Can someone tell me why software that lets you change the appearance of Mac OS X is not late-to-the-party (Windows and Linux have had this for years), not cool, but actually "revolutionary"?

[Joe Grossberg]

Exactly. I've been getting rather tired of the Apple propaganda lately. Especially the iTunes/iPod crap. Apple didn't invent digital music, digital music stores, digital music players, or digital music anything. They weren't first to market. They haven't made the best options that are available. So why are all the press claiming Dell, Microsoft, Wal*Mart, etc. are stealing Apple's ideas. Sure they want a piece of Apple pie, but just like a windowing OS, the mouse, WYSIWYG interfaces and the like, Apple didn't invent them.

Don't get me wrong. I like Apple. They make things pretty. They make solid interfaces. They are willing to try something different. But they are not the end-all-be-all. And very few things have been “stolen” from them, that they didn't “steal” from somewhere else. So, please, enough of the Apple worship.

In case you were wondering:

The Washington, DC Metrorail system is a regional rapid transit system consisting of five lines, 83 stations and approximately 103 miles of track. System completion as originally planned was achieved on January 13, 2001.

[NYC Subway]

What is that? You thirst for more knowledge? Then head on over to NYCSubway.org for more trivia than you knew existed, and then read up on other cities train systems.

Although I'm a bit of a Micro-softy, this is good news. I've always liked Sun (and Novell, who has good news of their own):

Struggling Sun Microsystems yesterday unveiled a major software deal with China's government -- a sign that the company is far from on its death bed. And given that the deal involves open-source software, Sun's news is a definite slap to rival Microsoft's attempts to woo overseas government customers. (washingtonpost.com)

[Yahoo! News - Technology ]

For my money, a bit of competition never hurts. I still like Windows, and I'm way excited for Longhorn, but a bit of Linux in the mix can only be good, right?

And that should be no surprise to anyone. I order things from Amazon all of the time. My site is integrated with my wishlist, and even trolls Amazon.com for games, providing them in a sortable grid, designed for ease of spending money on more games.

However, just when I thought that Amazon.com couldn't get much better, they upped the ante. In beta now, and (hopefully) soon to be a permanent part of the Amazon.com website is Gourmet Foods. This includes Cheese and Coffee!

I've already begun to add a few items to my wishlist, but there is just sooooo much to pick from, I don't know where to start. I expect that I will need to recalculate my budget and add a Cheese line item.

Update: They have freakin' Lasagna!

I want my car to know the direction of Mecca and let me know when to pray. [NY Times] (Courtesy Joe Grossberg).

Though I don't see what is so patentable. All of the math and technology that it sounds like this gizmo could do, has been around for a while. My Clié used to tell me when to pray, and now my Sidekick does (thank to Microsoft) when I manually sync my calendar.

Any GPS device can tell you the direction Mecca is, and audio playback of the call to prayer is a snap. So what is patentable? If this is affordable, however, it could be used in a lot more places than just a car.

Sounded stupid at first, but now I have to admit it's pretty darn sexy.

Google Deskbar enables you to search with Google from any application without lifting your fingers from the the keyboard. Installs easily in your Windows taskbar.

[Google Labs]

Doing some holiday shopping? We're right around the corner from Eid 'l Fitr, Chanukkah, Christmas, and Winter Solstice. Get your shopping done early:

• Mad Chicken Town
• One Stop Connection
• Skystone and Silver
• AllBeanies.com
• Chunky Monkey
• Beware of the Monkey
• The Monkey Store
• Sea Monkeys
• PacSun
• Amazon.com

Reuters - Chocolate manufacturer Cadbury Schweppes hopes to chip away at the world's litter mountain with sweet packages that dissolve in water.

[Yahoo!]

And I applaud their efforts. If only we'd ever see something like this in the US. But since US production of Cadbury is done by Hershey's, and the US has such weak support for eco-friendly anything, it'll be 15-20 years before something like this comes to America. Not to mention the delay that some plastics lobby will place on adopting new packaging like this.

Hollywood will eventually deliver on its rumors. Coming next summer: Alien vs Predator.

I've completed the merging of dasBlog 1.4.3297.1 into my code and it all appears to be running fine.

The biggest changes are a new WYSIWYG editor, courtesy of FreeTextBox, cross posting functionality added (which is little use to me), additional statistics (referrers, click-throughs, rss tracking)

There also appeared to be some improvements in the APIs that can be used by blogging clients, but there are few details on the dasBlog site regarding this, so I'm not sure what they are. In addition to syndicating to RSS and ATOM, dasBlog now syndicates to CDF, not that I know what that is...

UPDATE: The CDF lets you “subscribe” in the IE favorites via IE's Active Content system. It shows the site and expands to the items on the page. Kind of like a budget RSS aggregator.

UPDATE: My permalinks appear to have all changed to a new format. This leads me to believe that if you aggregate my site, all stories will appear to be new again. I'm not sure who made this decision, but the trouble doesn't seem to be worth what it gains by being reformatted. Any-which-way, my apologies if you have to mark all items read again.