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The iPhone Lives!
Apple’s cell phone has been announced and it is called the iPhone, Cisco’s trademark be damned!
iPhone is also the full screen video iPod? Runs Mac OS X.
Macworld Keynote Coverage
The Macworld Expo 2007 keynote given by Steve Jobs will get lots of on-line coverage. Here is a list of sites that will be providing continuous updates of hopefully insanely great products.
Since I can’t be at the Expo in person, I’ll be hanging out at home in front of my Mac for the play-by-play. I usually have two or three windows/tabs open for information overload. My favorites are Engadget (great pics of previous events) and MacRumors (text only so a wee bit faster). I may give TUAW a look as well.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Macworld, Steve Jobs
More MacWorld Rumors
As MacWorld Expo 2007 looms, more rumors begin to surface.
- An upgraded .Mac service? At least a bigger iDisk is rumored to already be available. One user reported a jump to 30 GB of on-line space. I hope .Mac receives other improvements as well. Yeah, the service is expensive for what you get.
- ApplePhone integration with iChat? Others think the recent iChat update does more than documented. Perhaps other fixes were incorporated to make iChat on your computer compatible with other devices, say the Apple cell phone (previously called the iPhone).
- More iTunes features. Gracenote, the company that provides CD names and track names, for software like iTunes has a press release saying that they’re soon going to provide song lyrics as well. From the press release, “Gracenote expects the first publicly-available lyric service to launch in early 2007.” Hey, MacWorld is next week on January 9 which is “early 2007.” What better way to announce this service than having Steve Jobs pitch it for you.
SuperDuper is Super Duper!
With a Holiday filled with picture taking and video recording, my stock internal 160-GB drive filled up quickly. So much so that I ran out of space and had to move things to other drives.
Soon enough, these other (tiny) drives began running out of space too. What to do?
CompUSA had a sale on a 500-GB drive, and I went ahead and purchased this mangous drive. Since I’m lazy, I really didn’t want to reload the Mac OS on this new drive and slowly transfer all my files. Instead, I gave SuperDuper a try.
Primarily aimed at making backups, SuperDuper makes disk images much like Norton Ghost but with a simple (and reassuring) GUI. The free version is all I needed since the paid version adds great but unneeded features for my task at hand.
A few hours later, I had a complete clone of my boot drive. Then I did a drive swaperoo and booted up with 300+ GB to spare. How easy!
I’d purchase SuperDuper and use its Smart Update feature if this app were part of some kind of cool software bundle.
Technorati Tags: Macintosh, SuperDuper
Top Baby Names for 2006
BabyCenter published their top 100 baby names for 2006 along with some trends. Here are the top 10 names for girls and boys.
Girls
- Emma
- Madison
- Ava
- Emily
- Isabella
- Kaitlyn
- Sophia
- Olivia
- Abigail
- Hailey
Boys
- Aiden
- Jacob
- Ethan
- Ryan
- Matthew
- Jack
- Noah
- Nicholas
- Joshua
- Logan (must be due to X-Men’s Wolverine)
New entries to the top 100 for girls are Aubrey, Juliana, Maggie, and Nevaeh (heaven spelled backward). For boys, the new names are Brody, Miles, and Peyton.
Technorati Tags: baby
Kids with a High IQ Become Vegetarians?
There is a British study that links kids with high IQs becoming vegetarians as young adults. So essentially smart kids become vegetarians. Other findings:
Vegetarians were more likely to be female, of higher social class and better educated, but IQ was still a significant predictor of being vegetarian
Don’t know if I agree with this study. In my informal observations of two vegetarians, my findings counter that put forth by the British study. And just because the Tabasco Man scarfs down meaty burgers doesn’t mean he was a dumb kid. 😉
RSS Feeds for Blogger Comments
Don’t know how long this has been available, but comments on Blogger blogs have their own dedicated RSS feeds. WordPress has had this feature forever and I liked it as soon as I understood its usefulness.
Instead of keep checking blogs for the latest comments, you can simply subscribe to its RSS feed and get the recent comments via your RSS feeder/aggregator.
What’s the URL for a comment feed?
http://pulpconnection.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full
Simply change out the blog name (in bold) with the name of another Blogger blog. For example:
Baby Dog Days comments are at: http://inupeace.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full
CCTWT comments are at: http://cctwt.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full
Wayne’s World comments are at: http://hokumi.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full
Enjoy!
Changes on Pulpconnection
As you probably noticed, I made the change to Blogger Beta or whatever it’s called now. And as talked about before, I ‘m starting to add some changes here and there. There are lots of sites out there to help hack away at Blogger Beta such as Hackosphere, the Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta), and Beautiful Beta.
So far, I got the recent comments working (but it could be a bit better). And I got the “Digg This” and other buttons added.
Lots more work to do!
Five Minutes with the Zune
Actually got to play with a Zune for a few minutes while at a family party. A short side story before we begin… It was a Christmas gift since the gift giver was tired of waiting for the release of the true video iPod. The Zune was purchased from Best Buy, but when the box was opened, it was empty! When explaining the mishap, the Best Buy rep commented, “Employees…” as if employee theft was not uncommon. Now back to the story…
The Zune is about the same size as everyone’s favorite iPod. But the Zune screen is huge! The screen must be about 75% of the front with the controls taking up the remaining 25%. By contrast, the iPod’s screen real estate and click wheel controls are split about 50-50.
The images on the screen look clear and sharp. I like the font used (not sure if you can change the font).
Since the owner only had the Zune for a short time, there were no pictures or videos loaded yet, only music. But the Zune does come pre-loaded with a variety of music though I don’t know if these songs are permanent or are of the Zune’s 3-listens-and-self-destruct variety.
I didn’t know the Zune has a built-in FM radio receiver too. I heard about the (limited) Wi-Fi wireless ability but didn’t try it out since there wasn’t anything else to connect to.
To control the Zune, there are four “buttons” – two regular buttons and two compass-style navigation circles. The two regular buttons are for play/pause and to go back. The navigation circles are like those found on many cell phones to go up, down, left, and right on the menus. The center circle is pushed to select menu choices.
The controls are the biggest thing that differentiate the Zune from the iPod. While the Zune controls work, you have to admire the evolution of the iPod’s touchable click wheel. The click wheel eliminates the need for any other buttons, greatly simplifying the user interface. And by spinning your finger on the click wheel, I think you get a better sense of interacting with your iPod. Clicking up and down on the Zune’s menus felt old-school and boring. Spinning the iPod’s click wheel is more fun.
And once you understand the iPod’s click wheel navigation, you get very used to it. Clicking up to go back a screen took me awhile to get used to when I first got an iPod. But now I appreciate the single button-ness of the click wheel. While the Zune has a dedicated back button, that is an extra button that you have to move your finger to. My fingers are lazy, let them stay in one area.
The Zune is a decent entry into the personal music player market, but MacWorld Expo 2007 is coming up, and now it’s Apple’s chance to counter.
Holiday Dinner 2006
Had our yearly holiday dinner and this year we headed to Uncle Bo’s in Kapahulu. Interesting place with an interesting design. Food looked plain but tasted good.
Visitors from Cali were here along with the Greatest Legal Mind. The Pulpconnection Prize Pack was delivered to Pulpconnection’s 10,000th visitor.
Then it was off to Al’s house for grab bag and a one man’s trash is another man’s treasure White Elephant gift exchange. Al has some awesome taste in music. Is that a SuperBowl 35 • Picks from the Non-Fans CD?! Good stuff I say.
Grab bag gifts included a pocket-sized digital camera, oven mitts, a Starbucks coffee mug and gift card, a set of greeting cards, a Muffin Magic maker, chocolate goodies, and pillows.
The White Elephant had some pretty good crap too. Bklyngrl got sandals and a restaurant review guide. The desk fan and salad bowls were stolen. What did Al get? Is that a crip do-rag? Gangsta!! Snoop Dogg! There was wine, Hawaii-themed items, and the bestest gift, a chips and salsa bowl. Ingenious!
