A couple of things about Apple products

As you may have noticed, Apple unveiled some new goodies yesterday. As you may not have noticed, I’ve written about two of them.

First up, FaceTime video calling in the iPod touch:

The big question is whether people want to see one another on the phone. I think the older generation hate the idea. I certainly do, but that’s because I have what’s best described as a face for radio and some really ugly friends.

And then, the sad tale of the UK Apple TV.

Badly dubbed adverts really annoy me. Faintly sinister firms make an advert for shoes or yoghurts or incomprehensible children’s toys in Germany, and instead of filming a new version for the UK they just do a half-arsed bit of dubbing that doesn’t even attempt to match the mouths to the sounds they’re supposed to be making. “Oh, who cares,” the advertisers think. “It’s only the UK.”

The Apple TV is a bit like that.

American spellings drive me crazy

I was in Glasgow last night. There’s a new hotel being built next to Renfrew Street, and it has some cool, hip brochure copy on the windows to get you excited. It’s a call to “travelers”.

Travelers?

I was driving home the other day, and just after Crow Road there’s a billboard that currently promotes a new dentist. It’s a new and exciting dental “center”.

Center?

I don’t know why this annoys me so much, but it does: it’s not endearing like an extra apostrophe turning tomatoes into tomatoe’s and pizzas into pizza’s, and it’s not a genuine typo like the ones you’ll occasionally spot on the sides of builders’ vans. It’s just bloody lazy, the result of firms either copying American copy without checking the spellings or, like I suspect Microsoft did with its Media Center, thinking “you know what? We can’t be bothered changing it. Screw you!”

Windows 95′s fifteenth anniversary

Doesn’t time fly? As you may recall, Windows 95 was a good operating system surrounded by some bad behaviour.

In 1998 consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote a devastating critique that accused Microsoft of “suffocating” the PC industry and argued that “the victims of Microsoft’s monopolistic activities aren’t just the companies that go belly-up; they are the consumers who pay high prices to use mediocre and unreliable products.”

It’s bleakly amusing to note that when the (then) Microsoft-owned Slate magazine responded to Nader, it argued that “in the browser wars, Microsoft faces a formidable array of opponents–Sun and Oracle, to name just two–and, after two years, it still lags behind Netscape even though IE generally gets better reviews than Navigator.”

iPad the news today, oh boy

Back in January, I wrote this:

I also have a £702/year newspaper habit. Imagine if I could come downstairs in the morning, grab the iPad, and use it as a newspaper. It’s big enough so there’s still the serendipity of seeing articles you might otherwise miss, and it’s digital enough that I can get my news for free (or nearly free, depending on what the Guardian, Sunday Times etc do about online content).

Now that I’ve spent several weeks sitting on a sofa with only an iPad for company, is it a worthy replacement for print?

Not yet.

NYT Editors’ Choice: Nifty but short

I’ve found newspapers on the iPad a curiously annoying affair. They’re nice enough in the browser but irritating to use – endlessly having to return to the back button is, literally, a pain – and I’m spending much more time in Instapaper than I am on the websites on which the articles are actually published.

RSS isn’t working for me so far either. While apps such as the sublime RSS reader Reeder are good at what they do, the feeds themselves can be irritating as the same story follows you across multiple sections. The Guardian is particularly bad for this, with stories appearing in, say, the Media, G2 and Main News feeds over the course of the day.

Other newspapers don’t even try with RSS: they have headline-only feeds that are pretty much pointless. Such feeds are slower and more annoying than just visiting the website in the first place.

Mind you, they’re not as bad as the tech sites that publish a headline in their feed which takes you to… the headline! Click here to read more! Here’s the headline again, with a link to the actual site it came from this time! Sites that do this, or publications such as Wired whose iPad apps don’t render text – text! – legibly hate you. It’s that simple.

But I digress.

Flipboard: Meh. Maybe I follow the wrong people

There are a few interesting apps out there, but there are a few disappointing ones too. Flipboard is ok if you like the idea of a paper made only from the links your acquaintances are posting on Facebook and Twitter (I don’t). The much hyped Pulse newsreader excelled at showing the stories I didn’t want to read and hiding the ones I did. The (London) Times app is ten quid a month for a paper I don’t particularly like in its daily incarnation. And The Guardian iPhone app hasn’t made its way across to the iPad yet. Reuters News Pro is quite nice, if a bit newswire-y, BBC News is a bit TV-y and the Huffington Post is too Huffington Post-y.

So far my favourite is the New York Times Editors Choice app. It’s very short (it’s free) but it delivers a lovely reading experience and the serendipity of a good old fashioned bit of newsprint. I could do without the interrupting ads, mind you.

Times for iPad: lots of potential. It isn’t the Times newspaper.

The one app I’m crossing my fingers about isn’t any of the ones I’ve already mentioned, though. It’s Times, the iPad version of a popular OS X RSS reader. The iPad version has a lovely interface, but unfortunately a wee bug affecting many of the feeds I want to use means I haven’t been able to use it for protracted periods yet. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Anyone else exploring print alternatives on the iPad? I’d love to know what you’ve found.

“You have no talent and we suggest you give up writing”

A memorial library for Kurt Vonnegut opens in Indianapolis this November. Exhibits will include “boxes of rejection letters”.

I’d really like to see it.

Let’s be honest, it’s not the kind of scar that’s going to impress women

It’s been two weeks since my carpal tunnel decompression, everything’s healing nicely and if it weren’t for the fact my left hand’s gone completely pain crazy – it’s been doing the work of two hands for a fortnight and has developed the same symptoms as my right, with added pain just to make things interesting – I’d be quite chirpy. The operation was quick and perfectly pleasant, the scar’s going to be a tiny thing, and while I can’t exactly go around punching nuns I can type, peel potatoes, hold a pint glass, drive cars… the important things, really.

I need to keep my computer use light for a bit longer, so I doubt I’ll be blogging for a bit yet, but I wanted to say thanks for the reading recommendations and for the good wishes. They were very much appreciated.

PS I’ve filed this under “cuttings”. I’m hilarious, me.

What’s worth reading while I’m recovering?

I won’t be using computers for a week or two after tomorrow’s hand surgery, but I will have my trusty iPad/Instapaper combination to keep me occupied and amused. Anything you’ve seen that I – or anyone else who hangs around here – should seek out (I’ve already cherry-picked my way through Kevin Kelly’s 100 Best Magazine Articles post and obvious stuff such as Wired’s look at the Apple/AT&T power struggles)?

I’d appreciate any suggestions for longish, interesting articles on pretty much any subject other than sport.

“Everybody knows how reviews work”

If you’ve ever wondered what working for the tech press is like or suspect that PR people use bungs to get good coverage, you might find this interesting.

If you’re reviewing something that’s problematic – perhaps there are clashes with drivers on your computer, or some weird issue you’ve discovered – what happens next? If you spend time tinkering, and calling technical support, and it runs to two days, then you’ve made £80 for sixteen hours work. That’s not even minimum wage – and that’s the biggest reason why there are errors with reviews.

You might have 350 words (or 750, for just under £200) to explain a product, to get over the idea of what it does, and why it might or might not be worth a look, and you need to get it done fairly swiftly, if you’re actually going to come out ahead, or you’d be better off flipping burgers.

How to take a funny idea and make it unfunny and offensive

Suitcase stickers! They make your suitcase look like it’s full of drugs! Hahahahahah!

Suitcase stickers! They make your suitcase look as if it’s stuffed with dildos and other sex toys! Hahahahahah!

Suitcase stickers! They make your suitcase look as if you’ve got a terrified, bound, crying woman in it!

Hmmm.

[Via MetaFilter]

The best words in any browser: Read Later

I know I mention this from time to time, but it seems not everyone on Earth uses it yet so I’m going to go on about it again: Instapaper!

Instapaper is one of the greatest things since sliced bread. Seen something interesting online? Hit Read Later to send it to Instapaper and you can read it – formatted nicely – in your browser, on your iPad, on your phone, on a Kindle… and if you’re short of stuff to read you can subscribe to other people’s recommendations, which is brilliant.

Honestly, this is one of my favourite things on any device. It’s full of win, as I believe the kids would put it.