“Never Trust A Computer You Can’t Lift”

25 years ago today.

It really is amazing when you consider what else was available 25 years ago today.

[Via TUAW]

There’s a lesson in here…I just know it.

Please Embrace This Commercial Interruption [Freakonomics Blog]

STD e-cards let you break the news anonymously [Ars Technica]

A Bit Unexpected, White Macbook Gets Refreshed

Apple Updates White Macbook

I had assumed the non-unibody Macbooks were on their way out, that perhaps Apple was just selling off some of its remaining production.  With the lack of firewire in the unibody machines, buying a new Macbook didn’t sound too great for a lot of people, unless they wanted to move up to a bulkier pro model.  But now, as pointed out by Engadget, with NVDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, the machine has received a significant update.  Firewire lovers rejoice!

Circuit City’s Making Changes

Circuit City today annouced that shareholders are going to see nothing from a company liquidation.  Right now the online store is down for updates.

This has been a long time coming and while I it may be a bit morbid, I’d stay tuned we might see some discounts coming from the company.

Throwing Away Money

From this:

Dell Advertisement

To this:

One of my biggest advertising pet peeves, is when a product is presented in an ad and the resulting click does not take you to a page featuring the product in question, or in some cases you get the product but no way to purchase it.

This is one of the more extreme cases however.  Someone has got to be responsible for this right? Ultimately some Dell employee should be responsible for verifying that they company’s campaign is working correctly.

New Life to iLife: Apple Demos iLife 09

Well I was right about just  a few things in my predictions. 

1.  iLife ‘09 was introduced.
2. 17″ Macbook was updated.
3. Changes came to the iTunes Store.  

I am surprised about the company  hasn’t expanded their quad-core reach, but I suspect that we’ll be seeing more regular changes and updates from Apple going forward.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a February press event.

There were some welcomed changes for iPhoto, and iMovie.

I found the most interesting feature of today announcements was the lack of Mobile  Me attention.  Now both Flickr and Facebook get a prominent position into the iPhoto UI. Interestingly photo tagging is now updated live from the web if you share your photos through those services.

I’m looking forward to checking out the “faces” feature.  Picasa has this for web albums, but iPhoto is now letting me also do this locally.  Being someone who already goes through to make albums for individuals, it’ll be handy to have a tool that tries to identify people automatically. 

Both apps are now taking advantage of geocoding integrating it into the presentation tools as well as the navigation interface.  If I tell iPhoto I’m at the Pike Place Market, it’ll automatically categorize my photo into a USA-Washington State-Seattle designation.

I won’t go too far into the changes made to iMovie, except to say that it’s got many improvements that should satisfy many of those who were upset with the transition from iMovie ‘06 to ‘08.  The editing features are much improved so that a person has much more control over how edits are made.  One thing I haven’t heard, and I’m wondering about is if the program will accept plugins as previous versions to ‘08 had.  

Garageband looks like it’s trying to connect with the burgeoning market of Music Video games.  The product now connects you to popular artists who, through the program, can teach you to play.  Additionally you can rock-out  along side a virtual band.

iWeb gets some minor updates, including Facebook notifications.

iDvd looks like it might be on its way out.  I’d like to see the product do a better job on working to integrate with third parties via plugins and extensions that would enable greater internet and application integration.

Oh and most interesting, for those who’ve yet to upgrade to Leopard, Apple is  going to be offering a “Mac Box Set.”  This will include Leopard, iMovie, and iWork, all for $169, or $229 for multiple machines.

Picasa Makes it to the Mac

While we’re likely on the verge of seeing and iLife update , Google has finally released Picasa for the Mac.

Picasa should be able to handle up to 1 million photos.  With 40k My iPhoto right now runs into hiccups.  There are some additional perks, and some missing features from the windows version.

I’ve been waiting to see something like this for some time. I’ve so far found iPhoto to be somewhat lacking. I’m trying Picasa right now and so far so good. I’ll post and update soon.

Picasa via TechCrunch

 

Update: I’ve been using the software for a day now. It works great.  It’s very responsive.  I don’t like how I can’t get rid of folder separations when viewing images, but one thing I found extremely helpful was the duplicate photo identifier.  Using Picasa and iPhoto side by side I was able to confidently review and eradicate duplicate photos.  A while back I purchase Duplicate Annihilator, but the software is slow to the point of being unusable.  Picasa has the feature built in and it’s fast.

I won’t be giving up on iPhoto, and am considering an upgrade to the latest iLife when it comes out, but I’m going to be using Picasa as well.  

I like that google made it easy to integrate with your existing iPhoto library, and the updating is nearly instantaneous.  As soon as I’d removed an image from iPhoto (emptying it from the iPhoto trash) it was gone when I went to select it in Picasa.