Those of you who've taken a look at Randompixel can tell that PostSecret is a project so cool I wish I made it. The only downside is that anyone can submit a secret, so the liklihood of made-up secrets from the attention-getter set skyrockets, but at least the attention-getters tend to be artistic. The premise is simple. Write your secret on an index card and mail it in. Fair warning though, there are a few disturbing pieces in there.

What's your secret?

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Following my recent bent toward the pedantic and odd, I thought I'd share too much. Here goes:

Pulling out a nosehair is one of the most bracing things I ever do.

I really should explain, because what I said isn't what I mean at all. By bracing, I don't mean 'jumping into a cold river' so much as 'brace yourself', and by 'pulling out a nosehair' I mean 'sitting there, with the end of the hair firmly pinned between my thumbnail and fingernail, all ready to pull, flesh willing, mind weak, with the neurons right on that verge of firing, asking my brain "now? now?" and hearing back "ye- I mean, just a sec, no. go. now! No. Ow! Doh."

I love my blog.

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The AntiBloggies, answer to the Bloggies, has published it's list of categories, letting you vote for the most deserving sites.

If ever there was an award Fury was cut out for it's Most Unfinished Projects. To refresh the mind of the gentle reader:

1. Randompixel (aka Cameo)
2. AOLiza
3. Metacookie
4. QWER
5. Blogger Purity Survey (2001 Edition!)
6. Fury 4.0
7. AIMtunes
8. Fury - Mobile Edition
9. Public version of FuryNodes
10. Fury MicroBlog
11. Underblog
12. LogMusic
13. Tao Dice
14. The Mara Story
15. The Butterfly Orgasm Story
16. Trip log for The Kevin and Ammy Cross-Country Show
17. So very, very many galleries sitting in iPhoto
18. Things I've forgotten but will doubtlessly be reminded of by you
19. More stuff I can't even talk about yet...

So go vote! You can vote once every 60 minutes, so vote early, vote often!!!

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For those who really want that 7-hour advance notice, here's what's going down tomorrow:

• iPod for Windows: Certain
• OS X 10.2: Certain release date, probably early August. $19.95 upgrade price.
• 17" LCD iMac: Most likely an announcement and a late Aug/Early Sept. release
• 20gig iPod: Same release date as the 17" iMac, but possibly not announced at MWNY.
• iPad: Patience... Wait for MWSF.
• Also... 'Switch' kudos, 3rd-party kudos (Halo?), QT 6 overview, small tweaks, LCD price drops...

Here's hoping for surprises!

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Due partially to my desire to not sit around on my ass all weekend, partially by circumstance, I did quite a lot this weekend. Including Friday, I:

• Did laundry - Two loads. Not too exciting.
• Took my car in for a tune up - New front brakes, new front tires, a realignment, regular 30-month service, and a brake caliper adjustment on the left rear wheel.
• Went to the optometrist - A week after the incident I went to my optometrist for a check. He found that healing is progressing well, though it will still be another week before I should try wearing contacts again. Next examination (and my regular full eye exam) is in two weeks. I brought the photo of my eye and he passed around the clinic and asked if he could keep it. I know one of my readers works for a medical images company. I'll have to get in touch with him and see if there's a textbook out there that wants a photo.
• Saw Spider-man on opening night - I really liked the movie. It's a love story, so don't get hung up on the special effects. Personally, I felt if they were too realstic (like The Matrix) it would detract form the message, and I was impressed at how internally consistant the quality and nature of the effects were. And the two leads, Tobey and Kirsten, were great.
• Went dancing at Friday Night Waltz - After the movie in Emeryville, Karen, Crystal, Quinn and I drove down to Palo Alto for Friday Night Waltz, and danced 'till midnight.
• Took first on-water Kiteboarding lesson - Flying a kiteboarding sail is a lot like flying a flexi-foil two-line stunt kite in the same way that riding a motorcycle is like riding a bike: The general principle is the same, the reflexes from one will help you with the other, but it's a completely different scale of power. The lesson went well, and by the end I was actually getting up onto the board and jetting along for bits at a time. Next time on the water should be a breakthrough.
• Went to Heather's bonfire birthday party - With much burning of things and visiting of friends I don't get to see very often.
• Helped Dinah set up her Frankentosh - A Powermac 8500 with a 500Mhz G3 upgrade card and a firewire/USB card. I also helped her out with instructions on how to install OS X on to this computer which was never designed to accomodate it. Keeping fingers crossed...
• Sorted through over 300 CDs - With Dinah's help, went through my CD collection, finding which ones hadn't been MP3-encoded yet, and matching CDs with their long lost jewel cases.
• Went to Karen and Crystal's Cinco de Mayo Fiesta - Much fun was had. Viva la Mexico!
• Dinner with Ali and Mark - Well, dessert really. They had dinner, but I had rice pudding and horchata. A good Mexican ending to a good Mexican day. I'm atoning for skipping out on my Spanish class last Thursday.
• And before I sleep...
• Writing a few blog posts - Like this one, for example...
• Watching the Simpsons - And a few other TiVo'ed goodies
• Working on stuff for Kevin 3.0

I don't think anyone can say I sat on my ass this weekend.

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It looks like Yahoo! is taking a page from Steve Jobs's book, promising something that's so big there's never been anything like it on the Internet, or anywhere else. Liftoff is 1 PM Pacific Time on Wednesday which, incidentally, is just after trading closes at NASDAQ.

And no, I actually have no secret info on what it is...

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Or, as Apple puts it, 'one more sleepless night'. Though I wonder if they're referring to the thousands waiting for tomorrow's keynote, or the dozens of engineers who are frantically working to make beta hardware perform without a glitch on stage...

Anyhow, new tagline up.

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Today's (real) Apple message is "To go where no PC has gone before."

While my first instinct was "what, an iMac for the shower, replete with little suction cups so you can check stocks while you rub-a-dub?" I'm betting this is further iPad evidence.

I bet it's the sofa. You know that's what I want an iPad for, so I can compute and watch TV, so I can instant message and read a book in comfort, so I can take the full internet with me everywhere I go in the house, and use it with one hand.

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Well, the cat's out of Jobs's bag. Next week's incredible unveiling? Well, it's one of the ones that some people have been waiting for longest. I'd call it a Newton II except it's come so much further.

In a nutshell, it's a PDA, significantly bigger than a Palm or small WinCE device, with a great color screen, a 'lite' version of OS X, multimedia and handwriting recognition support, Firewire, audio in and out, quite likely an Airport card.

On the software side, it looks like NewtonOS, where NewtOS would be if it had been evolving for the past 5 years instead of canned (which it may very well have been, though most of the Newton engineers I knew have gone to Palm or Handspring).

There's the notepad, of course, but there's also a full web browser, an OS rebuilt around multimedia, and quite possibly one of those snazzy 5gig Toshiba drives in there, although maybe not.

I'd post the pictures, but that would just elicit me a call from Apple legal later tonight or tomorrow morning and I'd just as soon not. If the pictures are still up at SpyMac when you read this, that's great. If not, well, as Apple keeps reminding us on their home page, Monday's just around the corner.

Damn I wonder if it still uses NewtonScript on the back end, or if it's BSD-based. If it's the former, then I'm probably the only person at Yahoo who's a readymade NewtonScript developer with four years experience. If it's the latter, well, that's just so cool I wouldn't care about it not using NewtonScript.

Though I'm not putting up a mirror for the aforementioned reasons, you can find one for now at Interface Studio.

Of course, it might not be real at all anyhow. Some folks over at MacSlash are raising red flags, mostly about small vibrations in the video in the closeup movie and the use of 'Apple iWalk' on the startup screen when all other apple products are refered to without the Apple moniker. Then there's the fact that Apple doesn't have a trademark on iWalk... but Microsoft does.

Okay, so there's still a little uncertainty. It'll make the world go around for another few days. Maybe the cat's still in the bag after all. :-) I'll say this: Apple's hype machine has actually made me not want to find the secret before Monday. Oh sure I'm looking, and if it's out, I wana know, but I'm kind of hoping Apple can keep it under wraps until the moment of the unveiling. Like the iMac. I didn't know, even though I worked in the office that was doing all the print work. There was just this room that was always off limits. I want a key to that room...

For the truly anal (and those who can get movie 3 to play) try going frame-by-frame. when the person touches the disk, rotating the apple logo, watch carefully. The logo is straight down, the finger touches, starts seeming to move the wheel, but the logo stays still, until after 5 frames it instantly jumps to where it should have been, but there's no blurring, and no corresponding finger movement. Looks like a glitch in teh CGI, though why someone would want to go through that much trouble... Also, it seems doubtful that the site would post for three days saying 'we have this confidential video. We're just making sure it's real before we post it...' acting as a beacon for Apple to step in if they really had something.

If it's a fake, it's the best I've ever seen. If it's not, there's some darn strange stuff going on. Also, the trim around the edge of the monitor often obscures the edge of the screen, including menus and other interface elements. doesn't seem like something Apple would do...

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With all the blind speculation, I've got to wonder: Could the 'flat-panel iMac' and the 'iPad' be the same thing?

There's little doubt that the flat-panel iMac is coming on Monday, but there's also little doubt that Apple's hype engine was called forth for bigger news than that.

I'm starting to feel like it's July of 1991, when Apple introduced the Powerbook 100, 140, and 170, completely revolutionary with their trackballs, palmrests, and portability.

Breath: Baited.

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Please live up to the hype.

You've gotta be curious. I really hope it's not a letdown...

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I got an anonymous email today from someone purporting to know the stats of a forthcoming iPad.

While the stats describe a machine marginally different than the full-size 'thin-client' tablet I had envisioned, they (not the spelling errors in the spec sheet) have an air of credibility. It makes sense.

I'll do a more complete write-up later, but in short, the iPad, as described, would be a handheld (3" by 4.5" by 0.8") half-pound device with a high-density 256x512 pixel 16-color touchscreen, a thin version of Mac OSX, and a firewire port.

The only real miss in the product seems to be a lack of wireless, depending on a firewire adapter. That seems pretty silly to me, but then it seems to be intended as more of an unfettered device than the 'around-the-house' iPad I envisioned. This is much more a star-trek 'padd' device.

Base price: $550

Release date: Unknown

Rumor validity: 5 on a scale of 10

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I'm skipping out on movies tonight to work on Underblog.... This is gonna be fun. You'll love it.

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Qwer.org is basically done, except for the paint job (and explanation).

The home page is blank, but if you go to any other URL, it seems to be working fine. I'll write tomorrow on exactly what Qwer is, and how you can use it, but just think of it as your own internet clipboard, sans security.

Hope everyone's having a great weekend, and that others didn't get sunburned like I did today!

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Just a small tweak to my earlier predictions: I still think the iPad will resemble what I detailed below, but it may not be released until Macworld Expo New York, in July. The new iBook is a certainty though, and from all accounts it's not going to resemble the existing iBook at all (which is good, like the design or hate it, it's still an awfully big oyster to shlep around town/campus/playground).

So, for Tuesday, think iBook, and possibly iPhoto. For July, think iPad and new, most likely LCD-based, iMacs.

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So Apple's planned a 'media event' for May 1st (yes, the aforementioned Beltane/Jury Duty/Term Paper day). People are speculating on new iBooks, new iMacs, a replacement cube, and all that. I have a slightly different view I'd like to put forth for consideration.

When Steve Jobs simplified the Apple product line into the 2x2 matrix of portable/desktop by consumer/professional, he made a bold statement about the direction of the company. Later, when he introduced the cube as a 'midrange' desktop, he left a hole in the matrix.

For months people have been speculating on the development of a midrange notebook to round out the 6-product line. Most speculation has gone towards a subnotebook. Something to replace the beloved Duo/2400 line.

The problem (if you can call it that) was that Apple managed to deliver a stunning TiBook in January which, while not a subnotebook, was thin, light, and inexpensive enough to seriously cut into the market such a machine would have. To differentiate a midrange notebook enough to carve a market would mean creating a subnotebook's subnotebook, a machine under 3 lbs. Even with Apple's newfound prowess for industrial and mechanical design, any such machine would take some serious hits in functionality.

I believe that Apple has hit upon a solution to this problem, creating a product which can differentiate itself from the iBook and TiBook enough to carve a healthy market, and moreover, create a machine that even current Mac owners with current equipment would want to compliment their existing machine.

The key isn't to fill the center spot. Apple's answer is to move the iBook into the midrange spot, and create a true consumer portable...

Tuesday, May 1st, Apple Computer will unveil the iPad:

• A tablet-based Macintosh, with no internal keyboard or trackpad.
• Dimensions: 11.5" x 9" x 0.7"
• Airport Standard
• One USB port
• Internal HD
• No media bay
• IrDA port
• Single PC-card slot
• Headphone jack and dual speakers
• 12.1", 1024x768 active-matrix touchscreen w/stylus (though a finger will work fine)
• Software-enabled softkeyboard for on-screen typing. Alternatively, the user can plug in a USB keyboard/mouse.
• 5 hour battery with docking charging stand
• Completely portable, intended to be used in the lap, on the table, in the kitchen, in front of the TV.
• Between 2 and 3 lbs.
• $999

The target user for this machine is the person who already has one or more macs, and has (or will purchase) an airport base, or other airport-equipped mac. This will be positioned as a value-add to their existing configuration. A web browser they'll actually take into the bedroom, family room, or bathroom, to surf the net, check and reply to email, or do any other light-duty work without being tied to the desk.

Away from the home, it's the perfect machine to take with you everywhere, without being concerned about an expensive 6 lb portable. With a merlin ricochet or CDPD card for the PC-Card slot, the iPad will be net-enabled nearly anywhere.

At the $999 price point, there will be a strong demand from people who already have a primary machine (even existing Powerbook owners). This is the machine you can take to your bedroom to use as an alarm clock, using your iTunes library (even your songs on another machine in the house), or a streaming mp3 station, to wake you up. When you cozy up to the TV, you can bring the iPad to continue that instant message conversation with a friend or loved one.

In short, use it for all the things you thought you'd use a powerbook for, before you got tired of balancing the pb on one hand, lugging it around, or opening it up in limited space.

Of course, with Airport, iPads could create a peer-to-peer environment on the fly, and at $1000 apiece, they're even more affordable for school environments.

In short, it's more than a PDA, less than an iBook, and every inch fitting Apple's vision of digital convergence, while at the same time leveraging off of an existing user base that's already wireless friendly to pull off what only Apple can at this point in time.

This is the next big thing...

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Either chalk this one up to shoddy journalism or nefarious scientists:

A story on CNN.com describes a new Palm virus 'discovered' by antiviral researchers at McAfee. Unlike the previous virus (actually a trojan horse), this one actually infects other apps, and can be spread by IR transmission of infected apps. Interestingly, the article states:

"However, as the virus has not yet been found outside controlled environments, the researchers at the company's McAfee Avert unit have given it a low risk assessment, the statement said."

So... what then? They caught the only copy of the virus in the wild? A hacker created it and handed it to them? Or did they invent it themselves? Curiously, the screen shot on the article shows a palm app actually called "Phage", which is the term they use for the type of virus (neither a virus nor a trojan horse). Was this a mock-up shot, or the constructed app?

More ironic is that they're supplying a vaccine for this virus that hasn't been spotted in the wild...

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