Day: June 24, 2003

I has arrived.  My new Nokia 3650 is here, charging beside me.  I’ve already been SMS’d by Russ and Jim.  Now begins the phone learning curve (round keypad!) as I familiarize myself with the Symbian OS.  The next step is to find a Bluetooth card for local connectivity.  I did pick up the $9.99/mo 10MB T-Zones (GPRS) plan, and I’ve only used a few kb so far.

This is going to be fun.

The Washington Post Business section today had a very interesting article on the doorstep delivery of the latest Harry Potter book.  Here’s a taste:

Early last week, Scholastic Corp., which holds the U.S. printing rights for the Harry Potter series, sent piles of books to Amazon’s five distribution centers — one in Nevada, Kansas and Delaware, and two in Kentucky. A special, secure “Harry Potter Zone” was set up in each of the fulfillment centers, which processed more than 2.2 million pounds of the books. The areas were encircled by an eight-foot-tall barrier, and only people with a special identification on their badges could enter. Guards patrolled the perimeters.

Juha noticed that the latest Top 500 Supercomputers list is out.

DPReview:

0700 CET: Olympus has today officially announced the Olympus E-1 digital SLR. The E-1 is the first Olympus removable lens digital SLR, it’s also the first digital SLR with an entirely new lens mount. Instead the E-1 conforms to the ‘4/3 System’ standard with a standard 4/3″ type CCD (18 x 13.5 mm) from Kodak (five megapixel) and the 4/3 System lens mount. Olympus has also confirmed five ZUIKO DIGITAL lenses and three flash units.

I’m personally not thrilled with the Olympys 4/3 digital SLR.  It seems like a duct-tape quick fix rather than a real solution.  I hope it does well, I just don’t have a lot of faith in it.

Update:

Embargo lifted, check out their preview.

Yesterday was a fairly busy day, with lots of announcements from Apple.  My new Nokia 3650 also shipped, should be here by 10:30am.  Without further delay, here’s the roundup:

• Safari 1.0 was released.  Dave Hyatt as always has coverage in his blog: Fonts in Safari and Safari Download Size.  With 1.0, developers will now be able to embed Safari in their applications.
• MacNN has a roundup of the major announcements.  They also have more information on the new Powermac G5’s.  64-bit OSX, baby!
• I spent part of the afternoon yesterday chatting with the guys in #mobitopia as well as hearing coverage from #openmac.
• I’m a little dissapointed at the proprietary lock-in going on with iChat AV.  You can use AIM or .Mac, but if you use any of the new whizzbang videoconferencing options, you’ve got to have a Mac on the other end.
• See also Scott Johnson’s rant entitled Apple, Panther and Paying Again for an OS Upgrade.
• See also Matthew “Silent Penguin” Langham’s post on the subject.
• MacCentral points to the Xcode environment, based on GCC3.3, sounds interesting.  More info about Xcode can be found at Apple’s Panther website.  It looks promising to me.
• The new G5’s are just plain SEXY.  They start at $1999, so I doubt there will ever be one on my desk, but that shouldn’t stop me from dreaming about it, should it?