This isn’t the first time I’ve managed to potentially offend an entire nation and maybe it’s not as bad as when I left Swedish off the list entirely. However, I received an email from Down Under, where Ian Graham of Lane Realty had this to say:

In supported languages, it should be English (Australian) NOT Austrialian. C’mon cobber, for a true blue bit of clobber like this you’ve gotta be dinki-di 🙂

I can only apologise. I blame a subconscious bitterness that many, many years ago some fool decided to set up a penal colony on a beautiful and sunny continent, while us whinging poms were left to eat potatoes back here in grey old Blighty. It should have been the other way around. Perhaps our Australian cousins were taught how to spell whilst in prison. There I go again! Sorry. 😉

Before I do any more damage, I should say that Feeder 1.0.4 is released today to fix this problem and a couple of other things.

Thanks, Ian, for letting me quote you here.

No updates to this blog for a few days – life catches up with you sometimes.

I’ve been very busy writing for the main Reinvented Software website. Mostly updating the Feeder FAQ, adding an Appcasting page to the Feeder Resources section and generally improving all the other pages in that section. I’ve also been dealing with lots of support emails and doing plenty of That Life Thing.

However, I have quite a few ideas stacked up for some interesting posts to come soon. Some funny, others informative and the rest probably just good old-fashioned rants. Stay tuned 😀

Friend and fellow Mac addict Claire was so pleased with her iPod Shuffle we asked her to write a review for this blog in the vain hope that she’d finally stop going on about it. 😀

This world is a fickle one. We work hard, play harder, use our disposable incomes to buy disposable goods (who would ever have guessed that cars, TVs and stereos would be classed as disposable?). Life in the fast lane is too slow. Our culture bombards us with ever-moving images: we channel-surf the TV, flicking past the advertisements, walk past billboards that change every 20 seconds – we can’t be trusted to concentrate on anything for too long.

And let’s be honest, concentrating is a chore and committing to something for any period of time is hassle – why stay in a dead end job when you can career-hop? Don’t like the commitment of marriage? Wife swap. Even holidays, the epitome of relaxation, become a whistle-stop tour to prevent us from getting bored.

I have a short attention span. I like to think it’s a by-product of my supreme intelligence, but it’s more likely something to do with the brain cells I’ve killed with wine, vodka and beer. The problem is worse when it comes to music. Listening to an entire album can be so tedious. You find an album, stick it on, start to listen, realise the first song isn’t as good as you remember, skip a track, skip another and before you know it you’ve flicked through an entire album but only actually heard two songs in their entirety. It’s all just so ‘samey’, which is why teenagers the world over spend their time making compilation tapes (or these days, CDs from their MP3s – they don’t know they are born!).

This must surely be one of the reasons why those clever boffins at Apple created the iPod Shuffle, a perfect accessory for modern life. Never again subject yourself to an entire album! Download some music onto it (either choose your own or let iTunes randomly select for you) – the Shuffle holds about 240 tracks, so you’ll have plenty of choice – pop in the earphones, hang it around your neck and turn it on. Don’t like the first track? Skip it. You can guarantee the next track will be completely different. Shuffling seamlessly through the playlist, the Shuffle delivers music to suit even the shortest attention span. Listen to Rock next to Pop next to Indie next to Dance – the only limits are those imposed by your iTunes collection.

The very, very best thing about the Shuffle is that you rediscover tracks that you love but had completely forgotten. It’s all one can do to refrain from screaming ‘Tune!’ as an old favourite comes bouncing through the earphones. The next best thing is its size, it’s so small and light, your average lighter will seem bulky. Sling the Shuffle around your neck and forget about it – you won’t get neck strain from this little beauty. The control wheel is so simple and intuitive you don’t need to take your eyes off the road and it has all the functions one could need – skip, repeat, play/stop and volume control. Marvellous.

Of course, being an Apple product and breathtakingly cool, it wouldn’t be complete without its own range of accessories with which you can pamper it (and yourself). As soon as I first used my Shuffle, I wanted an armband for running/cycling, and not content with that I’m pondering a protective case – must keep my baby safe. The Shuffle is so small and gorgeous it’s like having a little puppy that you simply must buy toys for, except you only have to take the Shuffle out for walks when you want to.

In this commitment-free, disposable world I’ve discovered something I want for keeps, something that positively encourages you to change your mind, something that even the shortest attention span can cope with. The iPod Shuffle – I love it.
– Claire

In some ways, it is more difficult for me to talk about KIT‘s future because a) I haven’t fully decided on everything yet and b) it lives on the fringes of quite a crowded and competitive market area. Showing all my cards might not be the wisest idea.

One of the problems with KIT at the moment is that it is just too flexible for its own good; you can’t just say it’s a note-taking application, an organising app or some sort of file management utility. My previous post, KIT: The Past, explains the reasons behind this, or the basis of its inspiration at least, but this factor makes KIT more difficult to market.

Before I released KIT I didn’t think it had any direct competitors, but it turns out that DEVONthink is an application that does much the same thing, albeit in a more complicated and less pretty way. Look more closely and these two apps are very different. I’m going to try to address the whole marketing aspect of KIT through refining its features and avoiding unnecessary feature bloat.

Actually, while I think of it, Devon Technologies are obviously aware of KIT. I know this because they stole KIT’s Link icon for DEVONthink – I have the original artwork to prove it’s mine. There’s not much I can do about this and it’s only 32 pixels square, but even so. The icons in my applications, apart from the system-wide generic ones, are original.

Back to the point. This post aims to answer two questions: firstly, what is the future for KIT and secondly what will be the point of KIT on Tiger.

On the first question, there is plenty of room for improvement to the application as it is now in the following areas:

• More information about files.
• Better note-taking abilities.
• More file formats supported for previewing and indexing.
• More advanced searching.
• Improved Smart Groups.
• Interface and usability improvements.

I also hope to deal with the problem of KIT’s groups vs subfolders at some point.

With KIT on Tiger, and Apple’s NDA, it’s obviously even more difficult for me to divulge unless the information is already publicly available. Let’s deal with the problem of Spotlight and Smart Folders in the Finder – the two things that supposedly make KIT less attractive to Tiger users. Yes, I was a little perturbed when I saw these features announced and my unreleased but finished product did just these things to an extent. However, that’s cool because a) it at least means my ideas are so good Apple was thinking the same thing b) this technology is not solely available to Apple but to all developers and c) KIT is written in such a way that it can take advantage of that quite easily.

So eventually, in a Tiger-only version, you will see KIT fully take advantage of Spotlight technologies, searching will be even faster and Smart Groups more efficient and more flexible. There are other technologies in Tiger that will take the QuickTime support and PDF viewing to new levels, amongst many, many other things.

So KIT is not going to die any time in the near future, in fact its journey has only just begun. I have so many great ideas the only difficult part is trying to choose what to implement and when. Long live KIT!

Article on BBC News:

Nasa is doing it, 14-year-old boys in bedrooms are doing it, couples are doing it, gadget lovers – male and female – are definitely doing it.

It is podcasting – DIY radio in the form of downloadable MP3 audio files.