thomas fitzgerald.net

The New York Times has a good piece on why the iPad doesn’t have flash

Numerous developers and executives that I interviewed for my story said there was a trend toward offering users an alternative to Flash video, the predominant video standard online, in the form of HTML5, an open standard.

Senior-level managers from many of the top video sites online, including YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Flickr, all agreed that video online is starting to splinter, and as some test out HTML5 for video distribution, many will begin offering both formats as the iPad makes its way onto the market.

There’s been a rumour doing the rounds the last few days that really doesn’t make sense. It started when some analyst (I think it was on techcrunch) said that they’d heard that Apple plans to offer people the ability to put their iTunes collection “in the cloud”. Basically, it would allow people to access their music anywhere in the world. CNET are now reporting that Apple have been talking to the record labels about the possibility. Needless to say the mac rumour web has jumped on this. I have doubts though. There’s one aspect in particular that just doesn’t make sense. Here’s an example From 9-5 Mac:

I’ve been running my various blogs off wordpress fore years now, and over that time I’ve tried various themes. Originally I used free themes and then progressed to using some premium ones. But even then I was never really happy. Then I discovered Woo Themes. Woo is a purveyor of premium wordpress themes, but they do it really really well. What impressed me about the company was not just that they created some really nice and high quality themes, but that they gave them a really good back end, and that they continued to upgrade them. But what I really like is the way they structure their themes.

One of the things that annoys the life out of me is that frequently technology pundits who have a strong leaning towards Windows will, every time Apple does anything remotely questionable, claim that Apple is getting a free pass and use is the stupid argument that “If Microsoft did anything like this there’d be outrage”. Well, here’s one: it turns out that Microsoft’s new twitter client for Zune HD (as well as having poor performance) is censoring swear words. Apple got a lot of stick from plenty of people on the web for rejecting Apps over censorship, so now that Microsoft is doing something similarly distasteful where’s the outrage we were promised? All we had was “this is stupid but whatever” type reports instead of the usual “this is a travesty” one comes to expect when Apple does anything App related.

This took place in a Boston Subway station when an inebriated woman fell onto the tracks. That was one incredibly lucky escape.

[Via Boing Boing]

CNN.com is sporting a new design this morning. The makeover is pretty substantial and it takes on a  bold minimalist look. I have to say I like it. It’s quite strong visually. Oh, and there’s a cool animation when you first visit the site where a curtain of the old site opens to reveal the new one. It’s very nicely laid out in my opinion, and much better than the old design.