YourMacLife
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TUAW guests on Your Mac Life... right now
If you're not watching the presidential debate tonight, and you feel like more Mac news is what you need, then pop over to Shawn King's Your Mac Life show -- live now, 8:30 pm ET -- and tune in for MacBook discussion and more. I'll be on the show for the segment starting at about 9:20 pm to discuss your responses to the loss of Firewire on the MBs and more. Your Mac Life is online at yourmaclifeshow.com and is streamed in QuickTime for your listening pleasure. Update: The show archive is here -- thanks Shawn, and sorry about the coughing.
MacAddict Magazine to be renamed Mac|Life
Near the top of my list of the dumbest things I've heard today, Macworld reports that MacAddict is being relaunched as Mac|Life, thanks to some genius at Future US, the humorous and handy Mac-themed magazine's current publisher. The Macworld article points to a recent job posting on the SF Bay Area craigslist for a new Editor-In-Chief, which confirms the "rebranding" and indicates that the newly named mag will be on the stands in Spring 2007.I haven't followed any of the goings-on over at the-magazine-soon-to-be-formerly-named-MacAddict, so I don't know what's prompted this name change, but I am pretty convinced that it's still a bad idea. Aside from the fact that it ticks off Shawn King, who leads the similarly named Your Mac Life, the long-running Mac radio webcast, it makes the mistake of putting a silent "|" in the middle of the name! I hate that. It's fine for a logo or title treatment but you can't just go around inserting random characters into names that you want to roll off people's tongues. MacAddict was a perfectly good name and fitting for its readership and fans. And according to Wikipedia, "As of June 2006, the magazine has the second largest audited total circulation in North America among Macintosh-focused magazines (with a rate base of 110,000), after Macworld, as well as the second-largest audited newsstand sales." Why mess with a good thing? Will that "|" really boost circulation even more? I think not. As for the confusion in having a Mac|life and Your Mac Life in the same niche market, it appears the lawyers are about to get involved, based on this statement King gave to Macworld. "We're not happy about the name change. They've know about us and the similarity of the names is too close for comfort." We are consulting lawyers as to what our next move will be."And every time a lawyer's phone rings, an angel gets his wings.
Rearview Mirror
Are you incredibly paranoid? Do you have a Mac with a built in iSight, or other webcam attached?if you answered yes to both of those questions then Jay Curtis, part of the team behind Your Mac Life, has whipped up Rearview Mirror just for you. It simply pipes the video signal from the webcam installed on your Mac to a small, looping Quicktime movie so you can always see when someone is sneaking up on you.This little app is more a testament to how easy it is to develop such things on the Mac than it is useful.
Let's go to Macworld and get married!
Isn't it sweet when geeks fall in love? You may know Shawn King as the host of the great Your Mac Life internet radio show. You may not know that he met his wife-to-be at the Macworld expo of three years ago, and got engaged at last year's expo. How else could you possibly wrap up this story than with a Macworld wedding? A host of notables from the Mac community will be in attendance when Shawn and his bride tie the knot at the end of this week, including Chris Breen on piano, David Pogue (who will give away the bride) and Andy Ihnatko (who will actually perform the ceremony; he's a deputy marriage commissioner in the State of California). Good luck, you crazy kids![Via Cult of Mac Blog]
