journals

Updated: Dell officially unveils XPS One, Latitude tablet

By Nick, November 16, 2007

Dell. They’ve always had the reputation for churning out decent PCs at good prices. But let’s face it, their products have never seen incredibly unique. That may be changing, though.

Yesterday Dell too the wraps off their XPS One all-in-one desktop, and their very first tablet PC called the Latitude XT. Dell hasn’t said much about the XPS One yet, but there is a teaser page up on Dell’s site. The XPS One is the latest all-in-one desktop to come from PC makers; other recent releases include the Gateway One (yes, I know about the name--coincidence?) the HP Touchsmart, and of course, the iMac. Perhaps PC companies are noticing that there is a market for the all-in-one desktop?

The Latitude XT is the first tablet PC out of Dell, and it’s not an ordinary tablet PC. As Engadget reports, The Latitude XT sports a multi-touch display. Dell used a painting program and photo viewer demo app to show off the XT’s multi-touch capabilities. The big question: how will Windows and applications handle multi-touch input? That remains to be seen. Still, it’s nice to see some really exciting products come from Dell.

UPDATE: The XPS One is now available to buy on dell.com Models start at $1499 for a 20” display, 2 GB of RAM, and a 250 GB hard drive.

	0	2299
Nick	comments	views

Hacker targets Mac blogs

By Nick, November 16, 2007

A hacker is targeting Mac-oriented web sites which come across as too smug.

I wish this was a joke. I really do.

An individual simply identified as “malcor” is threatening to launch “untraceable and unstoppable” attacks against Mac web sties against Mac sites. The problem? Smugness. This person has already taken down one site and has threatened to take down any other site which the hacker feels displays “Excessive Apple fanboism”.

The first target? GlennWolsey.com. Glenn’s site now reads, “This website has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been taken down for 24 hours.”

In his/her/its own words:

This apple is rotting at its core. It is infected with smugness, and more and more, the symptoms are starting to show, whether it’s the eye roll at the non-iPod music player, or the snide comments about my laptop’s lack of curves.
Everyone knows that when something starts to rot, the rot must be amputated to protect what is left. As an underground hacker for many years, I am in the perfect position to perform this operation. It is a pleasure to accept this opportunity on behalf of the Mac user’s community.

Seriously, what the hell?

UPDATE 27 Nov 2007: It was all a prank planned by MacHeist. Read their explanation here.

	6	2152
Nick	comments	views

FileMaker releases Bento preview

By Nick, November 13, 2007

Today Filemaker has released Bento, an application they are marketing as “the new personal database...that’s as easy to use as a Mac.” Bento features integration with iCal and Address Book, and allows you to keep track of various projects or types of data. For example, you can use Bento to keep track of your exercise log, track billing, use it to keep track of class assignments, manage projects, and then some.

From the little bit of time I’ve spent with it, Bento seems to be pretty flexible, and works pretty much as you would expect it to. It actually seems like it has the potential to be a pretty cool little app.

FileMaker is currently running a preview program (a nice way of saying “beta” I guess). To take part in the preview program, you will need to fill out a form. After submitting the form, you’ll get an email with a download link. The preview is free t participate in, and you’ll get 30 days to tinker with Bento. Macworld notes that Bento will be officially released in January for $49 ($99 for the family pack).

I’ll post my first impressions of Bento whenever I get around to it (hopefully tonight).

	0	2598
Nick	comments	views

Mac OS X Leopard Part 7: iChat

By Nick, November 13, 2007

Welcome to Part 7 of Deep Thought’s review of Mac OS X Leopard, the latest kitty to pounce on the world. It has been taking a while, but the Leopard review series should be completed this week. Woot!

In this particular sections, I get to discuss one of the more fun new features in Leopard: iChat 4.0. This is no minor improvement, mind you. So pull up a chair, relax, and get ready learn a little bit about iChat in Leopard.

Of course, no review segment would be complete without the following note on the score. That score you see way down at the bottom of the page only reflects whatever is discussed in this article. When all is said and done, we will assign Leopard a final score. Without further ado, let’s get into the heart of the matter.

(And pardon me for any typos--it’s 1:30 AM as I post this on the site and I’m really tired.)

Chat it up!

iChat made its debut way back in August 2002 as part of Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2). At the time it was a pretty bare-bones IM client. Despite its lacking feature set, however, iChat always had one thing going for it: its user interface. Accentuated by text bubbles in chats, a soundset that didn’t suck, and subtle animations, iChat made instant messaging fun. In time, audio and video chat support was added, along with support for Jabber and a number of other smaller features. This brings us to today…
(Continue)

	2	8623
Nick	comments	views

Mac OS X Leopard Part 6: Time Machine [UPDATED]

By Nick, November 11, 2007

Come one, come all, to Part 6 of Deep Thought’s Leopard review! There is still a lot to cover in Leopard, but we hope to have our review completed within about a week, if all goes well. In case you’re just joining us, here’s what you’ve missed so far:

In this section, we will discuss one of Leopard’s marquee features: Time Machine.

Before we start, a quick note about the score: the score at the bottom of the page only reflects the features discussed in this article. When all is said and done, we will give Leopard an overall score.

Insert “Back to the Future” reference here

Time Machine’s entire existence can be owed to one fact: very few people back up their files on a regular basis. Those who do, however, use an assortment of tools. Some use commercial software such as Retrospect. Some use the free basic backup software that came with their external hard drive. Some manually drag files onto a disk. Still others use software like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!, which create exact copies of your hard drive on an external disk called clones (clones are nice because if anything goes wrong, you can start your computer off a clone of your internal hard drive).

Some of these backup procedures are easy, some are more tedious, but the bottom line is that millions of…
(Continue)