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Apple //c Unboxing
Originally uploaded by dansays

Talk about a walk down memory lane. Dan Budiac recently bought an Apple IIc on Ebay. Nothing new there. A lot of nostalgia buffs are into picking up the computers they first owned in their youth.

But this one was special. It had never been opened! So after hemming and hawing about whether he should break the packaging, he went ahead and opened it up, while his partner documented the whole thing. The result is a great unboxing story.

Many of you will already have heard about this but I only now got around to looking at the photoset and it really is a great story.

I have fond memories of the Apple IIc. My first job was working for a farm newspaper. We didn’t use computers but shortly after I started, we began buying some (at my urging, I’ve got to admit.)

My boss at the time was a design buff, especially industrial architecture and he fell in love with the Apple IIc. I got to use it fairly often and I loved it too. Although I didn’t own an Apple myself, that first computer created an interest that I finally acted on a few years ago when I purchased my first PowerBook. I’ve been an Apple fan ever since.

Have you worked with any nonprofit groups to help them tell their stories? If you do, or if you ever have, then my friend and colleague Donna Papacosta of Trafalgar Communications would like to enlist your help.

Donna is the host of the Trafcom News Podcast, a tremendous resource for all of us in the PR and communications world who are interested in making use of new technology in the business world. As Donna puts it, its a “podcast for people who care about communicating.”

Here’s what she’s planning:

Big Ideas, Small Budget will be a discussion about how nonprofit organizations can communicate better without spending wads of cash. Big Ideas, Small Budget will start as a conference call, the contents of which will become a special episode of the Trafcom News Podcast. You are invited to participate in this conference call.

Who can take part?
Anyone who works for or with a nonprofit organization can contribute – whether you’re a board or staff member, volunteer or consultant (writer, PR specialist, graphic designer, Web expert, podcaster, and so on). If you are involved in any way with communicating for nonprofits, we’d love your help.

When?
The conference call is at 12 noon Eastern Standard Time on Friday, February 15, 2008. Dial 1-605-772-3285, then key in the access code 877696#. Don’t forget the pound key (number sign) at the end.

If you’re interested, you can read the whole post here.

Sunday is the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Three years ago, the 60th anniversary was a major event, but I fear that might have been the last time that the world collectively examined the atrocity that was the final solution.

At the time, I wrote a post about my own feelings and looking at it again, I think it’s worth reminding people about. So please take some time this weekend and follow the links in that original post and make your own tribute to those who died.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana (1863–1952)

Outside, the sun is non-existent. It’s threatening to rain and the sky is that cold, grey colour that nothing seems to be able to affect. It’s a dreary, gloomy day, so my thoughts are a bit somber.

That’s probably why this new series in the Christian Science Monitor, called “Sea Under Siege: The Mediterranean” caught my eye today. It’s a sobering (even depressing) tale about declining fortunes for the fishermen who ply their trade in the Mediterranean. Here’s an excerpt:

For more than 50 years, the nearly two dozen countries bordering the Mediterranean have struggled to jointly manage the shared bounty of the sea, whose uniqueness makes managing this crisis both unusually difficult and extremely important.

But their efforts have stalled often amid the conflicting political and economic interests in this diverse region, which contains everything from the heavily subsidized Italian fleet – one of the biggest in the sea with more than 14,000 boats – to thousands of subsistence fishermen in Morocco.

The benefits of preservation are manifold, however, in this marine ecosystem, whose share of global biodiversity is eight times greater than its size.

Now, that diversity is threatened. According to the United Nations, 85 percent of species in the sea are already being fished at or above sustainable levels. Some are near commercial extinction.

Other species, like turtles, dolphins, and sharks, often caught accidentally in fishermen’s nets, are also being driven toward extinction. A recent report by the World Conservation Union, which monitors endangered species, found that 42 percent of the sea’s 71 shark and ray species are threatened or endangered – a global high. Fishing is the most serious threat, the report found.

This story line is not new. The past year has seen climate change, and its startling effects, become front-page fodder around the world. While the glare of media attention has benefits, it has a downside as well. We hear about things so much, we stop paying attention.

Last week, we heard a remarkable story about how the Antarctic ice sheet is melting much quicker than expected. And we know that the same thing is happening in the Arctic. But as fast as we heard about it, it was gone, relegated to the “yesterday’s news” section. Let’s move on to something else.

I’m as guilty as anyone. I was more interested in the new toys that Apple released at MacWorld than climate change. I mean, who wouldn’t be? But this morning, the Steve Jobs “reality-distortion field” effect was wearing off and I’m letting my thoughts wander to a bigger picture. And the picture isn’t as pretty as one might hope.

Sitting here in my home on Vancouver Island (thankfully a few metres above sea level) I’m struck by how real these changes are becoming and how soon their effects will be felt. The number of species in the ocean is declining, the waters are rising along with the temperatures. Storms are stronger, heat waves last longer — what’s going to happen? And what can we do about it? Gloomy thoughts indeed. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Photo credit: Rutty, found at his Flickr site. Published under a Creative Commons Licence.

I had fun this morning, watching Steve Jobs give his keynote address at MacWorld 2008 in San Francisco. I was following along via live blogs from the event and it was interesting to see the differences.

I had four going at the same time — MacRumours, CNET, MacWorld and Engadget. I know there were others, but I was worried about bogging my system down so much nothing would run properly.

They all had a slightly different take on delivering the goods. Three of the sites were also posting pictures in real time, so it was almost like seeing video. (CNET elected not to show any pictures.) CNET and Engadget had some server problems. Both went down for awhile at the beginning, but were OK by the end.

MacWorld had the best writing, although it was a little slower delivering the news. But as with most of their coverage, it was well written and offered more detail. Engadget’s Ryan Block was more opinionated, offering his comments along with coverage. The CNET blog, by Tom Krazit was fairly straight up. I found it the least interesting.

The MacRumours blog was the most straight-forward. “Just the facts, ma’am.” The updates were simple but timely. There were lots of pictures to go with the slimmed down coverage. But what made it useful was that the site was continuously updated. Once I loaded the page, it updated all the time. I didn’t have to hit the refresh button at all. That was a nice touch. The others all required refreshes to see the latest content.

The sites also delivered the latest content slightly differently. MacWorld used a traditional top to bottom format, with the most recent news at the bottom of the page. But when you refreshed the page, you were taken to the end, so the copy all read in the right order. It was the most useful for catching up with.

Engadget posted all the latest updates at the top of the page, but they had a big photo at the top, so the updates were below that and I had to page down to see them. If you wanted to read a few updates at a time it was a bit awkward, because you needed to look above the one you were reading for the next one.

The other problem with Engadget’s site was that it was so ad-intensive, it took a long time to refresh and often lost the server connection before it had finished downloading everything. That was annoying.

CNET also posted their most recent updates on the top, but their format made it a little easier to distinguish which update was which.

So what about the content? It was very, very impressive.

Jobs announced a new version of the Apple TV software, which will allow you to rent movies and watch them on your TV. There’s upgrades to the IPhone software (which will also be available on the ITouch), there’s a new device called Time Capsule, to complement TimeMachine. And the finale was the introduction of the MacBook Air — the world’s thinnest laptop. You have to see this thing to believe it.

I want one right now — and an Apple TV — and a Time Capsule — oh, and an IPhone too!

You can see all the details on the Apple site right now.

Back in October, I told you about Glenn Wakefield, a Victoria sailor who is sailing alone, non-stop, around the world, from east to west. He’s now getting close to the half-way point of his voyage, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, south and west of Australia.

It’s been an interesting trip so far (to say the least) and thanks to his wife, Marylou, we’ve been able to follow along through their website www.kimchowaroundtheworld.com. Kim Chow is the name of his boat.

While the daily reports have been great, Marylou now has some new pictures of her hubby on the boat. Back in December, Glenn was able to heave a package containing some letters and a digital card from his camera to a passing fishing boat when he was off the coast of New Zealand. According to the rules of the these circumnavigation voyages, he’s not allowed to touch land or any other boat until he gets back to his home port. The fishing captain sent the package home when he got back to port.

So that’s why when Marylou arrived home from work one day last month, there was a FedEx box waiting at her door. And just as she tore it open and stood flabbergasted looking at the letters from Glenn, her telephone rang. It was Glenn, on his now-working satellite phone, calling her for the first time. What a great Christmas present for everyone.

Here’s the link to the pictures, which are on the site now. And who knows…maybe if another boat gets close enough we’ll get some more to look at before the end of the voyage in July.

Technorati Tags:
Glenn Wakefield, Kim Chow

Now there’s a blog title for you. Does that whet your appetite or what?

Mind you, if you’re not a Star Wars fan, or at least a bit of a geek, you might not find this entry all that exciting. But I wanted to follow up my post about the fabulous Star Wars Holiday Special from a couple of weeks ago with another example of how the Internet makes all things possible.

I introduce you to Wookieepedia, The Star Wars Wiki, in which I am pretty sure you will have all your questions about Star Wars answered. And where you’ll also be able to find a whole bunch of other info that might or might not be of value to you the next time you’re playing trivia at your local watering hole.

I’m not really a Star Wars geek, although I do have all the movies, of course. But what I find interesting is the explanation for how this amazing site came to be and if it looks like it spawned from Wikipedia, that other on-line encyclopedia, that’s no accident. Here’s the story:

Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki is a Wiki which was started on March 4, 2005 by Chad “WhiteBoy” Barbry and Steven “Riffsyphon1024” Greenwood. It strives to be the premier source of information on all aspects of the Star Wars universe. This includes information from the Star Wars films and Expanded Universe, as well as information of value to fans.

The Star Wars Wiki is considered to be a branch of Wikipedia, but can expand on Star Wars information in greater detail and with more freedom than Wikipedia. The Star Wars Wiki began when Wikipedia users began to complain of the overabundance of minutiae related to Star Wars, which began appearing on Wikipedia. Since then, it has expanded to become one of the largest Wikis on the internet.

As a fan-created encyclopedia, Wookieepedia is not intended to be a primary source, nor is it a replacement for the Databank or any other official source. Rather, it serves as a fan effort to summarize all aspects of the Star Wars universe in the best way possible, while pointing the reader to the respective official sources.

I like that. You learn something cool every day, don’t you? Especially if you read this blog!