Quiet bliss

The little phisch is at school. The dog is at the cleaners. The cats are off napping some where, since that’s what cats do, when they’re not sitting on the magazine you’re reading, leaving hair in your keyboard as they walk across the desk, or cheating death by racing under the dog’s chin.
In other words, it’s very quiet around the house right now.
I am getting an amazing amount of online reading done at the moment.
God, I need a job.

Is Gmail reaching saturation?

Tom notes logging in to his Gmail account this morning, and finding 50 invitations to offer to others. This prompted me to do the same, wondering if I would also have 50 invites, seeing as how the last time I looked at my Gmail account, I still had 4 from the previous 6 given to me still available.
Sure enough, there’s the little box, just like Tom has in his post, with 50 invites ready to go. How am I supposed to get rid of this many invites? Has Gmail already reached a saturation level, and it’s not even out of its invitation-only beta program?
Maybe it’s just me; I have a fairly close-knit group of online friends, with a slightly larger group of acquaintances. Everyone in these two groups who wants a Gmail account already has one. Heck, the reason I have a Gmail account is because one of my friends pointed me to a post by Tom offering Gmail invites back when they were hard to come by, and this is how he and I began chatting. (FYI: my winning funny is #2 in the comments.)
I’ve had a hard enough time unloading the last six invites Google gave me. I’ve joined Gmail for the Troops, but have yet to unload any invites that way. My own attempt to have fun while giving out invites met with one whole reader taking me up on the offer. So now I’ve got 50 invites. Want one?

Mac Mini to cannibalize older Mac sales

Yeah, I know, there’s a shocker of a realization, right? But it’s true.
Since the Mac Mini was announced, I’ve had many instant message conversations with current Mac die-hards who see the Mini as a great second, third, or even fourth system in their home or office, for xyz kind of use. The kinds of use that would normally be reserved for a two- or three-generation-old Macintosh.
For myself, I was thinking a Mac Mini would be the best way to transition my grandmother to OS X. She’s currently running OS 9.2.2 on a Power Mac 8500 I got dirt cheap from a fellow ATPM staffer, and that was when the iMac G4 was brand new. I had been thinking that a blue-and-white G3 would be the next step up for her (she already has a monitor, so an iMac would be overkill), but now I’m thinking why bother with that? All she needs is the $499 Mini and a RAM upgrade, and she’s good to go.
Everyone knows that Steve could care less that the Mac Mini is going to cannibalize those older Mac sales, especially among the more savvy, long-time Mac users out there who know better than to pay most of the prices one sees on eBay. Apple needs to move units, and for those sort of Mac users, Mac Minis aren’t going to cannibalize Power Mac G5, PowerBook, or even iMac sales. Certainly not enough for Apple to not have come out with the Mini. Apple doesn’t care about the so-called “gray market” of its products’ sales, because those products are already out of Apple’s inventory. The Mac Mini is the here and now, and that’s what counts.

It’s nice to know we’re cool

Christian Science Monitor:

Paul Saffo, a director of the Menlo Park-based Institute for the Future, a technology forecasting firm, says Apple’s two new slimmed down products are the newest harvests in what will be an array of hand-held devices catering to the demand for digital entertainment and serious computations. “Apple has been cool all along,” he says, praising Jobs’s talent for including “little details,” in Apple products. “The public wasn’t. But now because of Apple, the public has become cool.”
[Via DF.]

Fighting the link spammers

Everyone seems to be linking to The Register’s interview with a link spammer. This is what caught my attention:

“The hardest form to spam is that which requires manual authentication such as captchas. Or those where you have to reply to an email, click on a link in it; though that can be automated too. Those where you have to register and click on links, they’re hard as well. And if you change the folder names where things usually reside, that’s a challenge, because you just gather lists of installations’ folder names.”
So now you see why I’m using TypeKey.

ATPM 11.02

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Ellyn notes the need for healthy skepticism on the web, while Wes’s Bloggable column looks at the miniature life, courtesy of Apple’s new releases. The Wizard of Oz(ab) notes how the Mac Mini may affect musicians, while Ted’s About This Particular Outliner column continues with part two on the usage of outliners for task management. Sylvester has a follow-up column about what to do with those old Macs.
The ATPM staff is pleased to welcome Scott Chitwood, editor of the Mac GUI customization site ResExcellence. Scott’s first column is about customizing your Mac’s icons. Yours truly also kicks off a new column for the ‘zine, focusing on the iPod.
Wes delves in to Mariner Software’s ultimate productivity tool, Desktop Poet, while Chris Lawson looks at the FriendlyNET FR1104-G Wireless Firewall Router and Griffin Technology’s radioSHARK. Frisky Freeware notes a favorite chat client of some staff members. Cortland and the iTrolls continue their adventures. Lee and I were blown away by Mark Montgomery’s nature photos, which he offered as this month’s desktop pictures. I’ve already got a black bug on my desktop. Thanks, Mark!