If I were Steve Jobs (and I’m not), I would lose a bit of sleep tonight. The Amazon MP3 store is awesome. Cheaper, almost as easy as iTunes and *all* DRM-free. It helps that I love Amazon already anyway. Bought 3 6 albums so far. The nice and simple downloader app dropped them right into iTunes for me. Unless something bad happens, I go there first from now on.

I’m pretty sure I hate everything Bryan Taylor says here about Rails, Ruby, Java, Python, etc. Everything. It’s worth reading anyway, because I think he has a point. But can we all stop using the word Fanboy already?

For a time, I thought Facebook would continue to be useful. Indefinitely. With Facebook Apps opening the door to pretty much anything and everyone who’s anyone signing up, the sky was the limit. As it turns out Facebook is boring. This is what I get… Bob and Fred are now Friends. Jimmy added the I’m Useless App. You’re a Zombie! Janet is single. Compelling stuff, that. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood.

**Post removed** I’ve removed my rant about Scoble’s view of Ansel Adams. I agree with my original sentiment, but the way I said it made me sound like one of those whiny, blog-posting douche-bags that I despise so much. Think, then write, Jack.

I use Safari for day to day browsing. The only thing I miss about Firefox is the ability to load it up with useful extensions. Safari does have a few nifty add-ons available though. One of those is Concierge. Concierge adds simple drawer to Safari that can be used to manage bookmarks, collect links or simple text snippets (called notes.) It also shows your browsing history nicely collected by date and/or domain.

Just when I think I’m over my Leica fetish, there’s this. Asked how he thought of the Leica, Cartier-Bresson said that it felt like “a big warm kiss, like a shot from a revolver, and like the psychoanalyst’s couch.” At this point, five thousand dollars begins to look like a bargain. I want an M8. I can’t have one, but dammit I want one.

Yay Paul! System-dependent private messages blow in any context where the other users (aka “friends”) know who I am anyway. Hear that Facebook? If you want to contact me, me email address is . Please don’t use whatever social networking device is popular this week. Do NOT send me an email with a link to your system so I can log in and read what you could have easily included in the original message.

Jakob Nielsen has been back in the game lately with relevant, useful articles in his Alertbox column. And most of the time he’s right. His latest is Tabs, Used Right. In the post, he lists a bunch of usability guidelines for tabs. The first one, however, I no longer agree with… It uses tabs to alternate between views within the same context (not to navigate to different areas — a common mistake introduced by Amazon.

There’s this new app, Jottit, which let’s you create a simple web page with notes. We’ve got at least, oh, 43 of these already so how’s this one different? Well, it’s just so dang simple! Check it out… In fact, it seems to be little more than an exercise in UI and feature reduction. It’s like 37Signals dialed their mantra all the way up. Jottit is admittedly a nice app, but we don’t need any more online note-taking apps.

T.M. has finished his novel. I have trouble finding the energy to read a book, so I can’t even begin to fathom the persistence and dedication that it must take to write one. Congratulations Mr. Camp!

In my 30s I did almost nothing but work. I loved it. For a long time I didn’t have a laptop or a computer at home so I carried my desktop home *every night*. Fusionary was new and wonderful and nothing else mattered. Okay, Fusionary is still new and wonderful, but you know what I mean. During that whole period I was also a single parent. New parents are quick to realize that raising kids is more than just a full-time job – it’s a 24/7 commitment.

I’ve got one of Apple’s fancy new flat keyboards and it’s much better than the mushy old “crumb-catcher.” It may be for sale soon, as I just discovered the Mataias Tactile Pro. It uses the same mechanical keyswitch as everyone’s favorite, the Apple Extended Keyboard. I miss the solid, clicky-click of that old keyboard. I wonder.