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Apple had this big announcement today which like usual, everyone gets stoked over, but really they've not done all that much which is impressive lately. Their big one in January for MacWorld was a real dud. "Hey, here are the Intel machines! They're great!" Um yeah, we saw it coming since you announced it last year and whoop dee doo, you're bringing them out.       Today's announcement was really lame. A redux on the Mini, which is a pretty good rehash, but not worth an announcement. A new boombox for the iPod, which people already hate, and a leather case?!! No, really, a leather case?!! What's next, the iPod hairbrush?!! Fly that one to the moon.       It seems others weren't too pleased either, because as of the time of this writing, Apple's stock dropped 3.5%! Damn! Way to go Steve. I knew you'd really start to schmuck out someday. Maybe the April 1 announcement will be huge, but it's going to have to be something along the lines of Apple starting its own airline, giving away tickets to Paris which include a rub down in the plane hot tub by the Hungarian Bikini Team. That would be the level of the announcement to turn things around, since that Bikini Team? Yeah, they don't even exist, which isn't surprising since Hungary has no coastline.

When doing a recent web development gig, I was introduced to the folks who create Yelp which is basically a place for people to submit reviews of places in several US cities. They shun the name "community site" which I suppose it isn't. The best way to kind of sum it up is to say that they took all the blogs out there, stripped out all the crap about what people did in the shower and ended up with useful, personal information.       I've been reviewing a bit on there and I find it to be a useful spot for when I want to find out what people think about somewhere, because honestly, newspaper reviews are pretty lame and non-applicable to me. While there are other places that have some comments areas set up like this, the only one that seems to come close is Citysearch. While the breadth of information is greater than Yelp, it is so much more of a directory system that doesn't have the warm-fuzzy quality to it like Yelp.       Join up if you haven't, find me (I'm a Michael H.), and be my friend. I can always use more friends. Man, can I use more friends...

Recently, as I've been doing Adobe InDesign and InCopy integration training, I've noticed that some people interact with the web in a way that I find, well, different. I'm guessing it's a generational thing or some other large factor. You see, when I tell them, "Okay, now go to Google." or "Go to Adobe's website.", they'll actually type that name in to a search engine, search for it and click on the first result. They don't understand that you can always type in the website address in the location bar at the top of the browser. Definitely different, but it warrants attention. You can't just blow these people off as being clueless and not ever have to worry about their twisty methods of web navigation.       This was something of an eye opener for me that in the SF Bay Area, where we're so wired and webified, there would be people that don't understand such a simple navigation. I've always used my mom as a test case for any site I build. Not that she's a web novice or a lowest common denominator, but she is far enough removed from the web process that if it doesn't make sense to her, it's not going to make sense to a lot of people. Apparently, I've not dug deep enough. There are folks out there who do need the big buttons with simple instructions. An elegant design for them is one you can easily navigate. They could care less what it looks like so long as they can get around it.       So, how do you take these folks in to account, while at the same time not alienating the more advanced users out there; the kids who have grown up with the web and have no problems navigating a complex design? I think it all comes down to the approach of Apple towards the iPod and Adobe towards Photoshop. The iPod is pretty simple to use once all your music is on it, but if you dig through enough menus you can find many additional things to change and play with. Photoshop is great because you can just hop in to it and start messing with photos, but then there are so many levels to it that I don't think I've even found them yet.       I think that somehow in some fashion, this needs to be applied to the websites one builds and I am trying to apply it as much as I can to anything I do these days. Will this help those who don't ever figure out how to use the location bar to type in a URL? Who knows, but at the very least, you can try to design a site they can use once and however they get there.

Skip around! Jump for joy! Be amazed! We, the people of the Earth have finally managed to dump 6.5 billion of us on this poor place as of today. It's pretty scary really, since it just seemed like yesterday that we were a mere 6 billion.       It makes my mention of the 62 year old new mother even more poignant as there is really and truly no effing reason for people this age to be having children with our new population total.       How will the planet hold this many people? Many say it won't be able to. I honestly think it can if Americans stop buying new cars every two years, new cell phones each year, new clothes every month, and for the love of god, stop eating fast food and cereal that comes in a bowl with a spoon you throw away! Our waste in this country needs to come to an end. If and only if that will happen, then we might even fit 10 billion on poor old Mother Earth. Of course, we'd need to stop GMO foods as well, but that's another problem.

If you browse through the Photos area these days, you might notice that sometimes, some shots look a little "off". Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. I just bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT and it takes shots in a slightly different dimension than my Sony DSC-W5 which means that unless I want to seriously crop things, the images from each camera will be a bit different. Obviously, there is no comparison between the two as the Sony is a $250 point and shoot and the Canon is an $850 SLR. Both are digital and I like them both quite a lot. The Canon is taking some getting used to as it's been a long time since I've had so many things be manual on a camera before. It does take really nice shots though, especially at night.       At some point, I'll do a much more complete review of it, once I figure out what all the little knobs and dials do. Oh, and I need to figure out the best way to deal with these freakin' enormous RAW files that it dumps out as well. Luckily you can get a RAW and a jpeg of the same shot at the same time, which is really handy for when you don't know if you need a shot for the web and/or print.

A couple of words from down under. First, let's look at the Pro Lamb group and have a word from them.       Then, let's dig in to the hobbies of the kangaroo. I should definitely add that this second one is NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) which is probably making you really want to click on it, since what can a kangaroo do that would be bad to view in the office? Oh just you wait and see.       I love Australia.

I've got a real problem in that I like the soap from Lush a lot. It smells good. It makes me feel good. It will bring sunshine on a cloudy day. The one thing it doesn't do is be kind to my wallet. This stuff has never been that cheap and at the start of this year, they jacked up the cost quite a bit. I still buy it because, well, I'm a sucker and the ladies just go wild for it.       Here's the problem though, I don't really wanna waste such good soap on just washing my hands. Lush is shower only. While there are a lot of soaps out there that are cheap, I found this one for $1 a bar at Whole Foods which is decently natural and unchemical. It seems to work well for simple hand washing, which you need to do a lot of in SF and I am quite pleased. It's part of their 365 brand if you go looking for it.

Whaddya know, some cold weather was kind enough to stop by for a little while. weather.com, those guys behind the guys with the funny jokes are saying that it might stick around for maybe another week. I hope so, I look forward to truly cold weather all year long and so far, I've been relatively let down. Damn you Global Warming, damn you!

Someone somewhere along the chain of command at Google finally realized that there is a difference between a 'c' and a 'ć' or 'č'. It looks like they've gone through and actually made the distinction between the standard English characters of the Roman alphabet and those that are typically part of the extended set. I was wondering when they'd get around to that. Admittedly, most of the things you would search for would still come up all right, but it is a critical difference.       I have no idea when this went in to effect, but it wasn't so long ago that it was wrong. Now if everyone could start using proper UTF-8 page encoding so that way we do away with some of these bastardized character encodings. Maybe it's just my personal preference (and yes, I know it's not supported in some older browsers) but this has to be one of the easiest ways to get a lot of these characters to show up right.

It needs to stop. Seriously, this is repugnant. This rampant desire to overpopulate the world is killing us. A 62 year old woman who has had 11 other children simply does not need to have anymore children. That's not a subjective thing to say, it's just the fact. I can maybe understand the treatment if you're 30 and pregnancy just isn't happening, but the situation in that article is so ludicrous it makes me sick. And oh yeah, this woman is blind. Not that I don't think someone who is blind should not have children, but 12?!!! At some point, the question of how can she care for them does come up, maybe around number four or five.       The most amazing this to me in a lot of these fertilization stories is that the people always thank the "divine way of God" or whatever for their little miracle. The article doesn't mention if that is the case with this woman, but I gotta tell you something, you're all heathens. If you're not able to have children, isn't that God telling you that you can't have children and maybe you should adopt to better serve him. You know, take care of those who are less fortunate in the world? Apparently they don't see it this way. It's incredible how people bend Christianity to fit whatever self-serving need they have at the moment.