A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

No, I don't have one. But I am sold on one, where I wasn't in January, and will almost certainly buy one this year sometime. (The lowest-capacity 3G model looks most attractive to me.)

As xach recently noted, and many others have agreed, the iBooks app is beautiful. This alone would sell me on it. Even given the itty-bitty screen and sparse interface, the existence of Kindle for iPhone instantly made me fall head-over-heels sold on reading (and buying) books electronically. I have easily spent over $100, maybe $200 on downloaded electronic books in the past few months, and have many more freebies as well. The iPad's larger and richer interface is clearly much closer to the format that books want to be read in, and I in turn want to make my books happy.

I have read (or am still reading) all the books that I have bought this way. This is not the case with my personal library of paper books. And here is why: my library of electronic books is, in its entirely, in my pocket at all times. Wherever I am, when I want to read something, I can summon one of my books into my hand. It is real magic, friends.

But you know what really puts a fire in my heart over this? The fact that one of the first things I will do after acquiring an iPad is purchase a subscription to a daily newspaper. I am looking forward to reading a paper again, a real, smart, edited daily paper. I don't know which one yet, but any of the ones that have survived for this long (counting from when Craig's List pinched off their air supply) and which look and feel gorgeous on the iPad will do.

I last subscribed to a paper 15 years ago, when I was still a journalism student. Yes, thank you, I am well aware that nothing's been stopping me from subscribing to a newspaper since then. But a device like the iPad, to me, seems like such a more correct delivery vehicle for a daly paper than, um, paper. The reasons go from basic cleanliness and convenience to the potential for brilliant interactivity that a smart periodical with a modicum of subtlety can accomplish.

This device will help make me smarter, is what I'm saying, and that is very exciting.

I am totally in-line for a new iPhone when Apple lifts the expected veil on the device's second generation next month. My little Sony Ericsson brick is four years old, covered in interfaces that nobody supports any more, and works so spottily that I've been asking clients who wish to have a voice meeting if we could use Skype instead. I tell them that I'm holding out for the new iPhones, rather than just picking up a replacement. They understand.

Hm... I actually told myself (and anyone in earshot) from the start that I'd be in as soon as it hit its first major revision, so in that way I'm kind of pleased with myself for holding out so long.

I just got an email from someone at Apple informing me that the MIME type used by the first SVG document I ever made is out of date. What the.

He was testing an upcoming Safari release's new SVG-rendering capabilities, but that's not the point. How the hell he found the document, that's the bigger issue. Are there so few SVG documents on the Web that that one will get pulled into a "let's see how this handles the real world" testing suite?

(I make no apologies for the catchphrase seen in the document. It was all the rage when I created it.)