Once upon a time, someone thought to serve email through a web-based interface for easy access anywhere (that saved users the process of setting up an email client). HoTMaiL was one of the first of course, but is now owned by Microsoft. The number of services like these exploded and just as quickly collapsed (or got bought up like Rocketmail).
When web search giant Google announced GMail, its 1 GB email service, the major (and minor) webmail provider’s realized that in order to retain any of its members, they would have to amp it up.
Verizon Wireless is now selling the Motorola V710 cell phone, for August availability, featuring Bluetooth and a megapixel camera. [MacInTouch]
That’s right boys and girls! Verizon is finally going to offer a Bluetooth phone. It looks like it will cost $250 (subtract $70 with a two year agreement).
I can’t wait until it’s released so that I can pump all that money into a new phone. My only problem is that due to its picture phone capability, I may not be able to bring it into work when I make the move to Woburn.
It’s hard to believe that in this day and age that any email client doesn’t support IMAP. For those of you who already know what IMAP is, you can skip down to the next paragraph. IMAP is a mail protocol, like POP, only more powerful. The POP protocol, while ubiquitous. is very simple. It stores messages on the server in a simple queue that one downloads and deletes from the server one at a time. That mail is then stored locally on your computer, accessible no where but that server. While this may work fine for many people, it’s limitations are impossible to ignore for power users. With IMAP, the messages are stored permanently on the server, including a complete directory structure to file messages. This allows one to access their mail at any time, load only messages you want to see instead of having to download them all, and allows mail providers to place a web interface on your mail.
Apple released new iPods officially yesterday. New features include multiple on-the-go playlists, the ability to delete songs from those playlists, a revised menu including a “Music” entry as will as shuffle within easy access.
Apple also released a firmware update for all iPods, or so it would seem at first. They actually did not release an update for any iPod other than the new ones.
This has actually left existing users out in the cold. I can understand if certain features simply weren’t possible with existing iPod hardware (the ability to slow or speed up Audible content), but shifting access to the shuffle function into the main menu should be brain dead easy. It’s already implemented and in place on existing iPods, all that remains for Apple is to implant a menu item to access that call.
I’ve added pictures to my review of Radtech’s ScreenSavRz as well as my entry about my new futon. I took the pictures a little bit high-res so I’ll have to scale them down. Unfortunately, adding the pictures as part of the extended entry seems to be only a half-way solution as looking at June archived will bring up every entry in its entirity, including those pictures.
I wanted to avoid uploading the pictures using MovableType’s built-in web upload because it’s slow in pretty much every browser, but there seems to be no way to get MovableType to recognize pictures you’ve uploaded manually.
From MacMinute, Newsweek has the new iPod on its cover. Other new sites are saying that Monday will bring the formal announcement on the net.
New features include a clickable scroll-wheel (a la iPod Mini) and smaller size (physically, not storage). It looks to be a rather incremental upgrade.
This is the second time Apple has made public new announcements in a major magazine before announcing them otherwise. The first time was of course when the iMac G4 graced the cover of Time magazine. It was in fact possible to find out about the new iMac in Time before reading it on the net (other than through sites that basically referenced the article in Time).
Now that I have my own domain, it’s time I did something with it. While hosting the OS X Forum FAQ for Macworld and my blog are nice, I feel like I need more.
I could have a forum, but I’m not sure how much I really need one, especially since I wouldn’t host Mac topics.
I could have polls, but I’m not sure if that’s real content on its own.
Apple announced during a coneference call, that G5 iMacs are on the way. Here’s my spin:
Apple must make the G5 iMac an entirely new form factor. I’m not talking about simply changing how it looks. It has stop being an all-in-one with little upgrade possibilities. The best form factor I think they could adopt would be that of the late G4 Cube. Putting the G4 Cube’s failings aside, I believe we can all agree that it had a large target audience. Those that want moderate expandability, flexibility as far as the display goes, and an inexpensive price. We all know that the G4 Cube’s failing was its price. Nothing else was wrong with the machine. Most of its customers were happy with the level of performance and expandability (the lack of PCI ports, etc. was not troublesome). In fact, many people were crying for a headless iMac. This I can go along with.
Last night, I picked up my futon. This isn’t a cheap dorm room adornment. This is high quality baby (like $440 high quality).
I bought it Saturday, so I had to wait a couple days for it. I was so anxious that even though we weren’t back and done with dinner until 10 PM, I still wanted to assemble it. My father and I had it assembled in less than an hour.
Now all that’s left is to christen my self-proclaimed flip & fuck. Unfortunately, work absorbs nearly all of my time during the week. It’s pretty unbelievable until you actually start doing it for real.
I’ll take some pictures and post them up, along with the other things I promised to photograph.
I went to see King Arthur late last night (10:15 PM, which is way too late when you get up at 6 AM). Was it worth the $9 and lost hours of sleep?
Yes and no. Keira Knightley is a complete babe, that is for sure. She is hot, with a capital *SIZZLE*. I think seeing her was alone with the price of admission.
The movie itself isn’t the typical King Arthur mythology. The movie claims the story is based upon recently unearthed evidence. I didn’t bother to check whether this claim is substantiated, but honestly, I think they simply wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the original myth because this movie had nothing to do with Arthur other than using the names we already know and love. That doesn’t detract from the movie I think, but instead was a cheap marketing technique. Maybe next they’ll do a real life Jesus Christ movie, about this black guy who had some whacked out ideas from smoking too much weed with his 12 buddies.