AuburnCom Weblog

The environmentally friendly way to watch and listen to home and mobile entertainment has been the digital way for several years now.

I’ll set clients iTunes configurations to automatically import and eject and CD that gets inserted into their Mac, this ensures that the CD Drive motor spins for a maximum of five minutes to convert the audio into digital mp3’s or aac’s on the hard drive, thereby saving the rotations that would be used up if the CD played the standard way, that is, the CD spins around and around for about 60 minutes a la LP’s.

I also endorse this method of Rip now, watch later to DVD’s and video, where a DVD has been purchased, the responsible and energy efficient practice is to rip the DVD using HandBrake and adding the movie or video to iTunes, this can take anywhere from twenty minutes to eight hours for an older Macintosh, however, the benefits are vast. You’ll put your dvd safely away in it’s case post Rip and watch your movie from iTunes, your iPod (Nano, Classic or Touch), your iPhone, your Apple TV, or you can even post it to your personal web space for watching when you’re without any of these things (or if you’d like your girlfriend or family to see the movie).

Ripping DVD’s using handbrake not only, saves energy, wears your Superdrive down less, makes the video portable, protects your original DVD copy and is cool, but also, eliminates any Region Coding that DVD’s may have on them. For example, say you’re in Milan and buy a copy of the wonderful Romanze Criminale DVD, unavailable most everywhere else, this movie is one of Italian cinema’s masterpieces, when you arrive home in California, your Mac informs you that “Hey, your Superdrive will only play Region 1 (American) DVD’s”, sure you can change this to European Region or Asian Region, etc. but you can only change this five times, so after watching Romanze Criminale, you switch back to American to watch a classic Woody Allen DVD and then back to Italian region next week to watch a collector edition Fellini you just bought in Genoa. Pretty soon you can’t change your region anymore!
Enter Handbrake, the one stop shop for converting DVD’s to local video files that will play on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, MacBook, Apple TV or the web.
Try out Handbrake and you’ll be saving the planet as well as carrying Fellini, Romanzo Criminale, and, Woody Allens great movies all on your gorgeous iPod. You’ll never think about Region Coding again!

A common occurence, a Mac at home, an XP PC at work and a Palm or Treo for travelling with, many people have other portable devices including Razr’s, Blackberry’s, Windows Mobile devices and iPhones. (Psst, this site uses iwPhone theme so looks awesome on an iPhone, if you’re using Wordpress, look up iwPhone and plug it in)

To keep your calendars in sync across these devices, the first thing to do is decide which computer will be your primary (or master) computer.

Second, you’ll only sync your device with this master computer.

Thirdly to do some transparent synching between Google Calendar and iCal or iCal compatible calendars, you’ll need either Spanning Sync or an open source alternative that’s also free called GCAL daemon.

Just in time for the holiday season, Apple today unveiled a massive revision to it’s 110 million selling iPod line.

The revisions began with the iPod Shuffle, this small iPod is the size of a stamp and clips onto a lapel or shirt collar in a discreet manner suitable for bringing on trips to places that an iPod Nano might be too valuable to have, lke the beach, a jog through the woods, or when you’ve got to carry as little as possible. The iPod shuffle is now available in five new colors, including a Product (Red) edition which benefits African charities, they are still $79.

The iPod Nano received one of it’s most sensational revisions yet when the third generation became a video playing, game playing slender and sleek model. The iPod Nano starts at $149 for the 4GB model and $199 for the 8GB model, prior to hands on testing, the blogosphere was concerned it was too broad, but Engadgets Ryan Block said this after getting hands on with it at the Moscone center:

Ok, we know we’ve been calling it the fatty, but we’ll be straight up with you guys: the third gen iPod nano is friggin’ tiny. It’s maybe not the most beautifully proportioned iPod we’ve ever seen, but its tapered edges and ridiculously thin frame make up for the squatness going on here.

The iPod that we’ve known and loved has gotten a beautiful aluminum wrapper and beefed up storage, it can now hold 80GB of music videos and pictures for $249 or 160GB for $349. The iPod classic is exactly what can be expected a sleek and good looking elder iPod who seems content to hand the throne over to the successor King, his beautiful and technologically amazing son, the iPod Touch

The iPod Touch is the iPod to rule them all, Multi Touch Wide Screen Display, Web Browser, iTunes purchasing on the go, slender as can be, and absolutely gorgeous. Starting at $299, it’s got a generous 8GB of storage and goes up to 16GB of storage for $399 (at which price you can also now buy an iPhone 8GB model)

The iPod Touch and iPhone have similar feature sets with the iPhone having enough extras to make it a tantalizing temptation, Maps, Email, and, Camera are certainly three of the top reasons I’ve got my iPhone, it’s a business tool through and through, the iPhone meets a certain user set and I’ve a feeling the iPod touch is going to meet the larger user set who is simply seeking an iPod, after all, two days ago folks were paying $249 for an 8GB Nano with a small screen, they’ll surely love a full screen multi touch display, with Wifi web browsing and iTunes purchasing built in. They don’t even need a Mac or PC anymore to fill it with Music.

Both the iPhone and iPod Touch are gaining the superpower of Wireless iTunes purchasing through a new custom application that looks nice and simple.

With this revision of the iPod lineup, Apple is sure to reignite the interest of consumers and leave competing music players scrambling for competitive solutions, the iPhone price drop is a masterful piece of Machiavellian marketing, let Steve Ballmer and others scoff at the iPhone for the last six months, “Pfff, $600 for a phone!”

Then stun all by making it incredibly affordable, to compare, examine the price of unlocked Palm Treo’s and Rimm Blackberries, both sets of smart phones are in the $350 plus price range with the Palm 750 at $599. Out of the clear blue sky the iPhone is now a major competitor on price and a clear winner in terms of functionality.

One more feature worth noting is the existence of CoverFlow on all three of the new iPod models, iPod Nano, iPod Classic and iPod Touch, more than making these devices incredibly sexy to navigate, this confirms the existence of a OS X style operating system under the hood, great news for all Mac Programmers, developers and users, it verifies Apple’s commitment to the OS and their skills in advancing their software for the benefit of customers.

To ask questions about the new range of iPods, send email to brendan@auburncom.com, telephone 415-871-9683 or leave a comment on this page.
Thanks for visiting.

Steve Jobs today announced at an Apple Special Event at Moscone West in San Francisco by $200 to $399!

The iPhone will have sold one million units within days and to make it eve more attractive, they’ve made the cost a much more affordable $399, which has to be a major surprise for other Cell Phone makers including Palm, Research in Motion and the Open Source folks.

I’ve set up my iPhone with my Mac, the iPhone grabbed the 302 address book entries, plus I’ve added a few and changed some. Now the Mac has been reverted to an older version of the phonebook with only 282 entries. Is there a way to grab the names and calendar details from the iPhone?

Everybody has experienced the super long lines at the Bank and the Post Office, these are two lines that you simply have no choice but to wait and be patient, I usually bring a good book or the latest issue of Make Magazine to keep me busy while at the post office.Some lines though you have a choice about, Safeway or Wholefoods or Trader Joes, if you happen to run into one of these for a liter of Organic Milk at the wrong time (5-7pm M-F) you’ll be met with a 20 minute line at the checkouts, Grocery stores can pretty much get away with this as we’re very loyal to our grocers.Technology and impulse buy stores can not afford to have long lines, this is what makes me such a fan of the service and efficiency in the Apple stores, every employee (down to  the Geniuses) seem to have handheld (or for Geniuses desk bound) payment consoles that allow anyone paying with credit or debit cards to pay for their product on the spot, be that in the middle of the floor, buy the door, perhaps even outside the store, I absolutely love this method of paying for purchases, it’s truly convenient and saves you the five minutes of will I won’t I pondering that you have when purchasing a Nintendo Wii at Best Buy.This great checkout system will enable the Apple store to process incredible numbers of sales this Friday when the Apple Store begins selling the iPhone at 6pm, in fact the Apple store using their ‘Swipe’n'Go’ (Registered TM of Auburncom) will probably be able to process fifty transactions in the same time that the AT&T stores process ten.It’ll be a truly great experience and those folks that are a hundred (or five hundred) places back in line at the Apple Store Fifth Avenue will probably be stunned, when they have completed their transaction by 6:30pm (maybe that’s exaggerating), nevertheless, you can bank on the fact that the checkout process for Apples customers on Friday will be as simple, easy, quick and pleasurable as all of Apples range of products and services.

Just found this story on Apple Insider, Best Quote:

“Awaiting the freight at each location on Sunday were armored personnel, who were reportedly hired by Apple through its courier’s ground handling agent and then cleared by the Transportation Security Administration. Armed guards are extremely unusual for freight coming out of the Asian sector, those familiar with the matter explained, and are typically reserved for shipments containing riches such as gold and diamonds.”

You can read the rest of the story here

The website RoughlyDrafted has written a long and detailed article summing up some of the facts regarding the iPhone, who and where it has received hype or criticism from and how these folks fare on a histrorical basis, one of the best parts is this: 

Gizmodo called for an iPhone boycott “for the foreseeable future” as a righteous protest against AT&T, a brand it associates with “Microsoft-style anti-competitive maneuvers and anti-privacy efforts á la RIAA.”  

Interestingly, Gizmodo offered no opinions last fall about boycotting the Zune to protest genuine“Microsoft anti-competitive maneuvers,” or the Zune’s actual connection with the RIAA with its over the top DRM, self destructing media, and the Universal “music theft tax”Microsoft bundled into its price. Why not? 

To continue reading (it’s worthwhile), click here

Apple started showing three nice ads on sunday night TV, which proudly display the usefulness and functionality as well as good looks of the iPhone.
The ads are available for online viewing here:


http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads

The iPhone is going to revolutionize the mobile phone market and also provide easy web and email access for many of us who had been using our iBooks and MacBooks for mobile web access.