Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
WordPress 2.7 is a whole lot of good. Snappier and (to me) better designed UI. However, there is one aspect of the UI that has a few irritated (perhaps irriated is too strong a word). Not a critical thing, but still something they’d like changed. What is the issue? When looking at the publish date for future/scheduled posts, instead of the normal date on when it will be shown (e.g. 2009/1/25) the user is presented with how many days from the current date the post will be published (e.g. 37 days from now).
So, I’ve taken a gander and came up with the following solution. It may not be the best (and for anyone sketchy about editing code, a little concerning), but it’s fast and easy.
There are two lines in wp-admin/includes/template.php that effect the date display. If you have any text editing/coding program, you should be able to go to the lines 1342 and 1552. If anything, a search for “$h_time = sprintf( __(‘%s from now’), human_time_diff( $time ) );” (without quotes) will do the trick. Now, you can replace that exact text with “$h_time = mysql2date(__(‘Y/m/d’), $m_time);” (without quotes) and that’s it! Save and upload the modified file. If you’re sketchy about replacing the line, you can comment it out as I did.
line 1341
line 1552
And once you’re done and uploaded, you can see your results when you refresh the page.
If you would like to put the “from now” information on the tooltip when hovering your mouse cursor over the date, you can add the code chunk in the screenshot below to line 1361.
line 1361
Morning came quick. Perhaps too quick. Nevertheless, rising this particular Friday morning, October 24, was not the laborious chore that I would normally struggle through. It was the first day of Podcamp Hawaii. As I munched on my Frosted Flakes cereal, I ran my checklist of needed gear and made sure I got one of my Podcamp Hawaii shirts out. I worked out my plan of attack to tackle traffic and ended up leaving at about 7:30.
While it wasn’t a smooth ride, I got to the Hawaii Convention Center at a reasonable time. Parking was easy to find and was given directions to the location of the event. After a very quick check in, I spotted Dave Zuls and met his co-worker Kathi. I also met Nathan Kam, Chris Heuer and Kristi Wells. Then it was off to the opening ceremony and start Podcamp Hawaii!
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Netbooks seem to be the latest craze, and with good reason. Many are affordably priced and verge on the edge of an impulse buy. They tend to be highly portable and well equipped for handling the day to day tasks of checking email, browsing the internet, instant messaging and even office productivity. The combination of price, portability and technical capabilities can make netbooks very tempting indeed.
Amidst a small bout of research, I chose to get an Eee PC 901 with Windows XP. Like most in its class, it has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 12GB SSD an 8.9 inch display, a 1.3 megapixel camera and weighs about 3 pounds. It also has a 6 cell battery, built-in Bluetooth and 20GB online storage via Asus. After spending a week of using my Eee PC as regularly as possible, here are my observations.
Design
The outer design of the Eee PC 901 isn’t as thrilling like my Macbook Pro, but it’s cute and functional. I chose the white shell because I don’t want to deal with the fingerprints on the cover and the palm rests (my coworker who just got a new Dell XPS understands). The touchpad is large and worked well enough out of the box. The keyboard however, is painfully small and I can understand the many complaints about it. Since I have small fingers, touchtyping is feasible with enough practice. In fact, this article has been entirely written using my Eee PC. The main problems I’m experiencing are the apostrophe and right shift key. The apostrophe is real close to the enter key and the right shift key is located to the right of the up arrow key. The keyboard seems quite responsive and I have yet needed to do the “tape mod.” An internal design decision that I find quirky is having the 12GB SSD drive split into two drives; a 4GB and an 8GB.
Graphics/Display
I don’t intend to play any games on my Eee PC but do intend to watch a few movies on it. The display can reach a maximum of 1024×600. It can also go up to 1024×780 but goes off screen and you have to scroll. There is a compress mode but that distorts the render of the screen and doesn’t look that great to me. However, the 1024×600 resolution is quite alright for browsing the net, reading email and even watching movies, which I tested with Transformers and the quality was fine and wasn’t sluggish, especially since I was running it off an external USB flash drive. The most irritating bit about the display is the brightness level. It initially starts at 100% but once the level is modified, it remained stuck at about 61-63%. To address this, I initially installed eeectl (http://cpp.in/dev/eeectl/) which allowed me to increase the display brightness, among other things. Then I found the Asus BIOS revision 1501, which seems to fix the problem.
Sound
The sound isn’t spectacular, but isn’t bad either. Only thing is the speakers are located on the underside of the front end of the palm rests so it can get muffled. The sound was also okay with my “use with anything” (my reference because the default jack fit perfectly in the gen1 iPhone) Bose headphones.
Connectivity
Out of the box, the wifi worked very well with regular WEP networks but hiccuped on a combination WPA2 and hidden network (my macbook had no problems at all). I have Service Pack 3 but still needed to update the adapter driver, now it works just fine. I haven’t tested the Eee PC’s Bluetooth yet. There’s also an Ethernet port, but I haven’t used it at all. There are three USB ports, which for me is one port too much, but better too much than too little (Macbook Air). I haven’t tested the VGA port for external monitor goodness and have yet to get an SD card for the integrated slot, however I do intend to make use of it. Incidentally, I don’t miss an express card slot, like my Macbook has, because the only use I had for it was to read SD cards.
In conclusion, after doing some customization and updating of some drivers and applications, the Eee PC 901 is running really smooth and has met my expectations positively. With the 6 cell battery and some toning down of the display and sound, I’m getting an average of 5 hours of use from this little bugger. Definitely portable as I don’t have to stay wired to anything and it’s light and easy to carry around. It may not be the best netbook out there, since this is my first I can’t compare it, but it’s working very well for me.
In case there’s interest, here’s a list of stuff I did to my Eee to either customize it to my liking or increase its usability.
- Installed eeectl (mainly for display brightness, but can control fan speed and overclocking, etc.)
- Updated BIOS to 1501 (to address display brightness)
- Installed TweakUI (Activate some UI eye-candy)
- Installed Vista Inspirat theme pack
- Installed Launchy (I got spoiled by Quicksilver on the Mac)
- Updated the wifi adapter
- Installed ECap utility for the integrated camera
- Updated the touchpad drivers/control panel
- Installed 2GB RAM and set 512MB for Ramdisk using Gavotte’s ramdisk app to shunt temporary internet files onto, instead of my SSD
So, my first attendance to the Manoa Geeks event was on Thursday, July 31 at HMSA. It was a pretty nifty experience, what with about 70 people attending in person and some others (20? Not sure) via chat. It was nearly full when I arrived and a pretty good indicator of the sold out status was the fact the pizza was wiped out shortly after the geeks were given the green light to mob the tables.
After the dust of dinner settled, a few people came up to demo and talk about products they were developing, from Labels That Talk, to New View Hawaii. Of particular interest that I might mention at work, though, is Errorlytics. This web service captures 404 errors and can use an appropriate redirect to the correct page. I think the only main drawback is when working with very large sites one would have to program in the redirects via rules. If the rules could be vague, like if the page is supposed to be a special offers page (rather than a specific page) then redirect to the main page listing special offers, it would probably be really nifty. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a full demo of it due to network issues. I know, I know, a full house of geeks and couldn’t get it to work. Stuff happens. 
Aside from that, Eric Nakagawa from I can Has Cheezburger attended and mentioned he’s working on an ICHC book. Also, Bytemarks Cafe is going live this Wednesday, be sure to catch it! I was surprised, I know I shouldn’t be, to find out that one of the folks working at HMSA knew several people I currently work with.
All in all, the experience was great and while I didn’t talk to many people, it was cool to soak in the atmosphere. An event I wouldn’t mind attending again.
How do you one-up a revolutionary mobile device? You don’t. At least for now when other manufacturers are trying to catch up to Apple’s iPhone. The first generation iPhone was revolutionary due to its incredible integration of different applications. For example, using the Google Maps application, one can find directions to a restaurant and with one touch, could either call the establishment or bring up its web site. The multi-touch capabilities were also revolutionary compared to other mobile devices.
Other revolutionary concepts of the iPhone:
- Multi-touch interface – zoom in and out on webpages and images
- Accelerometer – Auto-detect in landscape or portrait mode for integrated camera and web browsing
- Safari browser – First (nearly) full-featured web browser on a mobile device
- Smart virtual keyboard – Its ability to learn a person’s typing is uncanny and its “trust in the Force” mentality is a nice nod to Star Wars fans
- Minimal hardware buttons – Features and applications can be modified and installed through software updates, which can be tied to virtual buttons/icons
While the first generation iPhone was revolutionary, the second generation, the iPhone 3G, is not. It merely builds upon the original device. This is not to say I don’t like the new version, I really do, but anyone who has the first version is just as well off as owners of the 3G one.
The only major new change of the iPhone 3G that I really like is the curved plastic back. While I initially thought the change to plastic was a step back, it’s actually really good. The curved mold feels more natural in the hand while the plastic makes the iPhone less slippery and lighter. Many people may like the flushed headphone jack but it doesn’t look as sleek as the first device. I’m also biased because the headphones I had bought actually fit in the first generation’s jack out-of-the-box. The new 3G speed is wonderful but eats through the battery like crazy. Not a problem in the office or at home due to easy power connection, but out and about folks might have concerns and of course, what’s supposed to help such folks out (e.g. no Wi-Fi) actually hurt them more. Until turn-by-turn vocal directions can be integrated, the GPS isn’t all that special. It’s nifty to look at the dot move on the map as you move, but doesn’t provide much practical application… yet. I haven’t explored geo-tagging images, so that might be interesting.
The most major update to the iPhone is via the 2.0 firmware, which nearly puts the first generation iPhones on par with this later version. If you’re new to the iPhone craze, a 3G is a good choice. However, if you can get a really good deal on a first gen, I’d suggest going that route, especially if you’re not an AT&T customer that’s eligible for a device upgrade.
I have left all reason behind and surrendered to the siren call. Do not fear for me as I have not fallen into a fatal trap, but sunk willingly into the embrace of my fate. I wear the adornments of the Chosen, not shackles of bondage for the enslaved. I fear not the crux of my journey for it is the blissful resolution that I seek.
This temptation is not sin, nor folly. It is all that I am and all that I desire. Pity me if you will, but I am not ashamed to choosing this path. You may think I am superfluous, yet I am content and see you as empty. I am whole.
I am complete.
Welcome to my techno-lust.
Years ago, I had watched a Japanese Anime series called Bubblegum Crisis. Of course, being Sci-fi and a cartoon there were many fantastical gadgetry and neat technology. One such combo, that pertains to this entry, was a laptop one of the protagonists used. It was sleek looking and had a cool OS, but the nifty part? It was used as an alarm to wake the protagonist up. Now, there are many programs out there that could be similar, however how many of them could wake a computer from sleep and activate the alarm? That’s right, the laptop was in sleep mode and the alarm triggered and woke the laptop and blared its incessant buzzing. Ever since, I always kept an eye out for an application like that. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything for Windows, however my search ended when I got a Macbook Pro.
The first application I encountered was Aurora. It did the job fairly well but settled into the dust for a time. Recently I stumbled upon Awaken and I must say that its sleeker and sexier (not to mention cheaper than the current release of Aurora). While both hook into iTunes so you can play your music, use the Apple remote to snooze or turn off an alarm and both have a sleep setting to play your tunes and stop, putting the system into Sleep mode, after a defined amount of time, Awaken’s presentation is very well done and just looks better. Call me superficial but it’s one of the big reasons why I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone. They look hot and work pretty darn good. One thing going for Aurora at the moment is its support of EyeTV, which Awaken doesn’t. I don’t use EyeTV so it’s not a problem for me, however for those that do, you might want to keep that in mind. Perhaps the cost of Aurora is worth it then?
I’ve been using Awaken for a week and half now and have been very satisfied. The full screen mode doesn’t emit too much light to be bothersome when using it at night during Sleep mode, but the text is large enough for me to see from my bed to check the time, either at night or when the alarm is blaring in the morning. Oh, and the developer is on Twitter so be sure to check out what he has to say about the new version of Awaken.
This is pretty easy and I don’t know why I never thought about it before, but I just added Twitter and Brightkite SMS numbers (40404 and 80289 respectively) to my contacts on my iPhone so whenever a new message comes in, it’ll label as the name and not the number. I never really thought about doing that until I had a momentary lapse in recognizing Brightkite’s SMS number.
With the introduction to the new iPhone, I figure many folks will be picking it up when it gets tossed into the wild on July 11. Why? Well, not just because of the increased speeds, GPS capability, actual native applications developed for the device or its impressive battery life. The most outstanding feature? Its cost; $199 for the 8gig model and $299 for the 16gig one. A two year contract with AT&T is needed, but personally, it’s not like I’m going anywhere (I don’t like the other carriers, except for T-Mobile, but we’ve moved on). The data plan will be $30 for unlimited data. If unlimited text messaging isn’t included, I’m going to be a sad panda.
When I bought the first generation iPhone (and its still kicking… never had to exchange or repair it), I promised that the only way I’d buy a new model was for increased storage capacity. I couldn’t care less about GPS (unless there’d be an app like TomTom). I even didn’t really care much for 3G (although I admit, EDGE is hella irritating). However, a friend of mine did bring up a good point about 3G, which was that we could use our iPhones in Japan; just need to get a local SIM card. Other hardware features didn’t really matter to me (my N80 took really oustanding photos… the iPhone’s camera doth sucketh), mainly because I was focused on the software/firmware stuff. While most phones, smart or not, have hardware (buttons) tied to their software, the iPhone doesn’t have these limitations. Many new features can be added to the iPhone, even if they’re the first gen models. That impressed me and got me to buy one. It’s also a strong point for not getting a newer model just because it’s new.
But now, I wouldn’t complain if the new iPhone came with GPS capability. I don’t mind the fact that 3G has been incorporated, because Apple purports that the battery life hasn’t suffered, in fact, it’s improved even with the new candy. Most of all, none of these features have increased the cost of the device itself. For me, I’d get one because every point of interest seems to have aligned just perfectly.
Would you get one? Why or why not?
So it seems that not all is perfect in my little Mac bubble. For some strange reason I’m getting Finder crashes/freezes. I did have some problems like that on my other drive but doubt it contributed to its crash. I’m thinking the freeze/crash of Finder is either attributed to VirusBarrier X5 (which was the cause of making my Time Machine browsing irritatingly slow) or my plopping in Firefox 3 RC1/2. I didn’t do a full overwrite and probably did the installation wrong. Still, I don’t have definitive proof that either of these two is the culprit for my less than stellar experience.
I’m going to have to do some experimenting and see what other apps might be the cause of these irritating bouts of unresponsiveness.
So, my HD crashed on my Macbook Pro. My digital life was potentially stripped from me like a foot length of duct tape on my chest. But, thanks to Time Machine, I was able to restore (nearly) all my data to the new drive. The only casualty that didn’t make it was my copy of Untraceable. However, since I bought it on iTunes, I made the cute anime eyes and wrote to the support group about what happened. Not even 24 hours later, I get the reply that Diane (the rep) understood my troubles and made the movie available for download again. All felt right in the world, until I realized I needed to build my Vista Boot Camp install again for gaming night.
Now that was torture.
Ever since I started blogging and adapted to a CMS system, I’ve always used the built in editor of the systems themselves. The only time I didn’t was during my Alaska cruise since the ship had really crappy satellite internet, not to mention it was expensive. So, I ended up using NeoOffice to write my blog entries and waited until I got home to post them and that was sufficient for me.
But now, I’m interested in using an offline application to write up my blog posts, save them and publish them whenever I want to (and if I’m connected to the Internet). Copying and pasting the entry is all well and good but why not have a one click solution? So here I am, using a weblog client called ecto and so far, I like it. While I don’t have any means to manage comments, ecto’s pretty full featured by allowing me to not only write a post and save a draft, publish posts and delete posts, I can also lay out my posts if other elements are used (like images or flash movies), whereas I couldn’t if I used NeoOffice. I must admit, getting an image positioned just right through a WYSIWYG editor is still a little finicky but when I encounter such difficulties, I can just go into HTML edit mode and conduct my fine tuning.
ecto’s been able to retrieve my posts successfully as well as my About page and I can go through and view or edit them. When creating posts, there’s automatic spellcheck and I can also get a word count. Preview doesn’t show the posts in my blog theme but rather a basic view state akin to Microsoft Outlook’s preview pane. However, I did notice a template feature in one of the menus when I took a cursory glance. Perhaps I can modify the template to match my blog’s design? I’ll have to look into it further or read up on some support material. I am trying to see if I can send a draft to the server without modifying the Publish button to do so as I’d like to keep that functionality the same as my WordPress interface.
It’s not without its flaws however, and I find myself using the HTML editor quite a bit (besides the aforementioned image finickiness, there’s also problems with editing link text while trying to keep the hyperlink reference intact). All in all, though, ecto is pretty darn nifty. and with a license being sub-$20, it’s very affordable and I think worth the price of admission.
While there are other clients out there (like MarsEdit and even TextMate), ecto is the first one I’m trying and I’m really pleased with it.
I was, still am a bit, ecstatic about the Macbook Air. Seeing pictures of it and watching the tour really attracted me. But I won’t be getting one for a while. Here are my reasons:
# Battery not replaceable. For my iPhone, not a care since all my cellphones have never needed to change the battery. But for a laptop? Five hours run time is cool and all, but with my current Macbook Pro and its spare battery, I can run it for nearly 7-8 hours. Enough time to fiddle on it at the airport and still enough juice to play with it in-flight (though it’s hard to use if the passenger in front slides his seat back). Even if I don’t travel often, not having the ability to swap the batteries is a major factor for me not to get a Macbook Air.
# No expansion slot. I just bought an ExpressCard/34 to read the SD card for my camera so I don’t waste its battery syncing it to my laptop. At first, I wondered what the heck I was going to use that expansion slot for. Now, I can’t see not having it. There’s the “Lexar JumpDrive Trio”:http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Lexar_JumpDrive_Trio.htm which was awesome when I had it, but I gave it to a friend. Also, read the next bullet.
# One USB port. At home, I’d only use the USB port to sync/charge my iPhone. Traveling? It’d be used to not only sync/charge my iPhone, but charge my “Jawbone”:http://www.jawbone.com/ bluetooth headset, use the external SuperDrive (maybe not often), used with the JumpDrive Trio or similar product to download my photos from the SD card or just connect my camera to it. Oh! And I can’t do any of these if I want to be connected to the internet at a location where I need to use an Ethernet cable since I have to use the USB to Ethernet cable adapter.
# No built-in Ethernet port. See previous bullet why this is a BAD thing.
# Shoddy graphics card. I have a desktop rig to play games, but sometimes I want to play on my laptop somewhere else in the house (or elsewhere even). The games I play, I won’t be able to with the Macbook Air (at least not enjoyably). My Macbook Pro, though, is cherry.
# Minuscule drive space. 80 Gigs? Too small and if given the option, I’d go with Solid State Drive any day, but again too small (64Gigs). My gaming rig is just that… for gaming. My laptop will be the command center of my life and thus will hold all of my writing, photos, music, movies, expenses (when I get my ass into gear) and whatever development projects I do. Not to mention that I have Parallel Desktop and Vista installed for any work-related stuff I’d have to do.
While the Macbook Air is filled to the brim with Hot, Sexy and Cool, I think Apple went a bit too far with Form and left out too much Function. Either put back a built-in Ethernet port or add a secondary USB and it would be much more attractive. I don’t see how you can add in a beefier graphics card but then again, the Macbook Air isn’t targeted to gamers (or media editing maniacs, for that matter). But even the demographics they are going for may not like it much when in order for them to get stuff done, they have to hassle and juggle with adapters.
I’m really attracted to the new laptop, but even if my Macbook Pro is heftier, the weight is proportional to its features. The Macbook Air just seems like a downgrade in comparison. I’m hoping that the next version will have a bigger SSD drive and at least another USB port. I don’t know if they’d be able to make replaceable batteries for the Air, but that’d be good too, because while I can deal with not pimping it in an airplane, I don’t think I could lose my command center while Apple replaces my battery. That is unless, it’s made known that Apple Store Geeks can replace them. Until then, I get plenty of love from my MBP.
The “Macbook Air”:http://www.apple.com/macbookair/ is so edgy, so sharp that it cuts cool and slices seductive. I’ve had my Macbook Pro for “just over a year”:http://www.zuruzuru.org/archives/2006/11/20/lose-ctrl-gain-command/ and when I got it, never thought I’d get a new laptop (unless it was an improved MBP). But what does “Apple”:http://www.apple.com do? It redefines ultraportable.
And baby, I’m all into that. The highlights are the crisp display, full-sized keyboard (with backlight!), huge trackpad, which made me cringe until I saw the “guided tour”:http://www.apple.com/macbookair/guidedtour/ and what you can do on that pad, and the wireless conventions they’ve incorporated. Even the optional “Solid State Drive”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drive they have available sounds awesome.
All this is dandy, but there’s got to be some lowlights, right? Yes, yes there are. First is the icky graphics card, don’t think I can play some of the games I’ve installed on my MBP (not that I play exclusively on my laptop). Then it has no built-in optical drive (but there’s an external drive accessory and the wireless interface to use other computers’ optical drives) and no express card slot, which I just bought one to read my media cards. The SSD drive is also smaller than I hoped it’d be. But regardless of all these lowlights, the highlights pretty outshine them and makes the Macbook Air a very dangerous temptress.
The display may be 13 inches but it’s LED backlit and is sharp, bright and crisp. The keyboard retains its awesome Apple status. The trackpad. Is. So. Nuts! Just like the iPhone, you can pinch and slide. Just like other Macbooks you can use two fingers on the pad and click for a right-click or scroll through stuff. They altered the sizing adjustment gestures to affect other applications, like the Finder windows and not just limit it to photos in Photobooth. You can even rotate photos with a gesture. Many things are wireless now, which is funny that the power supply isn’t wireless (KIDDING!). Since there’s no built-in optical drive, you can use the wireless feature to use optical drives on other computers (as mentioned above). They’ve even popped in an iTunes rental system ad in there. Also, “Time Capsule”:http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/ looks to be the wireless solution for backup. This would be awesome too, since I have to plug my external drive to my MBP everytime I want to make a backup. With Time Capsule I can do it wirelessly. Of course, I’m sure my MBP would be compatible with it too.
Which illuminates my dilemma. Do I want to get this shiny new tech that’s too sexy for my shirt? Damn you Apple. At least Sony makes cool looking pieces of crap, which allows me to separate myself from them speedily to the next hot, sexy, cool. You, on the other hand, make hot looking stuff that works pretty darn good.
First post for the new year and it’s a tie-in to last year. Over the past weekend, I went into movie marathon mode and rented a few movies from Vudu as well as purchased a couple (I wouldn’t have but it was the only way to watch them). While I was disappointed that Minority Report and Donnie Darko weren’t in the library, I was pleasantly surprised with a couple of foreign movies I wouldn’t have watched otherwise. Video quality was very good for all but one movie and the sound quality was still pretty good even coming out of the TV stock speakers. Since I don’t have a sound system, I won’t get into the audio. Even though I don’t have an HD TV, my set is relatively new so the display is pretty vibrant. There were no artifacts (except for that one movie, but I think it’s just how old that film may be) and, if I didn’t see the download progress whenever I paused or rewound the playback, I could be fooled into thinking the movie I was watching was on a DVD and not streamed to the Vudu box.
I mainly used the “My Wish List” feature to bookmark movies I was interested in but didn’t want to watch right away. While the “Find Movies” search is pretty nifty, I do get lost in the moment of perusing the titles and “waste” time. So, before the weekend arrived, I added a few movies to my wish list and waited for the weekend before starting my marathon. This method worked out pretty well but also made me miss some of the featured movies on the home screen. The featured movie list is great for newly available movies.
I think the Vudu system works well for anyone who wants to watch a movie “right away” aka to impatient to wait for delivery of the movie or too lazy/uninterested in driving to a movie rental shop. Although you might not find exactly what you’re looking for, you may be surprised to find a few gems you may not have come across otherwise.
After unboxing the “Vudu”:http://www.vudu.com/, I checked out the quick-start guide. The very first thing they tell you to do is slap the batteries into the remote. It melted in my hand (not literally melted, mind), which I’m guessing is due to its snazzy design. I’m hoping the experience of using Vudu is as elegant.
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_+Note: Received clarification and what I took to be a translation software is actually just a phrase book.+_
Did you ever wish you could have a device like a pair of earclips that could be used for real-time translation? Well, that very device was used in “Idoru”:http://www.amazon.com/Idoru-William-Gibson/dp/0425158640, a book by “William Gibson”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/. While not exactly the same, a new technology in Japan is very near that idea. “NEC”:http://www.nec.com/ has created an “automatic speech translation program”:http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0711/3002.html and “CScout Japan”:http://www.kilian-nakamura.com/blog-english/index.php/nec-automatic-speech-translation-demo/ saw a demo version on a mobile device. While the translation happens in real-time, it does take around 16 seconds for the process to complete.
It’ll only be a matter of time before the translation takes under five seconds and when that happens, who knows, it very well may be on earclips.
One of the Sci-Fi “what-if’s” I’ve read had power and internet connections on airplanes. Well, Virgin Atlantic is already offerring power and USB connections and now JetBlue is testing out limited email and instant messaging capabilities. It’s only a matter of time before full internet access is made available. It’s an exciting, albeit also scary, thing for fiction to be made real.
Richard Calder’s Cythera visualized PDA‘s with full color video and music playback in 1998. And only a year before in Idoru (or here for LibraryThing Fans) is there mention of native power and internet access on airplanes (to what I mentioned above).
In Pat Cadigan’s Synners, there’s even the proliferation of television channels and their shows that the word “porn” took on a slightly different meaning. For example, Food Porn is the term for the overload of food shows and channels.
What’s next? Will we have full 3D holographic communication devices? Pleasure bots? Slices of silicon and circuitry that operate as a personal computer terminal, newspaper and diagnostics tool that recharges off of our body heat while attached to us?
The future is now.
“Rumors abound”:http://www.macrumors.com/2007/12/10/apple-ultra-portable-macbook-rumor-roundup/ about an ultra-portable Macbook coming up. As someone who once had an ultra-portable laptop and a recent convert to Macs, this info is very delicious. But my Macbook Pro isn’t old enough to replace. It works cherry and for something to show me love, I can’t rightly just toss it aside for the next latest and greatest.
Well, not that it hasn’t happened before. But anyway! What makes an Apple ultra-portable so seductive? Besides the, mostly guaranteed, snazzy design and the cool OS X operating system? LED backlit display for one. “Solid State Drive”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drive for another. Vibrant imagery after a near instantaneous boot up. Mmm! Part of the rumors mention there wouldn’t be an internal optical drive, but I doubt that’d be a deal breaker as long as it came with an external drive. The ultra-portable I had was a Sony Vaio, it had an internal DVD drive and an SVGA display. Pretty crisp display and when not doing heavy video (couldn’t play much games on it with the shoddy graphics card), the laptop would run for about 4 hours straight on battery. My current Macbook lasts around 3.5 hours when not doing anything strenuous. I wonder how long the potential upcoming Macbook would last?
So exciting! (although I probably wouldn’t get one when it comes out. Maybe.)
It’s been about five months since the launch of the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ and it’s still humming along in the media. Apple has a “series of commercials”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads where everyday people explain how they use their iPhones. Here’s a list of how I’ve used mine:
# Looked up driving directions to unfamiliar places
# Received the latest traffic reports (with the help of “Twitter”:http://www.twitter.com/)
# Proved myself right or wrong in movie trivia
# Conducted “on the fly” research and purchased a digital camera
# Showed a store representative exactly what type of boots I was looking for
# Received suggested book titles for my reading tastes (with the help of “LibraryThing”:http://www.librarything.com/) while at the bookshop
# Looked up movie times and sent an email with the schedule to a friend
The possibilities of what else I could do is limited by only my imagination. I could use the iPhone for quick visual reminders by snapping photos. I could adhere to a more paperless office routine by using Notes and forwarding them to my work email. I could make better use of lists at “Listingly”:http://www.listingly.com for personal and work to-do’s. I can not only look up movie showtimes, but could purchase tickets too!
Now, many of the things I can do on the iPhone, I could do on another cell phone. However, I’ve never used other smartphones as much as I have made use of the iPhone. It was fun stuff on the day I got it and it remains fun stuff to this day, although I’ve been using less of the Youtube and iPod features than when the iPhone was shiny new.
I was one of those folks that bought “Leopard”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/ on the day (night, I should say) of release and have been using it to no ill effect since. The only incompatible application I have is Shapeshifter and that’s a non-issue. I had initially been wooed by the “Cover Flow-like Finder view”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder.html and the “Quick Look”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quicklook.html feature but I’m not exactly sure if they made my file browsing faster or not. I suppose that in order to take full advantage, I need to get used to the search too. However, I’m rarely looking for files so I’m not in any rush to get melded with those features.
The features I’ve been looking to take advantage of are “Spaces”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spaces.html and “Time Machine”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html. With Time Machine, I’ve become serious about backing up my data. Before this “life altering experience” (heh heh heh) I only used to backup my files (writing, development projects) and downloads (mods and stuff) and only rarely (once or twice a year). Now, I just plug up my external drive once each night and Time Machine takes care of the rest. As for Spaces, I’m still in the process of actually getting used to it. I need to expand on the default 2×2 and better organize which application resides in which desktop. I’m thinking of keeping web browsing, coding and design stuff in one row, while the second will have email, writing and multimedia.
“Boot Camp”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html has also caught my eye and I’ve used Boot Camp Beta before and thought it was good stuff. There’s a very specific reason for having Windows on my Macbook so I’m going to try to make the install as small as possible. The process in beta was very smooth so I’m hoping it’s still the same.
Besides those features, the recent prompts of executing something that I recently downloaded and faster boot up and shutdown times (boot up is kinda miniscule but shutdown is much faster than before), the upgrade to Leopard has been pretty transparent. Me likey.
I’ve been using Gmail’s IMAP service for almost a week now. It’s nice to deal with account administration via Apple Mail (bulk archive, bulk spam deletion, etc.) and the direct syncing of email between phone, laptop and Gmail account is nifty (meaning I don’t have to log into gmail from a browser to clean it up). However, something kept bugging me for a couple of days. Turns out that G-IMAP “doesn’t support a bunch of features”:http://blog.dave.cridland.net/?p=41, such as flags for \Answered, thus losing status icons to let me know if I’ve replied to an email message and/or forwarded it.
Most of my communication is via chat so it’s not critical to have them, but knowing if I’ve replied to an email, or not, is very nice. And of course, it was a feature supported by my domain’s implementation of IMAP. Due to this, I might switch back to the roundabout fashion I was using previously. It worked well and didn’t really cause a lag in receiving or sending mail. The only thing missing was the ability to deal with spam. Logging in to Gmail via a browser every once in a while isn’t difficult and what I’d get in return is more usability for what matters more than deleting spam.
IMAP’s been activated on my Gmail account. Instead of deciding what to do with my vacation time, I think I’m going to fiddle with the new feature and see how it goes.
Note to self: Save current email account settings on iPhone and record forwarding settings in Gmail in case of rollback fever.
So I still haven’t gotten the option to choose “IMAP for gmail”:http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html. What I’ve done was forward my email from gmail to my domain email and set up IMAP from there. It would be nice for me to remove that extra step and go directly from gmail, however it may not be worth it from what I’ve been “reading”:http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/10/imap. It seems that gmail hasn’t fully adopted the IMAP protocol, but with what they do adhere to, maybe that’s enough? Yet, if my current method isn’t broken, why change it?
Just installed a “plugin”:http://wphoneplugin.org/ that optimizes the admin interface of WordPress for the iPhone. So far, me likey. Especially since I could never really get the blogging via text/email feature to work correctly.
After the 1.0.1 update for the iPhone, I began to notice some performance quirks, which revolved around browsing in Safari. While on the EDGE network, I’d try to access “PocketTweets”:http://www.pockettweets.com/ and “Leaftlets”:http://app.getleaflets.com/ but I would get an error that Safari couldn’t find the server. Then, I’d try other sites and be able to access them. Well, perhaps the two sites were down? Couldn’t be, so I hooked into a Wi-Fi network and lo and behold I was able to access the two sites.
Strange, eh?
Well, I feel better that I’m “not the only one”:http://www.iphonematters.com/article/problems_with_the_iphone_part_2_891/ experiencing this problem. I just hope that enough folks are experiencing it for Apple to release a fix soon. It doesn’t kill me to do the workaround fix, but still, the JesusPhone shouldn’t need to have workarounds.
At least I finally got IMAP set up and have synced my MacBook Pro and my iPhone together and my folders show up on my iPhone.
One of the biggest aggravation with Internet Explorer is its listing of URLs in the address bar history. I could allay this aggravation by using bookmarks, which I do, but I don’t want to make a lot of bookmarks that clutter up my UI or even my Bookmarks list. What I do instead is use Firefox as my main browser of choice.
The reason I use Firefox (amongst other reasons), and I notice Safari does this too, is that it lists the URL history according to the most “used” link. For example, say I visit somesite.com and I find out they have an Australian parallel site called somesite.com.au as well. So I visit both. Now while the Australian site is informative, I visit somesite.com more regularly. Firefox will always list this at the top when I type something like “som” and it shows the URL history. Not so with Internet Explorer, which works differently.
Internet Explorer doesn’t list the URLs according to most used. It seems to list it in a weird alphabetical organization. Rather than listing somesite.com at the top, it’ll list somesimte.com.au first, then any subpages within that site. Finally it’ll list somesite.com and whatever subpages. I’m under the assumption, where alphabetical organization is concerned, that somesite.com is supposed to be listed first, then somesite.com.au. And it can’t be that Internet Explorer is listing by frequent clicking because I do use somesite.com more than the .au version.
Aside from that, Internet Explorer is… well, still not fun to use. Even their Developer Toolbar doesn’t work (at least on my work laptop, which is where I need it the most). Oh well, that’s my rant for today!
… though the day is still young and I might have more.
An “article mentioned how today’s operating systems may be behind the times”:http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/are-todays-operating-systems-behind-the-times/. In a way, I agree with it. I was an instant fanboy when I first picked up Neuromancer by William Gibson. I did what I could to get every bit of “Cyberpunk”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk I could. To think, back in the 80′s that it was far fetched to have a PDA that played video in full color. To think that there’d be cellphones that wouldn’t also be used as a lethal weapon, that could play all sorts of media, not just make phone calls.
But in the here and now, we have PDA’s that plays full video, that can be your music player and can even access the Internet via Wi-Fi. But that’s not all, we also have cellphones that are PDA’s and some that redefine the user experience, making it a wonderful tool not just for making phone calls. However, we don’t have Cyberspace decks that use neural interfaces or fingertip sensors. We don’t share a “consensual hallucination” to surf through the Internet, we still use monitors, we still use two dimensional interfaces to work with our data. While it would be great to have Cyberspace decks and to have full blow three dimensional operating systems, I don’t think we’re all that far behind.
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A bit ago I mentioned my recent usage of “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/ and how it helps bridge what I surf and read on my iPhone, to what I could potentially write about on my laptop. What I’ve also been doing is, if I come across any articles while on my iPhone or laptop and want access to them wherever I go, I tag it to del.icio.us., then I can hit up my del.icio.us page and clicky the linky.
I mentioned a couple reasons why I don’t want to bookmark them in Safari (whether on my laptop or using my iPhone). Here are two more…
# I don’t use Safari as my default browser on my Laptop.
# I tend to bookmark things in my iPhone so that when I tap on the bookmark icon, the first screen has my bookmarks. When I sync my safari browsers on both the iPhone and the Laptop, my bookmarks are moved to the “Bookmark Menu”, which requires me to execute an extra tap. I haven’t taken the time to delve into changing this default setting so I’m not sure if I can control this behavior.
So how do I integrate the web service del.icio.us, my iPhone and my laptop?
*Laptop*
On my laptop, I use Firefox and have the del.icio.us extension installed.
*iPhone*
On my iPhone, I use “Leaflets”:http://app.getleaflets.com as my “jumping off” point. It has a start page icon for del.icio.us so I just tap on that and get a list of my bookmarks.
When I want to tag an article, I either use a “Tag this to del.icio.us” link on the article, or I, currently, use the “Lazy Sheep”:http://ejohn.org/apps/sheep/ bookmarklet. I’m still in the process of finalizing which bookmarklet to use. The next one I’m going to try out would probably be the “one listed on Quick Online Tips”:http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/01/fastest-ways-to-post-bookmarks-to-delicious/.
So far this setup works pretty well and while I could just bookmark my del.icio.us page in my iPhone Safari browser, I like the list of my bookmarks that Leaflets generate because it’s fast all the time (optimized for the EDGE network).
YAiP (Yet Another iPhone Post). Get used to it.
A “post over at Hackszine”:http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/07/offline_iphone_apps_with_rfc_2.html mentions that it might be possible to create offline applications for the iPhone because Safari on the iPhone supports data URLs. While this might be really cool, I’d be afraid of the exploitability that this would present.
I’m not all that knowledgeable in this so I could just be paranoid. But still…
I have always wondered why bother using bookmark sites like “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/ when you could just bookmark a web site in your browser. However, now that I have an iPhone, I’ve started to use del.icio.us. It’s not because iPhone and del.icio.us works awesomely together, but it’s rather because I’m using the iPhone to browse and read web sites a lot more than I have with my other cellphone/smartphone devices in the past. So having my bookmarks floating in the web makes it super easy to get access to them whether I’m on my iPhone or MacBook.
*Why not just sync them?* I could do that, but with the clutter of my web apps for my iPhone, I’d lose my “reading” bookmarks easily.
*Haven’t you heard of folders?* Yes, I have and am using the default ones that were created in my Safari browser. It’s just nice having my bookmarks accessible from anywhere at virtually at any time. If they were only residing on my iPhone or MacBook, then there might be some instances where I can’t share my bookmarks or access them.
Now, I’m not dumping all of my bookmarks from my MacBook to del.icio.us, but what I am doing is saving bookmarks on things I’d like to write about here. And this works especially well with my iPhone and when I’m just lounging about web surfing with it. And right now, it’s actually pretty darn cool.
So, as the hype sort of dies down about the JesusPhone… I mean, the iPhone, people who’ve kept their hot piece of tech probably have chosen their favorite web apps. While I can’t remember the blogs and sites that have listed all the wonderful iPhone-centric programs, here’s a list of the applications that I like to use.
# “Movies.app”:http://www.moviesapp.com/ – What’s playing tomorrow? Oh cool, let’s get tickets for the nearest theater!
# “Jive Talk for the iPhone”:http://iphone.beejive.com – While it’d be nice to get sound pings when a message comes in, this program still does all the clients I use and makes them look shiny.
# “PocketTweets”:http://www.pockettweets.com/ – This has actually made me use Twitter more than I had been using it in the past.
# “Listingly”:http://www.listingly.com – Until a taskpad program becomes native to the iPhone, this site does wonders in helping me task out my day.
# “Leaflets”:http://www.getleaflets.com/ – They don’t lie when they say their app loads pretty fast on EDGE. It does and is pretty nice. But getting to all the apps listed can be a bit annoying.
# “AppMarks”:http://www.appmarks.com/ – Unlike Leaflets, currently, you can customize the “start screen” with apps you want quick access to. Takes a bit to load though on EDGE. However, you could keep the “start screen” up in Safari and cached.
No, not “The Man” as in the big dude we gotta rebel against. But the man who gave Cyberspace its ring. “William Gibson”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/ is to appear in “Second Life”:http://www.secondlife.com/. Seems Gibson’s journey is “organized by Penguin Books”:http://thepenguinblog.typepad.com/the_penguin_blog/2007/07/in-cyberspace-e.html.
While such a thing is awesome and I’ve heard lots of good things about Second Life, I just couldn’t get used to the interface. But maybe, just maybe, I might try again. If only to see if I can see the avatar of William Gibson.
Of all the movies in my collection, I’m planning on loading Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on my iPhone. While I don’t know entirely how to get the subtitles imported in when converting the movie into iPod format, I’d like to. But then how would it look on my iPhone? Would I even be able to read the words?
So I guess what I’ll do is just load the English dub. Those who know me know that I don’t like that. Most times the English dub comes out corny and stupid.
If anything I can always spend another couple of hours reconverting the movie.
Anyway, time to check it out on my iPhone, which is where I’m writing this post. 
Just got my iPhone tonight.
Yes, friends, I am in love. Sleek, sexy, sultry, seductive. And stuff.
After fiddling with all the different programs, I did experience what seemed to be a crash with the iPod portion; it wouldn’t play music. So, I just turned off the phone and turned it back on and I was good to go. I haven’t encountered any other issues.
Of course, having missed the whole weekend crusade, I was able to activate my phone in a matter of minutes.
Someone mentioned that they were able to connect to their secured wireless network without inputting the password on their iPhone. I call bull-doodoo since my network is secured and my iPhone detected it and asked for a password to connect. Either the person didn’t secure his network or he already slotted his password into his iPhone.
The maps portion seemed to be okay but all I did to test so far was look up the nearest Starbucks to my house. Google Maps picked it out correctly and gave proper directions. I’ve relatives incoming and I’d be interested to test the maps out for finding the good eats.
Other gadgetry, like camera, SMS, email, web browsing, were all good. Nothing outstanding, besides the interaction, but nothing glaringly wrong.
Mmmm… so wonderful.
In another 10 years, we just might have William Gibson Cyberspace realized. Even with video glasses being refined, there was little hope in having a new way to interface with a computer.
Of course, the iPhone launched with its revolutionary method of user interaction. Then Microsoft mentions their Surface technology.
And now, NTT reveals an interactive 3D system that you can actually “feel.”
Are you ready, cowboy?
It’s been a few days since the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ launched and there’s been quite a plethora of reviews. The ratio was originally leaning towards good until the sudden burst when people started getting problems with activation. Of course, that’s not really the fault of the iPhone itself but while some people realize that there would, of course, be some network clog (about 500,000 iPhones sold over the weekend), others are adamant that the iPhone is to blame for giving them such problems.
I’ve been looking for objective posts about iPhone’s shortcomings that couldn’t be addressed via software updates and could prove problematic for me. Rather, I’ve seen gripes mostly from folks who want everything in their cell phone.
Wading through all the whines and QQ’s, I found a few points in the “negative” that could impact my experience with the iPhone.
# Bluetooth Stereo is a no go – Not really a big deal for me. I plan on using the OEM headphones that come with the phone.
# Can’t mount iPhone as removable storage and/or browse the files with a file system application – I’d love to dump some stuff in my iPhone but with the largest, currently, being 8Gigs and discovering that my entire _Music_ Library consists of 6.4Gigs (not as much as I thought but still hefty), I’m not even including podcasts and videos, I don’t think I can hide my pr0n in my iPhone.
# Speaking of space… 8Gigs? – Kinda sucks comparing the iPhone to my video iPod, which has 60Gigs. But comparing the iPhone with my 8525, which has 1Gig, well… I think I’ll be happy with 8Gigs for a while.
# Some “potential problems”:http://geothought.blogspot.com/ with Google Maps – Now here’s a real valid complaint. I was planning on using my iPhone for maps and stuff since the feature was supposed to be well integrated. If there are problems (I’ll know in a week or so), then that’ll lower my enjoyment factor.
# No copy/cut and paste feature – If I were composing love letters or my disseration on the iPhone, I would probably be griping about that too… but I don’t. The most complex writery I do are basic emails and text messages.
# Speaking of SMS… no MMS? – This is a bummer, but I’ve mostly sent pictures via email. Wi-fi enabled iPhone? Damn skippy.
# But the EDGE network! – Yeah, slow but not game breaking for me. Even with 3G tech, my 8525 failed to load MySpace in 30 seconds. Or at all, actually.
# No video recording capability with iPhone’s camera – I admit, I’ll kinda miss the video recording feature of my 8525. But umm… picture quality isn’t all that. Seeing some examples of iPhone’s picture taking abilities… well, I think I’ll deal just fine.
# Feature bland camera – The 8525 has a switch from regular photos to macro. I don’t use it often. I have a digital camera to take sexy photos. I use my camera for quick snaps, nothing fancy.
# Basic ringtones are lacking, no way to select music as ringtones – This is a big bummer for me, but it’s a superficial one in actuality (since I’ve gone back to using regular ringtones). After a while, having a song played as a ringtone kind of drags the song down. Still, having an option (and it being free) would be mighty appreciated.
# No games – Ok, this kinda pisses me off. I want games man, games! Of course, not having games on my iPhone isn’t reason enough *not* to buy one. My DS and PSP do just fine.
All in all, there are some things that the iPhone lacks that kinda brings down the Wow! factor, but it’s still a really good phone. It has a revolutionary UI and makes using a cell phone an experience, not a chore.
I’m still adamant about waiting a week or so before using an iPhone. I don’t want to get one, activate it and find out that there’s something wrong with it that software updates won’t be able to fix.
However, actually purchasing one may come sooner than I initially planned. Since people will use iTunes to activate the iPhone, nothing’s really stopping me from buying one and holding onto it, right?
Right.
That’s $600 (4Gigs? That model doesn’t exist for me, 8Gigs all the way baybee!) out of my pocketsies. But… my prrreeeeecccccciiiiioooouuuuussssss…
God, someone hold me.
Hold me back.
So, it’s seemingly difficult to surf the web and not come across a blog about the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/. Guess what? Here’s another post about it.
When I heard about the requirement to purchase a data plan along with the iPhone it didn’t surprise me but I did think “Oh great… that’s where AT&T will scoop up the bucks.” Would only the elite be able to have the iPhone? Or those with easier spending allowances than other folks?
Sorta kinda.
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There’s been “some discussion”:http://www.hawaiithreads.com/showthread.php?t=12550 on a “community forum”:http://www.hawaiithreads.com/ I lurk about in concerning Macs and PCs and the differences betwixt the two. Folks have chimed in why they have one or the other (and some even use both, like me for example). There’s even some remnant of the Ye ‘Olde Mac vs. PC. While it’s pretty, for lack of a better word, superfluous, there’s really nothing wrong with people strongly biased for either or. Heck, I was a hardcore PC person back in the day and wouldn’t be caught dead with a Mac. Oh, if that Past Arlan knew what waits in store for him! hehe
Anyway, it’s not surprising that the discussion would fall into similar patterns from other talks when comparing a Mac and a PC. For Macs, it’s always easy to use, fast to set up and just get going but it’s pricey. For PCs, it’s easiest to customize, repair and you can get “more bang for your buck,” yet it’s harder to use.
Now with Vista and purchasing an out of the box system (not building or upgrading your own). Is it still the same pattern? Possibly.
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So, firsthand experience concerning the “Get a Mac Security Ad”:http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov is fun to go through. Sorta.
As I had to install all my games and such, I got the security pop-ups on a near constant basis. Grr, argh!
But as it is now, with things settling down, I haven’t been queried.
The “You must supply Administrator credentials” (or whatever the wording is) that I get when modifying files, deleting/removing items from the Programs list is a bit more irritating, mainly for the fact that the account I’m logged into at the time HAS administrator rights.
C’mon Vista, you should be smart enough to know that. Or! Instead of just giving me a dialog box to click Continue when you want me to supply Administrator credentials, ask for my password and only do such on “mission critical” items. Not the stupid empty game folder that didn’t get removed when I ran through the uninstall.
I need to admit though, the games that do work are running more beautifully now thanks to the upgraded system.
I’ve had this constant crackling sound coming from my speakers. At first I thought they were getting old, but after doing a couple of experiments, it turned out to originate from my sound card (Audigy 2 ZS). Googling up results, it’s interesting to note many others have had similar problems.
None of the solutions worked for me so I activated the onboard sound. Everything seemed to go ok until I fired up “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.”:http://www.stalker-game.com/ Sound was good up until a certain point, then it seemed to cut off. Reloading didn’t work. I had to exit out of the game and restart it. Well, it happened a second time, then a third.
“Alright. I’ll go back to the crackling sound. At least then the sound didn’t cut off,” I said with an exasperated sigh. Go back to my BIOS and deactivated the onboard sound. Problem. Oh wait, I just gotta re-install the drivers. What do I get? A blue screen and memory dump.
What did I do? Did I forget to mention I didn’t remove the Audigy card when I switched to onboard? It’s been so long, I don’t know if that mattered or not. Might have or might have been I didn’t take enough precautions against static discharge.
Anyway, moral of the story? Don’t mess around with crap until you read up and know exactly what you’re doing.
I thought to wait for the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ before syncing up my phone and laptop. But decided not to wait. Instead, I bought a copy of the “Missing Sync”:http://www.markspace.com/ and paired up my “Cingular 8525″:http://business.cingular.com/businesscenter/8525/index.jsp with my MacBook. They communicated so nicely, it’s kyoot.
What’s pretty awesome is, I initially used “gmail calendar”:http://www.google.com/calendar/ before iCal. But all I needed to do to get iCal synced up was plug in the URL of my calendar and it pulled in all the necessary information. Finally, I fired up Missing Sync and _zap!_ my cell phone’s synced up.
Just another hat tip to ease-of-use technology. And it’s oh so much fun.
I read an article today at Wired concerning the Cult of Mac and it’s got me thinking.
Does the author have a point that the Cult is seeing the time of its passing? iPhone is getting the attention of Apple developers who were working on the new OS X upgrade. Is the change in focus for the worst? Personally, I don’t think so.
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After joining “MyBlogLog”:http://www.mybloglog.com/, I went off to look for some techy and hip blogs. Considering “recent events”:/archives/2006/11/20/lose-ctrl-gain-command/, most of my focus in the techy department had mainly been on Mac stuff. In my search, I came across “Tips for Switchers”:http://www.tipsforswitchers.com/. Lots of great stuff for newbies and would have made it much easier to settle in had I found the site much earlier. There are still some new information that’ll I’ll have to take time to digest. Fun fun!
While I haven’t made a complete switch to the Mac (PC for games!) I’ve gotten pretty close. Here I am, fighting a bout with insomnia with my MacBook Pro, which has recently been souped up. I’ve got the “usual”:http://unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter “mods”:http://www.panic.com/candybar/ and “tools”:http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/. I also have wonderful “utilities”:http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html and “fluffy”:http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/ “stuff”:http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/magical.
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So it’s a completely new experience, me and this Mac, but incidentally it doesn’t stop at home.
I had been experiencing the dreaded squeaky spacebar and for a while, I thought I’d just live with it. I googled ways to fix the issue but didn’t feel daring enough to pluck the spacebar off myself. I came close as the squeakiness was driving me batty, but I’ve learned my lesson from my previous laptops.
I just couldn’t live with it and decided I’d try my hand at taking my Mac to the Genius Bar at the Ala Moana Apple Store. I signed up for a time on the web using their concierge service the night before. When I got there, the Apple Store was buzzing with activity. Folks from all walks of life… or should I say all points on the fashion scale—pop, retro, j-tourists, geeky (me), etc. frequented every spot in the store. Lots and lots of techy eye-candy and it took all of my willpower not to buy stuff.
Anyway, at the bar, they called my name (woot to reservations!) and I asked if they could help unsqueak my spacebar. The Genius then took a look at my Mac, scanned the barcode (probably to see if it was on warranty or if I signed up for AppleCare, which I did). After a bit of checking out their system, he took my laptop into the back. The wait was fine since I had lots of nice things to look at. Spare batteries, wireless travel mouse, stereo systems you can plug your iPod into… Apple swag. And when it seemed my shield of no-buy-stuff was about to crack, the Genius came out with my laptop with a triumphant grin. My Mac squeaks no more!
I had wonderful service and didn’t have to pay a dime. But while I’m pretty happy with the service, some folks aren’t too happy with theirs. Maybe it’s because I live in Hawaii and the people are, mostly, different. Maybe I came on a good day. All I know is, I had a nice experience and may even go back some day, and without the hesitation that I initially had.
Well, had to do this almost from scratch. Couldn’t load up the backup from the old site so I copied in the most recent post and the Alaska Trip Journal entries. Might as well start from ground 0.5 or so.
Layout was relatively easy to get down. First method caused the same display quirk in IE6 experienced on my old layout, but with the new method, this layout renders well. Best thing about the new method is, if I ever want to do a fluid width layout, it can accomodate it.
IE6 doesn’t support child and attribute selectors so the sidebar is a little squished. I rather not rework the entire area because I’ll soon be incorporating more of the advanced CSS techniques and will be phasing out IE6 as a browser in my test bed.
The above is a “slogan”:http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/switcher/2/ by “Apple”:http://www.apple.com/. It’s a pretty nifty slogan because it’s true.
Sorta.
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