I was totally going to write the exact same thing except with less coherency, and fewer oblique references to my financial well being (or lack thereof), but Wil Shipley beat me to it. You see, I was busy catching up on my feeds in NetNewsWire and watching people do silly things on YouTube.

In a nutshell Apple has me (and Shipley) a little worried. Shipley explains.

Which reminds me. I had one other (crazy?) theory recently regarding the iPhone and relative ease with which it was hacked. In this past Apple hasn't shown much remorse when it comes to "borrowing" ideas developed by third parties and incorporating them into the Mac operating system, no? Everyone remembers Watson, Konfabulator, etc. At least they had the decency to buy CoverFlow. While Apple isn't encouraging iPhone development (unless it's web based), they haven't yet made a concerted effort to put a stop to it. Perhaps Apple is watching closely to see what proves popular so they can incorporate it into the next release of the iPhone / iPod Touch without worry of guilt, compensation, or acknowledgement. Probably far fetched. Not the bit about Apple stealing any good ideas that might come from the iPhone development community. No that's not far fetched at all. But surely this isn't part of some master plan... or is it? [Cue: dramatic chipmunk]

technorati:
• apple
• iphone
• ipod
• development
• greed

Posted by Casey at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

G15 showing currently playing iTunes info

Every now and again, I'll get an email from someone that has seen this picture on flickr and they are looking for more information on how to write their own code or just curious how what's being used to drive the keyboard, etc. In the past I've answered each person individually, but it probably makes more sense to write it up once here where Google, and hence everyone else, can find it.

The software being used in the picture is an experimental plugin for Proxi. It works pretty much like any other message task (Screen Message, Bubble, etc), so you can push information to it using any Proxi trigger. I decided not to include it in the main release because I didn't think it was that good, and because I figured there were only a handful of Mac users with Logitech G15's. Perhaps there are more than I originally suspected?

So Proxi is one way to use the G15 with a Mac, but if that doesn't do it it for you, maybe some code will. I pieced together an application that demonstrates how to write to the display and also how to read the 5 buttons immediately below the display. I'm using this to clear and navigate the display and they are, from left to right, clear display, home, scroll up, scroll down, and end. The demo app mirrors the whatever the tiny NSTextView is showing in the G15 display. The demo seems to work well enough, but it was cobbled together pretty quickly so if there are any problems with it just let me know. Also please let me know if this was helpful to you, maybe I'll put more stuff like this up in the future.

Grab the code here: G15 Demo w/source

technorati:
• logitech
• g15
• mac os x
• sample code
• cocoa
• iokit

Posted by Casey at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

In case you haven't heard, Flying Meat has released a brand new image editing application called Acorn. I got a sneak peek of Acorn at the recent C4 conference and it looks very slick. From the Acorn product page, Gus Mueller, Flying Meat's perpetual employee of the month, explains:

Acorn is a new image editor built with one goal in mind - simplicity. Fast, easy, and fluid, Acorn provides the options you'll need without any overhead. Acorn feels right, and won't drain your bank account. Don't let Acorn's size fool you; it's a powerful little guy. Fancy math to keep your pencil strokes from having sharp edges, squeezing all the performance out of your computer's GPU as possible, and simple innovations to make your life easier.

I was going to mention this when in my last post, but thought better of associating a new software release with things bursting into flame. Though Acorn is unlikely to start fires, it is a lightweight, but powerful, image editor for the Mac that's easy on the wallet. If you've been looking for something that fits that description, go check it out.

technorati:
• acorn
• flying meat
• image editor
• mac os x

Posted by Casey at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I was getting ready for work this morning, it seemed that I could hear sirens off in the distance... the very near distance and so I wandered over to the window a looked outside to see if I could catch a glimpse. This is pretty much what I saw:

This is not a happy sight unless their happened to be an unscheduled parade in going through my neighborhood. I saw no Tootsie Rolls.

Actually there were more than just this one. This was one of about five La Vergne fire department vehicles. Later that number grew to include a couple of La Vergne police cars and someone from the water company maybe? Whatever, this was not good. I didn't smell any fire, but I rapidly finished dressing to see what was going on (My apologies to the fireman that saw me wearing only a towel as I was looking out the upstairs window. This probably burned his eyes more than any smoke ever has).

There was no fire in my house and my vicious guard dog lay placidly in the dining room, probably dreaming of driving my car. From my front porch I saw:

I could also see my next door neighbor standing in her driveway looking distraught. All the windows in her house were open along with the front door. A fireman was using an industrial strength fan to drive the smoke from the house. Not good, but the fire was apparently out. After talking to her I discovered there was an accident, a small corner of their living room burned and everyone has frayed nerves, but everyone is also okay, which is the important thing.

technorati:
• fire
• fire truck
• monday

Posted by Casey at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)