Orange Hipster Shuffle

This must be a sign. On the same day I read about the Hipster Shuffle the folks at Apple released iPod shuffles in new colors (pink, blue, green, and orange in addition to the original silver)! So not only can your Hipster PDA gain multimedia capabilities but it is also now available in snazzy colors. As orange is my favorite color I am very tempted

Wii-quest

I came late to the Nintendo party not having used the NES or SNES really at all and never having owned one. I was really all over the place with my console purchases: Sega Genesis, Atari Jaguar (yes really), Sony Playstation, Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and lastly the Nintendo GameCube (the Atari 2600 I grew up with was my parent’s purchase and I’m not counting any handhelds). But since the Nintendo 64 I’ve been a Nintendo fan. Neither the Playstation II nor the Xbox had any appeal for me. When the Wii was announced I checked it out and thought it seemed neat but I was deeply enthralled with World of Warcraft and saw no reason for any other game to be in my life

Recently some friends of ours began their quest for a Wii and my wife learned a bit about the system through them and seemed more interested than I’d ever known her to be in video games. She was anxious for them to find one so we could try it out. I was excited too, but I knew I’d like it, I wasn’t convinced she would. We’ve had the chance to play Wii Sports for about 3 hours now and to my surprise Sara has contracted Wii fever. She began to read about some of the games available and got more excited. So we’re on our own Wii-quest now and are planning on getting Wii Play, Trauma Center: Second Opinion, and Rayman Raving Rabbids to start with. Wish us luck!

Leopard Tech Talk Review

I’m a bit late posting about the Boston area Leopard Tech Talk that I attended on January 22nd. Both Michael and Daniel were much more prompt in their coverage.

Overall I thought the event was worthwhile if, like me, you weren’t able to attend WWDC. I suspect that if you did attend WWDC this was better as a meet and greet than an educational experience. I will echo what others have said with regard to the exciting APIs coming in Leopard. Much of what was shown really makes you contemplate a Leopard specific version of your applications. My suggestion to people is branch your development to work on Leopard features and put your Tiger code base into maintenance. That doesn’t necessarily mean do it now, but definitely look to take advantage of what Leopard offers as soon as possible.

I think that for the most part Apple did a wonderful job on the Tech Talks, especially considering it was free to attend. Still I think there is room for improvement and I’ll be sure to send these suggestions to Apple.

• Make sure the hotel hosting the event isn’t connected to the internet via a 56k modem.
• Consider tables in addition to chairs.
• Please, please, please consider providing power to us. You ask us to bring laptops knowing well that no laptop (Apple or otherwise) will run for 9 hours yet provide us no way to power them.
• Ditch the box lunches in favor of a buffet. If something runs out at a buffet it is replaced, not true with the box lunches. I wasn’t the only vegetarian there that didn’t score a box. Alternatively poll us for our preference when we sign up so you at least have a semi-accurate count to base your boxing on.

But as I said overall it was great and if you didn’t make it to WWDC and are near one the cities where the tour is going (and it is worldwide now) definitely try to secure a slot.

Macworld ‘07 Keynote Reactions

I must say I’m a bit shocked. Not shocked by Apple TV or even the iPhone really. Shocked that Steve only unveiled Apple TV and the iPhone, the latter not even being available for another 6 months. Don’t get me wrong, I think they are both cool and will talk about them a bit but I am surprised we didn’t see new versions of iLife and iWork. Granted nothing about a year-based naming scheme requires that new versions be released every year, just look at Microsoft, but I really thought Apple would continue with Macworld timeframe updates. Anyway, lets look at what they did announce.

PagePacker from Big Nerd Ranch

Big Nerd Ranch are known for their excellent classes about many Mac OS X technologies include Cocoa Bootcamp. One of their instructors is Aaron Hillegass, a name you should know if you do any Cocoa work on the platform as he’s written two great books on the subject. He whipped up a small application called PagePacker that lets you print 8 of the DIY Planner templates (or any single page PDF you want) onto a single sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and fold them into a tiny book. I think the UI for selecting the template could use some work, but it is still a nice freebie. Check it out!

Unfortunately my output has most of the spaces in any text in the templates converted to exclamation points. This probably isn’t going to happen for everyone, but I don’t have solution for myself yet. If you know of a solution please leave a comment.