The Life and Blog of MacGeek Pro

AT&T here in Lincoln, NE (and Omaha, I presume) flipped the switch on 3G this morning, bringing mobile broadband yumminess to my iPhone 3G. What can I say so far? It’s fast. Not quite as fast as using WiFi, but very, very close. This will be handy when out and about in Lincoln. When I am at home, I will probably still connect to my home WiFi.

However, I am resolved to keep my iPhone running on 3G for a little while in order to test performance. Mainly, I want to observe the hit on battery life, since Apple says using 3G may affect that. I noticed after using 3G for about three hours today, I had knocked my iPhone down to 80% battery. For some perspective, though, I was using my iPhone constantly during that time, instead of the occasional glance every 20-30 minutes. 

I am very glad AT&T rolled out 3G here in Nebraska. I had inquired last month at my local AT&T store, and the representative said it should be up and running by Thanksgiving. Looks like that goal has been met. I have to say, with all the griping I have heard people say about AT&T, I haven’t had any problems with them. Well, other than they are nonexistent when I travel to South Dakota, my homeland.

I’ll add updates if I find out anything noteworthy in the next day or two.

Courtesy of MacRumors.com

This morning Apple held their “The Spotlight Turns to Notebooks” event and surprise, they released new notebook computers! In all honesty, this is an event I’ve been waiting a long time for. Now, I love my iPhone to death, and use it countless times every day, but it is time for the Mac to shine again.

Sure, Apple had the MacBook Air in January, but the Air didn’t really apply to me. I want two things in a notebook: storage & power. At the time of my last notebook purchase, the MacBook satiated me compared to my iBook G4 of yore. Two years later, I am toying with the idea of upgrading within the next year. My next logical step would be the MacBook Pro, but the thing has looked like an old PowerBook G4 for it’s 3 year existence. 

Well, Apple stepped up the sexiness factor of the MacBook Pro today. Take a look after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Macolantern-Leopard Edition

Originally uploaded by chrisdejabet

The time has come again to unleash the Macolantern, my annual October desktop image! Downloadable here.

I posted this on Flickr last year, but that was when I was running Tiger. So here is the Leopard version. :)

Happy October!

Google turned 10 years old today! I wonder how many times I have used Google in the last 10 years? Especially since it is my home page on my browser. 

Well, Google wrote up a nice little blog post of their own for the occasion. Only 11 more years until Google can drink in the USA!

On Friday, September 19, Apple announced the Apple Ultracompact USB Power Adapter Exchange Program. Yep, that’s a mouth full. Basically, the cute little power adapter which charges the iPhone (pictured below) has a nasty tendency to leave its prongs in the electrical outlet. Not good. Bad Ulatracompact USB Power Adapter! Don’t do that anymore!

Apple will begin exchanging these faulty adapters on Friday, October 10 with adapters that look exactly the same except for a green dot.

The green dot signifies the awesomeness of this adapter. It is superior. It is…dotted green. My guess is the prongs are reinforced and won’t spontaneously escape from the adapter’s main housing.

Apple recommends all iPhone 3G users who have an adapter sans green dot to stop using the faulty adapter until an exchange can be made. Instead, users are encouraged to charge their iPhone via the USB port on their computer. More details can be found at the link in the beginning of the post.

Wow, things sure have changed since my last post from the line outside the Apple Store!

I’m a dad! Our little boy, Jonathan David, was born on Tuesday, July 15, a
2008 at 4:48 am CDT. He weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz. And measured 19.75 inches long. He is perfectly healthy and drop dead cute!

Karen is recovering very well. The little guy is one week old now. I do apologize for not writing about this joyous occasion sooner, but I rarely get a chance to sit in front of the computer now.

Thankfully, WordPress just released a native blogging app for the iPhone. So this post is typed out entirely with my thumbs on a buttonless keyboard. And you know what? It’s pretty fast!

I wish I could promise my full fledged iPhone review by the end of the week, but I can’t make a promise like that. I will do my best though.

Here’s a picture of my little boy:

It is a big day today! On this paramount June 9th, the planets have aligned. It is my 23rd birt

hday today, and Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco, CA! With a big Apple event like this, it is customary for Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, to give a keynote presentation. Sort of an Apple “State of the Union” if you will.

Today, however, it is widely expected that Mr. Jobs will unveil a new iPhone. For this, I am very excited. The key feature that is expected of this new iPhone hardware is support for 3G cellular data networks. In other words, mobile broadband, which is relatively fast compared to the EDGE network currently em

ployed by the iPhone, which I have heard called mobile molasses.

Other rumors include GPS support and video conferencing, which would be awesome, but I find unlikely. My reasoning for that is battery life. I have a Garmin nüvi, and it’s battery can go for about 4 hours. Now throw a cell phone into that. Exactly. And as far as video conferencing, I chalk that up to battery issues as well.

There are plenty of other rumors about the new iPhone, but I will not cover them all.

The other big story for the developer conference is Apple shedding more light on th

e iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK), the iPhone 2.0 firmware, and the App Store, which will allow iPhone and iPod touch users to purchase applications over-the-air for their devices.

All in all, today is a very exciting birthday for me!

After trying to figure this out since WordPress 2.5 was released, I finally consulted Google, something I should have done in the first place. Gravatars are now active in the comments of my posts. It’s a little gimmicky, but it helps to “put a face to the name.”

Gravatar support was added natively in WordPress 2.5, without the need for a plug-in, which is awesome. You’ll notice that many of my readers do not have Gravatars, as indicated by the silhouette placeholder image. This can easily be fixed.

If you go to Gravatar.com, you can register your email address(es) for Gravatar support. Upload an image, and 5-10 minutes later, your little Gravatar will be populated down to any Gravatar-enabled blog.

I’d like to note that Gravatar automatically lowercases your email address, so when you go to comment and you fill out the information fields, make sure the email address field is all lower-cased. This applies for commenting on this blog and any other Gravatar-enabled blog.

I can’t wait to “see” all of you in my comments!

To my surprise, I logged onto Flickr this evening only to discover that Flickr has added video uploading! It’s pretty cool. There are some limitations:

• You must be a paid Flickr Pro member. ($25/ year, totally worth it. I’ve been one for two years!)
• Videos must be 90 seconds or less. (If greater than 90 seconds, only the first 90 seconds will play.)
• Videos must be 150 MB or less. (And that’s that.)
• Videos must be “safe”. (i.e. Not pr0n.)

I think these parameters are all valid. The Pro status makes sense, because a Pro membership gives you unlimited upload space, and video is the bane of hard drive space.

Also, I am more likely to shoot short little videos and call it good. I am not much of a video person. For me, YouTube is fun to watch videos, but I won’t make videos for that site, because I am not part of the “social network” on YouTube.

On Flickr, I have many contacts, friends, and family. It is in the top three of my social networks. Those are Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. In that order.

Flickr, well done. This came as a total surprise, and it rocks!

Readers, embedded below is my first Flickr video. Bon appétit.

I’ll be back soon, hopefully.

EDIT: I’m back, upgrade seems to have worked well. Loving the new dashboard UI of WordPress 2.5.