Mike Rowe, a 17-year-old high school senior and web designer from Victoria, British Columbia, brought down the wrath of Microsoft this week, when a website he built and registered in April 2003, with the address www.MikeRoweSoft.com, was discovered by the software colossus from Redmond. "Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of it," said Rowe. Microsoft, however, was not amused. Mr. Rowe received a letter from Microsoft’s lawyers informing him that he was committing copyright infringement. So, being an enterprising young man, he wrote back, asking to be compensated for giving up his name. Microsoft’s lawyers responded with an offer of $10 (aren’t they magnanimous?). Rowe sent a letter back asking for $10,000. Because the software giant has a lot of experience with settling out of court, they are now trying to negotiate a “good faith settlement”. What has all this accomplished? There’s now so much traffic to Rowe’s site (250,000 visitors in 12 hours) that he has had to change hosting companies to handle the bandwidth. A legal defense fund has been established. Could this be the next high-profile “celebrity” trial? Only time will tell.

What is the price of celebrity? Out in Utah, at the annual Sundance Film Festival, the price is $218.12. That’s what 31-year-old filmmaker Jonathan Caouette spent on videotape and other materials, to make his feature-length autobiographical documentary, Tarnation. What does this have to do with Macs? Caouette edited the entire project with iMovie, distilling his home movies, old Super-8 footage, photos and audiotapes into a film that is drawing the attention of major independent filmmakers like Gus Van Sant. Speaking of iMovie – next week look for my review of the new iLife ’04 suite, including the hot new GarageBand application.

.Mac users got some more “bennies” this week. First, $30 off the purchase of Keynote, Apple’s presentation software (think PowerPoint with Apple’s style and good looks). Second, .Mac users can download seven free Keynote themes from third-party developers (a $100 value). I’ve downloaded and used them – they’re gorgeous. And, back in December, Apple posted ArcSoft’s PhotoStudio X ($79 retail) for free member download. PhotoStudio’s interface is simple enough for photo-editing beginners, but has several high-end features (like a photo browser) that pro applications like Photoshop have. And, for .Mac members, it’s $649 cheaper than Photoshop.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski