Archive for February, 2008

Living In a Blu-ray World

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

Well, there you have it: Toshiba finally rolled over and showed its belly to Sony. Blu-ray is now officially the high definition successor format to DVD.

OK, I’m sorry. That roll-over-showing-the-belly analogy was kind of creepy. How about “give up the ghost,” or “took its ball and went home,” or maybe “threw in the towel” — which is what I settled on for my article at iPodObserver.com.

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I Am Your Plaything. Really.

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Not everyone can brag that there is a paper cut out doll version of themselves, and technically there isn’t one of me. But there really kind of is. Through some weird twist in the parallel universe cross-over nexus point thingy, Geek Culture’s Nitrozac created a paper doll me. OK, it’s actually one of the After Y2K characters, but it sure looks like me.

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Design… Or Die

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

The world of the graphic designer isn’t always sunny days and Gummi Bears. Sometimes the wickedly dark side comes out, so what better backdrop to show off your design terminology knowledge than on a dark and seedy street corner filled with treachery and, um, design terms.

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On Microsoft and Funky Installers

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Here’s the deal: Microsoft released Office 2008 for the Mac, and the installer does its own thing with file ownership and permissions. The end deal is that some users are winding up with non-admin users having absolute control over Office’s components — a potential headache for IT crews. That was back in January, so I’ve had plenty of time to mull this one over, and the bottom line is that I just don’t get it.

OK, I get what is happening, I just don’t get how it could have happened in the first place.

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Adobe Stock Photos is Closing, and I’m OK with That

Monday, February 4th, 2008

Adobe dropped a bit of a surprise on the design world with the announcement that it is shutting down its stock photo service. You know… Adobe Stock Photos? That stock photo service you didn’t use because you already have an iStockPhoto account? Yeah, that’s the one.

First, what that means for anyone who really is using Adobe Stock Photos: Finish all of your image searches and Comp downloads before March 3, 2008. You can still purchase images for the Comps you have already downloaded up through March 31, but you are pretty much out of luck after that unless you want to go through the hassle of using Adobe’s Image ID Converter to figure out which company the image really came from.

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