Macgasm

A CEO in the public eye can only be sick, on and off again, so many times before someone at the SEC starts scratching their collective heads and decides to take a closer look into the situation.  It’s no surprise that rumours are abound about an “unofficial” investigation begin to take form.

But, like every other “source” that surrounds a rumor these days, there’s some skepticsm about the person providing the information to news agencies.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission’s review doesn’t mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn’t public.“

So, a review could be forthcoming which doesn’t come as any surprise, but what really gets me pissed off is the cowardice of people.  If you’re man enough to send stock tumbling with your announcement of a “rumor,” be man enough to reveal yourself as a source. Stop being such a chicken.

I’ve had a pretty dangerous relationship with IRC throughout my computing years.  It started in early high school while AOL was the big name on the internet, and it has continued on and off throughout the years.  I’ve met some pretty cool people chatting there, and one of them helped me found this site.

I was pretty surprised early on by the lack of iPhone applications that let you connect to IRC, but I’ve since found one that works fairly well.  IRChon lets me get my fix on my iPhone whenever i’m on the road.  It’s not as intuitive as I would like it to be, but it works pretty good.  You can connect to multiple servers, and multiple channels much like any IRC desktop application, but one caveat I found was the applications inability to issue commands like /msg, /me and all those other things that make IRC a fun place to interact.

One really cool thing that they’ve built in is the ability to see thumbnails of website links in the built in browser.  It saves you from both leaving the application, and looking at those perverse and grotesque images that some people think a hilarious enough to try and dupe you into clicking them.

Keynote Remote

Apple announced iWork ’09 at Macworld San Francisco 2009. After it was available, I downloaded the Trial of iWork ’09 for two purposes. The first is to see if I want to upgrade my family pack of iWork ’08 to iWork ’09, or hold off. While the second was to do a review of each of the applications for the Macgasm readers.

So I thought I’d try out the new Keynote Remote Application that works with Keynote 5.0 (Keynote ’09), since it was one of the cooler features of iWork ’09. Let’s Dive into it, shall we?

The Keynote Remote application, available from the iTunes Store is a $0.99 application that allows you to control your Keynote presentation with your iPhone. It seems like a simple concept, and it is.

The setup is a breeze. Here are the steps:

1. Turn on Wireless on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
2. Download the remote application. See link above.
3. Connect wirelessly to your presentation device. This can be via an Ad-hoc network, or via an access point.
4. Link your iPhone / iPod Touch with Keynote ’09. See the Section below.
5. Control your Presentation.

Connecting your iPhone / iPod Touch with Keynote ’09.

Open Keynote ’09.
Go to Preferences
Click on the ‘Remote Tab’. It should appear as it does below.

Check the ‘Enable iPhone and iPod Touch Remotes’ box.
On the iPhone / iPod Touch, start up the Keynote Remote Application.
Click on ‘New Keynote Link’. A four number code will appear, that looks like this.

Within Keynote ’09 a New iPhone / iPod Touch should appear.
Click on ‘Link’. A screen shown below will appear.

.

Click on OK, and they are now linked.

It really isn’t difficult at all, and it works with just your laptop and your iPhone or iPod Touch. I couldn’t expect Apple to exclude ad-hoc network support this, but some oversights do occur.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. Your iPhone or iPod Touch will lock automatically, if you have that setting set. So, I’d recommend taking the locking off. Secondly, if you unlink your iPhone / iPod Touch you’ll have to re-link it before it’ll work again, otherwise you will receive an authorization error.

I would also like to see VPN support. Let’s say you have a co-worker who wants you to check a keynote presentation. You could use your iPhone or iPod Touch to see if the presentation remotely.

Overall, it’s a good application that I would recommend anybody who is doing keynote presentations on a regular basis. Particularly since it’s only $0.99 + tax, instead of paying $19.99 for an Apple Remote, if you only use keynote.

Griffin Universal MP3 FM Transmitter

I’ve been using an FM transmitter with my iPod for a couple of years now, and my last one managed to break. So when I began looking for a new one, I wanted one that would work with my iPhone as well as my 5.5 Gen iPod with Video. So I went onto the big warehouse website known as Amazon and picked up the Griffin iTrip Universal FM Transmitter and Charger for MP3 Players. Shown below.

My last iPod FM Transmitter was another Griffin product, the Griffin iTrip Auto FM Transmitter and Auto Charger for iPod. See the image below for a picture of the transmitter. While this one would’ve worked again, I wanted to future proof my purchase, since this transmitter will only work with iPods that support Firewire, meaning iPod Nano 2nd Generation, iPod with Video, and any previous version. This one would not work with either iPhone, since neither support firewire for output.

The new Griffin transmitter has a couple of helpful features. The output from the headphones does fit the first generation iPhone’s headphone jack, so you can use it with any recessed headphone jack on any device. The other good feature is that it has a USB port for charging. This allows you to use the USB charger to charge another iPod or iPhone. So this can be helpful if you have more than one device that needs charging. This also allows you to keep another car charger free to charge another item you may have, like a non-Apple phone.

The transmitter works as expected. It does transmit sound, and the good thing is that you actually have two adjustment places. Since the headphone jack is doing the outputting of the sound, you can adjust the sound directly on the iPod or iPhone. The second source for volume adjustment is the car’s stereo. So if you happen to come across a song or Podcast that is a bit too low, you can adjust one or both to get the right volume.

The newer Griffin has 4 presets that allow you to choose the stations. This can come in handy in a more urban area (like Chicago) where there might not be very many open stations, or the open stations change as you traverse the area.

So the new Griffin transmitter that I bought does work, as one would expect. However, there are a few things that do bother me. First, it seems that if it is too cold it will not work. The last Griffin FM transmitter I had never had this problem. That one would work regardless of the temperature.

The second thing that bugs me is that if you have a 64Kbps podcast and you turn up the iPod or iPhone too high the sound will become severely distorted, meaning you have to turn up the car stereo. Which leads to the third thing that is irritating.

Maybe it’s just my car, but when I have the FM transmitter on, it picks up all types of interference. For instance, the revving of the car engine is picked up. I never had this problem on the last FM transmitter, it never picked up the car engine noise, nor did it experience the fourth problem I have with the new one.

It is almost unusable with an iPhone. I say almost unusable because entirely way too much interference is picked up by this. When I use my iPhone with headphones I never hear the ‘GSM Buzz’ in my headphones. Yet, with this transmitter every little GSM buzz is picked up, which can severely interrupt podcasts and songs.

Another potential issue with this setup, of using the Universal FM Transmitter and iPhone, is that if you’re listening to a song on your iPhone and you receive a phone call, if you pull out the FM transmitter you may disconnect the caller, which can be quite annoying.

Overall, if you’re in the market for an FM transmitter and have a non-iPhone device, you may want to pick this Griffin up, however, I would recommend going elsewhere to find a better FM transmitter. Now I won’t be getting rid of this, because I do need one, but I will be looking at others when this one goes south, because it’s only a matter of time.

I started off the day putting all my Christmas giftcards into iTunes.  I had the complete intention of spending a good portion of it today on iPhone apps in a hope to both support the indie developer community and to get some new material to write about.  Neither happened.  I couldn’t find one application that would make my life easier.  Before you get all huffed and puffed about exhibit A and exhibit B applications that have “changed” your world–I know they exist.  I just can’t find them.  Unless I know the application name, there’s a very good possbility that i’ll never find anything useful.

There’s 25 New and “featured” applications, 25 what’s hot applications.  20 Categories that list multiple sub categories and once you’re through selecting categories you’re met with three more pages, each with 25 listings–Top Paid, Top Free, Release Demo.

 

What’s a user to do?

 

If you’re not a “popular” application there’s little hope your application will ever be found unless you put a lot of time and effort into getting your name out around the internet.  But the problem with this application hub isn’t the “popularity” issues.  It’s the complete lack of attention paid to “useful” applications.

 

At the time of this writing, 17 of the top 25 applications are crappy games.  Games I’ve downloaded a thousand times in a thousand different iterations, from a thousand other indie developers trying to make a quick buck. Fart Applications ring a bell?  Flashlight Applications?  Beer Games?  Check, Check, and Check!

 

You know what this tells me?  There is a serious disconnect between “real” applications and jokey/fun applications.  We need to split them up, and Apple needs to do a better job of promoting “real” applications in their Appstore. Maybe the categories need a tweek or a tag needs to be assigned that categorizes the “fun” and the “real” applications into two distinct places.  I don’t want to see Fart noise generators beside mileage trackers.

 

I want to see my options, and I want to be able to find what I need quicker.  It says a lot about a devices usability when I have 60 dollars to spend on applications but the opportunity cost of spending a dollar to find that application I need just isn’t worth it.  Three categories in, and two pages later I was still without any “real” options.  My only real choice was to go to the iTunes store and buy a new album.  Sorry to the indie developers out there, but you should know I tried.  I really did.

I like my desktop to be as awe inspiring as possible.  I take great pride in finding some really kickass wallpapers. Most people do, so don’t pretend that you’re not one of them!  I stumbled across one today and decided to pass it along.

I received an interesting email a couple days ago. It was from Ian Marsh, the creator of the popular word game, Wurdle.  Correction: Semi Secret Software is the creator of Wurdle. I apologize for the mistake. (WD-01/20/09). It contained a free code to redeem a copy of his newly released game, Textropolis. At first I thought the email was actually spam. Given the phone, and ‘web 2.0′ look of the email. But after looking at again, I figured out what it was. As you can see below.

I had some time last night to sit and play it. I must say, I think I might like it better than Wurdle. The concept of the game is quite simple. You are given a city, the first one is Kingstown. The whole idea of the game is to get any many words as possible out of the city name given. Once you hit a certain threshold (10%) you unlock the next city. There are 30 cities to try. Once you unlock a city, you can leave your current city and go onto the next one. You can always return to see if you can find the rest of the words in that city.

The minimum world length is four, which is a good thing, since it adds a bit more difficulty to the game. As you get more words, the population of the world increases (as of right now mine is at 119,370).

I do have a suggestion for improvement. I’d like to see more difficulty, not as in words, but as in more percentages needed to progress, along with higher returns. I’d also like to see a sequel with even more cities. If you head over to Ian’s website eenmachine.com you can get even more information about it, and links to other games.

What would most pay for this game? $4.99? $3.99? $2.99? Well, it’s a whole 99 cents. So, who are you kidding, go and pick it up from the iTunes Store. I also recommend checking out the website and youtube video for Textropolis. I’d recommend this game for any ‘word’ junkie out there.

Early 2008 – Apple announces that part of the magical-thinness that comprises the MacBook Air is due to an integrated (read: non-removable) battery. Many are up in arms. How could they do this to us!?

Early 2009 – Apple announces that part of the magical-capacity of the battery of the new unibody 17″ MacBook Pro is due to an integrated (read: non-removable) battery. Many are up in arms. How could they do this to us?! Again!!!

While not unheard of, it’s definitely a trend that Apple is setting: providing an elsewhere unavailable feature at the cost of an industry standard feature that, and I know you’ll all argue with me, many (if not most) people never use. Non-removable iPhone battery (no one I know uses a second cell battery), same with the 17″ MacBook Pro, etc. You’re irritated, I get it. So let’s chat.

Let’s be honest – we’ve all gotten over Apple proprietary hardware quite easily. New things like Mini Display Port and Mini DVI, old things like the iPod dock connector, FireWire, and even terrible things like Apple Display Connector (anyone remember ADC?). The point? An integrated battery is different, not necessarily bad. It’s economical – cheaper to produce, cheaper to maintain, and provides us all with amazing battery life. While I wouldn’t expect the advertised 8 hours, a realistic 5-6 shouldn’t be impossible, and that’s truly amazing in such a device. At $179 to replace, you should have gotten your money’s worth after 3 years when your battery dies.

But this is where the problem lies – warranty and replacement. Apple’s policy on notebook batteries says that it’s under warranty for 1 year or 300 charge cycles, whichever comes first (yes, even if you have AppleCare). A charge cycle is a full charge and discharge (so if you discharge 50%, charge until full, discharge another 50% the next day, charge until full, you’ve used 1 single cycle) and for most people, 300 cycles is more than a year’s worth of use. What’s more is that these cycles are typically only 2-4 hours in length. Let’s double that, and increase the cycle capacity to 1000. That’s (effectively) 6 and a half times the amount of battery life of a last generation MBP. With this increased capacity, I expected to hear that the battery is warrantied for a full 3 years when AppleCare is purchased. Sadly, it doesn’t seem that this is the case.

Overall, I think the decision is a good one. Apple is going to be responsible for fewer wasted batteries, consumers may not need to purchase a replacement battery over the life of the product like they might now with a 300 cycle battery, and new advances in technology that are pushed upon consumers in this way help the market grow and prices drop. So while the product may not be for you, it’s definitely the right choice for Apple, and probably the right choice for most of us that are using the product daily.