Whip antenna for smallest PowerBook

As a 12-inch PowerBook owner, the blurb on MacMinute about QuickerTek’s new Whip Antenna for the smallest PowerBook piqued my interest. However, after looking over the product page, I’m left wondering if this wouldn’t just be something that would easily break off. It appears to be a permanent or semi-permanent installation; how does that affect my three-year AppleCare warranty? The kicker: 90 bucks. Sheesh. Fifty I could understand, but it seems a little overpriced as is.

New iPods Monday?

Engadget has the Newsweek cover with Steve and the new iPod. It’s still white, reportedly has an even slimmer case, and sports the iPod mini-style scroll wheel, which I really like over my 40 GB iPod’s multiple buttons. I’m curious to know if Espy Sans made the move from the mini as well. I am now depressed, as this appears to be the iPod I wish I could have had six months ago…
(Thanks to Gruber’s linked list for the link.)

War of the worlds

Last month’s Wired has a short article with a lot of graphs and charts on the Free versus the Unfree worlds, as it relates to consumers and producers, IP registrations and pirates. It looks at four industries: media, medicine, agriculture, and software. Worth a look.

On buying DVDs

So today at Costco I picked up The Bourne Identity: Explosive Extended Edition, Widescreen, of course.
I am seeing a trend in DVD releases lately. Release the movie as soon as feasible on to DVD after its theater tenure. Get the rental money back, then flood the retail market with copies. Nine months to a year later, release another version of the same DVD, only include myriad extras. This was done with the X-Men 1.5 edition, Black Hawk Down, and more recently with Saving Private Ryan.
I had been keeping my eye on The Bourne Identity at Target, waiting for it to drop from $19.99 in to their $14.99 or even $9.99 line-ups. The new DVD version was $18.88 at Costco.
So the lesson is becoming clear: if you really liked a movie enough to buy it on DVD, wait until the extras-filled DVD is released. Rent it from Netflix in the mean time.

Times vs Times

Jason Kottke points to an interesting backgrounder on Times Roman and Times New Roman.

Zimmermann online

Cryptologists and cypherpunks will note Phil Zimmermann’s home page. For the uninitiated, Zimmermann is responsible for the wildly popular PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. You can even purchase PGP on Zimmermann’s site, giving him a slice of the pie now owned by PGP, Inc., the company he founded but now only works at as an advisor and consultant.

Scanner lust

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that the prices for superior-technology scanners continue to drop? Take, for instance, Canon’s new CanoScan 8000F. It would be nice if the “F” stood for “FireWire,” but we can’t always get what we want.
(Via MacMinute.)

100 Million Songs

Apple’s iTunes Music Store has broken the 100 million-song barrier.

A man’s scooter

Not that I’m in the market for a scooter, but if I were, the Scarabeo 500 would be it. In black and silver, please.

Font lust

Hoefler & Frere-Jones have two great fonts out, Gotham and Whitney. Gotham is especially notable, as it is the font being used for the inscription on the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower in Manhattan.

The typeface, Gotham, deliberately evokes the blocky, no-nonsense, unselfconscious architectural lettering that dominated the streetscape from the 1930’s through the 1960’s in building names, neon signs, hand-lettered advertisements and lithographed posters.

Its chief inspiration, in fact, were the letters spelling out PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL over the terminal’s Eighth Avenue doors. So the circle comes to a close, since the trade center site is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The choice of Gotham is more than a matter of typographical arcana (though as typographical arcana go, it’s not bad). As the first tangible element of the Freedom Tower – and, by extension, the trade center redevelopment – and as an image seen nationwide on Independence Day, the cornerstone sent an aesthetic signal of intent.
As a fontaholic, I would love to own both. However, at 500 bucks a pop, I have no monetary justification for doing so. At least we get a good portion of the Hoefler Text family included free in Mac OS X.