This week, I was excited to be a guest on the excellent “Out of School” podcast. Bradley and I spoke about IT and customer service, Apple’s changing hardware and more. It was a real blast, and you should go check it out. This show’s been in my podcatcher since the first episode, and it should be in yours, too.
posts
RSS Sponsor: Almond+⇢
Almond+
A Router for the Jetsons.
Easy Touchscreen WiFi Router.
Easier Home Automation.
Extremely fast gigabit speeds.
Exquisitely Designed.
Reserve this “Jetsons” worthy Router now. Almond
No.1 rated router on Amazon
No.2 rated is Apple Airport Extreme
750+ Routers on Amazon
Kiwi for App.net Released⇢
This is by far the best OS X App.net client I’ve seen so far.
On Being the Mac Guy
This weekend was a big one.
My day job is running the IT/AV/Multimedia/Design department for a faith-based non-profit that just opened a 104,000 square-foot community center. I’ve been on board with this project for three years, and seeing it open was the realization of lots of dreaming and even more hard work.
While we enjoy a good amount of autonomy, this weekend, loads of people from our divisional and territorial offices were in town for the opening events.
App.net Goes Freemium⇢
Dalton Caldwell:
Although App.net has had only paid account tiers thus far, we initially conceived of App.net as a freemium service. It took some time to get to this point, but we are now ready to make this vision a reality.
The details are pretty cool. Free accounts require an invitation from a paying member, can follow a maximum of 40 users, and get 500 MB of available file storage, with a 10 MB-per-file limit.
The Magazine Gains Sharing and Web Subscriptions⇢
Marco:
I hastily built a basic site while I was waiting for the app to be approved. I only needed it to do two things: send people to the App Store, and show something at the sharing URLs for each article. Since The Magazine had no ads, and people could only subscribe in the app, I figured there was no reason to show full article text on the site — it could only lose money and dilute the value of subscribing.
On Samsung and Blind iPhone Users⇢
Shame on you, Samsung.
More on Glass⇢
The Verge has a great video of Joshua Topolsky trying out Google’s smartglasses. Here’s a bit from Steve Lee, Glass’ Product Director.
People want to be connected, and technology has enabled that. But a problem is that the technology creates distraction and takes you out of the moment.
[…]
How do we solve that problem? How do we get technology out of the way when you’re doing activities, but have it there when you need it?
On The Chromebook Pixel
Earlier today, Google took the wraps off the Chromebook Pixel, a notebook with a 12.85-inch, Retina-quality touch display, 1TB of cloud storage (for three years) and optional LTE.
Google touts its Chrome OS as the way forward:
Pixel boots-up in seconds and stays fast, requires almost zero setup or maintenance, and comes with virus protection built-in. Best of all, it stays up to date with seamless updates every few weeks.
At $1200, this machine flies in the face of previous statements made by Eric Schmidt. I guess since netbooks died out, Google decided to copy the MacBook Air, right down to the chiclet backlit keyboard, glass trackpad and its “machined anodized aluminum alloy” chassis.
The Worst Apple Print Ads of All Time⇢
Linus Edwards has complied a list of doozies.
The 512 Podcast 051 - My Middle Name Is Not Mother⇢
With myself being ensconced in a fugue state, Myke and I address a grab-bag of topics ranging from Lenovo Thinkpads to Google Glasses and iPhone Homescreens.
This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace, the secret behind exceptional websites. Go to squarespace.com/70decibels to start your free trial and use the offer code 70decibels2 at checkout to get 10% off your first order.
On Google Glass⇢
This morning, Google rolled out a new webpage for its Glass project, which includes this video of people using the product.
Google Glass is insanely interesting to me, but that’s not to say I’d be interested in owning a pair of the $1500 smartglasses.
The idea of having an ever-connected device seeing what you see is about as from-the-future as you can get, but I’m not sure I’d want Google being in between me and what I’m seeing. The beauty of the iPhone is that you can leave it in your pocket.