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SideTrack, from Raging Menace, is driver software that enables Mac trackpads to accept a variety of "gestures," similar to those standard on Windows trackpads, strikes me as emminently useful. I'm contemplating trying the beta out, but I'll certainly keep an eye on it. Thanks to Eric for pointing SideTrack out.
Despite my exquisite taste and judgement in using Mac OS X as my OS, one of my email accounts (the one my students use) is getting swamped with email containing the Swen attachement—and I do mean swamped. So for Windows users, of any stripe, here's some help in terms of thwarting and removing the nasties.
This Cringely column (by way of GeeksRus) asks why Macs aren't more common in IT, and provides some provocative answers.
I think Cringely has a good point; that Macs may mean fewer jobs. Certainly I've had to spend less time on the care and feeding of Macs than on Linux and Windows OS boxes, and the Macs were much easier for me to train others to administer. I think that there's also truth in the "nobody ever got fired buying Microsoft" aphorism. And Lord knows, at one IT shop I worked at in particular the CIO can't make a decision to save his life because he's always terrified that it's the "wrong" decision. In the end, when a decision is forced on him, he always decides on the basis of expediency and personal ambition, rather than in terms of what is best for users, the institution and the long term health of the network. Microsoft is "safe."
Kip Manley points to an article by Clay Shirky in which Shirky still argues that micropayments will ultimately fail because users won't pay for content in a sea of free content.
Shirky's wrong. Users (think readers and listeners and viewers) won't pay for content that we don't want, but we will pay for content that we do want. To wit, music, in the form of legal downloadable .mp3 and .aac files. Apple's iTunes store, with over ten million sales since its inception, many of them at 99 cents for a single "tune" or track, proves that we will pay under the right circumstances:
The iTunes store is extremely well designed and executed; Mac users (and very soon Windows users too) can purchase individual tracks or entire albums with a single click.
You'll note that iTunes starts at 99 cents per song; I'm pretty sure that's at the limit of a "micro" payment, but I also suspect that in an age when penny candy is ten cents a piece that a dollar is a better indication of a useable micropayment. Of course, I'd be even more excited by micropayments and legal digital music downloads that directed more of the fees to the artists, but I'm convinced that will come.
Oh, and I did send a buck to MetaFilter; in fact I've sent several. I think payment for goods and services is a Good Thing. And I think there's a fair amount of content on the web worth paying for, like this, and this.