Moment of Zen: Chris Rini / Feminine beauty

"Teri Polo. Oh yes, she's really quite something."

I feel she belongs a blonde. The color really suits her.

"Definitely. Although naked is always enough to not make it matter."

A very interesting little piece from Digital Chosunibo I caught a few hours ago. Apparently South Korea's aggressive investments in technological infrastructure are costing them quite a bit.

The royalties paid on foreign intellectual property clocked in at USD $3.86b, which represents an increase of just under 20% from the previous year. They are not without their own revenue streams, as USD $1.49b in royalties were generated; a 33.7% increase.

This points to something JLM and I talked about a couple months back, more specifically about China. It appears that a large amount of Asian development, because it depends heavily on technology, is generating an extremely large debt to the US intellectual property holders. Even if Asian firms like Ningbo Bird, mentioned in Wired as stealing Chinese market from US-based Motorola, much of their GDP goes into paying back borrowed technology.

Finally, I think one conclusion to draw from this is one that helps to calm the nerves of my anti-outsourcing/globalization friends. Obviously this article doesn't specifically call out moneys owed to US firms. Regardless, this trade deficit is compelling evidence that while certain types of occupations can, and therefore will be executed by the most effective provider, the spirit of American creativity is still holding a strong leadership position.

Moment of Zen: Joe Monzel / 1986 Bonneville

"Sir Sterling Moss...I could do this for hours."

"DIRTY SANCHEZ"

That's what the Stanford band is chanting tonight at their game in the newly redone Maples Pavillion.

They're playing Cal, so maybe that explains it. Realistically though, it's the Stanford band, and those fuckers can't be held accountable for much.

Their mascot is a dancing tree for fcuk's sake. Apparently at some level your financial abilities strip away a sense of dignity and reason.

Best wine ever

At first I didn't have the words to describe this.

I didn't buy this wine, but goddamn if it isn't the coolest graphic ever! I can't wait to get sodded on 47 pounds of cock.

Keynote: Special Thanks

Steve helps all of us thank the families and spouses to let us be away to work so hard.

Steve welcomes John Mayer back on stage for an accoustic performance of Daughters, the song he's been nominated for at the upcoming Grammy Awards.  The video feed shows all three of the angles on John ala iChat (complete with reflections of course).

Keynote: iPod

733,000 in holiday of 2003. 4,500,000 in holiday of 2004.

That represents a 500% growth year-over-year, and represents 10m sold total, with 8.4m in 2004. Steve holds up the 10 millionth iPod produced, which will be kept instead of sold.

Amazon's top 5 consumer electronics products, three of which are 20G iPod, silver iPod mini, and the iTunes gift card.

iPod adapters will now be available this year from Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Volvo, and Scion. In Europe Alfa Romeo and Ferrari will also have adapters. Mercedes has brought two new cars (the new SLK and CLS) with adapters on the show floor.

Steve show some slides of new Motorola phones and the iTunes client on them.

"But there is one more thing..."

Jan 2004, iPod had 31% market share, and flash held 62%, and "the wannabes" held 7%. Now iPod has doubled it's market share, but we want to go after the remainder.

Most flash devices use disposable batteries, tortured user interface, and very small displays. "And then we saw it...it was clear as a bell...shuffle."

The iPod shuffle is smaller than most packs of gum, weighs about as much as four quarters (<1oz), and has a simple click wheel (and no display). It has a cap hiding a USB 2 port, and a 12 hour battery. There's also a lanyard that uses the cap interface to wear it around.

"But that's not the whole story." iTunes now features an Autofill button to pick a playlist to precisely fill the iPod shuffle. It also allows for disk use for quick data transfer. iPod shuffle will come in both 512MB ($99) and 1GB ($149), and they will ship TODAY!

There are Apple accessories, including an armband, a dock, a sport case, and a surplus battery pack (uses AA). All of these will be $29 and will ship within the next four weeks. Steve now shows off the new TV Ad, with similar styling, dancers and with a giant shuffle symbol (two crossed arrows) swirling around.

Steve asks us all to thank everyone who's breaking their backs to make these unbelievable products.

Keynote: iTunes

iTunes is selling 1.25m songs every day.

Over 1m prepaid iTunes cards have been sold since Thanksgiving. iTunes essentials have been overhauled, and are much easier to work with.

Keynote: Hardware

"Today we think we know what they have in mind...it's called the Mac mini."

It has a slot-load combo drive, also FireWire, USB 2, Ethernet, etc. It's no bigger than a dessert plate and half the height of an iPod mini. It comes without a display, a keyboard, or a mouse. It's running Panther and iLife '05 and it costs $499 and $599 with 40 or 80 gigs of storage. Available January 22nd. The shipping box is the size of a goddamn lunchbox.

"The newest and most affordable Mac ever. So what's next?"

Keynote: Software Part Two

Time to get some iWork done.

iWork's got two applications in it, the first being Keynote 2, featuring the animated text and graphics from this Keynote.  It also includes new slide animations, new themes, a presenter display with timers and on-deck slide views.  Keynote 2 now supports Flash and PDF output.

The totally new app is Pages, includes 40 Apple-designed templates, in the same vein as Keynote.  Family newsletters, restaurant menus, surf school brochures, as well as basic letters are included.

Phil comes on stage to demo Pages, which shows a drop-down template menu on startup.  Templates are organized by type, and Phil chooses a family newsletter.  Text and photos are already there, and Phil simply changes the text while typography stays the same.  He opens a tray that accesses his iPhoto library.  He drags a photo and the text resizes and shifts automatically.  Each document can add multiple pages with unique formatting, this time with mostly text and a table object in the middle.  Phil then selects two columns from the column tool.  (Sidenote: When the feed changes to show a system screen and Phil/Steve, the video reflections are rendered like iChat).

iWork will be $79 and be available on January 22nd.

Keynote: Software Part One

"2005 is going to be the year of high definition video."

He introduces Final Cut Express HD, which includes LiveType, Soundtrack, and accepts datafiles from iMovie and Motion.

Next is iLife, and iLife '05 with major upgrades to almost every app. iPhoto offers better organizing & searching, more format support, greater editing abilities, advanced slideshows, and new book designs. New Project folders can contain multiple albums. A calendar view will show your library by date. MPEG-4 movies are now supported, and RAW image formats. Editing includes an album crawl along the top, an editing dashboard containing advanced settings like histograms, saturation, temperature, and tint. New slideshows can manage transitions and timing individually.

Demoing iPhoto with 25,000 photos, Steve shows a folder containing multiple albums. Next he searches for 'Lake' which searches photo tags. He then looks at January and June 2004 using the new calendar view, then drilling down to weeks and days. Double-clicks an MPEG-4 video to play it. Next he edits a couple photos in realtime using the editing dashboard. Next he uses the straigten control to level out a sunset shot!

Slideshow controls include different transitions for each photo, with the Ken Burns effect in some places.

New book drop-down menu with picture books, travel, watercolor and some others. iPhoto asks whether Steve wants to do layout manually, but instead he chooses to have it done automatically. He moves from book to edit mode effortlessly. Books now come in softcover, 8x6 softcover, and 2.5x2.5 pocketbook, and all are 20 pages.

iMovie is now much faster, works with MPEG-4 video, and Magic iMovie which automates the entire editing process. It also includes high definition editing (720p and 1080i)!! Now demoing iMovie with high definition video, showing a Hawaiian wedding with wide aspect ratio and flawless quality.

Now Steve shows the Sony HDV camcorder ($3499), "I've been playing around with this thing for a month, and...you just gotta go get one of these." Steve welcomes Kunitake Ando, President of Sony, on stage. Kunitake: "It's very exciting to see real Steve Jobs, making presentation." Steve is recording Kunitake with his HDV camcorder. "Steve is a big fan of Sony products, not all of them, but most of them." (Sidenote: Steve's water bottles now have their Smart Water branding on them, whereas in the past they were stripped.) Kunitake goes on, "HDV format allows recording and playback of HD video, on existing DV tapes." Steve and Kunitake shake hands as Kunitake leaves the stage.

iDVD now includes new themes, animated drop zones, and support for all burnable DVD disc formats. Demoing iDVD shows photos and videos being animated across the menu. Other new themes include are varied and gorgeous, with more media element animation, especially an infant mobile animation.

Garage Band also includes a fourth Jam Pack with Orchestral instruments. New features include 8 track realtime recording, realtime music notation, pitch and timing fix, make your own loops, and a few others.

John Mayer comes on stage to play piano, while Steve shows the realtime music notation (the note graphics resize in realtime also), and drags the note graphics to change the tune. John and his backup bass player start playing, and Steve records John's guitar, the bassist's bass, John's vocals, and the backup vocals simultaneously. Steve plays back part of the recording, isolating individual tracks at random.

"These apps work together seamlessly in iLife '05...it goes on sale January 22nd." (For $79).

Keynote: Updates

Updates on Apple Retail (101 stores), iMac (5 out of 5 by PC Magazine), and OSX Tiger (shipping 1H 2005).

No time for a full Tiger demo (good sign), but he showed slides for Spotlight, comparing it to Google Desktop search and MSN search. Because Spotlight is built into the core, it's obviously more effective.

Spotlight search for Soccer returns Excel docs, images, PDF docs, and direct access to contacts and their data elements (phone, email, etc.)

Spotlighting 'Love' brought him to a bug, and he flips a switch saying, "We've got a little bug here. That's why we have backup systems."

Spotlight tech is used to generate Smart Folders, similar to Smart Playlists or Albums.

Spotlight is also built into System Preferences, which finds the elements that match within various prefs.

Next app is Mail, which is also powered by Spotlight. He searched for 'soccer' in his email, and created a Smart Mailbox based on his search. In the header of an email containing photos, he punched a new Slideshow button, which launches a fullscreen slideshow, with controls like seeing all photos (Expose style) or adding a photo to iPhoto automatically.

Next app is QuickTime 7, which offers 24 channel surround sound, full HD playback, and H.264. This codec has been adopted by both the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray groups. Next he demoed QuickTime by playing the House of Flying Daggers trailer, resizing and showing the on-screen controls (like iPhoto slideshow controls).

Next app is Dashboard, which finds small utilities fast, like Expose for finding windows. New Widgets include a conversion utility, a dictionary and thesarus, a flight tracker, translator, Yellowpages, and weather.

Demoing Dashboard, Widgets appear on top of the screen, and the Widget library appears as a tray below the Dock, then launched Dictionary, flight tracker, stock tracker, and translator. Unit converter shows speed, currency, and after looking at the dollar->euro exchange, closes it saying, "Maybe we don't want to look at that." Weather widget has illustrations for every weather type, including an animated wind graphic!

Final app is iChat, which extends audio and video conferencing using H.264 (duh). Next he demoed iChat, vidconning with the ever-hot Danneka, Phil, and Scott. Fullscreen mode really gives you a sense of place, plus the virtual reflections on the 'tabletop.'

MacWorld ye bastards

Wake up, it's time for The Steve Show! Check in later for updates throughout the Keynote, unless my phone dies on me from excitement.

Someone in France thought it would be interesting to see if a German Shephard would tell the difference between a Sony AIBO and another dog. Trouble was, they thought it would be cool to test while offering the Shephard a fine cut of meat. I think the result is clearly the same no matter if it's a robotic dog or a full-grown human; don't fcuk with a dog and his food. Apparently even Sony can't find smart French people. Link.

Team Zissou shoes

Below is the email I just sent to Adidas requesting that they market and sell a shoe as seen in The Life Aquatic.

Send a similar email and maybe we can all be members of Team Zissou! -----Original Message----- From: Jesse D. Lewin To: consumer.relations@adidasus.com Subject: Team Zissou shoe request Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:22:11 -0800 Please please please me by making a Team Zissou edition shoe! -Jesse

This series of photos of India before/after tsunami is pretty incredible. I've got a much larger comment on this, but I've got to get back to slingin' 'Pods, so that'll come later on today perahps. Link