Mac OS X es un hijo de padres muy distintos: NeXTSTEP y Mac OS. Aunque lleva menos de diez años con nosotros, en realidad su gestación ha sido bastante larga. Esta es una continuación del artículo que puedes encontrar aquí.

Se aquietan (un poco) las aguas

Entonces, NeXT ha sido comprada por Apple, estamos listos para desarrollar un nuevo sistema operativo, están todos los ingenieros de NeXT felices y dispuestos a trabajar y además, como la guinda de la torta, está un tal Steve Jobs. Al comienzo, sería solo un consejero, luego sería iCEO (CEO interino) y, bueno, todos sabemos que sigue siendo CEO (sin i) hasta ahora. Eso, hasta donde sé, se llama progreso.

Pero no son las aventuras personales de este muchacho lo que nos convoca, si no la historia de OS X.

Recordemos un poco la situación: Apple tiene un sistema operativo agónico, que ha sido mantenido durante años con medidas casi cosméticas. Sin embargo, tiene algo, una ventaja comparativa sobre todos los demás, y no es la facilidad de uso. Es QuickTime. Y no es esa aplicación media fea (recién QuickTime X tiene una interfaz agradable), si no que toda la arquitectura que hay detrás, que permitía hacer cosas bastante avanzadas. Esa ha sido una de las razones de la supervivencia de Apple. Por otro lado, tenemos a NeXT, con su sistema operativo avanzadísimo pero sin usuarios y, la verdad, sin killer apps, salvo algunos mercados como… bancos. Tenemos mercados bastante distintos, pero Apple sabe que debe satisfacer a sus usuarios o simplemente desaparece.

Es entonces cuando revela por fin cuál será la estrategia de Apple: Rhapsody.

Rhapsody in blue

¿Qué necesita Apple? Un sistema donde los usuarios puedan correr sus aplicaciones preferidas, donde esté la “joya de la corona”, QuickTime y que, sobre todo, funcione. Y eso se dedican a hacer. La estrategia de Apple entonces es:

• Portar Quicktime a NeXTSTEP.
• Crear un “entorno de compatibilidad”, que es donde correrán aplicaciones para Mac OS antiguo, aisladas (como en cuarentena) del resto del sistema.
• Hacer que NeXTSTEP se viera como Mac OS.

El resultado de esto es Rhapsody.

En otras palabras, lo que Apple haría era maquillar un poco a NeXTSTEP, darle una apariencia más maquera, incluir una copia del Mac OS clásico como un programa más, donde se correrían aplicaciones ya existentes, pero protegidas en un entorno propio llamado Blue Box. Sin embargo, lo más importante es que las aplicaciones nuevas serían programadas usando las APIs de NeXTSTEP, que ahora eran llamadas Yellow Box.

Sin embargo, eso no es toda la historia. En el artículo anterior, hablé a la pasada de OpenStep, la especificación de las APIs de NeXTSTEP, que podía ser usada en distintos sistemas operativos. Ni cortos ni perezosos, en Apple lanzaron Yellow Box for Windows (y después decían que se congeló el infierno con iTunes). Efectivamente, como una manera de tentar a los desarrolladores, la idea era que podían escribir su software para mac y que además funcionara en Windows, lo que obviamente haría que sus ventas aumentaran y todos felices.

Y esto puede haber sido así para los desarrolladores pequeños, que de repente verían crecer su mercado. Pero el punto es que las aplicaciones nuevas debían ser hechas usando Yellow Box. Primero, usaban un lenguaje distinto y poco conocido, interfaces de programación distintas, pero sobre todo y por lejos, los grandes desarrolladores no aceptaron.

Y claro, cómo iban a aceptar. Imagina, por ejemplo, reescribir todo Photoshop desde cero. No sólo eso, si no que tendrías que confiar en que Apple haría funcionar Yellow Box en Windows o, si es por eso, que sacaría Rhapsody. Estamos hablando de Apple, la que en 10 años no pudo hacer un sistema operativo decente. Y de todas formas, si no salía Yellow Box para Windows, tendrías que reescribir todo lo que tenía que ver con la interfaz de usuario, una vez para Windows y otra para Rhapsody. Lo mismo Microsoft, con Office (una vez, consultado si desarrollaría para NeXTSTEP, Bill Gates declaró que “se mearía en NeXTSTEP”).

Resultado: un palmo de narices para Apple. Otra vez se quedaban sin estrategia para un sistema operativo.

Interfaces usuales pero no tanto

Antes de seguir con las desventuras de Apple, veamos un poco cómo era Rhapsody.

Rhapsody booteando. ¡Notemos el ancestro de la pelotita de playa!

El Workspace Manager, más conocido actualmente como Finder. Hasta antes de Snow Leopard, siempre hubo un grupo de gente que pedía a Apple que por favor rehiciera el Finder usando Cocoa (en Snow Leopard lo hicieron). Pues bien, esto fue lo más parecido a eso. Podemos notar varias cosas del screenshot, por ejemplo la manera casi orgullosa en que avisan que fue hecho usando Yellow Box. También un detalle raro, se ve como Mac OS, pero no totalmente. Por ejemplo, los bordes de la pantalla cuadrados (hasta Tiger, incluyéndolo, eran redondeados). No hay dock, pese a que NeXTSTEP lo tenía y OS X también.

Notas Adhesivas en Rhapsody.

Preferencias del sistema. Notemos un comportamiento curioso: en Rhapsody, como en NeXTSTEP, los menús se pueden “despegar” y mantener aparte.

La conversión no era completa: Algunas ventanas seguían con el mismo look and feel que NeXTSTEP.

Las vistas del Find… Workspace Manager (ciertamente, un nombre demasiado largo). Estas seguirían siendo las mismas hasta que se añadió CoverFlow en Leopard.

¡Yellow Box for Windows en acción!

Arqueología maquera

Ahora, todo eso es muy bonito, pero seguro que ya no tiene nada que ver con lo de hoy, ¿no? Pues no. Estas tecnologías forman la base de OS X como lo usamos ahora. Claro, ha habido un montón de cambios entre medio, pero la base del sistema sigue manteniendo cosas de Rhapsody y NeXTSTEP.

Como un pequeño ejemplo, les dejo una aplicación que hice para acompañar este artículo. Las imágenes que aparecen no están dentro de la aplicación, si no que están dentro de Cocoa, es decir, del sistema operativo. Algunas de estas imágenes son de los tiempos de NeXTSTEP, es decir, no las borran desde 1994. Por eso el nombre, Arqueología, pues eso es lo que hace, básicamente, mostrar fósiles. Pueden descargarla aquí.

Para terminar, en el próximo episodio, veremos por fin qué hizo Apple para lograr sacar OS X. ¡Saludos!

Genius, genius, genius

Here’s a video that’s been making a lot of “buzz” around the internet. Pretty funny.

Also, this one is worth a look. Enjoy!

You can now stream and download the new Chad Sharp single, “Diva” on Rhapsody. The song is a funky, dance track from the upcoming CD that will be released in 2010.

CHAD SHARP: Diva

Fonte: http://attivissimo.blogspot.com

Awesomeness

Seriously. This is pretty painful. But also fascinating. Um, just watch it. All of it. The Kermit part at the end is worth the wait … I think.

I just realized that this is the day Freddie Mercury died in 1991. I cannot deal with this being my blog tribute to him, so here is a much, much better tribute to him, and the real version of this fabulous song:

I will also enclude my favourite cover of it – it’s fabulous:

The promise of the digital revolution in the music industry takes another step forward with the creation today of Interscope Digital Distribution (IDD), by Interscope/Geffen/A&M Records.

Through http://www.interscopedigitaldistribution.com/, IDD will work in conjunction with TuneCore to distribute new and independent artists’ original music for sale on such leading retailers as the iTunes Store, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3, Shockhound, eMusic, and Napster, among many others worldwide.

IDD adds a fresh twist to the digital distribution model for independent music by offering unsigned artists a unique opportunity to reach the ears of A&R executives all while providing them complete freedom of choice. Interscope/Geffen/A&M’s top A&R staff will closely monitor the IDD service as a way to discover great talent. By signing on for distribution specifically through IDD, artists will have the chance to gain their attention. A number of artists may then be selected for development deals.

IDD is digital DIY done right – giving music artists a platform for self-expression, allowing them to retain all of the profits from their efforts, and presenting an opportunity for them to access the resources of a major record company.

So I am releasing my new single, “Rock Your Body” online. I am working on a new full CD, but I wanted to drop some sneek releases, so I am doing an online single with “Rock Your Body.” I decided to use CDbaby.com and do just a digital release. This is a pretty slick setup they have. All you have to do is send them 1 CD and artwork and they will digitize your music and art and make it available to a huge number of online dowload sites…iTunes, Rhapsody, Emusic are just the tip of the iceberg. They also make your songs for sale on their site, which generates quite a bit of traffic. I was able to release the single for a total of $55…. $35 for the sign up fee and $20 for a barcode for the project. I just mailed the CD Monday…so it will be a little bit before the song is up online, but I have always been pleased with CDbaby. They send out royalty checks promptly and they really do get your music out and heard on the net. I spent $55 for 1 song, but that amount could apply to getting your whole CD worldwide digital distribution….gotta love technology. Now go look for “Chad Sharp” online and buy some damn music!

I am super excited to let everyone know that I have been working on some hot new dance remixes with Tori Fixx.  I am working on a remix of his song, “Hey Bartender.” The remix is pure fire with a driving dance groove underneath Tori’s heat. I can’t wait til it gets out into your iPods and on the dancefloor! Tori is also taking some of my new songs from my upcoming CD and doing some blazing hot remixes! I am super pumped to hear what kind of magic that Tori whips up in the studio. Both Tori and I are producer/artist/remixers now in Minneapolis, although Tori may be making the jump to LA to expand his music.  I have my Minneapolis studio here where I produce my own music as well as pump out projects for other singer and songwriters. If you want to hear some music from Tori Fixx or Me, Chad Sharp….just search for us on iTUnes, Google or Rhapsody. We have some hot music online!

Un año y pico después de escribir un post en el que estuve buscando un poco de información sobre el estado actual de la banda, que llevaba sin dar señales de vida desde hace prácticamente un par de años, la banda al fin vuelve a la escena bajo la mano de Nuclear Blast (la causa precisamente de todo este tiempo sin noticias de Rhapsody ha sido la anterior discográfica de éstos, la Magic Circle Music).

Así pues, el próximo 5 de marzo será la fecha en la que aparecerá el nuevo álbum de Rhapsody of Fire, “The frozen tears of angels”, que contendrá, entre otros temas, Sea of fate, Raging Starfire y Reign of Terror. Según declaraciones de la banda, la intención del nuevo álbum es volver un poco al sonido más duro de la banda (cabe recordar que los 2 últimos discos se caracterizaron por una menor presencia de guitarras, y más medios tiempos que canciones rápidas).

Esperemos que tras estos 3 años de descanso vuelvan con las pilas puestas y con un trabajo a la altura de cualquiera de los anteriores al Symphony of Enchanted Lands II.

Web oficial: rhapsodyoffire.com

Quest’oggi Real Networks ha firmato un accordo triennale con l’operatore mobile SFR, il più importante carrier telefonico francese. Il servizio è attivo da ieri ed estende la copertura di Real che attualmente serve in Austria (con Mobilkom A1), Vodafone in 9 paesi tra cui Inghilterra, Irlanda, Portogallo, Germania, Italia, Grecia, Olanda, Romania e Spagna.

Complessivamente Real Network è disponibile attraverso 84 operatori mobili, in 45 paesi, rendendoli disponibili ad un bacino d’utenza complessivo pari a 860.9 milioni di abbonati.

L’intero catalogo Wondermark è disponibile su Real Networks, dal 2007.

THE FAME MONSTER is available to stream exclusively at Rhapsody’s The Leak this week before release! Gaga’s new album is out this Monday, November 23rd but head over to Rhapsody for your exclusive first listen! You can also check out all of the songs from The Fame Monster including “Bad Romance & “Telephone” feat. Beyoncé this week on MTV & VH1!

Giovanni Mesa didn’t let his insurance lapse on purpose. He said his insurance was canceled because automated payments stopped when his checking account was hacked. Mesa said he didn’t even know about it until he got cancer. He was diagnosed with Stage 2 lymphoma.

This Saturday, November 14th a Silent Auction / Game Night will be held from 5:00pm – 11:00pm to help offset medical bills at

The Rhapsody Wedding and Reception Hall 2322 East R.D. Mize Road  Independence, MO 64057

This moving documentary follows 6 months in the life of a young (uninsured) man diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. No worries; he’s a strong soul who prevails. Wonderfully choreographed with an inspiring message for all.  Thanks, Gio, for sharing with us all. Your determination is a lesson we can all learn from.    Watch The Film

Thanks and credit to HawleywoodFilms and KMBC NEWS for the contents of this post.

Email to a friend

of a movie. I’ve got it! I’ve been contemplating my obsession with the first 15 seconds of the title track of More Adventurous. At first I thought I just loved slide guitar, but that’s only part of it. The truth is that this song, or at least the sound in the intro, is perfect for the ending of that heartwarming indie flick. You know, all of Wes Anderson’s flicks (well his flicks aren’t really indie anymore, I don’t even know what classifies as indie anymore. Whatever); Eternal Sunshine; You, Me, and Everyone We Know; etc. I was thinking, “this is exactly the sound that describes home” except that made no sense since I don’t live on a farm. And then it finally clicked, and now I know why it makes me feel so good. Those damned movies.

Couldn’t find it on youtube, but it’s worth the illegal download, or purchase if you’re legit, or, in this case, one of your free plays on Rhapsody (just scroll down, click “More Adventurous”, ignore the popup, and then click play on the player above).

http://www.rhapsody.com/rilo-kiley/more-adventurous–brute-beaute-wbr

Google has turned its attention to music with three new services that will benefit both fans and artists alike.

Now when Google users run a search for a music-based topic such as an artist, song title or lyrics, they will receive search results including links to audio previews of songs provided by one of Google’s new partners Lala and MySpace’s iLike. After listening, users can purchase songs through links appearing alongside the song previews.

Have you ever heard a song you liked but did not know its artist? Google has solved this longstanding annoyance by implementing a lyrics search feature, allowing users to type a few lines from a song and receive its song title and artist information along with the aforementioned song previews. As if these new features weren’t great enough already, Google has partnered with Pandora, iMeem and Rhapsody to help users discover new music based on their current favorite artists.

These new services are Google’s attempt to tap into the large market of users searching the web for music-related content, which according to Google, amount to 2 out of the top 10 searches on Google today. And, while each of Google’s new music partners offer great services individually, having them all consolidated and incorporated into Google searches is a more convenient way for users to find and purchase music online. This convenience, along with greater accessibility to legal licensed music, are both paramount when illegal music file sharing continues to be commonplace.

Source

As health agencies rush to analyze data, some companies prep for a pandemic

Lucas Mearian

April 29, 2009 (Computerworld) As the prospect of a flu pandemic grew more likely Wednesday — the World Health Organization raised its threat alert to Level 5 — data is pouring into federal health care agencies using systems that a decade ago did not even exist.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had reported 91 cases of swine flu in 10 states. One death in Texas — a 23-month-old child from Mexico — has been attributed to the flu, and health officials expect more deaths to follow.

The swiftness with which the influenza strain has spread — and the speed with which new electronic health surveillance systems have tracked its emergence — is prompting companies to quickly dust off business continuity plans and warn workers to guard their health.

"Businesses need to take this seriously and put plans in place for personnel," said Michael Croy, director of business continuity solutions at Forsythe Solutions Group Inc., an IT consulting firm in Skokie, Ill. "They need to make sure employees can work from home. They need to tell them about how to take care of their health and be overly cautious by telling workers to stay home if they feel sick. But they also need to do it in way so as not to create panic."

The best antidote for panic is information, and disease-surveillance systems rolled out in recent years are allowing health agencies to track, report and confirm swine flu cases faster than ever. But gaps in the system remain, health care experts said.

While today’s electronic reporting systems are vastly more sophisticated than the paper-based methods used as recently as 10 years ago, many community hospitals and private physicians are still not equipped to correlate all the data coming from health providers, insurance companies and laboratories.

"We’ve gone beyond the early detection," said Doug Hamaker, who manages the data collection for infectious reportable conditions at the Texas Department of State Health Services. "I don’t think there’s a local health department around that’s not aware of the swine flu and is not aware that it either is or could easily be occurring in their local area. What we’re transitioning over to now is the use of a case-surveillance system that says for those who have an influenza-like illness … is that the swine flu variant?"

For at least 100 years, the U.S. government has required states to report potential epidemics. That system was traditionally paper-based, and it could take days, if not weeks, for information to trickle up to the CDC in Atlanta and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which coordinate health care and epidemic response on a national basis.

Accuracy in reporting remains a problem, because it depends on the sophistication of electronic systems used by local and state health agencies to quickly gather data for the federal government.

In the past few years, electronic tools have begun to transform the reporting system — reducing or eliminating the burden on doctors, nurses or medical laboratories to fill out reports on potential epidemics, according to Scott Danos, an independent consultant in Atlanta.

Danos, a former senior adviser at the CDC who retired after more than 30 years with the agency, said the basic challenge in tracking epidemics has been that patient diagnosis and treatment data comes in many forms to the local and state health agencies, which in turn must hand it off to the CDC and HHS. Those agencies have to analyze the data and then send back information to the states.

About four years ago, the CDC launched a national program called BioSense, which gave state health agencies an application that can transmit and receive epidemic data with federal agencies in near real time. The data, which comes from larger hospitals, laboratories and other health data sources, is compiled by the CDC and offers states a big-picture view of where a potential epidemic may be spreading.

For example, if a number of people going to hospitals with flu-like symptoms — or if there’s a run on a particular type of medical test — that data is reported through BioSense to the CDC from the state health agencies. The CDC then cross-references that information with data it receives from large national health care providers, pharmacies and other government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

"They then overlay it in sophisticated ways in Atlanta along with views back to every state so they can go in and query it to see what’s happening where they are," Danos said. But there is no precise data about individual patients and whether specific cases of swine flu have been confirmed. And out of the approximately 7,500 hospitals in the U.S., only several hundred are feeding into the CDC’s BioSense health data network.

In 2004, federal officials rolled out the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), which allows the exchange of specific, standards-based health data using secure Internet connections. The system data includes patient names, test results, diagnoses and treatments. To boost interoperability, NEDSS relies on standardized reporting templates that can be used with commercial software and minimizes proprietary data. Each state chooses the applications it uses to gather health care data so it can be collected in a central state-level database.

The electronic reports are far more accurate than the paper-based reports of earlier decades because of the standardization of data formats, Danos said. All states are moving toward the use a NEDSS-compliant system, according to Danos, but not all hospitals, medical laboratories or private physician practices are yet on board with the system. Just 16 states are currently live on the NEDSS reporting system.

"We have made great advancements over the last five to 10 years," said Hamaker, who is the NEDSS coordinator at the Texas Department of State Health Services. "But there’s always going to be room for improvement. There will always be new technologies and new capabilities. Am I satisfied where we are? I’m impressed in relationship to where we’ve come."

Texas and the other 15 other states on NEDSS use a product called Orion Health Rhapsody Integration Engine from Orion Health Inc., which normalizes the data coming in from health facilities for use in regional and state systems and then feeds it through the NEDSS system to the CDC.

That’s the same system a hospital will use to accept data from various departments and make it accessible in a patient’s electronic health record.

While the U.S. has moved forward with new health data surveillance systems, other countries such as Mexico don’t have systems that are as sophisticated. Without accurate reporting, epidemics can spread unchecked, even if some cases are reported up the government chain.

"We do have a lot of concern about Mexican disease surveillance — especially in a country that doesn’t have some of the penetration of high-technology surveillance systems that the U.S. has," Danos said.

Uber Operations and Pandemic Influenza: http://blog.uberops.com/2009/04/27/pandemic-flu-uber-operations/

Halloween Costume

The 8-Bit Low-Res Make-Up Is High-Res Clever

Halloween has come and gone this yea and the photos are up. This is definitely my favorite.

Low Resolution by Kindacarsick

Black Friday

It’s November and sooner that you’d like it will be Nov 27th: Black Friday. To help prepare, why not start looking through those sale ads now. Here are some links I’ve come across of leaked Black Friday Ads.

Kmart [pdf], Sears [pdf], Lowes, Old Navy [pdf], Harbor Freight [pdf], Toys R Us [pdf],

Office Max asked for there ad to be taken down, but there is a list of items and prices at Gizmodo.

via [bfads, TheBlackFriday.com, and Gizmodo]

Internet News

Internet Finally Getting Non-Latin Domain Names

The address bar at the top of your browser is filled with latin characters. Those who use the latin alphabet, we haven’t thought twice about this. But if you live in a country with a non-latin alphabet then you had to learn new characters to type in a web address. This is going to change soon, as ICANN (the group that decides on ip and addressing regulations) has decided to use native characters in the address.

If this doesn’t make sense, check out this video

Google Making search more musical

Google has partnered with MySpace (which just acquired iLike) and Lala to give you music results when you search for a song, band, or album title. The first results will have links to play the song. There will also be links to purchase the song/album directly through MySpace or Lala services. There will also be links to music discovery sites such as,  Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody.

I tried out the service on their demo site, before the release date, and it looked good. Though I am unable to get any of the same results on my searches today. The demo is down today, and I do not see the results in my regular google searches. I am not sure if I’m missing something or if the service isn’t fully released yet. ???

Google Onebox Fail

MySpace Adds Full Music Video Archives, Deep Artist Analytics

MySpace as a social site seems to continue dying but they are doing some interesting things. Their purchase of iLike seems to have worked out for them (see above post).

I’ve always wanted a video music player so that I can have a video playlist. If that feature is there I may actually use MySpace.

Web Games

Steakhouse or Gay Bar

A local rock radio station plays this game. You just guess if the name of an establishment is for a Steakhouse or a Gay Bar. Sounds simple but it’s amazingly difficult.

Internet Baby

Woman to Stream Her Child’s Birth Live on the Web

You can find just about anything you want on the web. Now you can watch a live birth. A truly amazing event, but live streaming it? Really? I guess it was just a matter of time…

Actually, this isn’t the first time.

Internet TV

BBC Planning To Launch Global iPlayer VOD Service

I am so excited about this. I watch almost all my shows online now and about 1/3 of those shows are from the BBC. It’s always been a pain to find the shows or wrestle with proxies to watch them. I can’t wait to watch the new season of Dr. Who.

Automobile Accesories

AIDA is the love child of your GPS Device and EVE (from Wal-E).

via [Gizmodo]

Arm Accesories

UIST’09: Enabling Always-Available Input with Muscle-Computer Interfaces

Look Ma’ no hands!

Improved arm mounted flame thrower

Hadouken!

Rhapsody’s Spotifydödare, som bara finns i USA just nu, verkar efter sin augustilansering i år bli en rejäl succé. Daniel Johansson på Musikindustrin skriver:

“Real Networks, som äger musiktjänsten Rhapsody, meddelar att man har sålt 500 000 nedladdningar av sin iPhone-applikation i USA. För 14.95 dollar i månaden kan användaren strömma obegränsat med musik till sin iPhone eller iPod Touch.”

Det här skulle innebära att Rhapsody håvar in 54.505.457,50kr. Varje månad.

Google Music gives users new way to search and listen as Google officially launched their new music discovery service. Google partners with labels, MySpace, Rhapsody and other make streams and MP3’s easier to find. It connects people searching for artists, songs or lyrics with free streams of tracks.

“Music is a big part of our lives. In fact, two of our top 10 queries of all time are music related,” explains the introductory video on Google Music’s home page. “We think it’s time to bring the power of our search to the music industry, so that you can not only find but also discover music.”

According to MTV news, Google has agreements with EMI, Sony, Universal and Warnor Bros. for music and Lala, iLike (owned by MySpace), Pandora, Rhapsody and Imeem for streaming and sales. Each search for a relevant artist or song yields a handful of links to free streams. (You’re limited to one full freebie per song; after that, you’re limited to 30-second snippets).

This is another from Google and this could change the way people look for and purchase music online. Cheers to Google.