For those of you digital photography enthusiasts who use Aperture, here's a little bit of info on how I deal with going out of town with my laptop, but wanting to do the "real work" on my desktop when I get home.

Cool piece on Gizmodo about Alton Brown's favorite Kitchen hacks.

I didn't realize the Blendtec guys would do this, but it's a very cute advertisement, especially for a tech-savvy camera, like the new Olympus, which has been getting rave reviews. Watch as fearless blender, Tom DIckson, discovers there's something more to blending than destruction.

Thanks to Amanda for pointing me at this article from author/blogger JA Konrath about the future of publishing and eBooks.

A friend (Hi, Laura) asked yesterday what Nav system that I would suggest. I told her that I was still recommending the TomTom series. Let me explain why...

It is apparent now, after the airing of New Family (the second installment in Microsoft's new ad campaign), that the object of the ads is to create a more sympathetic, approachable, and perhaps even more "human" Bill Gates. My only guess here is that he's being groomed to be the personal spokesman for Microsoft in future ads. Jerry Seinfeld's character is mostly deferential to him and the ads make a point of using lines praising Gates's personal position in technology and "connection" with others. I'm still not certain that they will work, and I find the ads painfully slow and mostly pointless, but if people do end up watching them, the message might start getting through. Whether it is believed and whether any perceived softness in Gates is going to rub off positively on Microsoft is unclear. But, these ads aren't made to woo the small percentage of non-Microsoft users, but to make defending Microsoft safe again. If you're interested, Shoe Circus (the first installment) is also available from YouTube.

According to an article from PhysOrg.com, MIT researchers have found a way to inexpensively use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for use later in a fuel cell. This has a lot of promise! Read the details on the MIT site.

So, after reading through all this Vista stuff, I decided that I should blow the virtual dust off of my virtual Vista computer (thanks Parallels!), and make sure I had Service Pack 1 installed. Here are my experiences.

Just for the record, I've checked out the Mojave Experiment website (as I said I would in my previous article about it), and my expectations were met. If you look at the feature set for Vista, this is what people are experiencing here... features of the os in a controlled environment, running on current hardware with a fast internet connection. And what do they like? Not surprisingly, there are some features they like, such as "indexing of files", "fast integrated search", photo management, "being able to flip through all your windows and see them at once", making DVDs, parental controls, panoramic stitching of photos, and (repeatedly) the speed. I don't have enough experience to say categorically that you should or shouldn't use Vista, but I do know that the portrayal of Vista debunkers as "Mac users", and "people who don't get it" seems to go against the fortune 500 IT departments and Windows experts that I know who won't use it on their own machines. Maybe they're behind the curve. Maybe they're just too stoic to upgrade. Or, maybe they have too much legacy equipment and software and don't want to deal with the XP and Vista user experiences being so different. Unknown at this point, but the "Mojave Experiment" is a marketing experiment, not a scientific one (not than anyone reading this is surprised).

If you haven't already heard of the "Mojave" experiment, then you will—likely in the next few days. Microsoft, not please with the reaction so far to Vista, set out to attempt to bolster the new operating system's reputation by offering a "blind taste test" of the OS. What happened? Exactly what I would have expected to happen—in a controlled environment, with no administration and setup tasks, people actually liked Vista. Why did I expect this? More after the link...