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May 29, 2003
Sum of the Parts
Every now and then, it seems that things just click together. Most regular readers know that I use NetNewsWire (Pro) and all of you should be aware that I use a Newton (yes, that is a Newton logo at the top right of this article and it indicates that the article was written and posted from a Newton). Well today NNW tagged a new item on the inessential blog (written by the author of NNW) and he in turn mentioned a cool piece of software called "Read it to me" that takes the unread headlines from NNW and creats a playlist for iTunes with the news summaries in it. Weird but interesting. Basically you can listen to the news (theoretically on an iPod) instead of reading it.
My first thought was: I bet I can get that news stream over to the Newton and use the MAD player. My second thought was: Huh? Why is that link already visited. Yup, the link to the software looked a bit familiar - www.tow.com! Suddenly the (very slow) neurons get their act into gear - tow = adam tow = foundation software = cool newton stuff like nBlog! Like wow, this guy writes Newton code and hacks around in AppleScript for iTunes/NNW as well. and the stuff can then feed back to the Newton again. The whole thing strikes me as somehow elegant where the total solution is so much more than the sum of the parts.
The slow neurons reminds me of my wife's favourite joke. You see there is this big dinner party and the speaker doesn't want to embarrass any of the guests so he starts by asking if there are any Scots present. There is no response but he asked again to be sure. Still no response so he launches into the joke: "You see there was this Scotsman and you all know how slow Scotsman are ...". He is interrupted by an irate guest (imagine Glasgow accent here): "Hang on mon, I'm a Scotsmon!". Now whenever the kids have one of those slow moments followed by an 'Aha' flash of inspiration, my wife looks at me and says: "Must be the Scottish blood".
Back to the topic at hand: Thanks Adam (and your co-author) for a really cool little utility. Now if I can just script it to run once an hour then I can get the BBC headlines on the hour at work...
Posted by Ozguru at May 29, 2003 09:05 AM
