Canned music is just awful. However, it is much more cheaper and easier to work with than some egotistical musician. Thus, Microsoft introduces Songsmith.  Turn up the happy and the jazzy and write that next top 40 hit, yeah!

Microsoft Research is now working on other easy to use interfaces for the lazy artist.  Coming next year will be Fashonista, Turn up the slutty and the tight to design your next prom dress.

UPDATE: My home slice birch from pmog gave me this fun link, That be a mac laptop in the commercial.

You are not alone!  Well, if you are on this site, chances you are.  However, designers, web monkeys & pirates there’s a new home for you called Dear Adobe.  That’s right, go there and find out that you are not alone.  There are loads of people who want set their Adobe install discs on fire and put them out with a stream of urine.  Read some complaints, and vote in agreement or disagreement and feel vindicated.  The site is in no way associated with Adobe, so there’s a fat chance that a solution will come, but voting is important, even if it doesn’t count, like for the President of the United States.  Just like the Electoral College, Adobe doesn’t have to listen to your votes, but maybe it will make you feel better.

As I grow accustom to using the ‘stacks’ feature in Leopard I am finding some tweaks that you may be interested in.

Stacks, A Quick Low-Down

From my early and basic understanding, anything you place in the Dock to the right of the divider line, next to the trash can, becomes a Stack.  Of course, you can right-click it and tell it to behave as a normal folder, rather than a Stack.  Now, there are two other options with Stacks, sorting and viewing.

Stacks sit on the Dock in the order they are sorted.  Thus, when you first start up Leopard the documents stack has a .pdf in it called “About Documents.”  So, the .pdf icon is the first icon we see on the Dock with other icons from other documents in that folder in line behind it in alphabetical order.

When you click on a Stack, it can be viewed in a few different ways, a fan, a list and a grid.  There’s also an automatic setting that must have some heavy math behind it to try and predict your mood.

The Tweaks

In Tiger, I always had the Apps folder on my Dock.  Using it as a Stack is pretty interesting because it opens as a big icon grid and I don’t end up opening the Apps folder in Finder.  However, how do I sort it?  Which application deserves the spotlight on the Dock?  Certainly not the address book, it is boring and I hardly use it.  I was thinking maybe I could make my own icon and put it in the Apps folder so it would sit on the Dock.  Then, I decided to search around and see if others have a better solution.

Here’s what I found, these great drawer or bin icons on this site and these instructions here.  Basically, like my original thought, you chose one of the drawer icons from the set and copy it to your directory.  You can rename it “0″ so that it is the first one in alphabetical order or follow some instructions on the link to change the time stamp date on the file.  See my new drawers:

Of course, depending on how may apps you have, it may be a good idea to make a folder full of aliases(shortcuts) to apps that you use a lot, but they were not Dock-worthy or wouldn’t fit.  Make that folder a Stack, and then you have all the applications you use frequently, without a cluttered Dock.

As I searched for ideas about modifying the Stacks, I also found this handy tid-bit of info.   When you navigate the Stack as a grid, you really don’t have any animation, border or highlight to know which file your are choosing.  The link takes you to a page with really brief instructions on how to remedy that.  They also have instructions on how to turn it back off.  I am trying it right now, but it really doesn’t seem up to par with Apple’s design skills, so maybe that is why they left it out.  It looks decent, but the movement seems weird to me, there’s a pic on the link.

Okay, so Mondays come way too fast for me to try some of this stuff out. It might help if I played PMOG more, lately I haven’t had the time. Though, if I only did the PMOG Link thing once a month, I’d probably never get around to actually writing it up. Sounds like I need to be more organized. Perhaps the links from yubbie’s mission, Innovative new sites you probably haven’t used to manage your life, can help me.

GrandCentral

So unlike me, you currently have a job and a personal life. You also have a phone for the job and a phone for the personal life. This beta will give you one number and one voicemail to get all your calls. You can have it ring all of your phones to find you, or tell it which phone to send certain people. At this very moment, you have to be invited by someone, but it seems damn handy to me.

Remember the Milk

I know plenty of people, in my daydreams that is, and some of them often call their own answering machines or voicemail to remind themselves of something. I know I am guilty of sending myself an email to remind me of something. Well, Rememberthemilk.com is all about tasks and lists. It’s a versatile little web app. that can work with your Google Calender and various other web apps, phones, blackberries, etc. I have heard several people mention this site a few times, but never played with it. Organizing my life might get me that much closer to adulthood which is definitely something this 35yr. old doesn’t want.

Jott

Hey, remember my imaginary friends above, who call their own voicemail? Call Jott, leave a voicemail and Jott will send you a text reminder, an email reminder or even publish the translated voicemail to the Google calendar or that fun new toy, rememberthemilk.

Web Upon has an interesting list of links, from free online books to finding you a date to see a movie with. On top of the 25 Unexpectedly Useful Websites for the Uncommonly Curious, there is a link at the bottom of the post to take you to two previous lists of “Curiously Useful” sites.

By the way, you can always see my latest bookmarks on the homepage because I love me the delicious social bookmarking service.  Read more about delicious and see a quick video on how it works in the sikkdays forum.