Geek Birthday Present
Does your favorite geek have a birthday *and* a car? Even without the car, I'd bet he'd like this:
On sale now for only *$5.00*!
Griffin Technlogy's Spring Sale
Outfit any iPod or MP3 player with cases and accessories during the Spring Sale at Griffin Technology. Also get deals on wireless audio kits, bundles, and auto convenience kits.
Hollywood is Dead from the Neck Up....
Apparently, I was right when I told Lesa "GhostRider" was gonna suck.
Well, I'm betting I go two for two with this next prediction - "Underdog - The Movie".
Now, before you get all excited and think, "Cool! Underdog was one of my favorite cartoons!" - watch the trailer.
Now that you've seen it...I'm right, aren't I?
iPod Tours at SFMOMA
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Patrons at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art can borrow an iPod for $2 and listen to a tour of the museum's two latest exhibits.
Apple donated 100 video iPods to the museum, which have been outfitted specifically with walking tours of its new Picasso and Modern Art and Brice Marden exhibits. The tours are broken into one to two minute snippets, appearing like song tracks on the iPod. And in lieu of album art, it has reproductions of the art.
The SFMOMA has already been producing free museum podcasts, but this is the first time it's offering self-guided iPod tours.
Ms. Pac-Man Now Available for iPod
Namco announced that the arcade classic Ms. Pac-Man is now available for download on the iTunes Store for fifth-generation iPods. Features of the iPod version of Ms. Pac-Man, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, include the four unique maze designs, 256 maze levels and the “coffee break” animated intervals from the original game. The iPod version also allows players to listen to the original retro game sounds or music from their iPod library while playing. Like other iPod games, Ms. Pac-Man sells for $4.99.
Click here to read more "Ms. Pac-Man Now Available for iPod"
The Battle for the Heart of the iPhone
The term ‘audio codec’ will be unfamiliar to many, and the device to which it refers will never enjoy the same iconic status as a set of white earphones. But to the millions of listeners who tune into their iPod each day, the tiny audio chip – which costs about $1 – is just as indispensable: it lets them hear the sound.
To Wolfson, the British manufacturer which makes the component for Apple, it’s also a big deal. With shipments of the music player rising to more than 21 million in the last quarter alone, supplying the part exclusively to Apple represents an enormous source of revenue.
Wolfson and several other micro-electronics manufacturers, mostly from Taiwan, are now desperately wooing Apple for the right to have their components included in its next sure-to-be hit: the iPhone, which was launched in San Fransisco last month and begins shipping in June.
Click here to read more "The Battle for the Heart of the iPhone"
Public Confidence, Thanks to iPod
iPods are great when you want to look busy. They're great when you need to focus on something other than the excruciating pain of your intense workout. They're great when you'd rather not talk to the girl who decides to come to lecture for the first time this semester and is staring at you because you seem like the type who takes great notes.
For me, the most important thing my iPod has given me is the confidence to blow my nose.
After Marketing Effort, RED Delivers $11.3M
The RED charity brand from the Global Fund has reported that they have raised a total of $11.3 million in contributions in the year that it has launched. 2006 witnessed a huge marketing push which leveraged partners including Nike, GAP and American Express. The charity itself spent less than a million dollars, the LA Times reports but assume the advertising spend by the partners to have been massive.
All the marketing activity behind RED made you aware of the brand, not the underlying message of plight in Africa. If the combined marketing activity raised only $11 million and no one has been left better educated about African concerns, wouldn't it have been better to have just redirected the ad budget straight into the charity?
(Shawn's Comment: Have you bought any (RED) products?)
Click here to read more "After Marketing Effort, RED Delivers $11.3M"
Apple TV Ship Date Pushed Back to mid-March
Expected to ship by the end of February, Apple on Monday said that Apple TV will be delayed for a couple of weeks. “Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments mid-March,” an Apple spokesperson told Macworld.
Apple TV will cost $299 when it ships.
Click here to read more "Apple TV Ship Date Pushed Back to mid-March"
1st iPhone Ad Premieres, Sucks
...Apple aired its first iPhone commercial during the Oscars. It's basically just famous clips of actors saying "Hello" in TV and movie classics. Then there's an iPhone. Then it says "Hello" in white text on black. And that's it. It might well be the perfect Oscars ad, incestuous as it is. But it's already passed its expiration date. It's instantly irrelevant. And they could have at least used the Mac saying "Hello" at some point."
I think this is a misstep. It might work for the Oscars, but as a launch, it's a mistake.
(Shawn's Comment: Anyone else think Kahney may have missed the point of the ad?)
EMI Reportedly Ends DRM Talks
EMI Group and online music sellers including Microsoft halted talks aimed at removing copyright protection from songs because they couldn't agree on the size of an advance payment, people briefed on the offer said.
EMI, the third-largest music company, demanded an upfront payment to compensate for its risk in releasing the music without software that prevents copying, the sources said. The retailers countered with a lower offer, which EMI rejected, and negotiations are now on hold, they said.
Discussions included Microsoft, Apple, RealNetworks, Yahoo! and Amazon.com, and a deal with some of them seemed close two weeks ago, the people said. CD sales slid last year, giving the idea traction as record companies look to reverse their fortunes. An announcement with EMI had been planned for as early as Feb. 9, one of the people said.
"It's a setback," Harold Vogel, an independent media analyst in New York, said in an interview. "That this industry fights every change tooth and nail is not helping reverse the tide."
Goldman Sachs - 14 million iPhones Sold by End of 2008
Goldman Sachs said it believes Apple will sell more than 14 million iPhones through 2008 based on results from a recent buying intention survey. The investment firm forecasts sales of 4 million iPhones in 2007 and 10.5 million in 2008. The consumer survey—conducted in the U.S., U.K., China, and India prior to the iPhone’s official unveiling—found that the number of potential iPhone buyers is equivalent to 75% of the installed base of current iPod owners. In the U.S., where Apple ranked as the No. 4 most desired handset brand, 71% of respondents indicated interest in a potential Apple phone. The survey also found that a number of consumers are willing to switch carriers to get the iPhone, with 30% of U.K. respondents and 15% in the U.S. suggesting that they would switch.
Click here to read more "Goldman Sachs - 14 million iPhones Sold by End of 2008"
Apple's coming 'Bypass Vista' Campaign
Apple has also apparently promoted videos that position Vista as a Tiger clone on sites like YouTube.
(Shawn's Comment: Nice to see Enderle is still living up to his reputation. Apple does not "promote" videos on YouTube)
Click here to read more "Apple's Coming 'Bypass Vista' Campaign"
Patent Troll Sues Apple, Samsung, SanDisk over MP3 players
Texas MP3 Technologies, a recently formed company that appears to only exist on paper, has hit Apple, Samsung, and SanDisk with patent-infringement lawsuits. The suits were filed on Feb. 16 in Marshall, Texas, a city popular with patent enforcers because of speedy trials and juries that lean in favor of the plaintiff. Texas MP3 Technologies—which shares a street address with one of its lawyers in Marshall—alleges infringement on U.S. patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel and covers “an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method.”
Click here to read more "Patent Troll Sues Apple, Samsung, SanDisk over MP3 players"
"Hidden Details" from the iPhone Keynote
(Shawn's Comment: Not exactly hidden but revealing. Pay particular attention to his comments regarding ringtones)
Apple WWDC Student Scholarship
Apple is offering a student scholarship to its Apple Developer Connection members. Winners of the scholarship get a free ticket to attend the Worldwide Developers Conference and has full access to the technical sessions and events. This scholarship is worth $1,595.
The Worldwide Developers Conference is a technology conference held every year and this year it will be at the Moscone West in downtown San Francisco.
Scholarship applications are due by March 19, 2007 at 5:00 PM PDT.
Gates and Jobs to make History
(Shawn's Comment: "Make history"? You're kidding, right? Jobs and Gates have been on stage with each other many times)
"Neither executive is a stranger to the conference, but this will be first time they will appear together at D, a fairly rare occurrence."
(Shawn's Comment: Um...actually, the D5 conference *isn't* a "fairly rare occurrence". It happens every year. Maybe you meant that Jobs and Gates appearing together was fairly rare. Well, in that case - write better!)
YML on the iTMS!
Thanks to the nice folks at Apple, Your Mac Life is again available for your listening pleasure via the iTunes Music Store so you can subscribe there and not miss a single show!
Remember, the show feeds on the iTMS are for *streaming only*. If you want to download YML to your iPod, you have to join our *thousands* of Audible.com subscribers. if you click through the graphic on the left, you can even get 3 free AudioBooks from them!
"When Goalies Collide"
You kids out there may not realize this, but there are levels to a hockey fight.
There's the event we call "pushy shovey". Basically, everyone mills about, tossing threatening looks at each other. But no punches are thrown.
Then you've got your average, every day fight. Two guys square off, grab each other, and start throwing punches. Few will land, fewer still will hurt and it's all over in about 45 seconds.
Rarely, you'll see a guy square off against some one he shouldn't (as in the first minute of this fight). Hockey fights are usually pretty even. Believe it or not, there's an etiquette involved:
Then come "The Battles". The fights between two guys that, years later, fans still talk about. A perfect example are the fights between Tie Domie and Bob Probert. Either these 2 guys hated each others guts or they just simply loved to fight each other:
But what really gets fans up out of their seats, what really gets Canadian blood boiling, is not just the good old (and no longer seen) bench clearing brawl but - "When Goalies Collide".
Imagine being a hockey goalie. You spend the entire game, trapped in front of 24 sq ft of net with 5 guys slinging frozen rubber at you at 95 mph. It's gotta make you a bit nuts.
Why Smart Cops do Dumb Things
Since 9/11, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: Much of our country's counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.
This is Cover Your Ass security, and unfortunately it's very common.
The Top 5 Mac Hard Drive, Diagnostic, and Repair Utilities
Macs are notoriously reliable computers, but even the best computers sometimes have problems: be it a hard drive crash, Mac OS X problem, or a more extensive hardware failure. Having the right diagnostic, repair, and data recovery tools can make all the difference for recovering your data and for diagnosing or resolving issues. In this article, Ryan Faas identifies and compares the five best tools for working with the hard drive, keeping your Mac running, and diagnosing problems.
Click here to read more "The Top 5 Mac Hard Drive, Diagnostic, and Repair Utilities"
iPod shuffle Wins Design Week Award
Apple's iPod shuffle this week won the Design Week Award for Best Consumer Product Design.
The judges said, “It feels a bit unfair to all the other entries, which were mainly very good indeed, that Apple — with its relentless commitment to innovative and evolutionary design, and its attention to detail — should again win pole position”.
Judge Sebastian Conran of Conran & Partners said, "The quality of Apple’s products, packaging and enticing presentation really sets the benchmark and creates a compelling ‘itchy wallet’ syndrome that makes them so successful."
Click here to read more "iPod shuffle Wins Design Week Award"
Apple TV: Why It Matters
Apple is extending its digital lifestyle concept to the TV, with Apple TV. I find this move by Apple very interesting and potentially important to the market because of the impact it may have on consumer trends. Of course, Apple is not the first to try to extend Mac/PC content to the living room; in fact, it's five years late. Microsoft's Windows Media Center has been doing this since 2002 with mixed results, and various other media adapters have come to market since then and gotten only minimal consumer acceptance.
On the other hand, you could say the same for Apple's late entry into the MP3 space.
Prevent Accidental Wakeups
I decided that it would be better if my Macs, as they do with sleep, would only wake on my command. There’s no built-in GUI solution to this problem, but it turns out that Apple has hidden a number of power management options in a Unix program called pmset. We covered one use of pmset, to set newer Macs’ sleep mode, in this tip. But pmset can do much more than that.
To see what options your Mac is presently configured with, launch Terminal (in /Applications -> Utilities), and type pmset -g.
Study: Consumers Balking at iPhone's Price
Consumers aren’t willing to pay what Apple may ask for the iPhone, but if the price drops they’ll switch their mobile service to AT&T in order to get it, according to results of a survey.
Among the 26% of respondents who said they’re likely to buy an iPhone, only 1% said they'd pay $500 for it. When Apple introduced the iPhone in January, it said it would cost $500 on the low end. 42% of those who said they’re likely to buy the phone said they’d pay $200 to $299.
(Shawn's Comment: I think a lot of folks, right now, if asked in a survey, would say they wouldn't pay the price. But when it becomes available, a lot of those same people will have a strong enough "gadget lust" to open their wallets a *lot* wider than they would like to)
Click here to read more "Study: Consumers Balking at iPhone's Price"
Macweek Ressurrected!?
How many of you remember the paper edition of MacWeek magazine? If you do, you're getting old. :)
I saw this site referenced somewhere and got excited, thinking MacPublishing was bringing the old venerated (and hated) MacWeek name back. But, when i go to the site, I saw that they were using WordPress and it didn't look anything like the other MacPublishing products.
After investigating further (actually, spending about 60 more seconds on the site), I figured the site was run by a couple of kids and will be taken down......oh.....let's say before the weekend is out. :)
But it brings up a couple of points. One is that there is an entire "generation" of Mac users who have no clue about the "Good Old Days" and two, if you're going to use a particular obvious name, at least do a Google search to make sure someone else doesn't own it. :)
