MacBreak Weekly 48: The Next Big Thing

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko, The Macalope

Variable pricing comes to iTunes, iPhone hacks, and where's the Mac?

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 48.

My pick for this week's MacBreak Weekly is Fly Gesture, which is a nifty little freeware app from Flying Meat's boy genius, Gus Mueller. Like it says on FG's home page:

MacBreak Weekly 47: That's Our Shooby!

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay

Universal challenges iTunes, iPhone hacks, and our software picks of the week...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 47.

This time we did our usual weekly software picks, but I also got to choose our Audible.com audiobook of the week. Can you guess what it is?

MacBreak Weekly 46: iDay

>

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay >

>

iPhones in hand our MacBreak quartet gives you their first impressions of the latest from Apple...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 46.

Believe it or not, this week's episode was about Apple's iPhone. Yes, the iPhone. I know: I was surprised, too.

Also, we shot a quick MacBreak (video) on Thursday night where we visited with people queued up outside the Stockton St. store here in SF. I chatted with a bohemian clown, an expensive-looking video camera, and a man from Gizmodo who had a webcam attached to his head. Just another Thursday in Union Square.

Anyhow, the iPhone is out, it's pretty, and lots of people are buying them. For further coverage of the iPhone and the experiences of its excited new users, kindly visit the entire internet.

MacBreak Weekly 45: Talk Time

>

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay

>

iPhone gets a better battery and screen, MacGPS rumors, and Safari holes...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 45.

Gotta tell you: I'm really excited about the imminent arrival of the iPhone for an unconventional reason: the possibility that we can eventualy stop talking about the iPhone. (sigh)

Anyway. Two things related to this episode:

1. If we can scare up a video jockey, I'll be at the Stockton St. store here in SF next Friday to shoot some stuff about that evening's iPhone release for MacBreak. Maybe interviewing people in line; who knows?
2. My tip of the week in this episode is a very cool Quicksilver trick called mouse dragged triggers. Explaining how it works is -- as you'll hear -- difficult, to say the least. So, herewith, I present my favorite tutorial on the topic, from the lovely and talented Dan Dickinson. He also has some great ideas for what to do with the trick:

MacBreak Weekly 44: WWDC Deconstructed

>

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, Andy Ihnatko, and John Gruber

>

We run down the WWDC announcements, and John Gruber explains why Safari for Windows makes sense...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 44.

Comments are open for your own thoughts on the WWDC keynote.

These are lower threshold links to stuff I've recently enjoyed.

• The Macalope On MacBreak Weekly - "Yes, it’s true. The Macalope will be on next week’s edition of MacBreak Weekly." The MBW crew seems to remain convinced that I am the Macalope. Tune in this week, and we shall see...
• Daring Fireball: iPhone SDK, iPhone SDK! Wherefore Art Thou iPhone SDK? - Gruber's analysis seems spot-on to me: with a product this big, it pays to manage expectations and hold out the possibility of an unpromised lagniappe or two.
• How to talk to the press | fortuitous - Mathowie talkes to the press a good bit more than I do, so I learned a lot from this. Love the tip about listening for frenetic typing.
• Jonathan Coulton » Blog Archive » How I Did It - JoCo tells the story of how he got where he is with his music and the internet. Essential reading for those who want to go indie on the web today. Would love to see more of these from other folks as well.
• Rosetta Stone for Unix - (PDF) - Ginormous table that lets you compare commands between different flavors of Unix. (via: adurity's bookmarks on del.icio.us)
• MailTags 2.0 leaves beta, goes official - The sine qua non Mail.app plugin goes 2.0. Can't imagine using Mail without this guy plus Mail Act-On.
• Twitter Blog: Are You Twittering @ Me? - "In other words, if somebody Twitters "@biz liking the new Replies tab!" it will get saved at Twitter.com/replies." I love this feature. I can't keep up with the (gulp) 2,300 folks who've been kind enough to "friend" me, but at least now I can see when they're saying something in my direction. Very cool.
• Facebook | Merlin Mann - In related news. I succumbed. Largely because of this awesomeness. (links require Facebook membership)

Submit your ideas for links to del.icio.us, and be sure to include the tag "for:43folders."

plain text wiki (20 May 2007, Interconnected)

TextMate users in search of a simple wiki should check out Matt Webb's new plain text wiki bundle. He's made it very easy to quickly generate new "pages" and links using nothing but TextMate, the Finder, and CamelCase words:

This is exactly what I need: A bunch of text documents that I'll be able to read at any point in the future, in a wiki structure that will be simple to implement in most extensible text editors.

I'd also note that Matt's bundle works handsomely with Quicksilver's venerable prepend/append and new file functionalities, so, once you've taken the requisite 45 seconds to set this up, you don't necessarily need to even be in TextMate to make additions. You gotta love text.

Nice work, Matt.

Edit 2007-05-22 17:36:17 Forever confusing my British Matts; This bundle is by Matt Webb not the also-wonderfully-talented-and-funny Matt Jones. Many thanks to jjg for the correction. 43 Folders regrets the error.

Ratholing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ratholing is a used to describe a conversation or process that has deviated from its original productive purpose into a generally unproductive but long and winding detour that eventually comes to a dead end. The original discussion purpose may be to agree on a course of action. However, if one or more people rathole into a specific point of the discussion then the discussion stalls with no actionable outcome. This term is frequently used on the Macbreak Weekly podcast, resulting in the eventual creation of the "Rathole!" jingle^[1] and subsequent full-length song.^[2]

I first heard "rathole" used in the developer meetings run by my old boss and current friend, Richard Ramsay. Any topic that could be better handled offline or that took the group off the meeting's stated agenda would be declared a rathole, and we'd immediately move back into the subject at hand. (Richard was great at this, by the way -- one of many things I learned from him.)

Of course, as anyone who listens to MBW has figured out by now, our ratholes are usually the most interesting part of the show. I think of it like "You Bet Your Life," where the "news" is an icebreaker for letting us talk about more compelling stuff than who sold the most chips the preceding week or whether the rumors of Apple's iLawnmower carry any weight.

In any case, I salute Richard for teaching me this fine term, and -- owing to my own fragmented attention and general lack of interest (or ability) in typical Mac punditry -- I'm proud to have a role in bringing ratholes to a broader audience.

(Here's The Official Rathole Jingle)

[via scottgladstone's bookmarks on del.icio.us]

iGTD & Quicksilver

As I mentioned on MacBreak Weekly the other day, I'm very impressed with what I've seen so far in iGTD, a new "Getting Things Done" application for OS X.