Ars Technica links to an article done by the Rocky Mountain News investigating red light cameras in Denver. While I have much to say about red light cameras specifically, and even more about traffic “laws” in general, the interesting thing to me about this news comes in the last paragraph of the Ars Technica writeup; longer yellow lights make for safer intersections.
While this makes sense intellectually, it has now been verified through anecdotal evidence. Next we need to get cities to stop treating traffic violations as a source of revenue and start treating them like a safty issue.
One of the more interesting (to me) additions to the new version of GarageBand included in iLife ’09 is the Learn to Play feature. So now, not only can you put together loops, synthesized music, and your own instrumentals, you can learn to play any instrument you might want to record. Want to add a piano track to your musical opus, but don’t know how to play? Well, Learn to Play probably isn’t for you since it will take you quite a while to really learn the piano; but it’s a start!
Along with Learn to Play are Artist Lessons, where leading pop musicians will give you prerecorded instructions on how to play some of their songs on their instrument. Gizmodo has a good review of Artist Lessons, and they sound like a really good deal to me.
It’s all about the price point. At five dollars, these artist lessons are an impulse buy. Five dollars is around what you would pay for five minutes of a lesson with a less-than-average instructor in the real world. While it doesn’t give you the personalized training that another person would, it gives you enough to get started, and enough tools to improvise from the one song you learn to progress.
If I had access to iLife ’09 and a piano of sorts, I would be all over it.
(That’s right, I’m not above alliteration) Those who know me know of my love for the upcoming Palm Pre. It’s a new contender with fresh ideas in the me-too world of touchscreen phones. I love it.
Apple, however, may see things differently. It turns out that Apple has patented a lot of what we think of as basic touchscreen capabilities with the revolutionary iPhone, which I’m glad they did. It’s their right to do that as the leader in this type of technology. While the details of what exactly the Pre may be doing that infringes on the iPhone’s patents are complex, this article from Engadget lays it all out very well.
I hope Palm can get this thing out the door like they demo’d it without any major legal trouble because its new ideas deserve to be seen.
One of the sites I have in my RSS reader is TheDailyWTF.com. The site is an absolute mine of comedy jewels. It’s like Dilbert sans the bland.1
The most recent article I’ve read is just great. As you read it, picture that the guy works at Microsoft. Lovely.
1. I have a theory that Adams thought it would be funny to mimic the corporate bland feel in his comic, but I personally think it just makes the comic bland.