I've decided to start a semi-regular "column" on the blog called TechNotes. Very clever, eh? Essentially, I'm going to use the column to point to interesting technological developments as they apply me individually, the organizations we serve and the general technological milieu. All of which gives me a significant amount of leeway to discuss just about anything as long as it relates to technology.

And away I go ...

The new server

The biggest current development to speak of is our move to a new server. In fact, this is the first blog entry to be posted on our new space! The new server is far more affordable and offers more than 40 times more space. More, more, more for less. Makes you wonder why we didn't move earlier, doesn't it?

Well, to make the move all of our sites coded in ColdFusion needed to be re-written in PHP. I simply haven't had time or energy in the last two years to learn an entirely new language. And I still don't ...

Thankfully, my new friend James Stewart has graciously given many, many hours of his time to develop the new code for catapult, by far the most complicated site in the *cino family. He's also helped considerably on the server administration side of things, walking me through the process of database migration (among other things). James: thank you, thank you, thank you (again).

For the next several weeks, I suspect, we'll be working through the inevitable glitches. Thank you for your patience.

Mighty Mouse and Intel

My beloved Apple has made many strides in the past several weeks that may contribute to significant climate change in Hell.

First, they announced that they will be moving all of their computers to Intel processors over the next couple years. After years of trying to convince consumers that faster processor speed didn't necessarily mean a faster computer--which is generally true, to a point--Apple finally gave up on IBM and Motorola PowerPC chips. Every Mac will be shipping with "Intel inside" by the end of 2007.

I think this will be a great move for Apple in the long run. While I was initially skeptical (along with every other Mac user), I've been convinced that this will lead to some winsome developments. IBM and Motorola haven't been investing the kinds of resources in computer chips necessary for innovation; Intel only makes processors, making innovation essential for growth. It should be interesting to see what two highly innovative companies can come up with. And because I don't plan on upgrading my machine for the next several years, my next Mac will be an Intel machine.

Second, Apple introduced the Mighty Mouse last week, its first multi-button mouse. From the pictures and descriptions available online, it appears to be a wonderfully conceived piece of hardware. Simple, elegant and intuitively functional. While I wouldn't mind owning one, I think I'll probably wait until my current mouse gives up the ghost--which will, of course, likely be never.

Software

Several little software packages have helped me organize my workflow as of late and I'd like to briefly mention them in case they might be of use to you:

• Audioscrobbler is a plugin for software music players--iTunes, in my case--that sends song information to the Audioscrobbler web site, which compiles information based on what you're listening to and compares it to others. Don't worry, it isn't sending anything other than song titles, album titles and artist names. For example, here is my user page. You can see what I've been listening to recently and who some of my favorite artists are based on music I play through iTunes or my iPod.
  

  Why would you want to do this? Well, things get interesting when you start visiting your musical neighbors (people who listen to similar music) or checking out your recommendations (based on people who play similar music and have listened to things you haven't). Essentially, this system is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to new music, completely sidestepping the music industry marketing machine.



• Mail.appetizer is a handy plugin for Mail that pops up a translucent window with message information every time you get new mail. You can quickly look at the message and decide to view it in Mail, delete it, mark it as read or simply close the window to deal with the message later.


• Delicious Library is a fairly inexpensive library system to keep track of books, CDs, movies and video games. If you have a barcode scanner and you're connected to the internet, you can scan the barcode on a CD and Delicious Library will import all of the information from Amazon.com. You can also search manually. Then, you can use it to track who you are lending things to. You can even set return dates if you'd like. The only problem is getting massive libraries into the system to get started ...


• NetNewsWire is a clean and effective RSS newsreader. I can subscribe to all of my news sources and blogs I read regularly through RSS, allowing me to open one program to see if anything new has been posted on 25 different sites. Utilizing RSS has significantly cut down my aimless browsing time.


• Quicksilver behaves much like the new Spotlight feature in OS X Tiger, but I continue to use it because it seems to work a lot quicker. It's basically an application that points to programs, documents, e-mail addresses, songs--any kind of information, really--and gives you immediate access to all of them in one keystroke. For example, to open any program on my computer, I press the Apple key and the spacebar at the same time, type in the first few letters of the program and press enter. Or, if I wanted to visit a bookmarked website, I could simply type in the first few letter of the address to immediately access the site. If my browser isn't open, it is launched and the site is opened. Slick.


• M-Beat is a little application for iTunes that places playback controls in the menubar, among several other handy features.

Well, I hope you found that slightly useful. If nothing else, you were introduced to several nifty applications/plugins. I have no idea how often I'll end up posting these TechNotes, so stay tuned (if you're interested in this sort of thing).