This isn’t a rumours site, and I’d hate to receive one of Apple’s famous cease-and-desist notices… but when you get a scoop this huge, you have to pass on the word.

Here it is: Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote will include a new addition to its wildly successful Macbook line.

The news product takes its cue from the popularity of the smallest notebooks. There is a large consumer (and prosumer) segment that will happily sacrifice screen real estate, storage space and performance for extreme portability.

So, on January 9th, Apple will launch the all-new Macbook Shuffle. At 16 grams, with a battery life of seven years, it’s the most portable notebook in history, and tucks neatly behind the user’s ear.

Specifications are unclear so far, but some details include a revolutionary Bluetooth-driven visor that can slip over any pair of eyeglasses, serving as a monitor. Although conventional wisdom holds that Bluetooth is too slow for a video display, the choice of a 200×150-pixel resolution appears to have been Apple’s end-run around that problem.

The lower-sized display (or “Cinema Nano”, as the visor is likely to be called) imposes significant constraints on the Finder, specifically the inability to read filenames. But, taking a leaf from its iPod namesake, the Macbook Shuffle avoids this problem by simply launching files randomly, a feature Apple calls Serendipityâ„¢.

And the company has anticipated the objection that users are unlikely to enjoy shuffling through all of their files until they find one they want to edit in two ways. One, there is no input device (Apple’s nickname for this function is the “no-button mouse”), making editing a thing of the past; and two, the device has only 64kb of RAM and no hard drive, saving the user from the inconvenience of access to too much of their data.

Internal Apple talking points suggest the company expects some criticism of the slimmed-down feature set. A suggested response includes “Many people laughed at Steve when he announced the death of the floppy disk. Who’s laughing now?”

A comment on a year-old post of mine has led me to PVR Source: to the best of my knowledge, the only Canadian source for TiVo, the industry-leading personal video recorder.

They’re strictly e-commerce, and their site still lacks any contact info other than an e-mail address for the Calgary-based company. And since a Whois lookup on their domain name yields an anonymous registration, my antennae were up, and I implied as much in a reply on that thread.

But within three hours of posting my comment (and copying my comment to PVR Source’s e-mail address), I had a reply in hand. That’s extraordinary any time, and bear in mind this is Christmas Eve – not exactly a quiet time of year, even for virtual storefronts. Yet owner Mike Yawney was happy to compose this thorough and reassuring reply:

PVR Source launched just over a year ago. I am a Tivo nut, and have been for a few years now (before it even officially came into Canada) I was very disheartened by the fact that Tivo was about to launch it’s service here in Canada but refused to sell the actual units here. Friends and family saw my Tivo unit and asked me to get them one. Well as it turns out I started getting a flood of requests for Tivo boxes. Now one year later we have worked out a deal with Tivo’s distributor and we now import the boxes into Canada and sell them online. We also started upgrading Tivos, a service that has never been offered here in Canada.

We have had a lot of changes over the last year. Last month we upgraded our website and came back with a new look. We also became an authorized XM satellite radio in November. As we grow we will look at offering other product lines.

You mentioned our website was registered anonymously. Well let me explain. Last year when I started the website I didn’t know a lot about e-tailers and online business. I was a little concerned letting my personal information out on the net. That is why it was registered anonymously. Wasn’t sure what the best option was. I should probably look at getting that changed now. As for a phone number, we trying to get office space so I won’t list our new number until it’s up and running.

I can’t vouch for them personally, because I have yet to do business with them – although if our attempts to repair our unit through Weaknees fall through then you can expect that to change soon. But the fact that Mike replied so quickly, and thoroughly, gives me hope that their customer service would be just as responsive.

One more note: the fact they’re Canadian means more than just a lack of hassles with border taxes and duties. It also means you’ll get a uniquely Canadian perspective… including critical information like the fact that the new HD TiVo isn’t exactly ready for prime time Canuck-wise, relying as it does on cable-card technology.

If you’ve had any experience with PVR Source, feel free to share it via the comment box.

Pints of Drivel is shutting its doors.

It’s too bad… I’ll miss Tim’s words of wisdom and wit.

• If all stories were written like science fiction stories
  This killed me. Even my favourite SF authors lapse into this sometimes…
  (tags: sf fiction funny parody)
• CSS turns 10
  #css {age: 10 years; usefulness: tremendous; standards-compliance: uneven; internet-explorer-grief: high; birthday: happy}
  (tags: css webdesign w3c history)

Buying stuff is like voting (except with money, they’re more careful with the counting). Buy a company’s product, and you’re implicitly endorsing the choices they made to get that product to market at a particular price.

Hence the furor over blood diamonds, or, as some call them, “conflict diamonds”, or as the diamond industry calls them, “post-excitement diamonds”. The focus of a recent big-budget movie, the proceeds of conflict diamonds help to fund brutal civil wars and hideous human rights violations. A years-long awareness campaign is finally penetrating the public consciousness: buy conflict diamonds, and you’re supporting murder.

But as a recent web-exclusive article from the magazine Foreign Policy makes clear, lots of other products come at the expense of human suffering and environmental damage. Their list of particularly dubious products includes some that are near and dear to my heart (and a few I could easily live without): gold jewelry (toxic pollution, human rights violations), chocolate (child labour), teak from Burma (the brutal Myanmar dictatorship), shower curtains (toxic pollution) and cell phones (buying into the violence and turmoil in the Congo).

They say cell phones, but they really mean all kinds of consumer and business electronics, relying as they do on coltan and tin. Those products include, ahem, computers. Like the ones you and I are using right now.

As much as I’d like to kid myself that tech is a nice, clean, high-karma sector, it isn’t. And it’s worth reflecting on the high cost that others pay for the low, low prices we do.

• Yet Again, DHTML Menus
  Merlin at Angry Donuts has a clever Drupal 5.0 module that creates dynamic menus – the kind that expand when you click on them.
  (tags: drupal module menus dhtml)

Lee and Sachi LeFever have made it home to Seattle, after embarking on a trip that lent new meaning to the term “world-wide web”. Throughout their year-long globe-spanning odyssey, they maintained a photographically-rich chronicle via their custom-built online community, The World Is Not Flat.

TWINF not only allowed them to blog stories and images from their journey, but also invited friends, family and onlookers to offer comments, kudos and suggestions along the way. Better yet, it continues to serve as a resource for anyone who wants to find or share information and tips about any destination the planet has to offer. (Hmm… given NASA’s recent announcement, how long before the LeFevers launch The Moon Is Not Flat?)

One journey ends, and another begins: Sachi will be joining Lee’s consulting practice, Common Craft.

Hockey player fired for not signing flag for troops:

A junior hockey player has been ousted from the Saint John Sea Dogs after he did not sign a Canadian flag that the team was sending to troops in Afghanistan.

Dave Bouchard — a 20-year-old from Jonquière, Que., who played left wing on the Quebec Major Junior team — said he thought someone else had already signed his name.

But Sea Dogs coach Jacques Beaulieu said he did not accept that explanation and cut him from the team after Saturday’s game. [...]
Beaulieu said he believes in freedom of expression but added that any player who refused to sign would have been kicked off the team.

I have no idea whether Bouchard had in fact thought someone else had signed his name, and whether the coach’s claim that Bouchard had been about to be cut anyway (despite, according to the CBC, being tied for top scorer on the team so far in the season) holds water.

What I do know is that Coach Beaulieu may have accidentally cheapened the team’s gesture. When the choice is to sign or be fired, those signatures carry a lot less weight.

Canadian soldiers are doing a dangerous job in extremely difficult circumstances, and it’s understandable that people want to voice their support. But those voices only mean something when they’re raised out of solidarity – and not out of a fear of being fired.