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I'm happy with the upgrade but I'm still weighing everything if it's worth the $99/year. This email from the .mac team pretty much sums it up.

Dear .Mac Member,

We're excited to announce that your .Mac membership now comes with 250 MB of combined .Mac Mail and iDisk storage. And, in another move designed to make life easier as traffic grows heavier and files grow larger, we've increased the maximum email message size to 10 MB.

If you haven't tried them yet, be sure to check out two additional enhancements recently added to .Mac Mail. There's a new online spell checker with a customizable dictionary available when you use your .Mac Mail account through a browser. And you can now use aliases as email addresses either for fun or as protection when you need to provide an email address but aren't entirely comfortable with the requester. If your concerns turn out to be justified, you can then simply remove the alias and create a new one the next time you face a similar situation.

We value your membership and hope you enjoy these enhancements to your .Mac service.

Posted by Joel at 03:42 PM | Permalink

from Engadget:





No, we’re not just posting this pic of Ora Ito’s new One Line clamped desk lamp because they put a PowerBook (thought it didn’t hurt). We actually sorta want one.

I want one too! I still have an Eclipse on top of my PC monitor which serves as my overall light for my room. This One Line lamp is stunning but I think the price is "stunning" too.

Posted by Joel at 05:22 PM | Permalink

Just saw this at MacMinute! As the article says,

Toshiba intros 60GB digital music player:
Toshiba today announced a new hard drive-based digital audio player with a 60GB storage capacity...

What's interesting is this bit of info:

In early June, Toshiba said that it had received an order from Apple for the 60GB drive used in Toshiba's new player. However, Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product marketing at Apple, dismissed rumors of a 60GB iPod.

I still smell a new iPod.

Posted by Joel at 12:40 PM | Permalink

I heard that the upcoming Tungsten T5 will have a metal body. That plus its hires+ screen would look great with any of the newer G5 desktops and Powerbooks. Syncing will probably not be a problem too as PalmOne and Macs never had major problems with each other.

Speaking of syncing, the Clies now sync flawlessly with 10.3.5, thanks to The Missing Sync 4.0.1.

Posted by Joel at 07:44 PM | Permalink

Nice idea coming from Green Day! Are we looking at the first of a trend from all the musicians?

GREEN DAY CD-Rs

A 5-pack of custom printed blank recordable CD-Rs featuring the color artwork of Green Day. A coordinated color slimline case is included with each CD-R. The five CD-Rs feature classic artwork from Green Day albums Dookie, Nimrod, Warning and the new album American idiot, as well as a rare photo of the band.



Burn responsibly. Download music legally and burn your own Green Day compilations.

Posted by Joel at 06:23 PM | Permalink

Just saw this at Engadget... I've been confused about how Sony's been thinking but this piece of news is something I like! Not really the iPod killer, yet, but if this pushes through, the PSP is set to kill off the other MP3 players out there. I'm starting to imagine people looking at an iPod then looking at a PSP. For a "few" dollars more, the ability to play videos and most especially play PSP games are very attractive selling points.

We’d reported earlier on Sony’s shift to finally start supporting MP3 in some of their digital audio players. Now comes word that even better still their new portable gaming console, the PlayStation Portable will support MP3 as well. So in addition to supporting Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format (for all five of you that use it), it will play all those pirated MP3 files that the rest of the world has been downloading (now the big question is whether they’ll let us burn our own Universal Media Discs, which are the 1.8GB shiny pieces of plastic it uses). In the new spec sheet released, the PSP will also support H.264/AVC format, a video codec which is to be used in the next generation of high-def DVD players. Now all they gotta do is pop a hard drive in there, or offer one as an attachment, and you’d have a heck of a portable video and audio player.

Posted by Joel at 07:35 AM | Permalink

Apple has just released information about the "white spot" problems in 15" G4 Powerbooks.

A limited number of 15-inch PowerBook G4 computers exhibit a display issue which may cause faint white spots to appear on the screen over time. The 15-inch PowerBook G4 Repair Extension Program is a worldwide program covering replacement of LCDs that exhibit these white spots. Your PowerBook G4 serial number must fall between one of two serial number ranges:

V7334xxxxxx to V7345xxxxxx

QT331xxxxxx to QT339xxxxxx

I do hope none of my friends are experiencing this. I can't imagine how I'd feel if my Powerbook would have this problem... or some other problem for that matter.

Posted by Joel at 08:45 PM | Permalink

Griffin has been churning out iPod products that are simple yet useful. The iBeam is an example of Griffin innovation that made me say "I didn't see that coming."

Posted by Joel at 07:51 PM | Permalink

Here's another use for iTunes songs encoded in MP3... the new Oakley Thump.

Coming this winter, OAKLEY THUMP™. The world's first digital music eyewear. No more wires. Just high-performance optics forged with an integrated, state-of-the-art digital audio engine. Listen to music virtually anywhere. Change the way you see and hear the world. OAKLEY THUMP comes in seven color combinations and two types: a 128 MB version for $395 and a 256 MB version with polarized lenses for $495.

What's quite disappointing is seeing them referring to the song file format: "ACC." This happened several times in their online music comparison chart.

Posted by Joel at 07:37 PM | Permalink

This shelf idea is by no means original as I got the inspiration from that site (who used a full tower case and converted it into a bookcase). I have to apologize because I lost the link where I got this idea from.

I reused my computer case and turned it into a game box case. I bought a LianLi aluminum case a while back and had the original case lying around and wasting space in my room. So, I took it apart. I removed the 3.5 drive bay and pried away the small speaker. I also got the led and front usb port wires, bundled them up and hid these in the front airway area. I left the 5.25 drive bays in there because they were more permanently attached to the case. Finally, I just straightened the power supply support bar to get it out of the way.

The game boxes are the new smaller ones. The bigger ones, most especially the special edition boxes (ie. Diablo Battle Chest and Warcarft III Collectors Edition) are still in my bookshelf. Most of the game manuals are in the game case too. Oh, I wanted to move the Jedi from the bookcase to the top of this gamecase, but I changed my mind and put them right at the bottom. You can have no better guards for these boxes than these guys...

And there you go, useless floor space reclaimed!

Posted by Joel at 07:53 PM | Permalink

The Missing Sync 4.0.1 is out beta. This version fixes one big problem associated with OS X 10.3.5 -- memory stick desktop mounting. I was extremely disappointed earlier, when Mark/Space issued a statement NOT to use 10.3.5 as a workaround.

Posted by Joel at 07:08 PM | Permalink

Ongo Bongo: Netflix-style CD rentals offers a free iPod Mini if you prepay for a year. That's $264 a year for a pool of 100,000 (20,000 presently) to choose from but up to only four CDs at a time. Engadget asks the question if CD rentals are legal in the first place (there's lively ongoing discussion in that link too).

Anyway, in this situation, I'd rather get an iPod Mini, purchase, and download my songs instantly through iTunes.

In related news, the free-iPod-site-folks couldn't ship out their "free" iPods as fast and are now blaming Apple for the delays.

Posted by Joel at 09:07 AM | Permalink |

Apple has just released Java 1.4.2 update 2 via Software Update. Earlier, a Security Update for iChat was also released.

Java 1.4.2 Update 2

Java 1.4.2 Update 2 provides improved behavior for applets in Safari and increased stability for desktop Java applications. Java 1.4.2 Update 2 also includes all the improvements from Java 1.4.2 Update 1.

The system will be updated to Java 1.4.2 Update 2. If the system currently has Java 1.4.1, it will be removed. Any previous Java 1.4.2 installation will be completely replaced.

For more details on this update, please visit: http://www.apple.com/java/

Security Update 2004-09-16

Security Update 2004-09-16 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following component:

iChat

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798

Posted by Joel at 08:37 AM | Permalink

Ok. Just saw this at Engadget and it adds yet to my confusion as to how the Sony people think! However, that's a great new design.

New PStwo, hold the hard drive:

When Sony dropped the skinny new PStwo on us we (along with just about everyone else, it seems) started to wonder if it’d work with the current Hard Disk Drive attachment. Now it’s been confirmed by Sony Computer Entertainment America that it most definitely won’t. Their reasoning is that the hard-core gamers (the ones that would actually buy the PS2 hard drive) already have a classic PS2 (dare we dub it the classic already?) and that the focus with the PStwo will be on new customers that haven’t yet purchased the console and probably won’t miss the hard drive.

Posted by Joel at 08:27 AM | Permalink

The new iMac reviews are coming in. Also, I'm happy to say that some of my PC-user friends are seriously considering getting a Powerbook or the new iMac this Christmas!

“I am writing these words on the most elegant desktop computer I’ve ever used,” writes Walt Mossberg about the iMac G5 in the Wall Street Journal.

“It has been a good year for Apple,” writes Wilson Rothman in naming the iMac G5 TIME Gadget of the Week.

Awarding the iMac G5 five stars, PC Magazine writes, “Pros: Simple, stunning all-in-one design. ..."

Posted by Joel at 07:49 AM | Permalink |

MacMice The Mouse BT Review is from The Gadgeteer. I'm on the hunt for a nice Bluetooth mouse but it seems that the MacMice is not for me. My standard is the Logitech MX700. So any Bluetooth mouse that exceeds the performance (ie. tracking + recharge-ability) of the MX700 is something worth looking into.

Posted by Joel at 10:42 PM | Permalink

Someone has gotten his iMac and... has taken it apart!

What can be seen inside is awesome. From the cooling block to the dual fans... the layout and design is a work of art.

Posted by Joel at 06:58 PM | Permalink

Unison is a newsgroups application. During the few times when I wish to browse the newsgroups, Unison is the only program I use. Unison is heavily developed and supported, in fact the newest version, 1.52, has just been released.

Posted by Joel at 05:45 PM | Permalink

I've encountered many Gbrowser articles lately. The most informative one I've seen is by Henrik Gemal, who showed that a quick check at markmonitor.com would reveal that the domain name registrant of gbrowser.com is Google!

We now have Gmail and probably soon, Gbrowser, which could be based on Mozilla. If all this is true, I just hope they'll make an OS X version.

Posted by Joel at 08:49 AM | Permalink

I was checking my Yahoo Mail account and saw this:

Get virtually unlimited storage with Yahoo! Mail Plus.
With a whopping 2GB of storage, you'll probably never have to delete another message. Now get it free for 30 days. Limited time offer.

I was tempted to sign up for the trial but decided not to. I guess my Gmail account is more than enough space for my email needs.

But I have to say it again... why is Apple not doing anything with .mac?

Posted by Joel at 10:49 PM | Permalink

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

My PC upgrade is done! I went for the following:

Motherboard: MSI 865PE Neo2-PLS
CPU: Pentium 4 3.20E GHz
CPU fan: Thermaltake Silent Tower
Thermal compound: Arctic Silver 5
Video Card: Leadtek WinFast A400 6800 GT TDH 256MB
Power Supply: Ultra X-Connect 500w
Memory: 1GB
Test software: Doom 3

All were found and bought online. The motherboard, video card, memory, and Doom 3 were from eBay while the CPU, fan, and power supply were from online stores. The purchase, bidding, and shipping times totaled to about one and a half months.

Now on to the installation process...

Day 1

The first challenge was to remove the motherboard's plastic mounting brackets for the P4 CPU fan. The Thermaltake Silent Tower had to be bolted on using its special metal mounting brackets. A dab of Artic Silver 5 was essential and used between the CPU and fan.

I wanted the Artic Silver to cure for a day so I stopped here.

Day 2

The DDR RAM were snapped in place easily. Thanks to the guys at 1src, I was able to decide to use my two slower RAMs together with my new faster one.

The video card was easy to install too. It occupies two PCI slot spaces because of its dedicated fan and heatsink.

The Ultra power supply came with its own individual rounded cables. I just chose and attached what I needed, unlike the traditional power supplies in which you have no choice but to use one long set of wires with multiple connectors. Plus, the Ultra rounded cables glow if there's a UV-light strip in the case! (I don't have lights installed yet as my Lian Li side panel has no cutout window).

When everything was connected, I encountered my first problem. The hard drives can't be detected by the board. I luckily discovered some loose connections and was able to setup everything for a successful first boot. Or so I thought.

Windows XP was stuck in the Safe Mode request page. Even if I agreed to use Safe Mode, the same screen always came up after rebooting. I decided to do a fresh install however a new option to repair Windows XP came up. I chose that and was able to boot successfully and to my delight, able to see all my files still intact.

I have a second drive so I backed up my essential files (saved game files, actually) because I felt that everything was slow.

Day 3

Windows XP was successfully installed. I tried activating it but found out that I cannot. I just called Microsoft, gave my 50-digit Installation ID to the Microsoft representative and inputted a 42-digit confirmation ID.

Next, I installed the latest Nvidia and Audigy drivers and fine tuned the monitor and sound settings.

To warm up everything, I installed Doom 3, set it to ultra quality at 1024 x 768 and roamed around Mars.

No hiccups.

I think I'm done!

***

Now why did I mention my PC upgrade in this blog? Well, it's to show how amazingly tedious a PC upgrade process could be. I included a shot of my cpu case to show how disorderly things are in there (the benchmark being any Mac desktop, opened up). I got various body pains too... after how contorted my body sometimes became while attaching the various upgrade parts and wiring everything later for the first power up.

Posted by Joel at 09:03 PM | Permalink | |

Ever marvelled about the iPod scrollwheel's design? Here's an article about Synaptics, the company that makes this technology available to Apple and Creative.

Posted by Joel at 07:07 AM | Permalink |

So I've just posted six sample pics taken by my TH55's camera. I said that:

Basically depends on lighting, subject, and amount of coffee in your system. Resizing the pics to 320 x 240 also helps.

Here are the links:

First three. Second three.

I've never really thought that the Clie cameras are horrible. It's a PDA so it has its limits. If I need better quality pics, I use my other camera.

Posted by Joel at 07:12 PM | Permalink

Colomain commented on my last post about the RSS Reader icon. Thanks to that comment, I discovered that there is NO RSS icon in Customize Window to begin with.

I did a clean install of Firefox. I backed up my bookmarks.html file in my Profiles folder and proceeded to search everywhere for any instance of "Firefox." After I deleted all the search results, I re-installed Firefox 1.0PR. I checked Customize Window and there's no RSS Reader icon. Moving around Firefox, I discovered that if a site has an RSS feed, an orange RSS icon will appear in the lower right part of Firefox's status bar. Clicking on it will give an option to subscribe to the feed which would then create "live bookmarks" of the feed.

Apparently, I had an older RSS reader which was flyson's RSS Reader panel which Sage is actually developing now.

There's no redundancy in RSS readers after all so I'm back to Sage!

Posted by Joel at 10:24 AM | Permalink

The Bose Sounddock looks great. Growing up wowed by the audio quality and design of Bose products, I might consider getting one of these.

Bose(R) has introduced the SoundDock(TM) digital music system, designed to deliver a new standard of audio performance for Apple's iPod(R) and iPod mini. No headphones, cables or adaptors required -- the new speaker system lets iPod owners access, control and listen to their stored music with the ease of dock and play.

More at BusinessWire

Posted by Joel at 08:38 AM | Permalink

Earlier, I commented about the Sage RSS reader. I used it quite a lot however I was only able to try out Firefox's built-in RSS reader after I accidentally discovered the RSS icon in the Customize Toolbar window. Dragging the RSS icon into the main toolbar and clicking on the icon opens up an RSS sidebar.

Firefox RSS is almost similar to Sage. Both offer Feedster search and views settings too. The only difference I can tell is the color scheme used: Firefox's is reddish, while Sage's greenish.

As of now, cosmetic differences are the only factors that differentiate Firefox's RSS reader from Sage. After discovering Firefox's RSS reader, I feel that Sage is just a redundant extension.

Posted by Joel at 06:01 PM | Permalink |

That's part of a screenshot of Sage showing 1src.com's RSS feed. Sage is a Firefox RSS extension that I find elegant and powerful. Once I had it installed, I used its OPML import feature, making it possible for me to easily get my feeds list from Pulp Fiction. I also tried Sage's Feedster-powered search feature.

Posted by Joel at 12:11 PM | Permalink

Three new announcements have overwhelmed me:

1. the new Japan-only Sony Clie VZ90 - I don't see why Sony had to leave the PDA market when they have this new awesome device.
2. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Preview Release - nothing really new that I've discovered yet, but any new Firefox release is something I immediately install
3. Security Updates from Apple - which should fix the earlier update Apple released

I discovered all these when I was just about ready to install my Pentium 4 3.2 upgrade! Guess it's going to be a long night...

Posted by Joel at 09:37 PM | Permalink |

Apple just released a new iPod ad! As usual, a joy to watch. View it at Apple.

Posted by Joel at 01:15 PM | Permalink

I've just read an article about the restoration of Star Wars for the DVD coming out this month. What struck me was this part, about what hardware was used:

600 networked Power Mac G5 computers with the equivalent of 378 terabytes (378 million megabytes) of hard-disk storage.

Amazing. I remember I laughed at how seemingly impossibly large a gigabyte was when I first heard it mentioned in the movie Back to the Future (it was pronounced "jigabyte" back then). Now I'm hearing terabytes and experiencing holding tens of gigabytes of portable hard disk space. In about how many years will I be holding terabytes of storage on my palms?

Posted by Joel at 08:33 PM | Permalink |

I posted news at 1src about the latest T5 rumor we'd received. It's not like we post every rumor we got but this latest one's artwork impressed me. Anyway, the discussion has picked up by now and reading through them caused a feeling of sadness. The features that the members and guests were looking for in a unit already exist. They exist in the Sony Clie TH55/E. It's sad that Sony decided to quit when they've done something right. Battery life, landscape/hires+ screen, form factor, wifi, bluetooth, voice recorder, audio player, camera, ... it's all in there! Add to this The Missing Sync's drivers that allow desktop MS mounting for the TH55/E!

I've not been using my Clie that much (opting for the iPod) but I'm happy to have a PDA, which I firmly believe, IS the best Palm PDA so far.

Posted by Joel at 07:54 AM | Permalink

I've never realized until about two days ago that Sonica was broken by 10.3.5. Created by M-Audio, Sonica lets me output sound from the Powerbook through USB to bigger speakers. When I first got the device, I was disappointed because there was no support for OS X. I was impressed when M-Audio finally got it to work and I remember going through my playlist with volumes almost set to the maximum.

I've contacted M-Audio so until I hear from them, I'm sort of happily "stuck" listening to songs through my new iPod.

Posted by Joel at 11:46 AM | Permalink

I was informed that a Java update fixes Safari's rendering problem. True enough, after I reinstalled it and restarted, Safari is working almost as great once again (bestbuy.com is the only site I experience having problems). Thanks for the Java tip, chris!

Now all I have to figure out is how to fix the "localized string not found" text in Safari's drop down menu...

Posted by Joel at 09:44 AM | Permalink

Inspired by the Brushed iPod , I finally got enough courage to play around with my iPod and brushed its metal back.

Here's what I did. I first put masking tape to shield the white plastic areas. I covered the open areas (earphone, cable connector etc) with tape too. Then I used Scotchbrite... yes, a scouring pad and scrubbed away. However, it was not a normal scrubbing motion, I had to make sure that it went in one direction to obtain parallel brushed metal lines. This is where a guide box was useful. I placed the iPod against a box and made sure that the scouring pad edge touched the box edge. Without a guide, wavy scratches might occur and this will ruin the look I'm after.

I panicked at one time when I accidentally slipped my hand. This resulted in jagged lines crisscrossing the parallel brushed lines I made earlier. However, continuous slow brushing motions covered up the mistakes in no time. That, I guess, is the beauty of the process... perfect machine-made brushing is almost impossible to do with this Scotchbrite method but you can never make a big mistake because you can keep on scouring the back area until your mistakes are "erased."

When I was done, I admired my unique brushed-metal iPod and smiled because the very imperfectness of it gave it character!

The ultimate compliment was when my girlfriend saw the iPod in wonder and said... "Could you do the same with my iPod?"

Posted by Joel at 02:41 PM | Permalink | |

I've installed the latest Security Update and it broke Safari! Some sites do not render well. I'm expecting Apple to remedy this problem very soon. In the meantime, I do not advise installing the update just yet.

Posted by Joel at 08:17 PM | Permalink |

I just found out that the Microsoft Music service uses ActiveX. That means it needs Internet Explorer to get the store to fully work. Add to that, I forgot to note that Windows Media Player carries advertising. I also noticed that the Music Service is like a normal commercial site... for example, clicking on the "Shop for CD" link brings you to Amazon.

So how will Microsoft entice its potential customers by just offering, technically, a webpage? Will people be willing to risk using IE and open their computers to security risks? Adding yet another music store into the mix just highlights the elegance, simplicity, and convenience that the iTunes Music Store, iTunes, and the iPod provide.

Posted by Joel at 07:13 AM | Permalink

Here's a cool project. DealMac has created a GI-Joe Steve Jobs and named it the iLeader. It's passed along together with a digital camera and stays for a week to whoever it's mailed to. The recipient then takes pictures and posts it in a common .mac address.

Take a look at where the iLeader's been for the last 66 weeks.

Posted by Joel at 10:28 PM | Permalink

Originally posted at 1src.com:

A few days ago, I was stunned by pictures of what seemed to be the Tungsten T5. TungstenInfo, the creator of the rumor, has admitted that everything was a hoax. At first, I was disgusted at this latest turn of events but in hindsight, I believe it was a good way to wake up my sensibilities.

It was a good time to release such a hoax: many Clie users, who were spoiled with new Clies every couple of months, suddenly had nothing to look forward to; leaks of pictures of the new Treo just came out; and there were no news about any new products from PalmOne. So when the "spy photos" of the T5 came out, it immediately got the attention of the 1src members and was quickly referred back to by other Palm and tech enthusiast sites.

I created news items to set it apart from the regular forums.The discussions were informative and insightful. We saw users welcoming the T5 yet we also got doubts about its authenticity. There were posts of support but sadly, attacks were unleashed too. All in all, it was a familiar blend of reactions over rumors not unlike other rumor discussions in the past (eg. old discussions at Cliesource).

After TungstenInfo sent in proof of his Photoshop-layered T5 hoax, I did this following experiment. I got a publicly availabe T3 picture (right pic) and loaded it in Photoshop Elements (a very simple photo editing application, not even at par with Adobe Photoshop's features). I was surprised that in only a few steps (Blur, Distort, Noise), I was able to create a rough "spy photo" effect (left pic).

I've learned a lot these past few days. If there's something good that TungstenInfo has done, it's to remind me that not all that I read in the news is something to gullibly believe. With enough irresponsibility with tools at my disposal, I can create literally anything. What I sometimes do not realize is that through these talents, I can also destroy.

What we experienced was a rumor that got a bit out of control. Reggie and I would like to apologize if 1SRC became a source of false hopes. While we have definitely learned from this experience, we can only hope that we can only be more careful next time. Now we just need to move on.

Posted by Joel at 02:43 PM | Permalink |

MSN has just released it's answer to the iTunes Music Store. It's still in beta but you can check it out. Songs are 99 cents, 160kbps WMA, can be burned to CD seven times, played on up to five PCs, and transferred to an unlimited number of portable audio devices.

Posted by Joel at 10:29 AM | Permalink

Apple has just posted the Paris Expo keynote address video.

I haven't seen it yet but I'd love to see and hear the reactions of the people when the new iMac was unveiled.

Posted by Joel at 06:57 AM | Permalink