernet ‘tween ThinkPad, Powermac, and Lacie network hard drive. File transfer bliss. Just getting the plumbing right before embarking on mass DVD-ripping.
  • Picasa. Hey, I bought iLife ’06 merely for the new iPhoto and it is good. But Picasa, Google’s desktop image catalog, is even better — and free.
  • Chandler 0.6. This is the best ical-compatible calendar app for PC that is available. Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird has made virtually no public progress in the last nine months so I started looking around. Not sure if Chandler will make it — and it is a fairly unselfconscious rip-off of Apple’s iCal, but for now it does the job.
  • LinkedIn. Social networking/contact management. You know you’re a loser when you join an online networking site because you see your friend using it, rather than being invited by one of the hundreds of people you know who are already on it. I’m off the grid!