• Fifty years of LEGO – Best. Toy. Ever. And still going strong.
• Polish IT worker calculates exact speed of snail mail – Apparently snail mail is actually slower than a snail.
• For those who thought that the MacBook Air had no use… – It’s odd that Steve Jobs didn’t mention any of these uses though.

Actually, no. My first reaction was what a cute, almost-square book. My second was to hate it. It’s only a few pages into it and Levy is already discussing his great taste in music and disparaging mine (“… a pathetic Pet Shop Boys tune, the sort of thing that Nick Hornby would listen to on a bad day.”)

It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. But — step back — what was I expecting? Well, the blurb on the back tells you that you can learn how the iPod became the defining object of the 21st century. Having read most of Steven Levy‘s previous books, the obvious point of comparison was “Insanely Great,” the story of the Macintosh. But while the Mac took several years to put together, the iPod took only around six months. In hindsight maybe it’s pretty obvious that it’s not all the trials and tribulations of putting the machine together.

• Are You Better Off than You Were 2,000 Years Ago? – The next president of the United States of America? If only…
• Apple unveil iNvisible iBook – Even more Apple announcements this week. Kind of.
• How to Spot Arial – I never realised that Arial and Helvetica were so different!

• Apple introduces new Apple TV software, lowers hardware pricing – Now potentially more useful with the movie rentals. But where is the price drop in the UK?!
• Dell tells customer ‘Mac is good option’ – “Now, it’s possible that the techie was referring to a 1970s rock band, or to an item of waterproof clothing. But we can’t help concluding that he was indeed talking about Apple’s operating system.”
• Steve Jobs gets cohesive – Some cool stuff from Apple at the MacExpo. I think the Time Capsule is going to be on my shopping list when it ships next month. The movie rentals (when they get to the UK) look interesting but they really need to build their catalogue!
• How to recognise a good programmer – Great discussion on recognising great developers. The problem would seem to be finding them! Most recruiters just pattern match on CVs which tends to favour the “career” developer.

I just realised that the story of my Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype lacks any form of closure. But before we get there, let’s start with a quick recap in case you didn’t read the original review or its follow-up.

Last year, after realising that we had spent over ?30 in a quarter on line rental but less than 50p on phone calls, we decided to get rid of our land-line and rely only on broadband and VoIP technology. After some thought we went for Skype and a physical handset that connected to our wireless access point. This seemed like a great solution as leaving a computer switched on 24/7 just so we could recieve calls on our SkypeIn number didn’t appeal.

Have you seen The ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘ yet? What do you think when you see the title? Tragically my mind immediately jumps to the Bourne Shell, the default command shell on most Unix variants since the late seventies¹.

Of course this isn’t the first time that this has happened. When I saw the title ‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ I though, “Yeah, why would anyone use the C Shell?!” Clearly Bourne and its work-a-likes are supreme for scripting even if the original Joy-authored C Shell was better for interactive tasks.

Like the true Mac obsessive that I am, I was “tuning in” for all the news on todays press event.

Judging by the effect that the coverage is having on the UK store (see screen shot) it seems that I’m not the only one!

First impressions: I like the new iMac. I’m not likely to buy one (since a laptop is powerful enough for all my needs), but the glass/aluminium shell looks great, the new CPUs are fast and the price-points (in the US at least) look reasonable. Not so sure about the keyboard, but I guess it’s just a less mobile version of my MacBooks.

Am I getting old? Perhaps. I’ve been using email since 1992 when I first went to university so I just find it second nature now. It’s got to the point where I organise my whole life using it and I get quite frustrated when I actually have to call someone to get something done that could more easily be done asynchronously¹. But that’s not how many people think according to ZDNet.co.uk.

Microsoft have been getting lots of press recently because of their new Zune music player. One of its major features is its wireless interface that lets you share music; even most of the advertising talks about the social implications¹. But let’s have a quick look at that functionality in more detail.

If I decide that I want to expend an hour of battery life in order to see other Zunes in the area, what can I do? Most famously you can transfer songs. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there are limits. When I receive a song, I can play it three times or hang onto it for three days² but after that all I get is an electronic post-it note reminding me about it. Clearly a lot of thought and a lot of engineering effort has gone into these limitations.

In this article in MacUser Howard Oakley notes that a number of schools have recently banned the use of wireless networks due to the unknown effects of the radio waves used. He then connects this with the declining number of people taking science subjects at those same schools and their ability to understand the likely risks of said networks.

It’s an interesting piece, but what I find interesting is that as the general populations understanding of how the world works dwindles, so our reliance on high technology increases¹.