This may make the live bloggers a little miffed, but apple announced they will live stream their event tomorrow. I love that they made this move.

From their site:
Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.

I’ll be sure to log in, how about you?

UPDATE: Here the link for the live stream: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1009qpeijrfn/event. Here are the system requirements: Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later.  Sorry PC friends.

I often get asked what maintenance should be done for mac computers.  People coming from the PC world are used to defrags, virus scans, and other routine maintenance tasks on their computers, but once they move to the Mac they aren’t sure what’s best.

I saw this post over on TUAW today with an easy solution and it’s free, IceClean.  While you don’t need to do as much as on your PC, there are still some simple things you can do to keep your computer running it’s best.  It also includes some great utilities for making some little system tweaks.

If you have been looking for some help it’s definitely worth checking out.

TUAW LINK: IceClean does system maintenance and optimization for your Mac for free.

It is frustrating to have to allow some app to compress you video or image files before you can upload them to your intended destination. Also frustrating is the cap on “over the air” uploading from your iPhone even when it is connected to WIFI. To top it all off, I like to have my video residing natively on YouTube and Facebook, but hate having to go through the painful uploading process twice. PixelPipe solves all of those problems.

PixelPipe focuses on one thing: publish photos, video, audio, text and files on over 100 online destinations. Basically that means it will put your media on every blogging, social media, and online storage site you can imagine.

Once you register for an account, you set up “destinations” like YouTube and Facebook and it adds them to your list of destinations.  Then, once you are ready to upload, you select the media you would like to upload, click upload and it does the rest (one upload to multiple destinations).  It has a 250MB cap which should make most of your HD clips uploadable; though, if you have edited them into a snazzy video, it may exceed the limit.

Its one flaw is its UI.  Once you fire it up, it is not obvious how to go about selecting which destination you are uploading to at that particular moment (you have to go into settings>edit destinations and then select “enable default” or “disable default” in a drop-down next to each destination).  It is this kind of unfriendly UI that would make you think twice before buying it, but is worth putting up with in this free version.

The bad UI aside, this app should be on everyone’s iPhone who does ministry as it allows you to easily upload media to lots of locations on the spot without having to wait until you get back in the office and have the time to sync it with your computer.

We just recently used this to upload videos of our kids on a mission trip every day while we were on the trip, and got rave reviews about our communication from parents as soon as we stepped off the busses.  Do yourself a favor and try PixelPipe out today.  There are versions available for tons of phones and operating systems (iPhone, Android, Nokia, Palm, IM clients, Windows, Mac, and Linux).

This past tuesday I got an email that told me I would be one of the lucky few to receive my iPhone 4 the day before it was released. I was more than a little bit pumped about that fact and waited somewhat patiently for it to arrive. Now that I’ve had it for a week, I feel fairly prepared to answer the question of whether or not you should rush out and get one.

The Basics
The phone is a substantial upgrade from the 3G, but far less of an upgrade from the 3Gs than apple would have you believe.

Topping the list of upgrades is the phone’s camera. Not only is it now 5 megapixels for stills, it added an LED flash. Video taken with the camera is now HD quality and can be illuminated by that same LED in dark situations. I will say that the camera quality is by far the best phone camera I have ever seen. It is on par with any 5 megapixel point and shoot I have used, and the video coming off is just as good, if not better, than any of the Flip models. AND, there is a smaller, lower quality camera that is front facing which will enable you to do easy self-portraits, video chat and FaceTime.

FaceTime is Apple’s video chat service that is built into the phone app, but it only works on WiFi.  In my tests it is good, but nothing to run out and buy a phone over.   As you can expect, it all depends on the quality of your WiFi connection.

One of the biggest updates is the processor. The iPhone 4 now has the same processor in it as the iPad which makes a noticeable difference in app performance and load times. It also ensures that when apps are running in the background that the rest of the phone doesn’t slow to a crawl.

The other big update is the display. It will blow you away. With a pixel density higher than the human eye can perceive at a normal distance, Apple’s “retina” display looks like nothing you’ve ever seen. Perfect shading, incredible viewing radius, and brilliant colors make it the stand out feature for me. I can’t wait until my laptop has one!

Good, Bad, and Ugly
All of those improvements are welcome and follow along with the rest of Apple’s excellence in implementation.  When you combine the video features with the $5 iMovie app, it becomes incredibly compelling.  I have been shooting short clips at our youth events, editing them in about two minutes with iMovie and uploading them to faceboook immediately.  That will rock your face off!  It will also allow you to make parents really feel like they know what’s going on at camps and retreats.

Though the phone is very attractive, it is glass on both sides, and that is a problem.  It will crack if you drop it on the right place at the right speed.  Since the screen is fused to the front glass, replacing the iPhone’s front glass will probably mean replacing the whole glass, screen, digitizer combo.  Pretty, but expensive.

There have been tons of reports about the iPhone 4′s antennae being able to be messed up by holding it a certain way.  That is 100% true.  Ask anyone with an iPhone 4 to hold it by cupping the bottom (usually using your left hand) and you can watch the bars drop to little or nothing at all.  However, you can do this same trick with the 3G or the 3Gs if you hold them properly.  It seems to be more pronounced with the iPhone 4, but is remedied by using a case that covers the edges (which you will need because of the glass design mentioned in the previous paragraph).

Should I Buy One?

Assuming you’ve got the dough, I would say it depends on two factors: what you are using now, and how much you want to use video.  If you, like me, had and liked the 3G and it’s time to upgrade, do it.  You will notice an amazing performance boost along with the incredible new features we discussed here.  If you really want to use video to up the communication in your ministry, do it.  The tools this phone has video-wise are incredible and will be worth every cent if you utilize them to communicate with your kids/parents.

If you have a 3Gs, I’d caution you to be careful.  This is not as much of a performance boost as you might need to justify the expense.  You can probably just update to iOS4 and download the iMovie app.  If you have a 3Gs or an 3G and will have to pay full price because you are not eligible for an upgrade, PUT THE CREDIT CARD DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!  If you are patient there will be another revision next year, and you can save yourself about $400.

Last summer I signed my daughter up for one of the free day-camps they do at the Apple store and she learned all about photography.  She had a great time.  I was excited to get an email this morning about this summers program.  It’s all about making movies this year.  I’ve already signed her up because spaces go fast.  Did I mention it’s FREE?  I thought I’d pass it along to any of you who may have kids between 8-12 who would love a fun activity for a few days this summer. They are even having a film festival for all the films the kids make. Should be fun.

If you’re in San Diego we are doing the early session at Fashion Valley on July 19 – 20. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Find a location in your area.

For long-term mac users, this may seem ridiculous. For those converts from the PC universe, be prepared to have your world rocked.  Spotlight is Apple’s search feature built into OSX, and if you’ve converted from a PC throw all ideas about how search on large file systems works out of the window.

Without going into mega-geeky details, the way that the Mac formats hard disks allows for incredibly quick search (instantaneous in comparison to the PC).  Just click your little magnifying glass at the top right of your screen, type what you’re looking for an voila; (in 1-2 seconds) it’s there!  Emails, applications, text files, images… everything!

And here’s the best part: it searches the contents of files as well as filenames!  There are lots of other tools that seek to improve on spotlight.  I’ve tried them, but keep coming back to spotlight because it is so solid, and it’s on every mac at which I sit down.

Peter Krough has written an excellent article on backup in which he suggests the 321 system.  It says that you should have three copies (one primary and two backups) on two different media with one off-site.  Not only is this incredibly easy to remember, it really helps me sift through the myriad of backup solutions to get what I need and not a lot more.

For my on-site backup, I have mentioned before that I like to use Chronosync to automatically backup selected files whenever I mount a specific hard disc or thumb drive though Apple’s Backup (free with Mobile Me) or Time Machine will meet most mac user’s needs.  On the PC side of things, I have heard good things about Paragon Drive Backup and NovaBackup.

For offsite backup, I use and am really satisfied with Carbonite while Chris has written a bit about his preferred offsite backup service: Mozy.  Both are great and both support Mac and Windows.  The point is that you need to have your mission critical files and irreplaceable memories (photos, videos) stored somewhere that fire or flood will not cause you to lose money or memories.

I think Peter Krough said it best in his article, “There are two types of people, those who have experienced hard drive failure and those who will.”  Do yourself a favor and get your 321 system in place today.

I must confess that I’m a sucker for a freebie, especially iPhone apps, but sometimes it’s hard to find good ones.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the ones that FreeAppADay.com has been giving out.  It’s been mostly games, but I’ve snagged a couple of fun ones.  If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch it’s worth checking out.  Remember each app is only Free for one day, so it might be something you want to check daily, or they also allow you to sign up for emails to notify you of the freebies for the categories you are interested in.

Enjoy!

LINK: FreeAppADay.com

It seems that although everyone makes their forms downloadable online as a PDF, almost no one formats the files as editable forms that can be filled out within acrobat reader. This means I have to download the form, print it out, fill it out by hand, and then either walk it over to whoever needs it or scan it, save it, and attach it to an email. Sounds like it would be easier to just stop by the registration table and fill it out on the spot.  Formulate Pro fixes that problem.

I should say, that if you have Acrobat Pro, there is a typewriter and annotation tool that works relatively well, but at $449 from Adobe’s site, or $378 from Amazon, it is a little pricey just for filling out forms. That is where Formulate Pro comes in. This tool does one thing, and does it well. It allows you to type, draw and make check marks on top of the PDF.  Then, you can save it with those edits as a PDF of print it out. And, it’s free!

After downloading and installing the app it is as simple as opening the PDF, clicking the “T” (text tool) for typing, the squiggle tool for drawing, or the checkmark to check a box, then save or print. Right now, it’s only for mac, but the source code is available at GitHub.

I will be honest.  Today I took a longer than normal lunch so that I could watch live coverage of the Apple event on TWiT.  As a self-proclaimed fanboi, I was excited and intrigued by the latest thing I didn’t know I needed until Steve Jobs told me I did.

All joking aside, this is an interesting device.  Apple is positioning it as a media player, content creator, book reader, and TV.  It’s a lot to fit into something .5″ thick, but they seem to have done a pretty good job.  You can go to Apple’s iPad site for all the gory details and places like Engadget and TUAW for even more.  But here’s a brief overview:

1. It has a pretty 9.5 x 7.5″ LCD screen with an iPhone-style capacitive touch interface (there is a pretty wide bezel, but the people who have played with it say that it makes sense because you have to have some place to hold it without touching the multi-touch screen).
2. The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
3. It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
4. They have totally revamped iWork’s UI to make it intuitive on a touch screen. Even keynote’s graphics-intensive elements seem to work without a strain.
5. It will have a new app called iBooks that is a book reader as well as an iBook Store.  They have already secured major US publishers and are adding more.
6. It has built in speakers (and 3.5mm headphone jack), mic and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR but no camera (there is no way this will be absent from the 2.0 release)
7. It will output VGA and standard A/V cable.
8. There will be models with 16, 32 and 64 GB of storage available.
9. It will have wifi built in and an optional 3G modem.
10. There will be a dock, keyboard dock, and case (with stand) available.
11. Though they released an updated SDK today, almost all iPhone apps will work on the device and can be used in their native size or at 2x to come closer to filling the screen..
12. Apple says it has 10 Hours of battery life (doesn’t seem like this is possible, but no one has them to test as of yet).
13. It will ship in 60 days starting at an un-Apple price point: $499

What it doesn’t have:

1. Multi-tasking
2. Support for flash
3. Across the board true GPS (only available in 3g model which is $130 more)
4. USB ports
5. Did I mention camera!??!

Now, that is a lot, but there are several things that are unclear:

1. Will it have the ability for external storage?  There are adapters that allow you to connect  USB and SD to the 30-pin iPod connector, but Apple says they are for importing pictures.
2. Will it sync with Mobile Me?  They say it will sync with a computer, but did not mention their “cloud” service.
3. Will there be magazines?  It seems logical, but was not announced.
4. The hands on experience.  This one is big, until people get to really sit down with it, we won’t know exactly how reality stacks up with apple’s claims

Overall, I am interested in the product, but I will probably not buy one for one simple reason: Apple’s second generation is usually far better than the first.  I did the same thing with the iPhone, and I got the 3G, and am not disappointed.

Apple generally sacrifices features for stability and user experience on the 1.0.  After they work out all the bugs, they release a product that seems complete.  The iPhone 3g added GPS, third party apps, streaming audio over 3g, push e-mail, and other niceties.  I fully expect the iPad 2.0 to have a camera, (maybe even two) some form of external storage (if that is not part of this version), higher quality screen (OLED?), and a couple more pieces of glory that I can’t forsee right now.

Bottom line: should you seriously consider buying it?

• If you were considering a netbook because of it’s size: yes.
• If you wanted a netbook because of its price and storage capacity: no.
• If you were considering a new laptop and do not need video editing or large amounts of storage (in other words you primarily use it for email and word processing): yes.
• If you have a church administrator who loves Apple and will let you play with $500: yes
• If you use keynote for your talks and cant afford a macbook but want something more portable than a mac mini: yes.
• If you need to run any traditional apps like Photoshop, Final Cut, etc.: no.
• If you were considering an ebook reader but couldn’t justify almost $300 on something for that single purpose: yes.
• If you are secretly in love with Steve Jobs and want to show him your undying devotion: yes.

There you have it.  Let us know what you think!  Although I said I was not buying one for myself, you are more than welcome to send me one in the mail, I would not even come close to turning it down… I am a fanboi after all.