StewtopiaDigg goes to 3.0
Third time’s the charm. Digg has updated their UI and added other categories including Science, Business, Entertainment, and Gaming. What, no Home and Garden?
10 Reasons High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed
AKA why consumers hate format wars.
Sofa Control and Remote Buddy
Two apps for the Apple remote control. [via Daring Fireball]
MacOSXhints unveils rating system
making a useful site even more useful. [via TUAW]
The short version – DO NOT USE PLAXO ON YOUR MAC!
The long version – Ok, I know that Plaxo is evil, but I really wanted another way than .Mac (which isn’t evil, merely incompetent) to backup my address book online.
I had never tried Plaxo when I was in the Windows world (like I needed one more thing to slow that lovely ThinkPad down) as I had heard the tales of spam that Plaxo had generated. It seemed that Plaxo had mended their evil ways and were not going to spam people any more. Apparently, now they just eat your data.
This morning I woke up to 99% of my entire address book gone.
Obliterated. Kaput. Tot. Dead.
This wasn’t the first time that there was a little problem with my address book and syncing, but I didn’t know the culprit before. I’m one of those neurotic folks that likes to have his data in many places, so the thought of something like Plaxo (or .Mac) backing up my data is very enticing, but after today I’m going to shut Plaxo down and cancel my account.
I’ve sent Plaxo two emails in the last month and even paid for the upgraded service to make sure that I would get help if I needed it. This morning, I chatted with a CSR from Plaxo and they informed me that my data would return within one hour.
Well, folks, it’s been a 3 hours… and I still have just 3 addresses in my address book.
[UPDATE: Looks like my post did some good. My address book is back (albeit with dupes, but hey, it’s back). Thanks Mark Jen and for Plaxo customer support for fixing this.
If you like free TV for your iPod, you’re in luck. This week (to kick off their undoubtedly slow summer), iTunes is giving away 4 TV shows, plus a bonus Superman preview. Download away.
TV Shows
Kyle XY
– new supernatural drama from ABC Family
Bono in Africa with Brian Williams – NBC News specials
Invader Zim – Season 1, Episode 1
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 3 free episodes of the FX summer comedy
Bonus Video
Superman Returns Preview – 2 minute scene preview of next week’s movie.
Music Video
Rolling with Bob Saget – Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone – from Mtv’s Blowing Up show.
Single of the Week
Landon Pigg – Sailed On
Still debating about getting a MacBook (I know I am)? Check out this video review from YouTube. Sometimes a video speaks louder than specs and test reports.
[via Digg]
The rumor du jour is that Apple will announce movie downloads from the iTunes Music Store by year’s end. The rumor that won’t die was substantiated by Variety today with quotes from unnamed sources within the movie industry.
The article also talks about movie studios balking at the single $9.99 price point that Jobs has proposed, getting Apple to relent to a two-tiered pricing system of $19.99 for new releases and $9.99 for catalog titles.
While I have no doubt that this rumor is true, two other products must be released to make this happen. First, a new widescreen iPod must be released and more importantly, a device for the living room needs to be released as well. Why? Movie downloads are great, but the screen on the current iPod is too small for movie viewing and more importantly, the market for video at home (vs. on the go) is much, much larger.
What is the living room device? I’m not sure what form it will take, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a Mac Mini, as it is too expensive and might scare Windows users (the larger market) away.
Read [via AppleInsider]
The Wall Street Journal released their report from the Walt Mossberg’s CEO love-in from a few weeks back.
(FYI – “The D” is a small conference for executives from large companies and essentially is a series of discussions and interviews conducted by the Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.)
Interviews include Bill Gates, “who showed off a dramatic new version of the dominant Office software, took shots at search rival Google, and declared the network-TV business dead,” Robert Iger (Walt Disney CEO), “who didn’t agree with him,” Sir Howard Stringer (Sony CEO), who was indicted by Martha Stewart for cluttering her life with wires, and Barry Sonnenfeld, (Movie Director) who thinks the movie to DVD release window is too short.
Much of this year’s conference was devoted to the changing media landscape and the disruption that technology is creating for old business models.
If you have a WSJ subscription, the D conference report is essential reading. I’ll provide some highlights in subsequent postings.
I’m trying to figure out what the heck is wrong….
[Update] Posting should work fine now. I think there was something wrong with the Ajaxy fanciness I had going on, so we are back to our old, faithful Stewtopia UI.
I heard this story on the NPR Story of the Day podcast a couple of weeks back and then a friend sent me an article from the NYTimes yesterday.
The gist is, in the UK, “inventor Howard Stapleton” discovered that teenagers can hear frequencies that many adults can’t and so he decided to turn those frequencies against them. Dubbed the “Mosquito teen repellent,” the frequency would be emitted at irregular intervals and would prove to be really irritating to teenagers and they would leave the premises.
The twist, however, is that teenagers have turned this invention on it’s head and are using it to send text messages undetected in class to one another. Most teachers can’t hear the tone and the virtual note passing is successful.
I thought I was done with the story until I ran across this while surfing tonight. Blogger Ochen K has the original mosquito sample as well as a series of test frequencies for your listening (ear shattering) pleasure.
For me it stops hurting at around 20,000Hz, whereas my wife is fitting in perfectly with our over-30 demographic.
What frequencies can you hear?
for now. After a little hiatus, hopefully you’ll be seeing more posts in the not-too-distant future. Hope you didn’t miss me too much.
Wow… I had seen Sketchup at MacWorld Expo this year and thought, wow, that’s kind of neat, another 3D drawing tool that I may have some use for, but not $200 some odd-dollar use for. Along comes Google shortly after Macworld and scoops up the company and makes the program free… for Windows.
Well, laddies, get your drawing pencils ready. As of yesterday, the free version of Google Sketchup is available for Mac OS X and boy is this program cool. Most CAD or 3D programs have been expensive and fairly difficult to use, not so with Sketchup. Take the 10 minute video tutorial and you’ll be up and running fairly quickly. You’re not going to releasing the next Pixar movie with this app, but you will can make some 3d representations of objects pretty darn fast.
Call me lazy, but I’ve always wanted a program like this to layout a room or space to get a sense of what it might look like before I do all the heavy lifting. This app is so easy to use, my back thanks you, Google.
Xbox Live returns with Message Center integration
Looks like no other fancy-pants updates with yesterday’s downtime. Damn…I’m falling into Xbox 360 fanboy hype. On the other hand, I’ve got a really fancy answering machine for Xbox 360 now.
Microsoft Buys Seattle Top Spot In Gaming Cities Poll
Glad to see my epic Oblivion playing last week might have helped our fair city gain some notoriety.
Btw, if you are on Xbox live and want to play head to head, my gamertag is stewtopia.
As in tomorrow. Xbox Live will be down for 13 hours tomorrow for what many presume to be a major update. Many are speculating that this update will include background downloading for Marketplace content.
For those of you that don’t have an Xbox 360, one of the cooler features is demo and content downloading on the unit. Demoing a new game before purchase is pretty wise on almost any gaming system, but before Xbox Live, demos were for PCs and game magazine subscribers only.
Microsoft has said recently that E3 will have lots downloadable coverage on Xbox 360 and this update makes sense before such an update occurs. What makes this interesting to me is that this new feature and a deluge of HD or SD content could really test a video download system. Oh, ya, and Xbox Live is free to non-subscribers next week.
If Microsoft wanted to start a video download service, the Xbox 360 could be a perfect Trojan horse to get them in a lot of living rooms. Apple might own the portable content, but no one owns the living room just yet.
Serious side bar aside, don’t plan on playing Burnout Revenge between 2am and 3pm tomorrow morning.