Dave Mancuso dot Com

Apple unveiled its online music service today. It’s great–I downloaded my first few songs already. It’ll be Windows compatible by year’s end. My favorite news coverage of this story is the Crazy Apple Rumors parody here, but if you want, I guess you could read the real announcement here.

Kevin was over and we were having too much fun. Who knew almost 30 years ago that we’d be hanging out on my back porch, smoking Hoyo de Montereys, watching 2001: A Space Odyssey on a laptop computer with a color screen almost the size of my parents first color television, and just having good conversation.

And no, I don’t smoke cigars often, although I do like to smoke a cigar on my grandfather’s birthday each year to honor his memory. Although if I were honoring him more strictly, I’d be smoking Phillie stogies every August 3rd…

This just in from the “freaky stuff is all over the Internet” department, a marriage of Beatles and Metallica songs can be found here. I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but the songs are available in MP3 format (at least until the site goes down or the lawyers sue every drop of blood out of these people).

If you’re into this kind of thing, that is.

You know you’re on Atkins when you eat some Worcestershire sauce on a steak and actually think “this Worcestershire stuff tastes kinda sweet–I wonder how much sugar is in it?”

Donald McCarty, the CEO of American Airlines, resigned amid controversy over his hidden management pension plan that was funded even after significant union concesssions. After asking and getting critical concessions from the unions, the management pension stuff surfaced. So he apologized about 50 times in a press conference (well, actually 3 or 4 times) but had to take the bullet.

I’m interested in this story because, well, is the guy a complete moron? Politically, did he really believe that he could talk his way out of this? You pull great concessions from your workers by telling them how tough things are and that “We all have to tighten our belts,” and a day later show them that you lied through your teeth? He justified the darkest nightmares of his workers–that their leaders are the enemy and couldn’t give a crap about them. It wasn’t just politically incorrect, it was blatant political suicide. It was inevitable from the outset that he would have to fall on his sword–it was the only salvageable way out of the situation for the company. If it survives at all, after a one billion dollar loss.

So the story in Red Lion School District next door in York County went national yesterday. It’s a terrible thing–people at our school knew the principal killed in the shooting.

It’s interesting to note, however, that the incident at Mechanicsburg Area School District next door in Cumberland County didn’t seem to get up there on the national media scene.

So in one story, a kid shoots and kills a principal. In the other, a kid throws firebombs at the school and tries to throw gasoline on an administrator, but fails to kill anyone. Is part of the problem with our society the fact that the one story gets all the attention because the kid managed to complete his plans? Is it all just about the drama?

That’s sad.

At least Mancuso’s Law of Media Accuracy was disproven with the Mechanicsburg story. My wife works at the school that was “firebombed” and verified that WGAL presented all the details exactly the way things happened (Mancuso’s Law of Media Accuracy:”I’ve been on the scene several times during news events. In none of these situations–not one–has the media reported things accurately.”).

The first DVD is out on August 26, 2003, and the extended edition (to me, the real one) is due out on November 18, 2003. the details are here.

The extended release may have up to 48 minutes of new footage.

Way cool.

I’m trying to wrap my mind around the idea of this new uber personal information manager, Chandler. This piece of software is in its nascent stages. It’s a super office manager–it’s like having a super secretary as a piece of software. Say you have a project you’re working on. Chandler will help you organize a project file that ties together everything to do with the project: emails, calendar dates, to dos, address book contacts, pictures, audio (MP3s), video, notes, spreadsheets, web pages, and more. It seems that virtually anything you have on your computer that has to do with your project can be tied together in Chandler.

But there’s more. It doesn’t just tie things together. It will help you create these things too. It helps you share them too.

If it does all this stuff, it really becomes a computer platform like Windows or Mac OS, or in this case a “sub-platform” inside Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

I’m really curious about how this thing will turn out. I’m also curious how they’ll pull all of this off for three operating systems within 10 years.

By the way, the prime mover and shaker behind Chandler is Mitch Kapor, the guy who started Lotus and designed Lotus 123.

You know you’re in Atkins diet Induction mode when strips of bacon start looking to you like tiny little steaks…