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Jobs will give Keynote

It has been confirmed that Steve Jobs will deliver the keynote address for Macworld Conference and Expo San Francisco 2004. “This is the biggest Macintosh community event of the year and we’re looking forward to a great show,” said David Korse, president of IDG World Expo. “We are thrilled that Steve is going to kick off Macworld with a keynote address.” The keynote address will begin at 9:00 am PST on Tuesday, January 6. [Spymac]

Good news for Mac Watchers… A Steve Keynote always means new stuff! Just a matter of how much…

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Push or Pull? Who cares!

The maker of operating systems for mobile devices and Research In Motion announce plans to collaborate on software that will enable Palm OS-based handhelds to use RIM’s BlackBerry wireless service. [CNET News.com]

I am not exactly sure what the connectivity is on T-Mobile’s site, but it lets you get Enterprise mail directly on a device – Phone or PDA. The Palm/RIM deal is interesting, and helps those corporate users get true support from IT. My setup was not officially supported by my (former) company’s IT group. For the small or solo user, I can’t see how this announcement helps. You can easily get email now, just not “push.”

I am not sure how much push really matters… I get plenty of email on a daily basis. When I am out and want to stay connected I simply set SnapperMail to auto-check every XX minutes – usually 30 minutes. This automatically initiates a bluetooth connection to my phone, which then connects via GPRS on the T-Mobile network and then allows my Palm to POP into my mail server to send and retrieve messages. I can always override this schedule with a manual connection as well. This is a very practical and relatively simple set-up that works VERY reliably.

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PortalPlayer Photo Edition paves way for Picture iPod

All your digital photos. In your pocket [The Register]

All the pieces are certainly there… just a matter of who will build it. Apple is far from the exclusive builder of devices with the Portal Player chips inside – they are just the best. If they took full advantage of this with the integration we already know through the iPod, this would be a clear winner of a device in my opinion. We can hope that Steve has just been blowing a bit of smoke about this and secretly building a new “something.”

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Apple gets Marketer of the Year accolade

Advertising Age magazine has named Apple its Marketer of the Year in a special report published this week. “The genius of Apple is that its brand has come to embody a lifestyle,” wrote Alice Z. Cuneo, who said that while Apple remains an underdog in the computer business, the company “resonates with consumers across generations and international boundaries.” [MacCentral]

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MacUpdate Will No Longer Be Free

As announced, MacUpdate will begin to charge a $20/yr subscription fee in January 2004. New features will include the ability to turn off ads and use a desktop application that will scan your hard drive for applications and notify you of updates. These new features place MacUpdate next to VersionTracker Pro, which currently has a $49.95/yr price tag.
[MacMerc]

Hmmm… it’s been a good free ride…time to pay. I love MacUpdate and rely on the menu bar widget and email updates to keep me up to speed on the ever evolving software landscape.

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Mobile Download Managers

Anil linked to PalmOne’s new Addit app which I think is awesome. It allows you to view and choose from a list of PalmApps, which you can then download and run immediately or “Over The Air”/OTA. This is an awesome step for the Palm platform, which up until now has always assumed that you would have a PC available to install applications. [Russell Beattie Notebook]

This looks great and if you install and register now, you can SplashClock free which is a 9.95 value. I’d really like to take advantage of this deal and the app, but unfortunately PalmOne and Bluefishwireless (the provider of the app) have decided to only release an .exe installer which comes with the PC conduit. It would be nice for wirelessly enabled apps to come just as PRC files or just .zip files which would give you the option of actually using the conduit if you wanted, or if your system supported it.

I’ve got an email into support… we’ll see how it goes.

Update – Apparently, March will be when we can expect to see a Mac version with a wireless only download about a month earlier. Stay Tuned…

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Prince of Persia

I picked up Prince of Persia tonight and dusted off my PS2. Been a while since I felt I could really spend some time gaming and I guess I feel pretty cool about it now that I am officially not working. All work makes… yeah yeah.

Anyway – Prince of Persia is an amazing game. It’s beautifully designed, not too hard to play and has a cool combination of fighting and adventure. It’s kind of like Tomb Raider, but with some serious tweaks.

I also recently downloaded a demo of Indiana Jones, which looks much closer to Tomb Raider. Have not played it yet, just watched the movie online and immediately downloaded.

Game on!

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Yes Please…

So imagine that you’re coming home from work with your iPod and you’re listening to a song. Let’s say that you’re listening to Don’t be Light by Air, because it’s an extremely good song. Now let’s imagine that your iPod has bluetooth capabilities (or something similar) and that you’ve already paired it with your home computer (that – of course – you have hooked up to your stereo).

[plasticbag.org]

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Burn no Bridges…

The best advice I can give anyone is to burn no bridges in life unless absolutely necessary. You never know what’s going to happen and the world is a surprisingly small place. As I exit my current company, I am amazed at how many people I have previously been in contact with are looking to help and offer advice. These are people I used to work with, currently work with and some I even just met.

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Google delivers parcel search

A new feature on the search site lets people type in their package tracking numbers to turn up shipping information directly from FedEx or UPS Web pages. [CNET News.com]

This is very cool – fedex/ups/airborne + tracking number = your search. It’s definitely quicker than going to each site you might have to normally visit.

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Bluetooth Sharing Windows XP’s Internet with a Tungsten

With Bluetooth in the Palm of your hand and on that desktop or laptop PC,
Internet sharing is only a few steps away. Whizoo has some step-by-step
instructions on sharing Windows XP’s Internet connectivity with a Tungsten over Bluetooth.

discuss [MobileWhack]

Anyone get this working on Mac? Seems like it would be simple using the Sharing control panel and creating a connection from Palm to Computer. For some reason my connection to world from Palm through Computer is not working… not sure if it is DNS or what. I’ve tried on my Powerbook as well as iMac.

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Job hunt is on…

Feeling good about my resume now so I’ve started to send it out… working through some personal network contacts as well as the job boards and a few “love to work there” companies. I’ve got nothing to lose so I am casting a pretty wide net.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you could easily surf the posted jobs for along time. Monster came up with about 100 pages of marketing jobs… of course many of them are lame, repeated and blindly posted by some seeming shady organizations, but there are many good job descriptions out there.

It’s amazing how differently people use the same words… You can find Director or VP level jobs that range in income by over 100K. Not the salary at $100k, the difference between them. One “high level” job listed cell phone benefits and a car allowance. The salary maxed out a $45K. Not exactly high level.

I can relax a bit now that my resume is up to date – at least from that perspective.

Now my leisurely walks with wife and child don’t have anything waiting for me to complete. Today looks to be a beautiful day – not too cold – so we are definitely going for a long one.

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Zukero V3 – crazy name, cool idea

Little black box lets any audio device get streaming content over GPRS.

The product itself is a small dongle terminating in a 3.5 mm jack suitable for connection to a wide range of home audio products. This dongle connects via Bluetooth to a compatible mobile phone (currently Nokia’s Series 60 devices, Sony Ericsson’s UIQ handhelds and their T68, T39 and T610) and uses its GPRS connection to stream audio content directly to the home appliance. [infoSync]

Pretty wild gadget, though I am not sure that GPRS is quite fast enough to be a practical delivery method for music. It’s more like a 33.6 modem connection in best cases which would be pretty lo-fi on your stereo. The concept is awesome though… hopefully they will figure out how to support faster networks as they become available.

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Hand / RSS

I’ve noted StandAlone’s Hand/RSS Palm news reader previously, but I’ve been using it much more lately and think it is definitely a winner. In my brief email exchanges with them, it’s clear that they are not only listening to the users, but also working to make some serious improvements to the app. I was emailed a version last night which fixes the main gripe I had – no cut and paste for for adding subscriptions. This allows you to import, though one-by-one, subscriptions from a memo file. Eventually, there may be a more true import function and possibly a desktop sync. I’d be happy with that!

If this app could post to blogs, it would be a killer communications tool. As it stands now, my practice has been to simply mail articles I want to read more on. This is a pretty simple process though it took a bit of trial to make it even easier. By setting your email address within the defaults (not to be confused with resetting the app to it’s defaults), you can drop an item in an email to your self in seconds. You simply tap and hold on any article, hit mail article and an email addressed to you is initiated in your email app of choice (SnapperMail in my case). I’ve been sending these to my outbox rather than sending immediately since I am usually reading while on the subway or I just know there will be others to mail soon enough. This lets me batch them in one shot and receive them back at my computer to then either read more fully or blog through NetNewsWire. You can also choose to open any item within the Palm browser if you choose… what you do all depends on your method of connection.

It costs 14.95 and is definitely on my list of apps to buy.