Being employed by a Stock Photography company I am constantly looking at Pictures and obliviously the technicalities of creating Photography is of interest and beneficial to my position. Up until recently digital photography has been seen as the poor cousin of film but things are starting to change, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one publication will help this change evolve somewhat quicker now.

Many see the National Geographic as a benchmark and its acceptance of using digital cameras for one of its main shots as seen in this article will spur publishers to take on the advantages offered by this medium. Film should rightly always have a place in the photographers toolbox but digital is now up there certainly for usability in a lot of circumstances and if photographers are willing to use the format and they will be most knowledgeable on the subject this shows the suitability of this technology.

I often wonder why the reluctance is at the publishers end, but then looking at the take up of new technology it isn’t often the main users that drag there feet but the mis-understanding of those around them.

Added to this is the fact that Eastman Kodak have announced that they are stopping selling traditional film cameras in Europe and North America. Read more on BBC News.

An article posted on Wired News follows the story by Owen Linzmayers that the Macintosh was not created by Steve Jobs but was the brainchild of one Jef Raskin. Actually I am not really that surprised..

As usual at the moment, I have been quite transfixxed by the latest issue of http://www.wired.com/wired and in particular the article by Doug Engelbart (page 158, or viewable at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/mouse_pr.html ) on creating interactive systems in the late 60s at Stanford Research Institute.

The article has interesting information on the first mouse: carved out of wood plus hyperlinks, videoconferencing, wordprocessing and network collaboration. In other words basically the technologies that we are now taking advantage of in our everyday lifes. I have recently been thinking about how much easier graphical interfaces had been in previous versions and particularly when I am using Mac OS 10.x I am thinking how easy would a novice find it to use. It is no easier than a Windows XP machine, it stores files in almost POSIX compliant file system, its networking is more diverse than just about any machine on the market yet it is still seen as the “center” of usability but I think that title was earned with System 7 and just sticks to the apple brand.

I do indeed like Mac OS 10.x and I like Apple but just looking back at those old screen shots shows how simple and effective the older machines where. Ok, they might have a hard job playing back an MP3 but that isn’t the point. Have we really evolved that far? In some cases I think that we have gone backwards.

Looks like my wardrobe might actually get a new addition with the launch of the Redlabor site. Alot of the posters are also quite nice and probably alot nicer in the flesh than most designers output from the likes of Threadless.

After looking at creating an RSS news feed I thought that I would checkout some readers, not thinking that they would be quite so useful to myself as they are. After downloading an RSS news reader I have been won over, instead of going around the many news sites I do every day I can simply get the headlines, some body content and a link to the article proper

Quite simply it is one of the best services I have come accross in along time and I wish the FT, Reuters, PixelSurgeon, DiK and a few others would supply their news feeds like this also. I have been using the NetNewsWire Software from Ranchero software on a OS 10.3 Mac and its 3 paned interface works like a charm, very much like outlook. I changed the subscription refresh so it updates the news more often and though syndic8 I grabbed the address of the following news feeds:

• http://www.K10k.net
• http://www.AListApart.com
• http://www.Arstechnica.com/
• http://www.BBC.co.uk/news/
• http://www.CNN.com
• http://www.Freshmeat.net
• http://www.Google.com Weblog
• http://www.Zeldman.com
• http://www.Metafilter.com
• http://www.Salon.com
• http://www.Slashdot.org
• http://www.Wired.com

I can see this saving some time, but obviously I am sure that I will waste it with some other equally trival use of my day! Now I can see this working really well it gives me the push to get the RSS news feed working properly, though there seems to be some fight over the DTD in the validators so copying the syntax from one of the more compliant feeds might be the easiest way to go about things.

I have decided that it would be quite cool to create an RSS news feed for this site so that I can update the site and feed it into other applications where I want.

At the moment it is quite a basic feed but with time and when the site improves perhaps it will turn into something that is of some use! View it here: http://blog.timc3.com/rss.xml

This is what I wanted to see:- My feed validating through a XML RSS newsfeed validator. That and creating the site a bit easier to maintain I think my conclude my evenings work.. Or perhaps not!

So Apple have announced the iPod mini, as of yet I haven’t heard much about the response from the expo itself, but the overall response and I share this opinion is that they are simply overpriced at $249.

For $50 more, consumers can get the new entry level 15Gb iPod, and in April when they are available outside of the States I wouldn’t be surprised if the pound price would be £249.. In other words far too expensive. Although it is a very strong brand and the player by far the most covertable, I can’t help thinking that Apple could have opened up a whole new market to itself if priced alot keener. Oh well I will have to wait a lot longer I guess to get one of those 20Gb beauties.

Also announced was iLife software which didn’t really capture my imagination - just seems like a soup’ed up suite and the Xserve G5 - with of course single or dual G5 processors.

For me this makes it the most desirable Mac yet produced, the 1U form factor being the icing on the cake..

What happens when you reply to the Nigerian Money Scam? Well Silicon have been asking the question and decided to reply to it, though perhaps the article goes on alittle too long and the reporter could have delt with it in a slightly more exciting way.

Maki does a nifty little round-up of design styles and trends of 2003. According to him, repeating backgrounds, CSS styles, UL menus and using fonts other Verdana where in then. So what am I to do for 2004 then?!! Check it.