uninteresting :: nerd

$10. [iTunes Store link]

i recently got the Canon PowerShot SD960IS. i first heard about it when @gruber linked to this review from @cabel. so far, i’m loving it. top features:

• 12 megapixel pics that look great
• 720p h264 video with stabilization
• looks really nice and is small & pocketable
• turns on and shoots pics really fast!

it’s replaced a bunch of old devices:

1. an old canon optura 400 minidv camcorder: who wants to have to import dv video over firewire when you can record straight to 720p h264?
2. my trusty sony dsc-w1 5mp digital camera: bought it 5 years ago, and after several burning man’s it was on it’s last legs
3. the flip mino hd i just bought a few months ago: nice device, but the video is really jerky…and the sd960is captures the same quality video with stabilization
4. a year old Canon Powershot SD750 7mp digital camera that I gave to Amo for her birthday last year.

we only need 1 digital camera, especially since she has her iPhone 3G (2mp pics) and soon i’ll have my iPhone 3G S (3mp pics + VGA video).

those are icons from the over 50,000 apps on the App Store, pulsating as they’re purchased:

some aggressive moves today. highlights:

• improvements & price drops across the entire notebook line (unexpected!)
• Snow Leopard is going to be practically free ($29)
• iPhone OS 3.0 goes out to over 40M iPhones/iPod Touches next week. this is a huge update that makes all of these already-purchased devices way more useful to customers.
• iPhone 3GS on sale next Fri. Faster, with video, and twice the memory - all at the same price.
• And perhaps the biggest shot fired: iPhone 3G 8GB dropped to $99.

so the Palm Pre is now twice as expensive and the iPhone 3G, and you gotta use it with Sprint (by far the worst rated carrier in the US). and just a handful of apps.

as Gruber pointed out so eloquently, the Pre will likely steal customers from Blackberry users, not iPhone users…they’re the niche market that insists on having a physical keyboard.

submitted and available as soon as Apple approves it:

…the mobile Internet (using cell phones to get online) market is poised to explode with a potential 4 billion cell phone users moving to smart phones.

“We believe Apple is emerging as the clear leader in the battle over the mobile Internet,” she wrote in her research note. “Smart phones are taking increasing share from traditional handsets and Apple’s iPhone currently leads market share of the mobile Internet.”

iPhone’s share of the mobile Internet market has gone from 5 percent to the current 38 percent in one year.

link: Analysts like Apple’s lead role in mobile Internet battle - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

From Apple Hot News:

App Store Pick of the Week: Locavore

May 20, 2009

If you like the idea of eating fresher, locally grown produce, it helps to know what fruits and vegetables are in season and where you can get them. And that’s how Locavore can help. It lets you see at a glance what’s currently in season where you live and what will be in season soon. And to help you purchase the veggies you crave, Locavore helps you locate local farmers’ markets. Filed under: iPhone, iPod+iTunes. Read more: App Store in iTunes

i get sick to the stomach thinking about the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars my family has paid (and continues to pay) to AOL for *email*. there’s 3 main reasons why they don’t just switch to something like Gmail:

1. They’ve built up their address book in AOL (there is no export option)
2. They have a bunch of old mail messages in AOL (and don’t know how to move it)
3. All their friends know the AOL email address (and there is no forwarding service).

here’s how to address these issues and stop the reaming:

1. Import AOL Address Book into Gmail: there are many ways to skin this cat, but here’s the easy option i’ve found.

1. Sign up for a free account at plaxo.com
2. During the signup process, enter your AOL login and it will read in all your contacts.
3. From the main screen, select More: Address Book: Add sync point (at the bottom), then Export CSV (Outlook format)
4. Then, simply import the CSV into Gmail and all your contacts will be there.

2. Import AOL Mail into Gmail: Using Mail.app (or any other IMAP desktop client):

1. Setup the IMAP account for your AOL Mail (settings here)
2. Setup the IMAP account for Gmail (settings here)
3. Drag and drop the messages your want to import

3. Notify everyone about your new Gmail address: since AOL doesn’t forward your messages, you’ll have to do the old fashioned method of telling everyone about your new email address and ask them to use it from now on. Fortunately, sending an email to all your contacts is easy from Gmail:

1. Go to your Gmail contacts
2. Click Select: All
3. Click Groups: New Group and name it “Everyone”
4. Then, “Compose Mail”, “Add Bcc”, and type in “Everyone”. The group list will expand into everyone’s email address.
5. Then type the rest of your message, asking folks to use your new Gmail account from now on.

There ya go. Hope this helps some people out. Death to AOL Mail!

Update: it seems that AOL Mail is free on the web to everyone, even if you cancel your AOL paid membership. So now I just want to make sure that nobody is actually paying AOL for membership for the sake of having their email address. And I still recommend switching to Gmail.

And for reference: 3 Ways To Cancel AOL Account in 3 Minutes

seems like most people have a Best Buy story. mine is actually a pretty positive experience.

let me preface this with my opinion about BB: they’re a total ripoff, and whenever possible I try to buy from Amazon (which is usually about 20% cheaper with no tax and free shipping). but sometimes you just want to bring something home immediately…such was the case 2.5 yrs ago when we moved to SF and I needed a new HDTV. i bought an open-box 42″ Westinghouse 1080p LCD TV. i also uncharacteristically bought the ripoff extended warranty for $250, in the hopes that it might pay off in the future…

so we actually really enjoyed the Westinghouse a lot. it was great. one extremely minor annoyance was that every month or so, it wouldn’t turn on and you just had to unplug the power and plug it back in. I called in the warranty service on it, and after about 2 months of Geek Squad failing to fix it, they finally approved a replacement (woohoo!).

unfortunately, they only approve a replacement for a similarly spec’d model, not for the amount originally paid. so I paid like $1600 for it, but a similar model today runs $800. with tax, I got $880 in store credit to buy a replacement.

in using the Westy, i also learned that 1080p is too high of a resolution to run the mac mini from the couch - you can’t read a thing. we always down-res’d to 720p, and in fact 720p movies look just like 1080p to me. so this time around I bought another open box item (one of the few ways to avoid being ripped off even more) 37″ Samsung 720p LCD TV - for only $530! The TV is great and we don’t even notice the lower resolution & smaller size. And I’ve got like $280 left on the gift card.

all in all, spending the $250 for the extended warranty paid off, but only because i got lucky and was able to swing a replacement unit out of them. i wouldn’t buy any big ticket items from them again in the future.

I splurged on the 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD a week ago, and it’s been driving me nuts that my Macbook Pro wouldn’t recognize the drive - even though it worked fine in my Macbook and from an external USB enclosure. Long story short, I finally discovered what the problem was. Here’s my forum post on it. Hopefully it may save some other MBP users the headache:

I finally got it working in my machine, and the solution is not what you’d expect it to be!

First, I was able to upgrade to FW1.1. That didn’t solve the problem: the drive was still not recognized by the MBP, although working fine in the USB enclosure and in my Macbook.

THE SOLUTION: after countless hours of trying different install options, I finally discovered this really obscure behavior:
- when the drive is installed the normal way (black side facing out), it’s NOT recognized by the MBP (you can tell because Disk Utility sees it as “generic external media”).
- when the drive is installed UPSIDE DOWN (silver side facing out) it works fine! Disk Utility sees it as “119.2 GB OCZ-VERT (serial#) Media”. Picture: http://skitch.com/richlin/bpb98/photo

The mounting screws don’t fit right when it’s upside down, so I figured that since the problem is likely caused by metal on metal contact, I taped a piece of paper to cover the silver side and installed it normal-side up. Sure enough, it’s working just fine now.

So far things seem to be working fine. Even boot camp is working. And now, I can get on with my life…