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.

I have never been that into RSS feeds in the past, but today I find them extremely useful. I’ve used Google Reader on and off, and it is certainly a great place to get your RSS feeds. The problem for me was that I didn’t log in often enough, and ended up marking all the news as being read, just to avoid a tsunami of new messages. The Mail app included in Mac OS X 10.5 got me into using it as a RSS reader. I used it for a while to get feeds from my favorite places. It did the job fine.

Lately, since I started using Entourage for my email, I decided to get myself a standalone RSS reader. I downloaded the free NewsFire app for Mac. It’s terrific. It’s lightning fast, and I’ve found that all of its default preferences are spot on. I particularly like it that every time I copy a RSS feed URL in my web browser, then switch over to NewsFire, the program is ready to subscribe to the new feed without naming it or hitting Paste! If you own a Mac and like to keep track of the latest site feeds, I highly recommend it.

I heard on the news today that comedic legend George Carlin died yesterday at the age of 71. He was the greatest comedian I have ever seen. I credit a lot of my personality, humor, and my frequent use exaggeration to the style and delivery of George Carlin. I watched his HBO specials from the late 1980s onward. I even saw him perform live in Raleigh, NC in the late 1990s. Never have I laughed so hard as when I listened to him on stage. I’m saddened that he is gone.

Hearing of his death brought to mind an excellent quote of his. In one of his past routines, he explained how language is crafted with the intention to shape people’s thoughts and ideas. He cited that, “At some point in my life, toilet paper became ‘bathroom tissue’.” He went on to say that people had an extreme fear of aging, and how obnoxious it was for people to use phrases like, “80 years young”. The particular quote I’m thinking of came at the end of that speech: “Now, Thanks to the fear of death in this country, I won’t have to die…..I’ll ‘paaassssss aaawwwaaayyy’.” As you imagine, he said it quite mockingly. Too bad he really has “passed away”. He was the absolute greatest.

What is this world coming to? I happened to notice that the #1 music video on the VH1 countdown is a new song from New Kids on the Block! Do what? When did this happen? Not only am I baffled that someone invested money in their careers, but I’m stunned that this somehow rose to be the #1 music video on VH1. You have to be kidding me! It’s 2008, for cryin’ out loud! Is it April Fools?!

I have taken quite a liking to Entourage 2008, part of the Office 2008 suite for Mac. I didn’t have much experience with its 2004 predecessor. It is quite a robust application. I don’t use most of the advanced features included with it, but it does everything that I normally would do using Mail, iCal, and Address Book. The difference is that Entourage has many more options, and I like how it all is handled by a single application instead of using three. Having the calendar built-in has me actually using it, unlike my forgetfulness to launch up iCal to add information.

I’ll admit that a cold launch of Entourage is noticeably slower than the other programs. I did a memory test of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, and they totaled a use of 78 MB real memory combined. Mail.app alone was using 47 MB all by itself. In comparison, Entourage, after extensive use, used 78.5 MB of real memory — Roughly the same as the combined others.

At first run, my Mail data was imported with ease into Entourage. The address book was not so easy, and ended up doing most of it by cut/paste. I wasn’t able to find an exporter that would arrange my data so that Entourage would be happy with it. There is a sync option in Entourage for the Mac Address Book, but I didn’t try it.

In Entourage, I like the flexibility in assigning categories and rules to my mail. There is so much you can customize. Data searches are powered by Spotlight, which are lightning fast. I like how I get a message preview popup when mail arrives. That said, it would be nice if Office would use Growl as an option for popups, but it works just fine as-is. Personally, I like how Entourage stores all of my data in a single file on the hard drive, but this does create a burden with Time Machine. A single change of any kind to your information in Entourage will cause Time Machine to back up the whole Entourage data file again the next time it comes around. (This is one reason I chose to set Time Machine to backup manually.)

One possible annoyance to me is that there is no simple way to “auto Bcc” myself, or another address. I like to shoot a copy of my outbound mail to Gmail, so I can store it there, too. The only way to do this, that I’ve seen, is to create a Rule to redirect outgoing mail to another account. It does work, but it creates a duplicate message in your Sent mailbox for every piece of mail you send out. I can’t figure out how to automatically delete that extra copy, either.

My liking of Entourage mostly boils down to the fact that when I was a Windows user, I preferred Outlook 2003 to any other client. Entourage is the closest match to that on the Mac. It may not always behave in the same way that you have come to expect from Outlook, but it is a very powerful application in its own right. I plan to use Entourage 2008 exclusively for the near future on my Mac.

I’ve used sites like Facebook and MySpace for a couple of years now. I used to log on when I got a notification email from one of the sites, which was only occasionally. I don’t do very much on MySpace anymore. I mostly just maintain my profile as a way for old friends to find me. My habits on Facebook have typically been pretty much the same since I signed up long ago.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m hooked on Facebook! I prefer it to MySpace by about 10-to-1. I’ve become addicted all all of the apps you can add to Facebook. I’ve come to enjoy apps like: Word Challenge, Pieces of Flair, The Hatchery, Super Wall, Battle Masters, SimmBook, and so on. I find myself signing in several times a day to check up on things and to boost my standings.

The recent addition of integrated instant messaging in Facebook has only sweetened the deal. It works very well. I like being able to see at a single glance if I have any friends online, regardless of what page I’m viewing on the site.

While MySpace has grown stale to me, Facebook is evolving. I’ve read a few articles predicting a type of “Facebook fatigue” would eventually set in for most users. So far, for me, this has not been the case.

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.

I’ve recently started watching an awesome new cooking show with Sam Zien called Just Cook This. It’s on the Discovery Health Channel. It’s a totally different kind of cooking show. Sam is a very casual, laid back guy who cooks out of his own house. He pokes fun at the typical TV food show, and is not your conventional host. Most importantly, this show introduces new ways of cooking very simple dishes, in both a healthy and easy way. Almost all of the foods that Sam cooks are ones that I’d certainly try at home on my own. This guy doesn’t talk over your head, or try to impress you with fancy dishes. He’s just a regular guy showing you simple ways to cook your own meals and manage your food. Check it out sometime!

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.