Cool site: Top Ten iPhone Apps
Not the best put together site or most professional looking, but I’ve found some apps here that have made it onto my iPhone so I’m adding it.
Where will you be on December 17, 2010?
Me? I’ll be at the sequel of one of my all-time favorite movies: Tron.
This is getting boring…
My MacBook Pro has been up and running without a reboot for the last 33 days. My Windows PCs usually can’t make it past 7 days before needing a reboot, either from it becoming unusable or from a system update.
Guess I’ll let the Mac chug along for a little bit longer. What’s the longest you’ve gone before having to reboot your Mac?
Now attached to Windows full-time by a CoRD
Although I’ve used the Windows RDP app in the past, I’ve now switched to using CoRD full-time to login remotely to my Windows desktop at work.
CoRD does a great job of scaling my 1680×1050 Windows desktop monitor down to my MBP’s 1440×900 resolution. Granted, it’s a little small, but it’s still pretty readable, so all is well.
A Free App A Day keeps the blues away!
Too many iPhone apps at the App Store to go through? Well, here’s an interesting little site that highlights one free(!) app every day. Check ’em out.
Today’s the day!
Today’s the much anticipated Apple media event titled “Come see our latest creation.” What do you think it could be?
A few places you can check out live coverage follows…
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/
With my head up in the clouds…
My hard drive head, that is.
With having to do work at home sometimes and studying at work sometimes and both while traveling, it was becoming harder and harder to keep data synced up between computers, even with a USB stick. So I thought I would look into some online file storage options. After doing a little investigating, I settled on checking out three of the many options in the Wikipedia article: DropBox, Live Mesh (beta), and ZumoDrive.
My findings and thoughts after the break…
“I gotta get me one of these!”
This is just way cool. Who wouldn’t want an iPhone-controlled quadcopter?! So far no official word on pricing or release date (that I know of–maybe one of you do?), but March 5, 2010 has been thrown around the Interwebs.
Easily shrink pictures for uploading or sending
for Windows
I guess that’s why they call the app “Shrink Pic.”
Basically, anytime you want to send a picture via email, upload one to a blog or share one via IM, Shrink Pic “automatically creates a temporary copy, resizes it and sends it instead.”
For instance, the below picture’s size on my hard drive is 450K. When I insert the picture into the post (which uploads it into my WordPress storage), Shrink Pic resizes it to 52K, saving me a lot of space for more pictures! I’ve only had Shrink Pic for a little while, but it seems to work great! One small caveat, though. Shrink Pic doesn’t seem to work for me when sending from Outlook 2007 running on Windows 7. I’m going to contact the author to see what’s going on since the website says it’s supported.
Shrink Pic doesn’t modify the original, nor does it seem to change it when moving pictures from folder to folder, even if it’s something like my online DropBox account.
via LifeHacker
Oh, boy! A new toy!
I hate to admit it, but I’m getting old and lazy.
Lazy because I have school some nights and I’m getting tired of packing the MacBook Pro to and from campus. Yes, it’s only about 6 1/2 pounds with power adapter, but with books and such, it gets tedious for me to carry around. Also, since it’s getting a little older (along with me), the battery only goes for about two hours. Since my classes are usually 2 1/2 hours long, I’d need to make sure I’m near a power outlet and that’s just not possible a lot of times. (Pshah, did someone say paper notes? Luddite) The other reason is that it’d just be nice to grab-‘n-go when I’m at home. Right now with the MBP, I have to disconnect the power, two usb connectors, the speakers, the external monitor, etc.
So the solution? Buy myself something that lasts longer and is lighter to carry, but that is also light on the wallet. I took a look at various Mac based solutions, but even an older MacBook started at $750 and I really wanted to keep it under $600 (I actually wanted it to be under $500, but I gave myself a cushion). I then turned to netbooks. Many of them met much of my criteria, such as light weight–around 3 pounds–and inexpensive–around $400–but this is where the old comes into play. My eyes can’t handle those little 10″ screens! The resolution at 1024×600 wasn’t too great either. So maybe I would have to save up a little and spring for the MacBook after all.
But while I was doing some research on netbooks through Liliputing and NetbookTech among other websites, I came across the Asus UL30A. It seemed to be getting good reviews from any number of places but its specs were what really did it for me…
- 13.3″ 1366×768 screen (just totally trumped the 10.1″ 1024×600, although I may have been able to get by with an 11.6″ or 12.1″ 1366×768 that a few of the netbooks I looked at had, but that extra inch really does help the old eyes.)
- Core 2 duo CULV processor (as opposed to single-core or Atom). This one (the 7300) even supports Intel’s Virtualization Technology.
- Windows 7 Home Premium (as opposed to Home Starter–definitely a no-no).
- 4GB RAM
- 320GB HD
- 12 hour(!) battery life. This one blew me away, and I found it hard to believe. (Stay tuned for more real-life testing)
- 3.7 pounds. Not the lightest, but certainly not heavy, especially when I don’t need the power plug!
- and other features, which I’ll probably write about in later posts.
I managed to find it at newegg.com on sale for $630 (so just a little over my budget). Unfortunately, the price is back up to $750, but even then, that’s not a bad price for the features.
And you know what? I kind of like Windows 7! I am sure I will be writing more about it as well as the little notebook in the future as I play with them some more.
Tales of a Switch-hitter 