CSI, Facebook, and Method Man

Apr 30, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: News, Technology

Sounds like the intro to a joke eh? Bear with me, and I’ll tie these three together, and (try) to make a decent point.

I watched the latest episode of CSI last night (Las Vegas of course, New York doesn’t even register for me, and while Miami is ok, nothing beats the original). During the opening credits, I happened to catch ‘Guest Appearance – Method Man‘. Hmmm…ok, i thought. Given Mariah’s stellar screen debut, and Britney Spears’ oscar winning performance, I wasn’t expecting much from a Musician come actor (although, I did think that Eminem did a decent job in 8 Mile).

Well, shut my mouth, because Method Man (aka Clifford Smith) did an outstanding job. His role centered around a Vegas club owner who was serving a short 8 month sentence for a ‘weak ass weapons charge’. While he’s doing time, all hell breaks loose on the outside with a double homicide centering around the woman who raised him, a high priced prozy, a boatload of cash, and his baby mama. Method Man delivers an outstanding performance, completely believable, and never for a second did I think that he was pushing the boundaries of his acting ability. He’s even portrayed as the like-able criminal who stages a breakout, only to save the life of his future child, while never putting up a protest to return to jail after the scene plays out.

The Facebook tie in.

Ok, perhaps just because these are areas of interest to me, but this line jumped out at me like a red flag. During an initial interview with Captain Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) regarding the relationship between two of the female characters, Method Man is quoted as saying:

“…one minute, they’re sending each other cupcakes on facebook, the next, they’re trying to kill each other over a broken curling iron…”

After my initial chuckles died down, I got to thinking about this digital culture comment. Two years ago, this line might have been written a bit more like so:

“…one minute, they’re sending each other glitter tweety birds on myspace, the next they’re trying to kill each other over a broken curling iron…”

And while many others have already written about this topic, let me just put it here in writing; In 2007

“MySpace showed a yearly growth of 19 % Facebook grew at a rate of 125%.” – mybroadband.co.za

Clearly this facebook reference by Method Man (and respectively the CSI team of writers), is yet other subtle mention of what I’ve been preaching for a while now: Myspace is a dying horse.

Sure while myspace still enjoys a much higher share of eyballs, March 08 compete.com data puts Myspace at 68,339,999 visitors, with Facebook receiving 31,233,452 vistors (both figures based on US traffic only), the growth rate is the important factor to watch. In March 08, yet again, Facebook is the clear winner with a 9.3% growth rate, Myspace, 3.9%.

While I’m not sure that Facebook is ever going to overtake the eyball count that News Corp.’s Myspace has, in my opinion Facebook has already won the battle of cultural superiority. While Method Man/CSI’s cupcakes on Facebook reference was the first integration of Facebook that I’ve heard in a television series, I’d bet the farm that it won’t be the last.

nOqo world’s smallest mac

Apr 29, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

nOqo, makers of the ultra small, ultra hip mobile commuting solution have a bit to celebrate today. Over at the Oqo forum, OqoTalk, a user by them name of TRF has posted that he’s successfully managed to hack the OQO to run Leopard.

The OQO Model 02 is frequently used by a number of mobile professionals who need to capture, edit, produce, blog or access information in real time. The OQO Model 02 is used by professional photographers for example at the Superbowl to provide real time uploads of their images to media outlets who then in turn can publish these images within seconds.  By hacking the OQO to now run Leopard, profs can now use their subnotebook with an operating system that they’re most used to/familiar with.

While boot time takes about 2.5 minutes, once it’s all up and running, the user has virtually all functions of a standard notebook or desktop OS in the palm of their hand. The only component missing is WWAN access which TRF is now testing.  Watch the fuzzy cam video here.,  Skip MacBook Air…OQO now the worlds smallest Mac

25 mac apps you can live without, but shouldn’t

Apr 23, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Technology

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I might have accomplished my mission. Bigbluebottle has finally jumped into the game! Sure, he’s got bigbluebottle.com and a few other smaller blogs that he works on, but nothing that I would consider ‘taking the plunge’. Bottle’s got a head chock full o’ information about the tech and IT world, and I’ve been urging him for a while now to leap into the frying pan with the rest of us, and start contributing content to the world wide internets.

Let’s call this first entry a super soft launch of his new venture allogeneo.us. Spiffy URL name as well I might add. Very web2.0y.  Bottle’s managed to kick this one off with a bang, providing us with 25 mac apps you can live without, but shouldn’t. A selected excerpt:

Multimedia:

• ImageWell: If you just don’t have time for all the nuances and intricacies of Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, and just want to do some very basic image manipulation, use ImageWell.
• Audacity: At first, I’d have labeled this as a basic audio file editing tool, but since it supports VST plugins, you quickly learn that this little free tool has a LOT of power behind it.

• Blender: This one is a bit more of a niche product. Very powerful 3-dimensional modeling too.

Read the rest of this highly useful article over at allogeneo.us. And congrats B, welcome to the party!

Jason and the Golden AirBook

Apr 22, 2008 by Dan Taylor    3 Comments    Posted under: Technology

If the original 24k Gold Macbook wasn’t enough for you, Computer-choppers let their 24k Gold and Sapphire MacBook air loose on the market today.

This baby is bathed in 24k gold all the way around, and features the ‘classic’ mac logo with 86 multi colored sapphires. Even 86 Sapphires wasn’t enough to satisfy those krazy kidz at the ‘choppers and they’re also offering a polished gold superdrive to go along with it.

Maclust Realized

Apr 16, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Technology

An ongoing review of Me and my MacBook Pro.

As Brent pointed out, I’ve not yet done a post about the shiny new bundle of joy that’s come into my life.  Well, let’s just say I’ve got a new toy.  More so than a toy, I’ve actually got my hands on a professional tool that’s going to allow me to be more productive, creative, and generally a better all around person (ok…that might be pushing it a bit far).  In other words…Maclust realized!

So dear readers, this is the first post I’m writing on the new MacBook Pro, and I’m sure you’ll understand and forgive me if the ‘screw doesn’t have a few posts for a few days….I’ve still got to use this darn thing. Biggest difference right off the bat; what’s the funny command key for, and I have to mount applications to install them?

I say a few days…probably more like a few hours. But all in all, thanks to all of you who’ve already sent me congrats messages. I’m incredibly happy already, and she’s only 6 hours old!’

A few days later (edit update) …

I’m just a little short of one week with my new MacBook Pro, and I’ve already decided that it’s (almost) the love of my life. I was talking with an uninitiated the other day, and she asked me why I love it. I honestly had to stop and think for a minute, as there are so many reasons, but I wanted to put it in plain and simple words she could understand. My answer? ‘Because it just works’.

Simplicity

Since this silver bundle of joy is brand spanking new, it shipped with Leopard, so I don\’t really have a version comparison to make, but all I can say is that OSX Leopard is probably the most intuitive OS I’ve ever worked with. Sure, it’s different from winblows and yes, it’s going to take you a minute or two to get used to it. But once you do…things just start making sense all of a sudden. There’s that lightbulb moment of, yeah…that was easy, why was that so complex with winblows?

Included Goodies

I’ve not yet done it, but I’ll be reformatting my old pc soon and rebuilding winblows xp. This got me to thinking, when I install winblows, what ‘extras’ and ‘goodies’ come with it? The core OS sure, along with solitaire, a calculator, and Internet Explorer. Oh wait…there’s defrag as well. If you buy your dell/hp/toshiba/sony, they often come preloaded with a boatload of crap that most of us go ahead and delete right off the bat anyway, so these do NOT count as goodies.

Upon booting up the Mac, I was delighted to find iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, AppleMail, iMovie, Dashboard, Frontrow, (shall I continue?) preinstalled. Ok, I’ll admit it, one of the first things I unchecked as default was Safari in favor of Firefox, but hey…can you blame me?

It’s HOT!

Actually, quite the opposite. Coming off a 1.5gHz Centrino processor where I could more or less fry an egg on the keyboard after about an hour of usage, this duocore 2.5 gHz could keep my drink chilled. The secret? Aluminum. The mac comes in a super sexy aluminum casing. The aluminum acts as a heat sink and wicks heat away from the key components inside, thereby increasing overall operating stability and speed. Conversely, take a look at your PC notebook. I’m going to take a wild guess, and assume that it’s probably made from plastic? Plastic. Un huh…a heat INSULATING material. Along this same line, I was told before my purchase that one of the most frequent gestures I was going to make was to hit the shift key just to make sure that the machine was actually on. Whereas the fan on Compaq could sound quite close to a vaccum cleaner running at full speed, the Mac is virtually silent.

Power for Days

I think it’s no secret that I like to watch my American television here in Austria. That requires and download, and then a trip over to the TV to have a watch (the other monitor isn’t actually required, I just like to watch TV in the living room). Normally, I’d have another dedicated power source in the living room to plug the computer in, as I know it’d never make it through more than 1 one hour program. My first reaction after recabling my desk was, hmmm…I’ve probably got to go get another power adapter for the mac now as well. But I figured at least we could watch one episode of American Idol (I know…don’t hate, but David Cook IS seriously a good singer) before I’d have to recharge. Well, low and behold, I cued up 2 episodes, and watched them both back to back without the battery even flinching. Upon taking it back to my desk, the battery meter indicated that I wasn’t even half way empty. Doing a quick mathematical equation, this means that I could potentially get almost 4 hours of computing time from this battery in minimal conditions? WOW! Now that’s what I call power management!

BuiltIns

It’s just a bunch of the little things built into this quite possibly perfect mixture of function and form. Everything from the built in iSight webcam and microphone (making skype calls an absolute pleasure), to the magsafe power cable (I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes, and have tripped over a cable or two in my day). The environmentally sensitive ambient lighting feature knocks me out every time I watch it in action. The iSight webcam actually monitors the ambient lighting around you, and automagically adjusts screen brightness and illuminates the keyboard. I didn’t mention that already? Yeah, the keyboard f#(ing lights up in dim conditions. The 1440 x 900 display is absolutely breath taking (and I’m already trying to figure out how I can swing one of Apple’s 23″ cinema displays), and the 512mb NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT doesn’t hurt either.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this one very short. Have I mastered this beauty yet? Not even close. Has Apple made the (almost) perfect machine and OS, whereby I can get my way around and utilize some of it’s super fun and cool features within a few days? Absolutely.

A few moths later (edit update):

Things are still rock solid here at camp mac, chez DT.  Since the addition of a Vestax VCI-100 that I use to controll Traktor (thanks Ludwig), the mac now replaces my down dust collector Technics.  The Canon Vixia HF10 in combination with Final Cut Express is about as close as I’m going to get to Hollywood, and while I’ve completed the 12 step process for my World of Warcraft addiction, gaming on a Mac is still a heckuva lot better than my winblows experiences.

I’m still a VERY happy MacBook Pro owner, and want to buy the world a Mac.

Logitech NuLOOQ increases productivity

Apr 15, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

While my shiny new Mac has not yet arrived, some of the stuff that I ordered to go with it has arrived today. 85% of it is Mac specific, so it’s not really doing me much good on my winblows based machine. However, one of the new pieces of hardware that arrived is truly changing my computing experience right out of the box.

At a suggestion from Bottle, I figured as long as I’m making this big of an Amazon.com order, why not just chuck the Logitech NulOOQ in there as well. And oh how I am glad that I did. Logitech bills the NulOOQ as ‘It’s not a mouse, it’s your mouses’ best friend’, and I can honestly say, it’s all that and then some.

Upon installing the software a bunch of popular programs and associated shortcuts are preinstalled (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Elements, Firefox, etc.). First stop Firefox. A twist of the scrolling wheel is now rolling me through tabs, while and up and down on the wheel is scrolling me smoothly through pages, and a nudge left or right is moving backwards and forwards in browsing history. Could I have done this with a mouse? Sure, but why all the extra motion when, I’ve now got controls all under my fingertips with my left hand.

Another great feature is that in addition to the presets (which you can remap any way you choose) you can also set up your own custom settings. The iTunes settings were not preset, as I can imagine everyone has their own preferences of how they’d like it to work. Well, I’ve been listening to iTunes all afternoon, and haven’t once had to alt/tab to the program itself to change the volume, play, next track, previous track and/or mute/pause. I have them assigned to touch sensitive numbers on the top of the device (see top image above). Square is play/pause, III is forward, I is backwards. Ready for the super-slickness? The entire top of the control pad functions exactly like the scroll wheel on an iPod. In other words, I can now control iTunes volume just by sliding my finger around the top of the device. Nice.

iTunes is already a preinstalled feature device (but commands left blank). The NulOOQ is also programmable to virtually any program you\’ve got on your machine. Simply go to the main menu of the controls, select ‘add program’ and then start adding keyboard shortcuts. The ‘lOOQ then recognizes which program you’re working in and maps key commands specific to that program. In other words, let’s say I’m working in Ableton Live and want to map a twist of the wheel to a filter effect. No problem. I add Ableton to my commands in the NulOOQ menu, and map the specific keyboard command or mouse gesture to a right turn of the NulOOQ wheel. How cool is that?

This settings can also be exported in case you ever switch machine (or work onsite for a client). This works out quite nicely for me, as I’m mapping custom settings today on winblows, and will hopefully by this time tomorrow be working on a mac. No need to remap, just export from winblows, and import on the mac. I also found this site, that’s offering up a bunch of preconfigured mappings (most are specific to <snicker>Vista</snicker>). Hmmm…now to figure out some mapping for WoW for some SERIOUS pwn ftw!

I’ve only used it thus far with Firefox, Word, and iTunes, I’m sure this is going to get REALLY fun when I start working with it in Photoshop (think magnifiers and brush size) and Final Cut (shutteling through video…oh nice!). Is this object necessary for your everyday computing? Probably not. Is it a wicked awesome cool productive time saving the keys glow blow ultimate geek toy? Abso f#*(ing lutly!

Blu-ray on the cheap

Apr 14, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Technology

If you happen to own a blu ray player or a PS3, Amazon.com is sharing the blu love for the next 4 days (18 April 08).

“Buy Two Blu-ray Discs, Get One Free

For a limited time buy any two Blu-ray discs listed below and receive a third free. Discount will automatically be applied once all participating items are added to your cart. Offer valid through April 18, 2008. See offer terms and restrictions.

Shop our Blu-ray store for other new releases and bestselling pre-orders.”

And I know…I know…Apple is going to start shipping all Macs with a blu ray installed coming later this year, but I really couldn’t hold out any longer, as the current machine is on its last leg. So I guess we’ll just have to get a PS3 (with that super sexy Gran Turismo 5 package). Damn.

‘s Baggers delivers food iRobot

Apr 8, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: News

Ah the Germans.  Such a fun group of people.  They’ve given us Aspirin, the Zeppelin, and the Diesel engine.  In the next wave of German ingenuity, they\’ve now come up with the (almost) fully automated restaurant system.

If you’ve ever been to B&H photo/video in NYC, have a think about the product delivery method used in the store.  Whizzing overhead on a system of pulleys and tracks, baskets of cameras, lenses, and memory cards come up from the basement storeroom, and are delivered to the cashier’s desk.  Now imagine the process in reverse, products coming from the roof down on a series of rollercoaster-like tracks.

‘s Baggers in Nuremberg has come up with a rather genius way of not only pulling in customers, but cutting labor costs at the same time.  While there are still a few ‘waiters’ within the restaurant, none of them are actually taking orders or running food to tables.  They’re there rather to inform and instruct patrons on how to use the system.

Each table has an assigned number, and each seat a color code.  Diners use a touchscreen display to select their seat (tables are preassigned according to the monitor…so I guess I’m not sending that cute blond at table 12 a drink), and then flip through the electronic menu.  After an order is placed, patrons can then use the touchscreen to send an email, an SMS, or simply browse away.

While there may be no waiters coming to your table to take your order or deliver your food, fear not, all the food is prepared by human beings in the kitchen high above the dining room floor.  All food is prepared fresh, and when possible ‘s Baggers uses local Bio ingredients.  When the food is cooked, it’s then sealed, color coded with a sticker, and sent down to diners via the ‘coaster tracks.

Local business owner Michael Mack says, “I wanted to come up with a complete new restaurant system, one that would be more efficient and more comfortable”.

Not only does automating the restaurant make it more efficient and labor cost saving for Mack, but it also saves the consumer: No waiter…no need to leave a tip!