soapbox

For those interested in sustainable and socially responsible business, and its impact on / role in capitalism, make sure to check out the Business and Society Conference, at the Tuck School of Business. Jan. 15-16, 2009.

MBH and I attended a couple years ago, and it was pretty interesting. Certainly worth swinging by the few best sessions (but get there early, since some fill up fast). It’s free, but you do have to register ahead of time through the “registration” link.

1. No Steve Jobs – not a surprise, really, but a surprising number of fanboys were disappointed.
2. Also disappointed was anybody with AAPL stock – except again they shouldn’t have been, since Apple’s stock price ALWAYS drops anytime Jobs doesn’t announce the iUniverse, and even then it probably sheds a couple points.
3. The new iPhoto sounds pretty darn sweet. Sorting photos by face (using fancy and trainable face-recog algorithms) or place (using GPS tags found in many new cameras) is neat. Apple has done a nice job with iLife’09.
4. I really, really want a new MBP. Not sure if I’m buying the seven hour battery life claim, but wow that’s a slick piece of machinery goodness.

5. Numbers (Apple’s version of Excel) looks like it’s going from “sucky” to “wow, I could probably manage using it instead of Excel, or soon anyway.” Linked charts – when you make a chart in Numbers and embed it into a Keynote presenatation, the chart updates when the data changes – is a rather nice feature.
6. Finally, iTunes will now have three pricing tiers: $0.99, $0.69, and $1.29. Starting today 8 million songs (of the 10+ million catalog) will be offered DRM-free, with the entire catalog to be DRM-free by the end of the quarter.