I was reading the paper the other day and came across s STIHL ad for a trimmer which has a bold headline that reads -

What makes this trimmer too powerful to be sold at Lowe's or The Home Depot?

Then the copy below says -

We can give you 8,000 reasons, our legion of independent STIHL dealers nationwide. We count on them every day and so can you. To give you a product demonstration, straight talk and genuine advice about STIHL products. And to stand behind every product they carry, always fully assembled. You see, we won't sell you a chain saw in a box, not even a big one.

Ouch. But good for them. Yet another small move away from the "big box" retailers.

Found this on "The Cult of Mac Blog" and thought it was pretty funny -

Apparently, there is a way to crack Apple's veil of secrecy: Be a third-grader and get upset.

Bay Area CBS affiliate TV-5 reports that Shea O'Gorman, a South Bay third-grader, received an unwelcome reply to her hand-written letter to Steve Jobs suggesting improvements to the iPod nano.

She wrote the letter as a school project and received an unpleasant response from Apple's legal department noting the company does not accept unsolicited product ideas. Shea's mother's description of the girl running into her bedroom to hide is a perfect description of how it usually feels to ask questions of Apple. Hilarious.

According to the report, Apple's legal department apologized to the girl and is contemplating a different policy in its responses to letters from children.

I came across an interesting point of view today while scanning through a bw forum - the thread was about why people like film - not really meant to be a film vs. digital thread, but - as is often the case - it seemed to migrate that way.

But this one individual made a fascinating point that I hadn't really considered (I of course will shoot film as long as it can be found and I can continue to develop it myself) - a point about why they thought film will last, if not always, at least for a very long time - and it was :

photographs captured today with a digital camera are forever etched at the camera's resolution. They will never be more. An 8-megapixel capture today is an 8-megapixel capture ten years from now - and that cannot be changed. However, even a 35mm capture (say, from thirty years ago) - which, using a high-end drum scanner, can achieve an output resolution equal to a 25-megapixel digital camera - may someday be able to have an even greater resolution - the "information" has been permanently captured by the film (film is a tried and tested format and is a uniquely complex and refined technology), and the resolution is only dependent on the technology of the scanner that is used at the time. Ten years from now, scanners will no doubt have a higher resolution - and that same 35mm negative from then forty years ago will be able to attain that resolution, whatever it might be.

I know - as a professional photographer - I would be somewhat hesitant to capture really important photographs on any digital camera because of this simple fact. I am not trying to dismiss the technology of digital cameras or digital photography - nor was this individual - but the point made was one that should certainly be considered.

Another new feature is the ability to set a preference for which ICC specification version you wish to save your profile, and to save the reference data as either a matrix or an LUT. The question then becomes, which specification to use?

Here is an ICC test document that will show you which versions your system is capable of reproducing. View this in your browser or download the PDF and open it and look at the top image - then at the three different reference screenshots (which won't change regardless of your system's compatibility). Then compare the top image to which one it matches of the three below and to determine your system's ICC compatability.

Pretty slick. And below are my recommendations for those settings - assuming your system can decipher v4.0 profiles.

This is very cool - I just recently downloaded v3.6 of the Gretag MacBeth EyeOne Match software - I had been running 3.0 - and it offers several cool, new features.

Particularly, a small app you can run called MonitorValidator that will graph the monitor changes from the profile reference LUT file in delta-E (see snapshot below) - my monitor was last calibrated on 4.9.06 and has drifted delta-E 0.79. I have been very impressed with my 17" Apple Studio display (acrylic) - the luminance actually bumped up without changing the physical monitor brightness setting on this last profile I created - and have not been as impressed with what I use at work, the new Apple 20" Cinema display (for reviews of each, try here or this Flickr discussion that I contributed to - I'm "koaflashboy").

So I'm going to test them out - I'll profile them both on the same day, and then run the validator app every week to see how they perform against each other.

Stay tuned ...

She also thanks Bosendorfer pianos "for making the best pianos in the world."

I'd have to disagree and assert that Bechstein pianos hold that claim, but the Bosendorfer is a close second.

"Thanks to Apple Computers it's bitchin what these things can do."

Tori Amos, 1994

This is downright scary - an article about the rapid genetic transformation of homo sapiens and how we should embrace using technology to accelerate our own genetic mutation, er - transformation.

Yikes.

Here are my favourites from around the Flickr photo-sharing website. These are updated whenever I see something interesting, but include a pretty cool sampling of some images that I find worth "favouriting" - have a look-see.

Of course - when compared to others' 1000s of favourites, my list seems pretty miniscule. I need to get out more ...

In a huge surprise-of-an-article, the NY Times reports here that the rise of executives salaries - in many cases, without regard to company or stock performance - has reached ridiculous heights when compared to the average wage-earner of the same company.

Surprise ... surprise ... surprise.

Oh - and just as reinforcement (not that any is needed) - here is another NY Times article.

Came across this photo on Flickr of the infamous Pet Shop Boys by dunechaser - this guy's entire photostream is of Lego minifigures, BTW. As he states in his profile - "I like minifigs."

Yeah, dude - I guess so.

The Pet Shop Boys are actually just a part of this whole Lego "band" set he made on Flickr. Pretty cool.

Which is a far cry from this beauty (the Apple G5 and Cinema Display) -

You gotta love this classic shot of the Apple I -

There is a lot of news swirling around Apple lately with the company's 30th anniversary. So, here are some interesting links to check out, in order of significance -

#1 - Apple's announced Boot Camp, which will allow an Intel Mac to run both the elegant Apple OS and the "other" OS. Big news.

#2 - A neat (albeit abbreviated) history of how Apple got its start.

#3 - A cool and still-being-updated-at-5-a-day list of the top 30 all-time greatest Apple products.

My list wouldn't include 30 - but would be

5) The Power Mac G4 - it's a beautiful machine and the first really powerful Mac
4) Colorsync - the Apple-designed application that is fully-integrated with its OS to ensure color consistency across applications and devices
3) The iPod (duh)
2) their partnership in forming the ICC - the International Color Consortium which, with the advent of Adobe's PostScript language, literally transformed the graphic communications industry and led to the desktop publishing revolution (for better or for worse!)
1) OS X - if not for this, I would never have fallen in love with the Mac

Here is a good link that I came across for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) - where you can remove your name from mailing and telemarketing lists. Heck, you can even remove a deceased person's name!

For those of you not keeping track, Apple Computer, Inc. turns 30 today, so ...

happy birthday!

Read the Macworld article here - but the best line from it is from Paul Saffo, director of the nonprofit Institute For The Future research group -

'The people that have the most to celebrate are Windows users. But for Apple bringing out the Macintosh and demonstrating the [windows] interface and the mouse, we would all be stuck with a C: prompt.'

Thanks for such innovating products - and here's to another 30 years (in which time who knows where we'll be at the rate technology moves ... )