I had to replace the unibody on a MacBook Pro yesterday, which requires taking everything in the notebook apart and moving it into the new case. Two hours later, it was like new.
Category: General Tech
The King of Texts
From a leaked AT&T memo:
Fact of the Week: On June 25, the day Michael Jackson died, text messages sent on our network spiked at 65,000 messages per second — the largest volume ever recorded — surpassing events like American Idol voting and New Year’s Eve, when millions of our customers wish their friends and family a happy new year via text."
Microsoft Pulls Puke Ad
In a statement sent via e-mail Thursday, Microsoft confirmed it removed the ad—one in a series to promote IE8—based on viewer feedback, and meant no harm in it.
“We make a point of listening to our customers,” according to Microsoft. “We created the OMGIGP video as a tongue-in-cheek look at the InPrivate Browsing feature of Internet Explorer 8, using the same irreverent humor that our customers told us they liked about other components of the Internet Explorer 8 marketing campaign. While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.”
Firefox 3.5 Offers ‘Private Browsing’
Safari’s had it forever, but Ars Technica’s Ryan Paul does a nice job of describing the feature:
With a stroke at the keyboard, users can erect stiff privacy barriers that will prevent their Web surfing habits from penetrating the browser history and defiling the sensitive auto-completion system with incriminating data where it might arouse the suspicions of subsequent users.
Perfect.
The Walkman Turns 30
The Walkman made music mobile. For the first time, you could take your favorite tunes - albeit in cassette form - anywhere. It is this freedom that Apple capitalized one with the first iPod in 2001.
The first Walkman, the TPS-L2, had all sorts of cool features like dual headphone ports (so you and your girl could slow dance together behind the school gym), independent volume control for the left and right audio channels and a talk-over feature (so you could talk to your girl over the music), all tucked inside a sturdy blue and grey metal case.
Two Horrible Things Don’t Add Up To One Awesome Thing, Microsoft
File this under “Shit you couldn’t make up if you tried.”
Microsoft is offering a “special edition” of Internet Explorer 8. What’s so special? You get a Nickelback MP3 and access to “Nickelback webisodes and online content.” And a browser that doesn’t respect open standards.
If you want a sub-standard browser and a sub-standard band’s new single, click here. Be warned, the Nickelback song starts playing automatically, of course.
Shopping Cart to Go-Kart
Why waste a perfectly good used shopping cart when it can be recycled into something fun? Seeking to definitively answer that question is a twenty-year-old MIT student named Charles Guan who normally spends his free time building competition-spec battle robots. Our favorite of Guan’s projects would have to be the LOLrioKart, obviously a play on the classic Mario Kart series of games from Nintendo.
First assembled using an old NiCad battery pack that was quickly nearing the end of its life, the LOLrioKart is well into its second generation using some leftover lithium nanophosphate cells from A123 that the company had donated to the University. This latest 33 Ah battery pack sends its 48 volts to a Briggs and Stratton ETEK DC pancake electric motor, which operates through a DIY rear differential and to the tiny little tires out back.
Another Charming IE 8 Advertisement
@mynameispj (my co-editor from back in the high school newspaper days) sent me this on Twitter after reading my take on the Internet Explorer/Nickelback thing:
Seriously. I’m reposting this because it’s beyond absurd. Really, Microsoft? Really?
He was talking about this link, on CNET. The headline reads: “Microsoft resorts to vomit to market IE 8.”
I wish it didn’t but it does. The article contains this ad:
Yes, you did just see what you think you saw.
Do People Really Still Use This Stuff?
Joining Gmail, Yahoo, and other mail services, Windows Live Hotmail launches incoming POP3 access for the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, meaning Hotmail users can aggregate all their other email accounts into one inbox.
As we’ve previously reported, Microsoft recently allowed outgoing POP3 access. While Hotmail users in the U.K., France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany have had access to the incoming POP3 feature for some time, today the Western hemisphere gets their more open-ended accounts as well.
Birdfeed: A New Way to Nourish Twitter
Birdfeed - a new twitter application by Buzz Anderson (of PodWorks and more) and designed by Neven Mrgan - is now in the App Store for $4.99.
Five bucks is high for a Twitter client, but Birdfeed is simply gorgeous. It fits nicely between Tweetie’s simple layout and Twitterrific’s design-heavy approach.
As a 1.0 release, Birdfeed doesn’t have all the features that other (and older) Twitter clients offer, but the app does offer some features that others don’t, such as a local cache (for offline reading), timestamps in the feed to show you when you left off, and the ability to load more tweets once you hit the bottom of the screen. The developers are saying more features are on the way, but they adhere to the “Real Artists Ship” theory crafted by Steve Jobs when working on the original Macintosh.
3GS Battery Issues?
Just a week after the release of Apple’s new iPhone, a few owners have complained about the handset’s high temperatures, which in some cases are high enough to start browning the white plastic on the back of the phone.
Only a small number of iPhone 3GS customers have reported their handsets are reaching very high temperatures. But because more than a million iPhone 3GSes were sold in the first weekend, the issue could put tens of thousands of new iPhones at risk, a component specialist told Wired.com.
‘Perfect Timing’
Palm’s new ad for the Pre is gutsy. But I suppose it has to be.