Tech Tok

It’s WWDC-keynote-day! I’ll be adding to this post over the day.

Rumour: Mac Fusion

TUAW has some murky screenshots of an ad for a new Mac, the “Mac Fusion”, appreantly targetted at developers.

Sort of a super-Mac-Mini?

“Live” Web Sites

Here’s a list of web sites that will be tracking the WWDC keynote.

• MacRumors Live
• MacWorld
• macnn live coverage
• Summize twitter filter
• engadget
• Mac Observer
• Gizmodo
• MacRumors IRC feed
• Ars Technica IRC Feed

Let me know of any others.

Woah, live video feed from a phone! Pretty impressive. There is also a full-screen version of Viru. Very cool!

So we have:

8 GB	$200
16 GB	$400

There will be a white model available, apparently.

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Okay, so overall, this was a really long and boring keynote. Nothing we didn’t already know for the first 70-80 minutes.

Finally the 3G iPhone is rolled out, and all it seems to be missing is video.

Let me know what you think of the new comment system. I’ve installed if for all zero-comment posts (which includes all new posts), so old posts with comments still have the old WordPress commenting system.

This may involve you having to create a Disqus account, but the idea is that you can use that account across blogs. I am also setting up Disqus on my blog so you only have to create your account once for both places.

Leo Laporte has also set up his blog to use it. Maybe it will spread everywhere.

The idea is that your comments belong to you, and Disqus makes it easier to follow people, as opposed to blogs.

Ran across twhirl today because Seesmic bought them, and my good friend Bear is a Seesmic dev. (Hi Bear!)

It’s an Adobe Air app, which is both good and bad (Air is not open, but there are Linux and Mac versions), and seems to be the Twitter-client-du-jour.

I always do twitter-via-IM, so I’m not sure what benefits this would bring me. Perhaps Twitter IMs are a bit too interrupting, although I’ve mitigated that somewhat by setting a custom sound for twitters, by which I know I don’t have to pay attention to the IM window that has popped up.

What do other people use to Twitter? IM? Twitter-specific clients? If I was all blog-centric, I would put up a poll, but all I have are the comments below, so please add one!

Looks like I’ll have to edit the links over there.

engadgetHD.com

Found a not-bad HD site. HD Beat seems to be an HD news site, which also has a podcast.

I haven’t listened (watched?) the podcast yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s any good. Feel free to leave a comment saying if it’s good/bad.

Update:
The RSS feed for HDBeat is an excellent full-text feed with images. Highly recommended.

Hm, all the weblogs blogs I’ve seen so far have these hi-fidelity feeds. Must be a (very good) corporate policy.

Google now has a competitor to PayPal: Google Checkout.

Unfortunately, it’s only available to people in the US. This can be deduced from the signup form where you enter your credit card #, address and country, but the country is static text that says “United States”.

Well, maybe I’ll be able to use it around the same time I can actually purchase TV shows from the iTunes Music Store, another US-only experience.

Check out the press release. It’s very marketing-heavy, and they keep mentioning “a Canadian CLEC” without naming them! Geez.

Basically, by the end of June, the 22 Mbps service will be accessible to 3 million Canadians. They will be setting up a beta group to use it at the same rate they’re already paying for normal DSL.

Since there is no specific new product, I assume they are doing technical trials and don’t have a marketing “package” for this service yet.

Just once I’d like to see a clear press release that says something like: “Now offering 22 Mbps service for $50/month, $4/month for static IP, $100 for new modem, $10/month for additional IP addresses, $5/month for no traffic shaping or protocol prioritization”. You know, something useful.

Yet another very cool Google Maps API use: tracking satellites in real-time. Click on the pic below to see the full-size screenshot.

The ISS was above the horizon around lunch time today.

I am curious about how it figured out my longitude and latitude. Perhaps by my IP address? Hmm.

(via Wohba)

Rogers’ WiMax offering Rogers and Bell are rolling out WiMax service for Toronto and a few other cities. It’s a joint venture between Bell and Rogers, called “Inukshuk Wireless Inc.“. The price structure looks like this:

Speed down/up	Price	Company
½ Mbps/125 kbps	$45	Bell
1½ Mbps/¼ Mbps	$50	Rogers
3 Mbps/384 kbps	$60	Bell

Interestingly, despite WiMax’s symmetrical up/download speeds, the service is asymmetrical with slower uplaod speeds than download. This may be an artifact of the head end’s limited internet connectivity.

Alas, the number of cities with WiMax available is pretty small at the moment. I was hoping to get my Mom on it.

Also, the modem is a separate box that needs its own power, not a PC-card for your laptop or something nice like that.

Excellent article all about it over on Ars Technica

I upgraded to this unit. The local cable company does not support the HDMI connector, but based on reports that it worked for some people’s TVs, I tried it. It works okay for me using a $100 HDMI to DVI cable to the back of my SONY Grand Wega. The image contrast seems to have improved slightly over component video. The main issues other people have had with HDMI have been unsynchronized audio, I was told. I have also read that even though Roger’s employees are discouraging it, external SATA-300 drives can be plugged into the back. I want to buy a 400Gig SATA-300 tomorrow and try it. This would be about 100 hours of HD programming that could be stored. I have read elsewhere on the net that people have been successful with this. I still expect better technology in this area shortly, so “rental” is the key word here.