mixing

It's been raining '80s nostalgia gadgets around here lately. Between the Lasonic iPod boombox, Plusdeck EX cassette ripper, Speak & Spell speaker mod, and buckets of Transformers tschotkes--we're just waiting for Prince and John Cusack to pull up in front of CNET in a Delorean.

Here's another gadget to throw on the '80s retro-tech heap. The Suck UK Mix Tape USB is a Flash thumb-drive cleverly masquerading as a vintage Hitachi cassette tape. No word on pricing, but the product is poised to launch in the UK in September. But why wait? This looks like a totally … Read more

Interestingly enough, those My iTunes widgets that popped up last week have a new distribution partner in the form of Widgetbox. While the widgets you'll find at Widgetbox's site are the identical to the standalone Apple widget builder you get sent to via the iTunes music store, Widgetbox also has their own widget called MixIt that will let you share your iTunes iMix on blogs and Web sites.

If you're unfamiliar with the iMix feature, it lets you publish any regular iTunes playlist to the iTunes music store for others to view, rate, and (hopefully) purchase. A … Read more

Tonight I was thinking back to the first time I visited Red Hat's office in Raleigh. Havoc Pennington (among others) was interviewing me. On my resume I had something about developing a mixed source strategy for Lineo (or maybe it was helping articulate Novell's in Developer Services - I can't remember, and I've since purged all mention of "mixed source" from anything I've written ;-).

I distinctly remember Havoc reading through my resume, and then looking up and asking with perfect, deadpan sincerity:

"Why mixed source?

I stammered out an answer, but the pride I had taken in my cleverness ("See, you give away the open source code and make money on the valuable IP!") dissipated. Completely. Forever.… Read more

In the spirit of my recently sworn allegiance to the powerhouse add-on Tab Mix Plus as the "best Firefox extension ever," I've created a resource guide for all of the features and options available in the Firefox add-on.

In a nutshell, Tab Mix Plus lets you customize nearly every detail of the appearance and behavior of your tabs without having to get into any of the about:config settings in Mozilla Firefox.

One important note: my Tab Mix Plus guide is based on the default Firefox theme. If you use a different theme, some of the Tab Mix Plus options may be affected. Also, this guide was written using Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6, which is important to note because the add-on does update semi-frequently.… Read more

Nearly every time I meet with a representative from one of the Web browsers, the questions of "Which browser do you use?" and "Why?" inevitably come up. The answer to the first is still Mozilla Firefox, like most people I know. The short answer to the second is "extensions," which is an easier way of saying "more functionality and personal customization."

The follow-up question is invariably, "What's your favorite extension?" and that's much harder, because it's not any one particular extension that makes Firefox great--it's the … Read more

Microsoft's Silverlight technology, launched at the NAB conference two weeks ago and pitched hard to developers at the Mix '07 conference this week, is being taken as a competitor to Adobe's Flash. Since it is a framework for providing rich applications to the Internet browser, it is indeed that. But though Silverlight and Flash are competing technologies, Microsoft's offering is different from Adobe's in key ways.

Silverlight is being pushed side-by-side with Microsoft's Live services for developers. Microsoft is opening up APIs (application program interfaces) for its search engine, for … Read more

The Mono open-source project will create a Linux version of Silverlight by the end of year, said Miguel de Icaza, a Novell vice president and head of Mono.

At the Mix '07 conference on Monday, Microsoft touted the ability to write Silverlight Web applications that run on Internet Explorer, Firefox and the Safari browser on Mac OS. Next up for Silverlight is an edition for mobile devices, including Windows Mobile.

Asked about plans for Linux, Microsoft executives have been non-committal, saying that it will depend on demand.

But de Icaza, who is attending Mix, was able to commit without hesitating. … Read more

Tapping into its deep development tool experience, Microsoft has shown how it intends to duel Adobe and others in an ongoing rich Internet applications race.

At the Mix '07 conference, Microsoft announced that .Net languages can now be used to write applications for Silverlight, a cross-platform browser plug-in that it's offering as an alternative to Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft also announced the Dynamic Languages Runtime, an extension to the .Net Framework that enables people to use dynamic, or scripting, languages to write Silverlight or Windows applications.

Microsoft is making the source code for the Dynamic Languages Runtime available under … Read more

At the Mix '07 developers' conference tomorrow, AOL will show off its new Vista sidebar widget built with Silverlight technology. Called the "social e-mail gadget," this new tool will let you know when your personal A-list of contacts sends you an e-mail or IM, or posts a photo or video on an AOL service.

I kind of like the idea. E-mail is too cumbersome to monitor in a widget, unless you are rigorous about creating and maintaining filters, and even standard IM buddy lists have become visually overwhelming, due to the number of contacts most … Read more