The Home Of ob81

What are you itching to try out on Leopard?

October 17, 2007 – 12:14 pm

Well, the word is out. Leopard will be landing in stores on the 26th of October as rumored. The good news for Apple fans that recently purchased Macs, is that a purchase on or after the 1st of October is authorized an upgrade to Leopard. It is still hazy if it will be free or somewhere around $9, but we shall see. I will be keeping a close eye since I have recently purchased a Mac.

I checked out the 300+ new features for Leopard earlier, and was astonished by how much stuff they squeezed into the OS. I predict that I won’t use most of the features more than the one or 2 times I use them when I first upgrade.

Spaces
I have been waiting for Spaces ever since the first Leopard preview. I often have several windows open at once, and at present, I have 9 open. Would love to throw my mail in a separate window, and maybe have some DVD burning going on in another.

Dashboard

The dashboard looks to have a huge makeover. One of the dashboard features I am waiting for is the drag and drop widget making. There is a lot of potential there, and I can’t wait to try this feature out for myself and see where it goes. I tend to be pretty widget happy, and being able to create widgets at will would be awesome.

Better than Adium

Sorry Adium. You have held it down for well over a year now, but iChat is about to take back over. In Leopard, iChat supports multiple chat clients AND supports the voice and video features on your Mac. Adium was good while it lasted. I have it open almost every second during my surfing times. Sadly, whenever I want to do a video chat, I have to log into iChat to get it accomplished. Not all of my friends have iChat though.

I plan on walking into the Apple store and grabbing my copy. Don’t think I can wait any second longer than 10:00am on the 26th.

What feature are you guys waiting for?

ob81 |

Apple |

Comments (12)

Finally Home

October 11, 2007 – 5:42 am

ob81.com has been a little inactive for the past week or so. For the few that may not have known, I recently returned home from a 7-month deployment in Doha, Qatar. Seemed like forever while I was there, and feels like it was nothing now that I am back.

Feels great to be reunited with my family, and it is odd hearing my son, who was 2y 5m when I left, say full statements now, and run around jumping without falling. My dog Chuck does not listen to me anymore though Hopefully a few more snacks will fix that.

I have been mainly trying to catch up on everything that I have been missing in the tech world and in the theaters. I still haven’t seen Spider-Man 3 yet! I finally got a chance to check out the iTouch also. Wasn’t impressed to say the least, but that is a whole subject on it’s own. I dived in and purchased an iTV for my bedroom and fell in love with the youtube feature. Can’t wait to see what else they throw on this thing! If you don’t have one, check it out.

From a blogging standpoint, now I can get in some first looks at new Apple gear and news due to being back home. I was seriously running dry out there in the desert where they were still selling the original Nano.
I am in the process of revamping my computer setup, as writing on this 13″ Macbook seems very uncomfortable at the moment. The 24″ iMac was looking nice, though I have been debating with being a cheapo and just grabbing an external monitor. We will see how things shape up.

If you have missed me on pownce the last few days, my inet connection chose to act up as soon as I returned home, and for the first time ever, I was too lazy to fix it until this morning.

Well, I will be on pownce and twitter as well as h_oberry@yahoo, or ob81@mac.com for my iChat users if you want to chat.

I finally feel connected to the world again!

ob81 |

Just Blogging |

Comments (5)

Those Social Network Friends are as Real as your RL Friends

September 30, 2007 – 8:37 am

I was checking out a blog post a while back that asked the question, “Are Internet Friends True Friends?”

Though a simple question, it really left me thinking for a while. Recently, interacting on a social network has become a big part of my daily internet routine. In fact, I can’t browse the internet without being simultaneously logged in to pownce, twitter, or streamy.

I have used features such as chat and forums to communicate in the past, and I have met some great people there. It never really amounted to much though, and the relationship only went as far as the hobby or topic that brought us together. Conversations were very limited, and rarely did I know what was going on in any of their day to day lives. Social networks today encourage more solid relationships, and make it easier to communicate for the most part. They are not built on one central idea, which would limit the amount of diversity that you would run into on the site.

Back in early March, I was sent on a deployment that would last for 7 months. I am not really a big email person, but I ensured that I had the email addresses of some of my closest friends so that I could keep in touch while away. For the first few months this seemed to be an efficient means of communication. You know friends and emails though. After a while the emails slowed and the news of friends going to the beach and enjoying summer seemed to only encourage home sickness.

Then came pownce. I signed up for my account and started meeting funny and interesting people right from the start. Over the months, I have learned a lot more about some of the individuals there than I know about some of my real life friends. I have exchanged advice and humiliating episodes in life with other users, and upon signing up for new social networks, I follow these friends there and they follow me.

I haven’t had a chance to personally meet any of my new social network friends yet, but it is very common for friends to meet up to hang out or go to an event or some sort. This makes social networks a bridge or another method of meeting new friends that in some cases end up being very close friends that you hang out with frequently.

I have met quite a few friends online these past few months that I would consider “close”, and that’s why the article I mentioned above, sparked my interest. Though some of them I may never actually meet, they are still friends that I share ideas with and spend time enjoying the daily activities in their lives.

Check out the article and let me know what you think!

ob81 |

Social Networking |

Comments (5)

The iTouch Woes: Long Time Apple Fans Are Not Surprised

September 22, 2007 – 4:02 pm

iTouch

The iTouch debuted a few weeks ago and Apple fans, old, new, and the curious, all wanted to get their hands on the new hot device. We thought we had to wait a few weeks after the announcement, but Apple surprised us with stocking a few stores with a few units which quickly sold out.

Almost immediately the negative reports started flooding in, one of the most humorous being the identity crisis. It seems that Apple simply copied the code from the iPhone and loaded it into the iTouch without any modifications.

I am an iPhone!

Some users received units that didn’t even have OSX installed on them. This further supported the iPhone code being used in the iTouch, as there were hints that bluetooth was turned off in the unit, though it contained no bluetooth parts.

Then reports and pictures surfaced arguing that the iTouch’s screen had several problems, with one being the inability to display dark colors.

To top it off, as the world was shouting “Yes, an iPhone without the phone”, Jobs and Co were busy removing features such as the ability to add calendar appointments. Features like this were favored by the masses, as when coupled with the iTunes wi-fi store, your iTouch could operate without the need for computer connection.

As the internets went wild over these issues, I myself thought “So what?”

You see, I have been using Apple products for about 2 years or so now, and I have been witness to some pretty comical product launches from Apple. I have to give them credit for the iPhone launch though. The only thing jacked up about the iPhone was AT&T.

iMacs, macbooks, Macbook Pros, and whatever else you can think of, all shipped with some sort of issue or “flaw” within that first line of units. The most famous being the heat issues in the new Intel chip packed “laptop” that just happened to burn your lap if you used it as it was meant to be used.

With that in mind, most long time Apple users don’t rush to the front lines when a new product is released. Most have learned the hard way as well. I got a 1st product line Macbook, and though I love it to death, prior to the firmware update, I was unable to use it anywhere else but on a desk or flat surface. Apple fixed it, just as they have now fixed the iTouch issues. As usual, they have it down to the exact serial # of the last units affected by the current issues. Serial #’s 9c738 and after all will have revised iTouch units, thus having avoided any of the agony involved with spending $400 on a unit that shipped without the software installed.

Sure it is Apple’s fault, but you have to keep in mind that they do most of the designing and software for all of the products that they produce, leaving a lot of room for little errors like color performance on their best iPod to date.

This post may seem like old news to most of my long time Apple users (Hi guys!), but to the fresh post iPhone group, hopefully you guys take note for the future

Getting my iTouch soon!

ob81 |

Apple |

Comments (9)

The New Digg Just May Work

September 20, 2007 – 3:02 pm

After several hours of browsing the interface of the new Digg, I have come to the conclusion that Kevin and co. may actually be on to something. I had my doubts initially though. With the addition of the expanded profiles, they seemed to have a Facebook/Myspace feel, and I feared the whole “Hey, I’m sexy, digg my stories” fad that was bound to happen.

One controversial new feature is the new system of viewing and interacting with your friends and their submissions.

You now have to click through the story to digg it, which most would agree is what you should do anyway. The only fault of this system is that active users have over 150-200 active friends.

There is no way to tell which stories you already dugg, thus a lot of double checking will be needed if you want to be supportive of the great news that your friends submit.

Imagine the pain of a faithful friend with over 250ish active friends!

My favorite addition is the shout. I had doubts about this system, at first, but a friend that had been submitting stories that I found interesting for months, wrote a shout to me and thanked me for being his friend. I had no idea that he was a new user, and within hours of the new update, I learned more about him than I had previously known in the past month. You can even check shouts that your friends are sending as well. If you all are active at the same time, you can even carry on a 3/4-way conversation with each other, with other friends that notice it being able to join.

With shout, you can also share stories with friends that you would like for them to check out. The current theory is that top digg users can now easily send out their stories to friends, thus faster promotion of their stories. I doubt that this will be the case, and if it turns out to be a problem, it is easily tracked by admins.

It will be interesting to see how digg users utilize all of the new features in the coming months. You can even do “twitter” type status updates, and real-time chatting seems to work pretty well.

If the idea was for friends to be able to interact better, then digg admins have done a good job. This new method also encourages users to interact more in the upcoming sections, as now that is where all of the action is!

The updates were long overdue, as Digg seemed a little “quiet” at times. Now all we need is that picture section!