Monthly Archives: January 2005

Apple

New Powerbooks

This morning Apple revised their powerbook line…see the release here. The biggest things to note, are the inclusion of Bluetooth 2.0, making Apple the first laptop manufacturer to include the new standard as standard equipment, and the cool new ‘if you drop it we’ll try and save the hard drive’ feature, which uses some kind of super high tech gizmo thingie to determine if your powerbook is going to fast, and if so, it stops the HD from spinning, which should help minimize HD damage when your fast moving powerbook comes to a sudden halt.

Now…all thats left (if you don’t count the eMac) is for Apple to update the PowerMacs….

Oh.. and what’s with the non-tuesday release? up until today, almost all of the hardware announcements I can remember, were released on Tuesdays…

Tech

DSL/Cable Alternative

Looks like everyone who lives in areas that aren’t served (and probably never will be) by DSL and Cable hi-speed providers are going to have a reasonably priced alternative this year. Wildblue is expecting to start nationwide rollout this year. The speeds are lower at the entry level then dsl or cable’s entry level speeds…but, since its targeted at people who can only get dialup.. its still much faster! From what I’ve seen online, it looks like they will end up being a reliable, cost effective hi-speed option to alot of people. If you’re looking for high speed and don’t want to go through your phone company or cable company, head over to their site and sign up to be notified when its available in your area

Just Stuff

Don’t Panic!

Saw this on Apple’s Quicktime site tonight… I’d seen the actual trailer last time Janice and I went to the movies. May is looking to be a good Movie month this year.

There’s Star Wars: Episode III

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

So, we get to see Anakin turn into Darth Vader… and we get to find out the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! What more could you ask for from a single month?

Oh, and in case you missed it earlier, Douglas Adams (the Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) has had an asteroid named after him!

Tech

My kind of sunglasses

These look cool. Of course…there is no information available from either vendor yet as to what kind of cool tricks the sunglasses will do. I’d like to see an integrated headset, with the phones display (caller ID..etc..) appearing on the lens of the glasses.. like a HUD display…

Apple

250,000,000 songs!

Apple announced today that the iTunes Music Store has sold 250 MILLION songs..thats a quarter of a billion.. so much for all the smack talk from companies like napster and buymusic.com about how no one will want to buy from Apple.

So, Apple is selling over a million songs a day…and Naptser is taking what 6 months for that many? (I’m guessing… notice how none of the Windows Media Player based stores actually release regular updates on their sales, perhaps they’re trying to avoid the embarrassment of taking months to sell what Apple sells in a few hours?)

Tech

New Host

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Yes… again… After spending awhile (read that as since I switched to GoDaddy for hosting). I’ve been unable to get parts of the website (really, just the blogs..since thats all thats really hosted outside of .Mac) working properly.. the typekey logins wouldn’t work for the commenting system, I couldn’t install MT-Blacklist to help prevent comment spam (apparently, this blog hasn’t made it to the bigtimes yet, as I have never suffered from comment spam). I also didn’t like the fact that GoDaddy limited my server access to FTP only (and not even SFTP at that). Pricewise, GoDaddy still offers the best prices for domain registration services, so I’m going to keep renewing my domains through them. But, today, I switched over to Dreamhost for the hosting of theteppers.net. So far, I like their services – I get shell access, easy to configure domain/sub domain information, SQL databases that don’t seem to time out (another problem I had with GoDaddy).

I’ve got 91 days to decide if I like them enough to stay for good (after day 92, I can’t get my money back). Hopefully, this will be the last server hop for the site for awhile.

Apple

Pepsi – iTunes Promotion – Take 2

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Since Pepsi screwed up their last free song promotion with the iTunes Music Store (you remember, huge parts of the country didn’t get any bottles printed with the promotional caps until the week the promotion was scheduled to end. Parts of the country didn’t get their bottles until AFTER the promotion had ended….resulting in a whopping 5% redemption rate)

This time around (the promotion is apparently going to be announced at SuperBowl again), Pepsi has doubled the number of winnable songs…added Mountain Dew to the list of drinks that will have the codes attached (hopefully,they remember that mountain dew is clear…and come up with a better way to prevent people just looking through the bottle to see if the bottle was a winner, before buying it). And… one iPod mini is going to be given away each hour once the promo starts.

So.. prepare to force your kidneys into early retirement… and feel free to send any unwanted song codes my way =)

Tech

Comcast DVR: The Review

Friday, Comcast sent a tech out to swap out our HDTV cable box, for the new HDTV/DVR box. Since my big complaint about my TiVo Series 2 is that I can’t record HD in HD, I figured I’d give the Comcast box a try for a month or two, to see how it stacks up against the TiVo.

My first complaint – Comcast had to send a tech out to do the install… I would have preferred to just go into one of the local offices and swap hardware myself..I hate having to let the install techs play around with my stuff. According to the rep I ordered it from, its because the DVRs are so new to the area they are in limited supply. With that out of the way… read on for the actual review…

Continue reading Comcast DVR: The Review →

Kael's Adventures, Tech

Vivendi Universal/Knowledge Adventure

Kael’s gotten a little bored with Baby Banger, so last time we went buy our closest Apple Store, we decided to pick him up a new game or two. Now, knowing like I do that the kids edutainment titles are WAAAY out of date (there are kids’ titles out there, still selling, that will run on System 7!) I made sure to check the system requirements very closely. Since I don’t run ANY OS 9 software, I don’t have the classic environment installed on any of our computers. When I purchase/trial/use software at this point, if it doesn’t run natively under OS X, and its a ‘new’ (meaning less then 3 years old) title, I don’t buy it.

We decided on Jumpstart Advanced – Toddlers for him, and the system requirements don’t make any mention of Classic. Here they are as listed on the box:

PowerMac G3 266 Mhz, OS 9.2.1 OS 10.1.5 OS 10.2.3, 64MB of RAM (128MB RAM for 10.1.2 and up), 16x CD-ROM drive, 16 Bit Color

Continue reading Vivendi Universal/Knowledge Adventure →

Current Events, Tech

Spammer Lawsuit

Any of the recent lawsuits regarding Spammers have been good lawsuits, in case you missed them, they’ve been filed by states against spammers who violated the incredibly weak “Can-Spam” act.

This lawsuit however, falls under the ‘not good’ category. A notorious spammer has decided that people reporting him as a Spammer is malicious and he has filed suit.

Surprisingly, the courts didn’t throw this out right off the bat as a frivolous lawsuit. Hopefully, once it goes to trial, it will get thrown out. This is a good cause to donate to, so feel free to throw the guy a few bucks via paypal.