XPize [via] replaces all the old 16-color icons and graphics Microsoft never bothered to update in Windows XP, for a more consistent, polished interface. It’ll still be Windows, but cleaner. Not tested, but the screenshots look nice.
@apple@
It’s creepy how the full-screen iPod rumors make sense with all the tablet-PC patents that cropped up in Apple’s portfolio lately. Can’t you totally imagine Steve Jobs deciding to disguise the future iPod’s patents as tablet PC stuff, so nobody could see it coming? This could be big — much bigger than just an iPod video.
Or they could not be ready at all, and we’d have to wait for the next generation before we can carry a Mac in our pocket. Steve Jobs seems to embrace planned obsolescence like a madman lately.
@apple@
SetAlphaValue is an input manager (yeah, evil, I know) that makes OS X windows become partly transparent when the associated application is in the background. The interface is ugly and not quite configurable enough, and the ergonomic benefits of the idea are pretty dubious anyway, but that’s the kind of toy I played with on Windows XP, and I do intend to play a bit more with it now that I’m using an OS that can actually handle transparent windows without choking.
@web@
I was going to write a detailed post on imeem [via], the Flickr / Blogger / Myspace / MSN would-be killer with a ridiculous name, but I’m not so sure it’s worth my time (and support didn’t feel like answering my email requesting some clarifications). The website looks good, the convergence works pretty fine (besides blogging / photologging / podcasting on imeem, you can also import your blog and Flickr account’s RSS feeds to display on your public profile), but it relies on client-side software to generate the pages, only loading from their servers encrypted data rather than HTML pages, and the OS X client lags far behind in terms of functionality. Considering the client essentially a web browser that generates its own pages, I don’t see how hard it could be to move the HTML generation into a cross-platform library that could be updated simultaneously on all OSes.
It’s a pity, because the web pages and functionalities are actually well-designed enough that it could stand a chance, if it were usable without the proprietary client. (For now your public profile exists on the web, but you can’t do much in the way of administration or communication on a regular web browser. Not even write blog posts.) All so your data can be encrypted — hey there, ever heard of https?
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