What a surprise! Apparently the so-called iPod Killer will never kill anything (except maybe some of its users?). Here are some quotes from The Chicago Sun-Times' review:

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

The overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?"

The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure.

Read the article for more about incompatibilities, DRM, pricing scheme, etc. Looks like it's the best present you can offer to someone you hate. :)

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I want one of these! Watch the demo movies, it's amazing!

(via TUAW)

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This week I introduced Mac OS X (10.3.6) to a new co-worker who had been working previously mostly on Windows and a bit on unix, but never on Mac. His machine was due for a couple days after, so I created a new user on mine and gave him a two hours tour of the whole thing. I often could say that he was quite impressed by the look & feel and the user friendliness of it!

When we were done, I asked him how he felt about switching to Mac. His answer was "Now I understand why Mac users make it a cult. I just can't wait to get my hands on it!".

Makes him another happy switcher, I guess. :)

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Virginia Tech posted a a series of photos showing the installation of their cluster of G5 Xserves (thanks to MacBidouille for the link). Beautiful!

Click for a larger view

I don't know how noisy G5 Xserves are compared to G4 Xserves, but even if they're twice as quiet, when they're all running the noise level in that room must still be breath taking! :)

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Amazon release their new search engine, A9.com.

They say: We provide a unique set of powerful features to find information, organize it, and remember it—all in one place. A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book™ results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more.

I tried it a bit and it's very nice! Some will probably complain that you must have a (free) Amazon account to benefit of all its features, but you already have one anyway if you ever bought something at Amazon. I did, so A9.com is now one of my default tabs

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MacBidouille (a French site) has this amazing photo showing the insides of the new iMac G5:

Click to see a larger version

I find it quite beautiful! Looks like it comes from some sci-fi movie.

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The new (Xserve-based) BigMac is getting ready. According to MacBidouille (in french), performance tests will start next week.

That photo is amazing! Makes you drool, doesn't it?! And this is just one row!...

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A robot developed with NSF support has built the first wall ever constructed entirely by machine, with no use of human hands.

According to the article, homes and other structures could very soon be "printed out" in one day directly from computer design software, much as ink jet printers produce documents from word processing software.

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Folklore is a new CMS devoted to collective historical storytelling. It's written in Python and will be licensed under the GPL.

But that's not the only reason why it's interesting: The first project it hosts is about Apple and the Mac. It's full of first hand stories and anecdotes about the development of the Macintosh, and the people who created it. It's very interesting to see how the Mac interface was designed, for example: Busy Being Born.

Oh, and it also has a RSS feed.

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Wired has an article about a system that prints subliminal messages on your glasses, to remind you appointments, shopping lists, etc.

DeVaul said subliminal messages aren't powerful enough to stimulate action; rather, they act as prompters -- they fill in the blanks that the wearer is already searching for. The fact that the wearer is unconscious of them is, according to DeVaul, the key to his system.

"We can never precisely know what the wearer needs to know, or when he needs to know it, and this is why the fact the messages are subliminal is so important. If the information given is not helpful at that time, it's not important because it isn't noticed," DeVaul said.

Sounds pretty cool! If it works...

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