After looking at the specs and the prices, especially the prices on Amazon on Black Friday, and playing with the real thing at the SF Apple Store, it was hard not to buy one. They should sell like hot cakes this holiday season…

I plan to blog about my initial experience and impression on Sherry’s new MacBook, so stay tuned…

AppleInsider | Apple to ship 300,000 MacBooks this month – paper

Apple Computer’s new Core 2 Duo MacBooks are selling like popsicles on a hot summer day, with orders for the month of November likely to reach 300,000 units.

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UPDATE: I don’t have any more invites left, sorry.

Kavin told me about this new cool service at Amazon, it’s pretty damn useful, especially when you’re too busy to Google stuff yourself… I have a few invites left, if you want one you can use the MeeboMe widget on my main blog page to contact me…

NowNow.com beta

technorati tags:NowNow, AMZN, Amazon, Web2.0

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When I used KMaps I could query my contact database to get street addresses, it uses Java and was pretty darn slow but it works. I’ve switched to the native Google Maps for Treo since it was publicly released, it works great but I now have to go into my address book, copy the street address, remember the zipcode, and go back to the Gmap app, paste in the street address and type in the zipcode from memory. It’s kindda annoying. It would be nice if they would just let me query the address book. Most of the other apps can do that so I’m sure it’s pretty easy to implement.

technorati tags:google maps, goog, treo

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Kavin told me about this, pretty cool stuff…

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) – Limited BetaAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon
EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use
web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with
your custom application environment, manage your network’s access
permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you
desire.

To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

• Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications,
  libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use our
  pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.
• Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools
  that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable
  and fast repository to store your images.
• Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.
• Use Amazon EC2 web service to start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed.
• Pay for the instance hours and bandwidth that you actually consume.

Service Highlights

• Elastic
  Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease
  capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one,
  hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. Of
  course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your
  application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its
  needs.
• Completely Controlled
  You have complete control of
  your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact
  with them as you would any machine. Each instance predictably provides
  the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz x86 processor, 1.75GB of RAM,
  160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth.
• Designed for use with Amazon S3
  Amazon EC2 works in
  conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to provide a
  combined solution for computing and storage across a wide range of
  applications.
• Reliable
  Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable
  environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and reliably
  commissioned. The service runs within Amazon’s proven network
  infrastructure and datacenters.
• Secure
  Amazon EC2 provides web service
  interfaces to control network security. You define groups of instances
  and their desired accessibility.
• Inexpensive
  Amazon EC2 passes on to you
  the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You pay a very low rate for
  the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the
  significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase
  and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from
  many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are
  commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs, and
  removes the need to over-buy “safety net” capacity to handle periodic
  traffic spikes.

Pricing

• Pay only for what you use.
• $0.10 per instance-hour consumed (or part of an hour consumed).
• $0.20 per GB of data transferred outside of Amazon (i.e., Internet traffic).
• $0.15 per GB-Month of Amazon S3 storage used for your images (charged by Amazon S3).

Data transferred within the Amazon EC2 environment, or between Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3, is free of charge (i.e., $0.00 per GB).

Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon EC2 / Amazon Web Services

technorati tags:amzn, ec2, elastic compute cloud

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A little app I wrote (automatically snaps pictures from the iSight when the computer wakes from sleep and uploads the images to flickr) caught the facility and staff of an Apple authorized repair depot in Tennessee in action! Surprise!

digg – Covert MacBook photos from inside Apple repair facility!

technorati tags:aapl

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Like I said before, CS3 is the thing holding me back from upgrading…

The release of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3.0 professional software package next year will be a catalyst for new sales of Apple Computer’s Intel-based Macintosh computers, according to one Wall Street analyst.

AppleInsider | Adobe’s CS3 seen driving new Mac sales in 2007

technorati tags:CS3, Photoshop, Adobe, PS, photography, Macintosh, Mac, x86, Intel

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I must report that I am less than impressed with the stability of my second-generation Nano; I’ve had it for about 2 weeks, use it every day when I run or at the gym. I’ve had to reset it (by holding the Menu and Select button for a few seconds) on several occasions. It usually happens after I install or remove the Nike+ sensor. The problems range from the loss of audio through the headphone even when the LCD looks like it’s playing music, to messed up sound (like really bad FM radio, or how my car radio sounded like when my antenna was stolen), to just not coming on without resetting it first. For the record I have a 2g 2GB iPod Nano with firmware version 1.1.1 optimized for Macintosh.

This is my 5th iPod and my previous 4 were a lot more stable than this. Well, my 4g 40gb iPod had the high-pitch noise problem when the HDD spun up, only noticeable with high end cans, but I never had to reset the thing.

Also, when I go to Nike+iPod -> History sometimes it takes a good 10 seconds to load my workout history, what gives? I am pretty certain these are pretty much all software problems so I am hopeful that the next firmware release would fix them. Either that or it will be going back to Costco.

Technorati Tags: ipod, nano, nike, nike+, running, problems

Conclusion: This first version of SlingPlayer for Mac is a very good first step in Sling Media?s venture into software on a platform other than Windows. As a relatively new Slingbox user (July 2006), I am unaware of the quality or polish of previous versions for Windows, but this Mac client offers everything the current Windows client offers. Yes it needs a little polish, but for now it should satisfy plenty of pent up demand from the Mac community, as well as open up a whole new market of users (and very loyal ones at that) to Sling Media. Hopefully, everyone will agree it was worth the wait.SlingPlayer for Mac looks to be a great piece of software and will hopefully get better and more Mac-like over time.Happy Slinging.

Sling Community – SlingPlayer for Mac Public Beta Review

technorati tags:slingplayer, slingbox, mac, osx

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I think I’m gonna order the AV version off Amazon soon, waiting for some reviews to see if it actually works or not before I place the order… This thing would allow me to catch up with my TiVo when I’m in SF on weekends…

SlingPlayer for Mac OS X Public Beta Download

System (Mac OS) Requirements
PowerPC 600 MHz or Intel Core Duo 1 GHz
Mac OS X 10.4 (10.3 support coming soon)
256MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
100MB Free Hard Disk Space
1024×768, thousands of colors display (millions of colors recommended)
Ethernet Network Connectivity (wired, 802.11 a/b/g, or Powerline)

Features

SlingStream?is a proprietary streaming technology specifically designed to addressvarying network conditions while optimizing your video playbackexperience. SlingStream provides the best possible video experience bycontinuously monitoring the connection speed and dynamically adjustingthe video compression ratios to match your available network bandwidth.

SlingRemote?acts exactly like your real remote control, giving you full controlover your viewing experience. From changing channels to setting a DVRto record, you can do it using buttons right on your computer screen.Plus, you can create your own skins for the the SlingRemote so that itlooks just like the one at home – or maybe you can finally make yourmillion-button universal remote easy to use!

The Slingbox Directoryshows you all the Slingboxes that are on your network or that you haveset up remotely. This networking magic makes it easy to connect to yourbox without complications.

Three viewing modes give you flexibility in your viewing style:

SlingBar?– docks SlingPlayer on either the right or left of the desktop,allowing you to watch your television and work with other applicationssimultaneously

Resizable Window – move it around the desktop just like any other application, making it small or large

Full Screen – for a real break watch your shows as big as your screen can get

Extensive customizable settings allow you to fine-tune your viewing experience and view streaming statistics.

Manual Audio & Video Controls? You make subtle changes to your input signal with v1.0.5. You canadjust audio volume, as well as brightness, contrast, saturation, andhue for each input.

Favorites Bar?Now your favorite channels are only one click away! Place shortcuts toyour most frequently watched channels in the Favorites Bar along with acustom icon. You can use any picture on you computer! This is the firstof many planned features which allows Slingbox owners to create apersonalized SlingPlayer experience.

technorati tags:slingplayer, slingbox, slingmedia, osx, beta

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