First, me:
It's January 12 and I'm only 8 blog posts in (this would be number 9). Unfortunately, last week was a very busy week at work, as we delivered a new version of our software to one of our clients last night. Things weren't so bad at the beginning of the week, but the 12-15 hour days really took a toll on me as the week progressed and I just didn't have much energy to write anything when I got home (even on Twitter, my most recent update was posted last Sunday).
Second, Gizmodo:
One of their bloggers ran around turning TVs off with TV-B-Gone. He's been banned from CES but the blogosphere is up in arms because it reflects poorly on all bloggers and jeopardizes mainstream media's already tenuous perception of bloggers as not-really-journalists. John Biggs of Gizmodo rival CrunchGear (the blog that I stopped reading when they posted a story detailing how to go about stealing Leopard) has a rather insightful post on the whole issue and I think he sums it up nicely:
While I’m sure editors at Business Week rarely have to sprinkle out sawdust in the break room, they are looking to emulate our style if not our traffic. Unless they’re willing to accept the risk of an asshole move with the promise inspired ones, they’ll be sunk. And unless bloggers are ready to act their age and use their skills, energy, and position to help consumers and not piss of PR folks, they’re also sunk. We’re almost there, but each stunt like this pushes us back a notch.
Also, see TechMeme yesterday at around 4:15 for more of the conversation.
Technorati Tags: blogging, journalism, mainstream media, CES, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, prank, TV-B-Gone
I attended the DigitalLife show this past Saturday. I got a chance to see some interesting little toys, get some hands-on time with the PS3 and got a chance to hang with Robert Heron, Patrick Norton and Jim Lauderback of dl.tv/PCMag. Here are some of my impressions:
- The new Treo 680 is a nice (but incremental) improvement over the 650. It definitely does not reflect the two year gap between the 650 and the 680. It loses the antenna, but keeps the awful VGA camera and same processor.
- Dell was everywhere. I didn't see many non-Dell/Alienware machine on the floor.
- The 20" Dell notebook is a hoss. I can't imagine anyone buying it and actually taking it anywhere. If it would actually fit on an airplane tray table, I can see the table just snapping off under the sheer weight of this machine. Even for LAN parties, I think a Shuttle box and separate display might be easier to manage, and would be a whole lot more upgradeable.
- While I didn't get to hold the controller, I did see the Wii on display. The system is about the size I expected, but the controller looks a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Elebits was the game on display, and while it didn't look particularly fun, it did do a good job of showing off the Wiimote.
- The PS3 controller is a nice incremental improvement over the PS2 controller. I like the way R2/L2 were converted to semi-trigger buttons and the slightlly smaller grip felt a bit better.
- Sonic on the PS3, although 70% complete, was pretty buggy. Lots of clipping issues were apparent and the 360 version (85% complete) felt a lot faster. The graphics on the PS3 were great, although they didn't seem that much better than the 360.
Technorati Tags: DigitalLife, New York City, Javits Center, dl.tv, Robert Heron, Patrick Norton, Jim Lauderback, Palm, Treo 680, Dell, Alienware, games, Nintendo, Wii, Wiimote, PS3, Sega, Sonic the Hedgehog
I've been ridiculously busy with OCR (on-campus recruiting), aka trying to find a job for after graduation, so I haven't had much time to blog, let alone read half the links I open up from my RSS feeds. Here's just a few of them I opened up today and yesterday:
Get free Digital Life tickets. It looks like a cool little conference taking place in NYC in a few weeks. Tickets are cheap enough that I might have gone anyway, but this really seals it. If anyone else is going or wants to go, let me know to meet up.
Woz will be on the Colbert Report this Thursday, promoting his new book. Woz is a big prankster so expect some good laughs.
The Treo 750v will be the face of Windows Mobile in Europe. The latest Business Week has the Cingular 8125 (by HTC) in a bunch of ads, so maybe they're just trying to please their two big licensees (BTW, does anyone else besides Palm and HTC make Windows Mobile phones anymore?).
Harvard Econ professor Gregory Mankiw talks about getting rid of the penny (again). I hate pennies and try to use my debit card most of the time to avoid them. We're already rounding gasoline to the nearest penny, why not round everything else to nearest nickel?
Technorati Tags: Digital Life, free, tickets, conference, Woz, Steve Wozniak, Colbert Report, Steven Colbert, economics, penny
Mac Pro
Apple announced the Intel-based PowerMac replacement today, the Mac Pro. The case is the same as the old PowerMacs, so the entrance banner I posted a few days ago was actually displaying the Mac Pro. Now that the space-heater G5s are gone there's a lot more room inside the case for expansion. The Mac Pro features four SATA drive bays, 8 RAM slots, 4 PCI-Express slots (one being double-wide), room for two optical drives and even two Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Something different for Apple is the fact that all the machines are Built-to-Order. You start out with the pretty hefty base config of Dual 2.66GHz dual-core Woodcrest Xeons, 1GB RAM, a 256 MB GeFore 7300GT, a 250GB hard drive, and "only" one SuperDrive. From there, the only downgrades available are Dual 2GHz Xeons and a 160GB hard drive for $2,124 ($2,029 edu). A fully loaded Mac Pro, with Dual 3GHz Xeons, 16GB RAM, 4×500GB hard drives, Quadro FX4500 512MB, 2×30" displays, and 2xSuperDrives goes for $17,134 ($15,246 edu). The max config (with OS X Server licenses, Apple Modem, etc) is $18,481 ($16,137 edu). New XServes based with similar configs were also announced.
Whereas the PowerMacs were a reasonable option for any "prosumer" (ugh, hate that word) Mac user wanting a decent, upgradable Mac, these Mac Pros are just overkill. There's an $800 difference between the high-end iMac and the low-end Mac Pro, and a $1,700 difference between the high-end Mac mini and the low-end Mac Pro (not to mention the HUGE performance gap). So will we be seeing a headless mid-range Conroe-based Mac anytime soon? I would surely hope so.
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Rumors are running rampant in the hours leading up to Steve Jobs' Worldwide Developers' Conference keynote. The image I posted on Flickr last week got mentioned in places, but only to show how overzealous Apple fans can get. It was pretty clear to me that nothing new would be shown on such a prominent banner, I just wanted to tag it so others could see the same. In any event, two pictures of Leopard banners from inside the Moscone Center have popped up; one reads "Introducting Vista 2.0" and the other reads "Hasta la Vista, Vista".
No live video feed is available, but MacRumors (among others, I'm sure) will be providing live coverage from their MacRumors Live website. The keynote starts at 1PM EST/10AM PST.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Steve Jobs, keynote, Leopard, OS X, Mac OS X, WWDC, Worldwide Developers Conference
Apple WWDC Banner Revealed
Originally uploaded by Martin Gordon.
Someone was able to sneak into the Moscone Center and snap a photo of a banner they were putting up. I've gone through and added notes for most of the icons (check out the image's Flickr page), but there were a couple that I was unable to identify. This is also the first glimpse we get of the Leopard "X" design. It's hard to tell whether its the image itself or not, but it looks to be darker than the Tiger "X".
The keynote kicks off the conference on Monday morning, so we should know what Apple's been up to soon enough.
Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC, Worldwide Developer's Conference, Leopard, Mac OS X, Mac, rumors, icons
