I completely agree with this New York Times article, written by Randall Stross, which suggests that a complete rewrite of Microsoft Windows is desperately needed.

Over the past several years, I’ve grown accustomed to using a split-style keyboard. It is easier on the hands, and allows me to type faster with fewer mistakes. In the past, I’ve owned a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite, both at home and at work. When I bought my Mac Mini last year, I also picked up the small Apple keyboard to go with my Mac. I ended up giving my MS Natural Elite Keyboard away.

After a year has passed, I’ve finally grown sick and tired of typing on that small, uncomfortable keyboard. I wanted a new one, preferably one that was ergonomically split. I went to Staples to buy my keyboard, as they had the best prices that I could find in a brief online search. When I got to the store, they didn’t end up carrying the old Elite keyboard, but they did have a newer, more spiffy one called the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, which conveniently was on sale.

This is the nicest, most comfortable keyboard I have ever used. It is virtually silent, and the keys fit my hands like a glove. The soft, fuzzy palm rest is a great addition, too. It came with software for Windows and Mac. I’m using it on my Mac now, and all the extra buttons work just as they should. The volume, browse forward/back, calculator, all work great. I will mention that the space bar is a little stiff when I push from the far end of either side. Hopefully that is simply because it is brand new. I’ll recommend this keyboard to anyone who prefers to compute in first class.

The final release date for Firefox 3.0 is June 17th! Don’t forget to visit SpreadFirefox and join in for the world record attempt. According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.0 has been in active development for 34 months. Firefox is a fantastic product, and I am very grateful to Mozilla and the open-source community for creating it. But 34 months strikes me as a bit ridiculous. I’d expect an entire operating system could be written in less time.

Apple needs to seriously negotiate a way to get most, if not all, of the iTunes Store tracks available as “Plus” (DRM-free) tracks. I don’t understand why Amazon has a deal with all of the record labels to provide high bit-rate, DRM-free music tracks across the board, and Apple does not. I just recently read that Napster has now followed in their footsteps. What is the deal with iTunes? Today, there are still a relatively sparse selection of iTunes Plus tracks. I’m certain that this has to do with some contracting with the record labels, but they need to wiggle their way out of that — if that’s the case.

I love iTunes, and I frequently buy the iTunes cards at places like Target, so I load up on downloads. Despite having credits from those gift cards, I’ve bought my last two albums from Amazon. You browse the music just like any other Amazon product, and use a batch downloader that they provide to get your music (For Mac and Windows). After that, the 256k MP3 files are yours to do as you please. Sweet indeed.

Until Apple offers the same, I’m afraid I’m going to have to continue buying music from Amazon. It’s a shame on Apple’s part, considering iTunes is such a big player. If others feel the same way that I do, they are going to be in trouble some day if they don’t turn this around.

I am watching the Apple keynote address at the WWDC 2008. The new iPhone features look sweet. Nice! Apple also announced that Mac OSX 10.6 is to come out in mid-2009. Wow. Leopard (10.5) just came out in October 2007, and I am using that right now. They seem determined to release yet another OS version before Microsoft can get Windows 7 to the market. Word has it that Apple is dropping PowerPC chip support in 10.6, and will continue developing with only a 100% Intel multi-core processing structure. Today, they are coding both platforms at once, to keep the old chipset alive for users who bought before Apple went all-Intel a couple of years ago. They probably want to cut that cord.

The following is my advice to Apple: Apple is riding so high today, with both the iPod and iPhone’s superstar product status. Considering that Apple and Intel are now all hugs and kisses, I would like Apple to turn the Mac OS loose for anyone to use on any Intel platform. Once 10.6 is ironed out, they could throw down the gauntlet to Microsoft and take Windows head on with the PC desktop market. The top exes at Dell have even said that they would sell the Mac OS to buyers, if Apple agreed with fair terms.

Considering my own Mac Mini is “Intel Inside”, I feel like anyone should be able to run it. Why does Apple want to fight it? Apple’s computers will still sell on their own awesome design merits. Still, I don’t think they’ll do it. Perhaps they suspect that Microsoft would yank their long-term commitment to future Mac versions of Office if they did this drastic maneuver. Who knows.

Absolutely under no circumstances install or use Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2008. After some recent slowdowns on my Dell laptop with XP, I installed Ad-Aware 2008 to scan for spyware. I have used versions of this software in the past, and I can tell you that something is terribly wrong with this new product. After it was done scanning, I checked the process manager in Windows to find that Ad-Aware was sucking down over 700MB of memory. After terminating the program, another mysterious Ad-Aware system process would start—over and over again. I simply could not get rid of it. Every time that process started, it would start out consuming 128MB of RAM, and grow sharply every 2 to 3 seconds. I uninstalled this piece of crap and erased every last trace of it. It seems Ad-Aware is just as bad, or worse, than the rogue applications it is supposed to be eliminating.

The folks over at spreadfirefox.com have started accepting pledges from users to download Firefox 3.0 the day it is officially released. So far, no concrete date for the final release has been set. They are hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the number of software downloads in 24 hours. For all the details, and global pledge totals, head to the Download Day page at Spread Firefox. I’ve pledged!

If want to try the new Firefox 3.0, and plan to copy bookmarks between different computers, there is something you should know. Firefox no longer stores its bookmarks in the traditional bookmarks.html file. It is now using some type of database system to make up Places, a new way of managing your bookmarks and browsing history. While this new system is a big step forward from the days of old, it gave me a lot of grief when trying to move my bookmarks from one computer to another.

The problem was, I had no idea about this new system. I kept trying to copy my bookmarks.html file between computers, only to find that when I loaded Firefox, the same old ones kept appearing in the browser. It took me a long time to nail down what was causing it, but after some research online, I found out that you have to go about this in a slightly different way.

First, within Firefox, choose Organize Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu. Then, export your bookmarks from your source computer. You’ll find importing and exporting options within the pull-down icon displaying a star within the Organize Bookmarks Library window. You may notice that the file size of the exported HTML file is half the size that it used to be in the past with Firefox 2. (I don’t know the technicalities of why this is, but it’s all the better.) When you get to your source computer, choose to import bookmarks and use the HTML file as the source. Done. I only wish there was an option not to duplicate existing bookmarks. I found it necessary to delete all of my old ones before importing the new ones to avoid having a duplicated mess.

I was not aware of any of this until I failed repeatedly at trying to copy my bookmarks after upgrading to Firefox 3. This may explain why the Foxmarks extension has not yet been updated to support Firefox 3.

One of the gifts that Laura bought for my birthday was a really cool device that I never knew existed. It is an iTrip add-on for my iPod, made by a company called Griffin. It is a small device I plug into the bottom of my iPod Nano that broadcasts the music from the iPod to any FM frequency of your choice. So pick a blank spot on the dial, and set it to that, and bam! It totally works. We used it in the car this past weekend on a road trip, and were able to hear hundreds of songs through the car stereo. Wow! No wires, no fuss, no muss. All the power needed is drawn from the iPod itself. Granted, the audio quality is not that quite that of a CD, it is a little brought down by the FM radio transmission, but it is still very enjoyable. Great stuff!

I’ve been using the Del.icio.us bookmarks site for a long time now, but recently decided to create a brand new account. I started from scratch and imported all of my bookmarks from Firefox. I had Del.icio.us automatically assign tags to them as they imported. It did a pretty nice job at that, for the most part. What troubled me is that it set all of my imported bookmarks to “not shared” status. This for your own privacy, I understand, but there is no option to make them shared. It appears the only way to turn them all into shared bookmarks, is to change each bookmark individually. One site I read said that Del.icio.us was working to add such a feature to change them in bulk. That site was dated back to 2005, and today, we still don’t have the option.

The available extension(s) for Firefox confuse me a little. I like using the traditional Del.icio.us Bookmarks extension, which simply puts two buttons on your toolbar (this extension still is not compatible with Firefox 3.0). At the same time, the site also has another extension, called Del.icio.us, which is much more bulky. It adds a sidebar, and integration with your local bookmarks. I don’t care for that much overlay. On top of that, while searching the site, Del.icio.us offered two local bookmarks to add to Firefox that uses some Javascript code to take you to the Del.icio.us site in a new tab, and you can add a bookmark to the page you were just viewing. Personally, I like the last approach the best. No extension is required, and it is very simple.

I do love the simplicty of the Del.icio.us site, but it feels like it’s in need of a bit of an overhaul. It is a little slow at responding sometimes, too, despite it’s lack of graphical flair. I still love it, and use it daily, it’s just that it’s starting to feel neglected by its owners. Hopefully that isn’t the case, Yahoo!