Mother Google had a macrumors.com thread listed discussing this very thing. Couple of people mentioned Max from sbooth.org. Downloaded the Universal binary, set it up to export to the first MPEG-4 listed with High quality at 256kbits/sec. Converted the file in less than 30 seconds (2.4Ghz Macbook Pro) and the result was happily imported into iTunes.

Best bit? Max converts to/from many, many formats, and is completely free (GPL)!

They paid what they thought was a reasonable price for the goods.

A mere two months on and Apple have dropped the price an astonishing $200. And dropped the smaller of the two models.

Some customers who bought the device most recently may be able to claim money back but Apple Chief Steve Jobs has publically stated that wholesale refunds are not an option. The forums are full of fuming customers who’ve wasted $200.

I guess being forced to wait because I’m outside the USA might have it’s advantages after all. Doesn’t make up for all the price hikes after the currency is converted though…

Edit: Steve Jobs probably just read this post. He’s made an announcement offering $100 store credit for every early iPhone adopter.

There are times when it is prudent to self-censor.

Then there’s this chap’s bug report.

Edit: Now links to the https web site as the non-ssl version now redirects to Gnome.org home page probably due to digg.com traffic.

Of all the “goods” he has helped to manufacture perhaps the most rediculous is the “toothpick dispenser”. But I’ll leave you to judge yourselves.

It is perhaps the ultimate job. Sit there and earn money. I checked and found nothing like it down the local job centre.

While on Wednesday prison officers across Britain were on an unofficial strike over pay and conditions the inmates at Whatton decided that rather than behave in a manner unbefitting a human being, they would in fact sit still and wait for their guards to return. Apparently the prison Governor Peter Wright noticed this and decided a £2 (US $4) bonus payment should be awarded to each one.

Now paying prisoners is not without precedent. They can earn money (up to £8 per week) by cleaning and gardening and other essential yet not exactly risky or exciting jobs. But rather unsurprisingly the Prison Officer’s Association isn’t welcoming the idea of paying them for doing precisely what any normal human being would be expected to do under similar circumstances.

Glyn Travis, Assistant Secretary of the Association told the BBC it was “absolutely despicable“.

Can’t really argue with that conclusion…

I might however argue that if the UK Government felt it had some spare change:

• Could I have some money for paying my bills? On time, naturally.
• Could I have some money for going to the gym to try and keep healthy?
• Could I have some money for mowing the lawn?
• Could I have some money for yawning and going to bed?

Oh, and if you like that, check out the gorlilla advertising Cadbury Daily Milk chocolate bars. Phil Collins never looked so good!

With most comments clearly frustrated at Microsoft creating new applications while the long awaited Mac Office 2008 is delayed Microsoft responded in typical style asking for patience and promising previews from September.

Perhaps I can offer an alternative posting, one which would have had a slightly more positive effect. Here goes my attempt at a Microsoft announcement spoof.

An Office 2008 Update

Here at the Mac Business Unit we’re excited to be releasing a few screenshots of what we’ve been working on, and a little explanation on why it has taken so long to get where we are today.

Firstly you will be aware that our last Mac Office release was before Apple moved it’s hardware to Intel processors. You will also be aware that our colleagues on Windows Office recently released their newest version to retail. Both of these developments have led to considerable upheaval for Mac Office.

Let me explain the end product first.

Gone is the old interface, in comes a clean, fresh one based on the functionality of Windows Office. Compatibility is very important to us, so pretty much everything in the Windows interface is here now on the Mac version. Additionally we have some further interface improvements now on Mac which will be making their way across to Windows in the future. We also believe that products on Mac should look and behave like other Mac products, so we’ve included a completely native interface too. Whichever way you want to work, just select the right interface for you.

Entourage, our Mac Office mail and communications application, is now fully compatible with the latest Exchange server. We use Exchange all the time and this was one of the most obvious requirements we heard from customers. It is done. Don’t worry, you can still use IMAP and POP 3 mail servers. RSS and ATOM support is also there. Pretty much everything you can do in the latest Windows Outlook can be done in Entourage.

Word for Mac has seen significant improvements too. No longer is it just a word processor, today it can create pretty awesome looking web pages with tabular data from Excel and interactivity provided by PowerPoint. Far more to be discussed soon.

PowerPoint now has modules that are no longer tied to PowerPoint. Think of creating a nice graphical interactive presentation then exporting as a series of web page fragments with Silverlight for rich user experiences.

And Excel? The basics are there and improved with larger spreadsheet support, more mathematical functions and far faster. More than that though new wizards allow you to create documents that serve common purposes far faster. As a specific example, the PivotTable system is now far easier to understand and use. The presentational aspects are also far improved.

Clearly the specifics of our improvements are to come, but I wanted to give at least a few clues on what to expect in 2008.

Now a little look at why things have taken so long.

With Apple hardware moving to Intel and Office being given a new release on Windows, the Mac Office and Windows Office groups got together early on to discuss compatibility and came to the conclusion that as far as technically possible our code should be one and the same. So today we announce that aside from required platform differences and “a few” improvements in the Mac Office over the Windows office, they are essentially the same.

What you do on one should be pretty much the same procedure as within the same application on the other platform. And it is almost all the time. The differences come mainly in areas like File Open / Save As. Integration with other non-Office applications has to be different of course but the important compatibility is there. The business logic that creates the XML for Windows Office applications is the same code as that used by Mac Office.

To achieve this level of compatibility required an unprecedented level of API work for the Mac BU. Our development staff worked with Windows Office counterparts to build API code for the Mac which Windows Office components required. You can say that some of the Windows OS APIs now run on the Mac too, although only those required to run Office. For performance reasons some of our Mac code is native, like display routines, and these are optimized for both Tiger and Leopard, just as our Windows edition has XP and Vista optimizations.

it’s by far the closest we can get for compatibilty reasons and the more technical amongst you will hopefully now understand and appreciate the timeframes we required and how we are so confident Mac Office 2008 will rock your world.

Right now we are feature-complete. Today until RTM we are testing and bug fixing, and documenting. And yes, some of our bugs are being fixed in both Mac and Windows Office together.

Moving forward releases of Office on each platform should be much closer together. Clearly being so close has additional advantages too. Here’s one: All the languages Windows Office supports are in Mac Office 2008 too. Full read/write compatibility between platforms together with backward compatibility as well.

We’re sorry it has been so long, but the we promise the wait will be worth it. Roll on with the feature previews from September.

Over To You

That’s my take on what Microsoft should have said through their blog. Specifics are a little difficult to come up with but you get the sentiment. Question is, are the specific things you’d like to see in Office 2008 aside from obvious compatibility?

Google needs no introduction but clearly needs a proper photo sharing site to pick up where Picassa leaves off. To plug their vacant video group they purchased YouTube which, so far at least, appears to be good buy. Just needs to make some money now.

Zooomr you might have heard of. For those who haven’t here’s the lowdown.

Think Flickr. You’re 3/4s there. Zooomr is privately owned, majority of shares between Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate the co-founders. Thomas is a recognised photographer and technology blogger who’s personal missions include building the largest collection of photographs of neon in the world. Kris is a web scripter who doubles as a photographer in his own right, and who’s desire to share his photographs with his friends (including non-English speakers) drove him to write Zooomr v1.

Earlier this year a new version of Zooomr went public and pretty immediately crashed their servers causing Kris directly and Thomas more indirectly a great deal of stress. Damned Dell RAID systems. Anyway, in steps Zoho offering data center space and additional technical resources. Others including Dell also realised getting Zooomr back on-line would be a PR-bonus and leant a hand or two.

Now, Zoho, who are prominently featured across Zooomr for their support, happens to be building web applications such as a word processor and spreadsheet. And Thomas reckons it’s faster than Google’s suite.

So we have Google with enormous resources and a phenomenal income but without a photo sharing web site (unlink Yahoo! who bought Flickr) plus a web application suite. Then there’s Zooomr and Zoho. Do I see options? Yes I do.

One of Zooomr’s guiding principals is that images should be free to be shared. They use Google advertising to raise cash. Slip them $20 and you’ll be a Pro user with ads disabled. They don’t want to censor you and document this matter clearly, unlike many other companies who shy away from sweeping public statements. Google are known to want to make the world’s information easy to find and access. There could be conflict here, between Google’s lawyers and Zooomr’s founders. Can it be overcome? Flickr for instance began censoring some images particularly with local laws affecting what people can see in their native country, which ended up including some of Thomas’s photos; as a result Thomas left the Flickr side completely.

Just me rambling on what is probably obvious to everyone else.