Malky’s Birthday

Malky’s Birthday was yesterday. For those who didn’t wish her happy birthday on facebook or twitter, you can do that here by leaving a comment. Cake is accecpted as well

Fun with Audio Hijack Pro

I’ve spoken about Rogue Amebia’s Audio Hijack Pro before since it’s such an important tool for our podcast. Last night I discovered a new use for the application.

I was looking for a sound clip but the only thing that I could find was a YouTube video of said audio. AHP came to the rescue sine it allows me to record sound from Safari. I gave it a try and it worked briliantly. Hopefully you’ll hear the new sound in our upcoming podcast.

Thoughts on the iPhone 2.0 software

Like millions of other people, I upgraded my iPhone to the new 2.0 firmware that was released with the second generation iPhone (known here in the US as the iPhone 3G) . There were numerious articles and blog posts written about the problems that happened on Friday (the short story is that Apple’s website couldn’t keep up with the demand) and you would have thought that Apple would have learned their lesson after last year.

Once I finally got the software onto the iPhone at about 3:00pm using the new firmware was almost like a religious experience. The first thing that I tested was the Active Sync component. This will allow someone to get their email in real time along with their contacts and calendar. All synchronized over the air. It worked as advertised and I now get my email pushed to my iPhone and it’s quite exciting. Of course this is working with Kerio MailServer and not Microsoft Exchange but I would assume that your results would be the same. 

The other exciting this is the app store, which will allow you to download applications to your phone. There are free ones and there are ones that you can pay for. I installed several free apps and have been mulling over buying a really neat looking app as well. The free apps are what you would expect AIM, Facebook and NetNewsWire just to name a few. They are all very well written well (UI wise) and do a very good job of doing what you want to do with it. 

The app that I am looking to buy is At Bat from MLB.com. This allows you to get updated scores and watch the scoring plays a few minutes after they happen! Really cool, eh? 

I think that once I get the new G3 iPhone and I hand the old one down to Malky, she’ll be really happy with what she is getting. 

Cool App for the iPhone

Since I’ve been working from home, I use Vonage for my office line and one of the biggest annoyances is that my iPhone won’t play the .wav files that I receive for a voice mail. Yesterday I finally decided to jailbreak my iPhone (using ziphone), at the behest of a friend,  and found a wonderful application called vonagent which will allow you to control some of your Vonage settings (e.g. setting call forwarding) from your iPhone. Not only does it take care of that but you can now listen to your voicemails as well. I was able to give it a try today and it works as advertised.

Well, at least until the 2.0 firmware is ready.

Tech Annoyences

As many of you may notice, I like technology a lot. However, with technology there come annoyances as well. Here is my list:

• Why didn’t the iPhone come with a task application?
• How come you can play a .wav file from within iTunes but not while you are in the mail application (iPhone only)? This is important to me since I get my voice mails emailed to me as a .wav attachment but I can’t listen to them while I’m on the road.
• The iPhone could make the perfect ebook reader, yet the only way to get said application is hacking your iPhone which I refuse to do.
• Why is it that mail.app gives you a rss reader included in the app but no real way of getting your existing rss feeds into the reader? An OMPL import feature was too hard?

Those are the ones that are bugging me now. If you have any tech annoyences, leave a comment to tell us about it.

This is your MacBook, this is your MacBook on eBay

I’ve decided to put my MacBook up for sale on eBay. Why is Aaron doing this you might ask yourself? Well as much as a Mac fan that I am, I have a new laptop from work and I think that I’ll be using that a majority of the time. “But Aaron!”, I hear you say, “what kind of computer would make you give up on your MacBook?”. The answer is quite simple, my job gave me a MacBook Pro. As a result I have an extra laptop and Malky and I agreed that we should sell the MacBook (although I wanted her to use it).

So if you like a great laptop with the best operating system around* then you should bid on the MacBook. Or you can even buy it now! How convenient is that?

The Leopard Sleeps Tonight

I know that malky and I have a few readers of the blog who are Mac users as well. To that end, I want to let you know that you can pre-order Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) from Amazon.com and save yourself $10 at the same time.

Not only that but if you buy Leopard from Amazon and through our site you’ll be helping to support the blog and the podcast. Here is a link for your purchasing pleasure:

I have to admit that I am excited by some of the things that Leopard will have in it. Most notably, I’m psyched about Spaces virtual desktops. While not a new feature (other OS’s have had it for a while) I’m really looking forward to the twist that Apple will put into it.

Good Support experience

A while ago, I listed some of my favorite non-Apple apps and among them was my back up software, SuperDuper. This week I had a problem with the my back up and couldn’t get it done. The software has a feature that you can send the log to the support team, so I did that. Only a few minutes later I had a reply from the support team (and the developer of the software) telling me what I needed to do to get me backing up again.

I have to note at this point that the problem wasn’t anything to do with the software but with a problem with my hard drive. Never the less, Dave told me what I needed to do and after following his directions, I was back to backing up.

This is the great thing about the independent Mac developers, they are really customer focused and really ready to help out with a support problem any way that they can.

If you aren’t backing up your Mac, you should be; and if you should be doing it with SuperDuper.

Decision Reached

Well that didn’t take too long now did it? Not that I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted to get with the $100 gift card that Apple gave me for buying the iPhone before the price drop, but I suggested to Malky that she take a look and see what she might like to get from the store. Not surprisingly, she found some stuff and I ordered it for her yesterday. Amazingly enough, the goods are out for delivery already; and this is with standard delivery!

Oh, what’s that? you want to know what Malky ordered? OK, she got Sennheiser PX 100 Collapsible Headphones and the iPod iSkin for iPod Nano 2G. I am sure that she will be very excited when she gets them today.

Decisions, Decisions

It’s a good thing that I listen to podcasts because otherwise I would not have known that the $100 store credit plan was official. Why would I have not known you ask? Because the news was released on Friday and that was the second day of Rosh Hashanah and I wasn’t on line again until Saturday night. Well I was washing some dishes this evening and listening to a Mac related podcast and they mentioned that it’s on Apple’s website. So I went over there and got my rebate. It’s not actually a rebate, it’s more like a store credit to either the online or brick and mortar stores.

So the question now is what should I do with this store credit? Buy software, hardware? There is too much to choose from!

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