Looking for a perfect podcast do go along with the rise of Mastodon and a renewed feeling of excitement about a more open and personal internet? For Swedish-speakers, I can strongly recommend Hej (resten av) internet (literally "Hello (the rest of the) internet") - a podcast all about the old, new, nicer, quirkier internet. Two people talking about things large and small (and often but not always somewhat off the boring beaten path) which excite them online. How do you surf the internet? Why and how should you have your own little corner of it? What is the thing about Discord communities? Newsletters? My description completely fails to capture the joy of discovery in the voices, so go give it a listen if it sounds at all interesting.
Speaking of podcasts and older versions of the internet, Edge cases is back online. I think it is fair to call it a formative podcast for me, one of the earlier ones I listened to regularly and as it was released. I was a bit surprised to discover the time during which it ran - from 2012 to 2015. I would have placed it much earlier, going on nothing but my feeling that I listened to it a very long time ago. But it actually fits very well with when I started to really listen to podcasts regularly. The strangest part about the timeline was discovering that Edge cases only preceded Kodsnack by a few months, whereas in my mind it had probably ended before we even got started.
Look! They kept lists of "Rejected episode titles" for episodes! This must be where I got that idea from for Kodsnack. Speaking of titles: One little package of hate has always been and remains one of my favourites. It is also a very good episode, I should give that a re-listen …
Keynote corner
We talked about Safari turning 20 on this week's Björeman // Melin // Åhs. After finishing editing, I of course had to have a look at the presentation. I ended up watching the whole thing, because it was full of things. It must almost have marked the start of me getting really into Apple. First, there was Safari (bookmarks management only seems to have gone backwards in discoverability and simplicity since 1.0).
Then, Keynote was unleashed. Jobs' line about hiring a single beta tester still pops up in my mind regularly.
And then, they introduced the 17 and 12-inch Powerbooks. The 12-inch was the first Mac I bought, and I remember watching the introduction videos mesmerized by all the style and technology the computers packed in.
Apple had also sold 600 000 Ipods in less than a year and a half, and they said that 2003 would be the year of laptops for them. Laptops which could easily get 4,5 hours of battery life.
There was a lot in that one presentation, and a lot of good Steve Jobs energy. Is there a better example of what people hoped for in Apple keynotes, pre-Iphone? I did not realize until I re-watched how much it seemed to have set the bar for me personally. Some numbers, lots of Steve, some solid software updates, some entirely new software (which would be regularly updated and improved going forward, as opposed to released to great fanfare and then seemingly forgotten for years), and some childishly exciting new hardware to wrap it all up. Good times.