Winter ’05 Roundup, Part 1
I thought I’d post a few things that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Some are a bit outdated, on account of me being lazy.
First, what’s with everyone creaming over the Video iPod? That’s nothing new! MP3 players have been able to play video for at least a year. This story made the front page of the local newspaper, just because it’s an iPod. This is not a technological leap. In fact, competing MP3 players had color screens long before iPod did, and iPods still can’t recieve AM/FM radio, though much of the competition can. Plus, I’ve heard a lot of people are having problems getting video to look right on iPods.
Speaking of video, have you heard of Channel101? Why, it’s the “unavoidable future of entertainment!” I heard about it because Saturday Night Live recently hired some guys that they discovered through Channel101. It is basically a site where people submit five-minute videos, and based on viewer ratings, some series are put in Prime Time and others are cancelled. The shows vary widely in quality. One of the low-quality shows is The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations, with, oddly enough, Sarah Silverman. I’ve also seen Sarah Chalke (from Scrubs) in another series, The ‘Bu. House of Cosbys was the first show to be cancelled due to legal concerns, but you can watch it at Waxy.org.
Third, Massachusetts has decided to drop Microsoft Office and instead use OpenOffice.org (OOo) for its official state business because OOo uses the non-proprietary OpenDocument Format, which is an approved format for documents. OpenOffice.org also reads and writes Microsoft Office documents, making it very easy to switch over. I salute Mass. for realizing that vendor lock-in is bad. For anyone out there who’s stuck using WordPad or WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org is a great suite that includes software for word processing, databases, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. And it’s free.
Finally, Microsoft is finally ending support of Internet Explorer for Mac. While it was a decent browser in its time (much better than the Windows version) there are such better alternatives available now, including Safari and Firefox. Good riddance. If only they would officially discontinue IE6, since it hasn’t been developed in years.