Plaxo and AIM

The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of Terry Chay. Content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo.

The beta 6 of AOL Instant Messenger, a.k.a. “Triton” has been released today. You can download Triton here.

The big new thing (from my perspective) is that this is the first version of AIM in which Plaxo powers the address book. For those who don’t know, Plaxo, the company I work for, is a contact synchronization network that allows you to synchronize your contacts between your computers, between your programs (in this case AIM and Outlook/Outlook Express), between people (so that I can update my information on other people’s address book). Did I mention that all this is free?

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Corpse Bride

Last week, Bill, our resident Canon guy, mentioned that Tim Burton was working on a new stop-motion animated movie called Corpse Bride using Canon digital still cameras. The attention to detail and imagination in motion animation never ceases to amaze us.

Mark Jen sent me this article confirming the use of Canon digital still cameras and Nikon lenses.

Animator Peter Dodd sets up a shot with the Corpse Bride puppets. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Animator Peter Dodd sets up a shot with the Corpse Bride puppets, by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Building Liquid Websites with PHP

Okay because Apple upped my iDisk quotas, I’m putting up my OSCON talk there temporarily. Caitlin finished producing this talk last month, but I haven’t seen it because I can’t stand the sound of my own voice.

production Silver Keys Studio
video source HD and Keynote
size 104.8MB
run time 50 minutes, 32 seconds
format H.264 (Quicktime 7 required to play movie— free download)

You should: Right click-download this link or click on the image below.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 21

The future of Nikon DX

Canon has an EF-S lens series, which is roughly like Nikon’s DX lenses except they won’t mount on their full-frame or film cameras.1

  1. EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
  2. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
  3. EF-S 17-85MM f4-5.6 IS USM

For comparison, here is Nikon’s DX line:

  1. 12-24mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor
  2. 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye-Nikkor
  3. 17-55mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor
  4. 18-70mm f3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor
  5. 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor
  6. 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 12

Bad AIM beta defaults

The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of Terry Chay. Content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo.

The AIM Beta a.k.a. “Triton” has been out for a while and one thing I’ve noticed that bugs me is that the default AIM message is unreadable in iChat.

screenshot of an iChat session with an AIM beta user

AIM beta-iChat issues, originally uploaded by tychay.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Identity 2.0

Identity 2.0

Identity 2.0, uploaded by tychay.

Joseph mentioned that Dick Hardt has posted his excellent Identity 2.0 presentation he gave as OSCON.

This is a great presentation with a excellent use of Lawrence Lessig simplicity combined with some of the new text effects in Keynote to emphasize it.

It is very easy to get the repetition/refrain that Dick uses for effect using Keynote. You simply put all the slides in an outline under the first slide of the string. Then option-drag the slide to the points in the talk you need it.

If he had more time, he could have used to new auto-build feature of Keynote to transition the slides automatically. But then again, it was somewhat amusing to see him tap away.

Lots of great ideas worthy of theft. 🙂

I promise to post my talk soon. I need bandwidth. I’m not rich like Dick.

Posted on by tychay 1

Jon Stewart Emmy Speech

John Stewart has a puppy for the Democrats and a Kitten for the Republicans about Hurrican Katrina

John Stewart’s two things uploaded by tychay.

Dru pointed me to an excellent Jon Stewart presentation of an award at the Emmy’s.

It’s quintessential Daily Show. He definitely wouldn’t have gotten away with this on CBS two years ago.

Another interesting thing is to see that the liberal blog linked got the video from a right-wing blog. It’s amusing to note that the amount of peer pressue that accompanies the vitriol in these right wing blogs—Ad hominems have more weight than logic, and if you aren’t a hard to the right you are barraged with threats of excommunication.

I wonder what will happen now that it is no longer “in” to be an idiotic right winger? Looks like we’re getting as fed up with this as we were with Political Correctness.

(The quality of the video sucks shit because it is transcoded from Windows Media. Some people have no pride in their piracy.)

Posted on by tychay 2

Just what the country needs right now: more tax cuts

A bill for hurricane relief passed the house at 422 to 0. This is all well and good, but tax breaks aren’t an efficient way of distributing goods to the needy. Economically, the only difference between giving a tax break for hurricane-related charitable donations and just raising taxes and giving the money directly is the fact that in the former case you can tax future generations through deficit spending. What ever happened to just giving them aid? I’m confused.

Is the problem really the lack of funds? After all, we are burning food aid from Great Britain and sending ice trucks in the wrong direction, it sounds like the problem has been due to too little logistics and too much red-tape.

Of course, I don’t know what a rich person can do with things like food and water. But a tax cut…

Guess what the South needs is more corporate welfare programs.
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 7

Bad Design Kills

Bad Design Kills—Command Z

bad design kills sticker from baddesignkills.com.

It makes sense that with business internet and insta-companies that people would looking to have instant original logos (and on the cheap).

That’s why it is so fascinating when BoingBoing pointed out a fascinating site that catalogs stolen logo designs by one such online logo design services.

Wow! talk about blatant. My favorite has to be the Ernst & Youngrip off, for so many reasons that I can’t begin to name it. It actually has me scratching my head wondering how a company like this is allowed to stay in business. If anything is cause for a lynching by a bunch of pencil-wielding design geeks, this has got to be it.
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0