An online notebook
Dave Since Lee (who is rapidly losing my respect) has pooh-poohed my earlier attempt at a logo for B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S., and even Amsterdam-resident Neville thought it a little on the risque-side, I have attempted another one.
I thought this might suitably reflect the feelings of most Bollockers (is that the right collective noun?).
Thoughts, chaps?
AJ’s blog features a nice piece on keeping your desktop free. It’s Windows specific, but the principles could be applied to any OS, I guess.
I am with him on this one. The idea of having icons on the desktop is inefficient and, well, rubbish. I use my desktop purely as a temporary holding station for downloaded files before they are put away or deleted. By the time I switch my PC off at night, there is only the Recycle Bin left on show. Because of this use of the desktop as a place for downloaded files I don’t follow AJ’s advice that you should use the Windows option to turn all icons off – they can be handy sometimes.
I also very, very rarely touch the Start menu – again, I just think that they are rubbish, and it depressed me a bit when I installed Ubuntu and Mandriva and found that they use a similar system. I personally use a quick-launch bar, with all the apps on it I use regularly, which is displayed at the top of the screen and which autohides when not in use.
I still think the most efficient and the most user-friendly way of operating a PC is through the keyboard. When I had Google Desktop Search installed on my old PC, I really liked the little search field on the sidebar that would auto-complete and hunt out whatever I was after, whether a file or an application. This sort of thing would form the basis of my ideal OS.
Instead of having to click on a box, though, you should be able to just start typing. Where there is more than one file with a similar name, such as a word processed document, a spreadsheet, an email and a webpage with the same name, then options appear to let me choose which one I want. Likewise, an option could appear to create a new document of some sort with that name.
So, no matter what you are doing, the method of doing it is the same. This could be taken further with task based search words, so I could type “burn cd” which would locate the CD burning software on my machine. The search “type letter” would bring up a word processor. This way, the need to know exactly what bit of software performs which task would disappear.
IN MY WORLD, THIS IS HOW THINGS WOULD BE.
Lee Hopkins, antipodean blogger extraordinaire and contributor to Shel and Neville‘s For Immediate Release podcast, and I have been bantering on various posts about the lack of an offline blog editor that, well, does what we want it to. This led me to make an utterly idiotic suggestion.
There was a recent flurry among the blogging PR community recently about the International Association of Nobodies – an organisation created to provide a refuge for any blogger who has been bullied by another. My suggestion was that we take the IAN as an example and set up our own group: Blogger’s Off Line League Of Content Kreation Systems (the use of K in kreation, is not, as some have suggested, a pathetic attempt to create a childish acronym, but instead a calculated PR move that will certainly add to our appeal to the kidz).
Sadly, I had no idea that Lee was as juvenile as I am. He is certainly giving this project the serious attention it most definitely does not deserve. For God’s sake, he’s even asking for logo designs! Of course, I couldn’t possibly resist that challenge.
I felt that the real requirement here was to create a logo that represented the serious and professional nature of B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S. and this certainly does that. I mean, it would look great on a t-shirt, don’t you think?
So, how far can B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S. go, exactly? As far as we can stretch them, I say. As Lee wrote:
Whenever I next hear young men using the phrase, I shall instantly know that they are talking about offline blog editors.
My thinking exactly.
[tags]B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S., Blogger’s Off Line League Of Content Kreation Systems[/tags]
ajaxTunes is the latest in the line of web based desktop replacement services from Michael Robertson.
It claims to be:
…a web-based media player that lets you play, pause, forward and rewind high-quality streaming music straight from the Internet on any computer. Try ajaxTunes immediately, it has been preloaded with a demo account containing more than 25 songs encoded at 192kbps from different albums and a great mix of playlists from select artists. Or, create your own music locker and choose from over 40,000 songs to create your personal playlists. ajaxTunes is a fully interactive application that will allow you to connect to hours of music, FREE.
To be honest, I am still not sure how it works. It says later on you can use something called www.sideload.com to add your own music to your portable library. This seems to be a step on from the other ajaxLaunch stuff which didn’t offer the chance of hosting files – they had to be saved on your PC or USB key – albeit via a third party.
It doesn’t seem to offer the ability to play music saved locally, which is a shame.
[tags]ajaxtunes[/tags]