Martin Gordon's Blog

Since I switched to Google Reader, I've read my feeds all at once in the trendy "River of News" style. This past week, however, I was on vacation and while I did have internet access, it was spotty and I didn't get a chance to keep up with my feeds (on a side note, Google Reader doesn't play well with half-working 'net connections; I lost a lot of starred posts and read/unread statuses).

It's unfortunate that three big events took place this week: the Geneva Motor Show, SxSW, and PMA. River of news just isn't working for the ton of posts I have to sift through. So I'm currently plowing through my feeds one at a time and learning new key commands ("?" works well as a reminder). It's no longer j, j, j, s, j, j, shift+s, as Scoble puts it; it's now j, j, j, shift+n, shift+o, j, j, etc. It does take some getting used to and I'm going slightly slower, but at least my brain doesn't get as tired jumping from cameras to cars back to cameras and everything else sprinkled in between.

Technorati Tags: RSS, Google Reader, river of news, feeds, Geneva Motor Show, SxSW, PMA, Robert Scoble

BarCamp Miami took place yesterday at the University of Miami. I didn't go since I'm in Philly, but the BarCamp Miami site has a good list (though without a doubt not exhaustive) of Miami bloggers.

I'm currently subscribed to a few Miami-related RSS feeds but I am not nearly getting the amount of local news from South Florida as I'd like. I avoid those cityname.com (such as miami.com) sites like the plague, mainly because you get a few story views before having to register (ugh!), and Yahoo provides a Miami Herald RSS feed that leaves something to be desired (I want full feeds and less on murders, car accidents, etc), so hopefully I can get a bit more from these local bloggers.

Technorati Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Miami, barcampmiami, Miami, Florida, Miami Beach, RSS, Miami Herald, local news, newspaper, placeblogging

Google has finally rolled out a feature that allows users to get email from other POP3 accounts right into their Gmail inbox. This is great since I won't need Outlook once I'm out of school and work uses POP email. Instructions on setting up "Mail Fetcher" are here.

In other Gmail-related news, Lifehacker has a good howto on setting up an automatic nightly backup of your mail using the command line program, fetchmail.

I've recently switched to Google Reader (more on that later) and now my transition to an all-Google life is almost complete (and is a bit scary).

Technorati Tags: Google, Gmail, backup, Lifehacker, lifehacks, POP3, mail, Google Reader, web app, Web 2.0

Two very important people are leaving Microsoft. First is Bryan Lee, former VP in the entertainment and device division, who oversaw the Zune launch. Second is Jim Allchin, former Co-President of the platform and services division. The latter had an excellent blog post on a day in his post-Microsoft life. Neither are going to competitors, however, instead both are going to "pursue personal interests," as the Reuters article linked above puts it.

In other Microsoft news, a so-called "vulnerability" has been found in Vista. The vulnerability involves having voice commands from a third-party being played over speakers and doing nasty things to a PC. I don't really see this is as a new problem, as it could have been done on any other OS that had voice recognition (e.g., XP or OS X). The easy solution is to disable voice commands (who really uses them anyway?), but a more long-term solution for people who do want voice commands is to have it require a passcode to be said before the OS runs a command.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Jim Allchin, Bryan Lee, Zune, Windows, vulnerability, voice recognition, voice commands, sound, voice

Sorry about the hiatus, finishing up the semester and job-hunting (and Zelda ;)) have taken up way too much time and something had to give. Luckily not a lot has been going on over the past two and a half weeks. Now to get back into it…

TechCrunch reports that Jason Calacanis has joined VC firm Sequoia Capital as an "Entrepreneur in Action". Congrats to Jason!

This move is another data point for the idea that to become a VC, one needs industry experience first. Guy Kawasaki also talks about this in a recent post and even came up the VCAT, the Venture Capital Aptitude Test. I'm curious to see how Jason would score? Famed VC Mike Moritz didn't do too well, but I'd still want to see how a brand new VC scores.

Interestingly enough, the news broke almost 2 hours ago and its still not on TechMeme. The first Digg story showed up an hour and a half ago and the most popular one 45 minutes ago. Hmmm…

Technorati Tags: VC, Venture Capital, Jason Calacanis, AOL, Weblogs Inc, Sequoia Capital, Mike Moritz, Guy Kawasaki, VCAT, entrepreneurship

Well, it's official: My Mac lineup (17" iMac and 13" MacBook) is now completely obsolete. I'm not worried that much since the new models are only slight speed bumps and not something more drastic. As seen from the iMac and MacBook Pro bumps, Apple is continuing their long-standing tradition of incremental speed bumps once or twice a year.

Just a short time after their pricier, gray brethren made the jump to Merom, the 13" MacBooks are now outfitted with Core 2 Duo processors. Clock speeds on the MacBooks remain the same at 1.83/2.0 GHz, but the 2GHz chip now has 4MB of L2 cache, twice that of the 1.83GHz chip and the previous Core Duo models.

Not much else has changed, however. Besides the new chip, other incremental upgrades include a bump in the SuperDrive speed from 4x to 6x, and a bump in hard disk space on the 2GHz models from 60/80GB to 80/120GB (white and black models, respectively). The cost of bumping up the hard drive from 80 to 120GB on the white 2GHz is $150, so the black paint only costs $50 as opposed to the previous $150. If you were going to upgrade the hard drive anyway, going for black is almost a no-brainer.

Only time will tell if Apple has fixed the problems that plagued the first-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Even if they haven't, notebook buyers are slightly better off today than they were yesterday.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook, Intel, Core 2 Duo, Merom, notebook, MacBook Pro, iMac

I was going to do a regular "report the facts" post on Apple's announcements today but I was busy with submitting resumes and didn't have a chance to. So I'll just post my thoughts on the whole thing.

The 5.5G iPods are a solid upgrade, but Apple didn't really show much improvement for a the year span between the 5G announcement and their successors. Apple did let us lowly 5G owners have downloadable games (but only because they can charge $5 a pop for them) and the long overdue gapless playback, but would it really have hurt much to give us the search feature?

The new nanos look very nice and bring back a lot of memories from when the minis ruled the world. It's a great tribute to the colorful ones that'll be a whole lot less scratch-prone than the 1G nanos. With both the 8GB nano and 30GB iPod sitting at $249, it's makes the nano vs video decision a whole lot tougher. It is an excellent hedge move by Apple in that they are now that much more indifferent as to the sale of a nano vs a full-size iPod (differing margins notwithstanding).

By far the most revolutionary update is the shuffle. No longer is the iPod relegated to the pocket or an awkward armband. The combination of the clip and weight loss make it possible to carry the iPod shuffle, literally anywhere. You can carry 240 songs with you and not even notice. It's pretty amazing.

iTunes 7 saw a whole lot of improvements that will have varying effects on people's enjoyment of their media. The reorganization and segregation of different parts of the Source list make things easier to find, and the new-fangled UI theme is pretty and refined, but consistency sticklers will rag on Apple for introducing Yet Another UI Scheme™. The blue note in the icon pays tribute to iTunes 2, which also featured a blue icon. iTunes 3 had a purple icon and iTunes 4-6 had a green icon.

The iTV is interesting, and is essentially an Airport Express for video. The shots of the "enhanced" Front Row look great, but I'm wondering how well even the new 640×480 videos will look on HDTV (this also makes me wonder whether or not the 320×240 versions will get free upgrades to 640×480).

It really looks like Apple is setting up to take over the living room like they took over our ear canals. My only concern is that the whole iTV messes with my thoughts on Apple's future and makes me really wonder what kind of innovation they'll push forth on the desktop hardware side now that the Intel transition is over.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod video, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iTunes Store, iTV, Front Row, hardware, music, video, movies

Apple's "It's Showtime!" event starts in less than three hours. The iTunes Music Store is already down in anticipation, but the online Apple Store is still a go.

I'll be in class (but with my MacBook) during the event. As always, however, MacRumors or Engadget are the best places to go for coverage in this post-"live stream" world that we live in.

Here's a small recap of what's expected to be announced:

• iTunes Movie Store, debuting with Disney movies going for $9.99-$14.99.
• iTunes 7, which will add support for the Movie Store (perhaps as a seperate item in the source menu) and will hopefully improve the video playback features.
• iPod nano with new aluminum enclosure that does better against scratches. Capacities somewhere in the 4-8GB range.
• iPod capacity upgrades. A true "video iPod" with touch screen scroll wheel is possible, but unlikely

That is what is >90% guaranteed to be announced. Any surprise announcements are anyone's guess - we've already seen fake shots of a MacTower (smaller version of the Mac Pro), the wide/touch-screen iPod video, and even a USB -> TV device named TubePort.

Technorati Tags: Apple, It's Showtime!, special event, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, MacRumors, Engadget

A Gizmodo reader observes that the circulars in today's New York Times have no iPods in them. This almost guarantees we'll see new iPods at Apple's "It's Showtime" special event on Tuesday. It's been almost a year since the nano and the 5G iPod were released, so updates are long overdue. The real question, then, is will we get all new iPods to go along with the movie store or are we going to just see capacity upgrades?

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes, movie store, special event, Gizmodo, ads, New York Times

Apple released today their Rev. B Intel iMacs featuring the mobile Core 2 Duo processors. A 24" model was added to the lineup.

The new iMacs start at $999 for a very stripped version of the previous-generation 17" iMac. This iMac more closely resembles the education-only iMac as it lacks a Superdrive, discrete graphics, Bluetooth and Remote. The next model up is an $1199 17" model that is at a similar price point to the previous base model. The processor on this model gets bumped to a 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 4MB of L2 cache, comes with 1GB of RAM and the price drops $100. The 20" iMac gets a $200 discount, a 4MB/2.16GHz processor.

Added to the lineup is the $1999 24" iMac. The specs are similar to the 20" iMac except that the video card has been replaced with an NVidia 7300GT with 128MB of RAM. The 24" iMac also gives up a FireWire 400 port in exchange for a FireWire 800 port.

BTO options are abundant, with almost every part of the iMacs being customizable. The $1199 17" model can get a 2.16GHz processor as an upgrade for $100, while the bigger models can go to a 2.33GHz processor for $250. The video RAM can be doubled to 256MB on the 20" and the 24" can take a 7600GT with 256MB RAM for $125 extra.

In slightly less exciting news, the Mac minis have been bumped to 1.66/1.83 Core Duo processors. There is an special Apple event next Tuesday where the company is expected to announce the availability of full-length movies on the iTunes Music Store.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iMac, Core 2 Duo, Merom, Mac mini, Core Duo, Yonah, iTunes, iTunes Music Store