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iPhone 4 Review: To Buy or Not to Buy

Jeremy — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:41:49 +0000

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 [...] Continue Reading "iPhone 4 Review: To Buy or Not to Buy"

Send Your Kid to Apple Camp

Chris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:03:00 +0000

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.

Quick Tip: Use Spotlight (Mac)

Jeremy — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:38:44 +0000

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.

Failsafe Backup (The 321 System)

Jeremy — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:28:56 +0000

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.

Fill Out PDFs Free with Formulate Pro

Jeremy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:31:02 +0000

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 [...] Continue Reading "Fill Out PDFs Free with Formulate Pro"

Apple’s iPad: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Whether to Buy, Wait, or Pine

Jeremy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:16:51 +0000

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:

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).
The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
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 [...] Continue Reading "Apple’s iPad: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Whether to Buy, Wait, or Pine"

Apple’s “latest creation” Event Today

Chris — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:01:37 +0000

If you’re interested in watching Apple reveal it’s latest creation at it’s event this morning, there are lots of places on the web to watch it unfold today at 10 AM PST (1 PM EST).

Bloggers love to Live blog these events and it’s almost live being there. Here are a couple of my favorites:

And if you are really obsessive, one of my favorite podcasters, Leo Leporte and his Twit network, plan on covering the event all day with follow-up after the announcements. You can watch them here:

Live.Twit.TV

Will it be the mythical tablet? Also rumored are iLife 2010, and iPhone 4.0 software.

I can’t wait.

Stats to Your Heart’s Delight with iStatMenus

Jeremy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:35:52 +0000

I’ve seen many little utilities/preference panes I could install that would show me extra details on memory usage, cpu temeprature, hard disk availability, and everything else under the sun. iStatMenus puts it all into one nice package and displays all of them in your menubar. Though it has far more that would be interesting to get into here, here’s a list of what I like best about it:

You can view multiple CPU cores as one item or multiple graphs.
The memory usage meter will display your top five processes.
HD USage will monitor your mobile me space as well.
Network drop down shows peak as well as current bandwidth.
Every sensor from temperature to exhaust fans is available for monitoring.
The best date and time display. It drops down a full month calendar with user defined alternate times as well.
Every item is configured via one preference pane in system preferences.

The best part? It’s free!! So, if you need to monitor your stats or just change your date and time display to a more helpful configuration, go to iSlayer.com and download iStatMenus. Available for Macs only.