Tips From Tony Blog

Most folks don’t know this, but ever since Apple came out with the OS X 10.4.9 update, certain newer, “UVC-compatible” webcams can be plugged into your older Mac, and they will work right away with iChat.

Why would anybody bother? To stay in touch with family-members… To share love across the miles. “Hey Grandma! Look at Junior’s new tattoos!” Once it’s set up, it’s free forever, and it works whether you have a Windows PC or a Mac, as long as you have a fast Internet connection.

I set this up all of the time, and it’s always gratifying to see family-members cooing at each other across the miles. Holiday gifts being opened simultaneously across a continent are a big hit in our household.
Tell everybody in your family to get a webcam (see below), and then they should all go to AIM.com and get a free screen name. Once everybody has e-mailed each other with the new screen-names, then the Mac users should use iChat and the Windows family-members should download the newest verson of AOL Instant Messenger. Why? Because it’s the simplest way to share vision AND sound between the two platforms.
Ever since Apple stopped production on the iSight webcam, prices have skyrocketed for used iSights on eBay. Some have asking-prices as high as $299! Very discouraging.

I’m still doing research on which webcams are guaranteed to work, but here is one that is known to work, and is highly rated:

If your laptop, eMac or iMac already has a microphone, then the Xbox Live Vision webcam ($35.99 on Amazon.com) is a good choice. To see if your computer already has a microphone built-in, pull down the blue Apple menu, go to System Preferences, then to Sound, and then to Input. If an “Internal microphone” shows up, you’re in business.

If your Mac does NOT have a built-in microphone, then there are other choices for very little money:

There are good things being said about the Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks Pro, or the Logitech Quickcam Fusion.

You can also use Logitech’s support-page to see which of their models support “UVC”, which is required for proper, driver-free iChat compatibility. This one looks very nice, and for only $41.40 after rebate.

Once everybody in the family has their free chat names from AIM.com, then all Mac users should fire up their Address Book software and add the chat names for all relevant people. Then, fire up iChat and answer a few questions until iChat is up and running. On the Buddy List window, hit the “+” button on the lower left and start adding people to the Buddy List.

Hopefully, once the Windows folks have added everybody to their AIM Buddy List as well, you should see a nice green camera next to one of your buddies’ names. Double-click on it, and they will hear a “brrring!” sound. They’ll also see a window pop open, saying that you are requesting a chat-session. If they click “Accept”, then the video-chatting can begin!

Technically, I’m here for business, not monkey-business. I’m here for the NAB convention until tomorrow, learning all about digital video and the future of broadcasting. What the heck does this have to do with me, or my clients, you may ask?

Well, I am here to observe trends, detect patterns, and get set for what is going to be important to the folks that I help, a few years down the line. I’m observing software features that will be dirt-common in days to come. I’m looking at expensive hardware that will be cheap-cheap in five years.

For instance: I’m seeing plenty of signs at various booths saying things like “Up to 5 PB”, and at first, I was puzzled, until I figured out that they were referring to five petabytes… five million gigabytes. Gosh, that sounds like an awful lot of storage, and surely only big businesses are able to afford so much storage. But, based on so much past experience, I just KNOW that there will be five petabyte keychain drives being handed out for free at baseball games and banks in a few years. Remember when ten-megabyte hard drives were like infinity stretching out before you? I do.
Apple has announced their new suite of professional-class video-editing programs here, and in my opinion, everything else here runs a distant second-place finish. They’re dominating all of the news coverage. Their “booth” is the biggest thing here, and it’s always jammed. They have a huge theater for continuous presentations, and every seat is always filled. I’m seeing the usual, middle-aged, paunchy conventioneer-types, but I’m also seeing an enormous number of young people clustered around the Apple displays, and standing at the back of the rows of seats being hogged by old folks.

Apple hired a Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer to supply some high-quality photos for this event, so I’m not going to try to compete.

Being an enormous geek, I was mesmerized with Apple’s wall of horsepower… Technically referred to as a big ol’ pile of Apple servers (268 processors) and networked hard drives (300 terabytes). In every direction, Macintosh displays were demonstrating smooth, snappy powerful new software. Everything flowed so nicely, thanks to those stacks of servers, slaving away behind the main stage. This was brought forcefully to my attention when I was admiring this wall of flashing winky lights while the guy around the corner was demonstrating the audio-editing software. I could hear the sound of a Ducati motorcycle screaming away, on and off, and the winky lights in front of me were going bonkers in perfect sync. Cooooool.
This all seems very esoteric, expensive and far away from most people’s needs, doesn’t it? No, not really. The newest high-end Macs have eight processors inside. New laptops will have four processors in around one year. Intel expects to have 80 processors inside of one chip in about three years.

That huge, expensive wall of power probably cost more than a million bucks, and required a technical team for assembly and maintenance. By the time you buy your next Mac, YOU may command nearly as much power!

Off-topic, I have to say that I DID squeeze in some fun last night - SPAMALOT is well-worth seeking out when you get to Vegas (or Broadway, though the Broadway tickets are usually sold-out months in advance). If you’re a fan of classic Monty Python, you will NOT be disappointed.

Vegas has changed a lot, and there are construction-cranes everywhere. Expensive, glitzy casinos are replacing the old, tired classic dumps, and Sinatra’s ring-a-ding-ding has been replaced with REM and Beatles music everywhere. Baby-boomers rule here, now.

I’ll predict the future: In ten years, there will be industrial-strength shop-vacs at the exits leaving the Las Vegas Strip, just to simplify things. Nobody goes home until every wallet and purse has been emptied! NOTHING here is free, or even inexpensive, without a taxi-ride away from the Strip.  It’s too far to walk, even for a bank - I’ve tried.
There have to be EIGHT separate Cirque du Soleil shows in town, and my, aren’t they expensive. Every major casino has one of these shows, and I can see why… scanty garments, but not TOO scanty… You can bring the wife and kids.

I’ve done my best to be abstemious, so far away from my daily routine, but I’m failing miserably. It costs 22 buicks to use the gym, so I’m not spending a lot of time there, and my waistline is mysteriously expanding. It MIGHT be due to the incredible meals that we’re enjoying every day. Most nights, I feel like a python that has swallowed a goat! My vices don’t include drinking, womanizing(!) or gambling, but I can ALWAYS be tempted by high-end chocolates or a perfectly-prepared steak.

Dennis and I attend the conferences and walk around the convention floor by day, and do tame, expensive stuff by night. We are SO middle-aged!

I’ve had the new Home Theater setup installed for a few days, and I plan to be hosting that High Resolution Popcorn event soon. I’ll be gone for a week - I’m going to the NAB show in Vegas. After that, I’ll be sending out the invitations.

For now, I’m doing some intensive playing with the AppleTV - It’s full of potential, and well-worth the $299, though I can see lots of room for improvement. Its job is to turn your big-screen TV into a high-resolution iPod that plays the video, music, podcasts, audiobooks and iPhoto albums that exist on your computer(s), somewhere else in the building. I never thought that I’d care much about such a concept, though it is definitely growing on me. The AppleTV has become just as essential to our family’s enjoyment as our five iPods put together.
First, the good stuff, and then the wish-list:

It’s awfully simple to use, and I can easily see a technophobe like my mom getting good use out of an AppleTV without a single complaint. Apple definitely nailed the “elegant and simple” part, right out of the gate.

When fed with good-quality media, the AppleTV really shines. I can see that my low-resolution Tivo’s days are numbered, because it puts out horrid-quality images that almost hurt your eyes. I never noticed this until we retired the old picture-tube TV to the upstairs bedroom, and now we never watch it. We’ve become media snobs, frankly. I haven’t used a VCR in years.
I take a lot of multi-megapixel photographs, and the AppleTV is the best way to enjoy them, hands down. I’ll take a bunch a photos at an event, and then gather the family for a nice slide-show. The quality is astonishing.

GETTING media is a problem for most folks, unless they use Apple’s online store. The visual quality of what you can buy there is pretty stinky, given what the AppleTV is capable of. Being a media snob, I’ve been converting my other media files and DVD’s so that I can get maximum quality for our viewing pleasure. I use VisualHub to convert existing media files (AVI files, WMV’s, etc.), and I use MediaFork to convert DVD’s to AppleTV format. Watch both of those programs very closely, because new versions keep coming out that really make them more and more AppleTV-centric. Now that the AppleTV is out, you will see other file-formats withering into irrelevance.

I was originally planning to buy an actual antenna for our new high-definition system, to pick up HD channels! Why would I even consider going back to rabbit-ears? Because I’m a cheapskate - I couldn’t imagine paying something like $100 per month just to get high-definition channels. We’re skating by on Cox with Basic Cable, which is something like $13 per month for local channels, and no HBO or Cinemax. We don’t need them, and won’t pay for them.

Well, it turns out that cheapskates are extra-blessed: If you use Cox Cable without a cable box, then you get all of the local high-definition channels for free. If Channel 15 is the old, traditional-style PBS station, then channel 15.1 is the PBS HD digital channel. Not only that, by tuning into the channels right around Channel 100.1, we shared somebody’s pay-per-view enjoyment of the movie “Borat” (including the rewind after that person’s bathroom break), for free. No antenna needed. Somebody let me know if this is true for Time-Warner and other providers.
I’m not kidding - Our two-year-old Tivo box is providing low-resolution images that would make your eyes water. We’ve stopped using it - We’re ACTUALLY WATCHING COMMERCIALS AGAIN! That’s not gonna happen for much longer.
So, now we are thinking about replacing the Tivo. We MIGHT upgrade to the Tivo 3, but the idea of paying $100 per year for the subscription service is annoying. Did I mention that we’re cheap? We are also considering using the Macs around here to take the place of the Tivo, by using something like the EyeTV from El Gato Systems. I suspect that this might be a viable choice soon, since there will undoubtedly be a version coming up that is 100% joined to the AppleTV at every step.

As always, the problem with buying an AppleTV version 1.0 is that there are all sorts of compromises.

It doesn’t yet support surround-sound, so we’re not getting the full experience of our best material.

It’s not super-duper high resolution, to match my zingy 2007-model TV. Incidentally, the TV is a wowser - a big LCD that has better specs than a plasma. It took almost two weeks to arrive from New York, and the wait just about killed me. The only complaint I have about it is that I’m going to have to remove the back panel and glue a metal washer to the inside. The security slot is too big to safely secure the TV to its cabinet with a cable and lock. My 1918 Craftsman-style bungalow’s living-room is a dinky thing, and that humongous, expensive-looking, highly pawnable screen is visible to anybody on the front porch. We’ve got a couple of ginormous Lab Experiments to guard the place, but I would still feel better knowing that things are locked down.

The AppleTV supports VERY few file-formats. Having to convert media to work on it is a pain. My laptop is running 24 hours a day, and it’s currently converting the BBC Life on Earth series. Yes, folks are hacking the AppleTV so that it can handle more file-formats, but I can’t be bothered with all of that, at least so far. I’m on the end-user-enjoyment end of things, not the twist-it-until-it-breaks end.

It was expensive, switching from the old analog TV to the new, zoomy Home Entertainment System. I can’t believe how many things I can’t wait to leave behind, such as the idea of going to a movie theater, watching commercials, videocassettes, and even DVD’s! Our existing DVD player does a bang-up job of “upscaling” its output to match our high-end TV, so it gets a reprieve, at least for a while.

The biggest downside to the rush to Home Theaters is the social cost - Why would we want to leave the house when we can get everything that we want, right here? Will future generations even have the experience of shared communal high points, such as when the very first Star Wars movie came out? I can still feel the fevered anticipation as we stood in lines that stretched around the theater and down the block. I remember the roar of the crowd around me as the Death Star blew up… even now, thirty years later.

I used to host huge, popular dance parties a few years back.  I can’t get them organized any more, because the general public has fractured, and can no longer be reached by traditional means. When everybody is on a zillion different websites, blogs and mailing-lists that are centered all over the world, we lose the ability to have a central, unifying connection for local news. Traditional-style clubs are failing everywhere - why join a club and commit to helping out, when you can just join a mailing list and click a link to unsubscribe when you’re bored? Why leave your high-res screen and your comfort-zone?
The AppleTV and its surrounding hardware are getting cheaper, easier and even more tantalizing.  I plan to stay conscious about my need to be among friends and getting exercise,  because it’s awfully tempting to wallow permanently in the megapixels and the Dolby sound.

Actually, Apple calls it the “8-Core Mac Pro“, but the nerd network has been calling it the “Octo” for months and months, since Apple’s new top-of-the-line Mac tower has EIGHT processors inside.  Now that the new Adobe Creative Suite 3 has arrived and is selling briskly, you just KNOW that it will work much better with some newer hardware.

I’m surprised that the Octo hasn’t shown up before this - Nerds have been swapping the newer chips into the existing towers since November, with absolutely no problems.

If you’ve been sitting around, waiting for the newest thing to come out before upgrading, the waiting is officially over.  This one is a definite money-pump for any business, and it’ll be a good workhorse for years to come.

A SPECIAL REQUEST:

If you DO want to buy a Mac, and would be willing to help me gather bonus-points from Apple, you can order your new hardware online, here.  It won’t cost you a penny more, and you can customize it to your heart’s content.  Then, on the very last page, it’ll ask for the “Agent Code”. I’d be plumb grateful if you’d put this in:

AA071743

Thanks!

I haven’t been writing very much lately, because I have been LEARNING so much new, massively detailed information. Ever since Apple has changed their name from “Apple Computer Inc.” to “Apple Inc.”, I’ve had to change MY mission statement as well.

I’m learning all about High-Definition TV, home theaters, AppleTV boxes and 2.7 zillion acronyms such as H.264, HDMI, HDCP, DVI-I and many others. I’m learning all of this so that I can distill my advice to simple, elegant terms when somebody asks me for my opinion. Apple is going to RULE the whole High-Definition Movies on Demand world, and I need to stay current.

By the way - I just recently celebrated my 26th anniversary as a consultant, and I don’t know how many more techie facts I can store in this poor old noggin of mine!

So, watch this space for further developments - My new 46″ 1080p (super-duper-high-resolution) Sharp Aquos LC-46D92U LCD Television is arriving Wednesday next week (it’s the February 2007 generation, and still too new to be sold anywhere in town). My AppleTV box is arriving Friday. The Home Theater Surround Sound receiver and speakers should be arriving shortly thereafter, along with the universal remote control. I’ve got several terabytes (that’s thousands of gigabytes) of hi-def material to throw into the mix. I’m READY, Freddie!

Even if you have your own hi-def setup, you’ll want to see this one - It’s the ginchiest. Once everything is set up properly, I plan to host a few “High Definition Popcorn” open-house sessions so that everybody can see what the future looks like. Get on the list early!

A client of mine was concerned because her 17-year-old daughter had posted personal information on MySpace.com, including the home phone number! Here’s what I wrote in response:

I went to Google and looked up “myspace predators” and found this.

The best I can offer you is a few of my own thoughts, after raising kids of my own:

- There are a lot of bad people in the world, and ALL of them are online. They see ignorant, innocent teens and they see easy meat. There is NOTHING you can do to keep her away from her favorite online hangouts if she’s determined - she can just head to the library and dive right back in. MySpace and FaceBook are HUGELY popular with teenagers nowadays - they are the “Lou’s Soda Shoppe” of the modern age. It’s kinda creepy, because you can have a lot of friendlike objects that you never actually MEET, in the flesh. But, it’s the current thing going on, so it’s not going to go away.

I’ve found that the best approach is to be brutally honest about the incredibly high probability of being groomed and then attacked. Those “Have you seen me?” milk cartons and “Amber Alert” signs on the freeway are the most-visible examples of the need to handle this NOW.

If she runs into Mister Predator online, she’s not dealing just with him, she’s dealing with his huge network of buddies who share success-stories, pictures and videos (they constitute great porn for that crowd). He and his peers are constantly honing their techniques together, every single day. Open-hearted, innocent little tootsies are their designated prey.

Here’s what I would do in the same circumstance:

I’d bring her to a neutral space - a nice, high-end restaurant with a private booth. Everybody should dress up and do it up right. The setting will enforce the specialness of the occasion. I’d tell her that this was the most important conversation that you have ever had together up to this point, and that you are not speaking to her as “Parent to Stupid Little Child”, but as “Adult to Adult in Training”. That ALWAYS get their attention. She’ll be in full recording mode from that moment on.

Now, in the next few paragraphs, I’m going to say “I’d recommend saying this or that”, but your daughter should be able to contribute at least fifty percent of the conversation. Don’t just hand down Royal Proclamations from above, and don’t gang up on her. Teenagers hate that! Ask her what she thinks, and LISTEN.

If necessary, designate the Salt Shaker of Truth… As long as one person holds that magical salt-shaker, NOBODY else can talk until it is voluntarily relinquished. It really opens up the conversation, and a lot more truth shows up. If you have to, set a timed, five-minute limit per person.

Now is not the time to say “Because I say so, that’s why!” Open up and be as real as possible. Temporarily, you’re not her parents, you’re fellow adults, remember? That’s the advantage of being on “neutral ground” - Both sides are off of their turf, so that communication can flow more smoothly than usual. It adds a sense of occasion, so that it will be more impressive and memorable for all concerned.

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You have ownership of a lot of responsibility for the situation (and you should admit this - she’ll be impressed). You’ve done your best to make sure that the home environment (the “nest”) has been as safe as possible. This would have been a very good thing to do in 1907, but the harshest parts of the world have no respect for the borders of your home nowadays.The problem with ultra-safe upbringings is that they don’t help youngsters to develop “street smarts”, and they become prey if communication fails between the parents and the youngsters.I’d tell her that you are NOT going to throw up a firewall between her and her MySpace buddies. Tell her that you are quite aware of her activities there. Tell her why you snooped, and what your thought-processes were. Tell her that you would rather NOT snoop, and want to redefine your relationship to match her age and level of adulthood.

I would tell her that posting the phone number online is hideously hazardous for YOU, your household and your belongings, and not just for her. It’s NOTHING for a predator to do a reverse-lookup on the phone-number and get a map to your place in under ten seconds. Some folks probably even have the process automated. I could do it in one click. She’s messing with everything that you’ve got, frankly, and she needs to “toughen up” her attitude, fast. Online is not the place to be tender and juicy and available - It’s a place to be tough, cynical and armor-plated.

Tell her that she’s a mature, responsible young adult and that you trust her, and really mean it. Yes, she screwed up briefly, but it’s a blip until something really bad happens, which it hasn’t. It can be changed, and you can enter a new phase of mutual communication. Transform it from a problem to a possibility. Make some new rules for 2007, but make them together, based on mutual agreements. She’s 17, and she can handle more responsibilities, and is more likely to do so, if she gets to make her own rules.

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If she doesn’t follow up, and STILL does stuff that jeopardizes your household, then sell her computer. Let the hammer fall, because she didn’t take you seriously enough. She can buy her next computer when she’s got a place of her own. This is life-or-death stuff, not some stupid game.

I can’t recommend investing in expensive high-definition (”HD”) video equipment, at least until Apple starts cleaning up the hassles for everybody else. NONE of the stuff currently available is guaranteed to be able to function properly due to the new, hardcore “content-protection” restrictions coming up.

You may not have noticed this before, but I haven’t written a single word about the new high-definition video disk formats (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD). One would think that somebody who surfs on the very tip of the wave of change would have expressed some strong opinions a long time ago.

Well, they stink, I don’t desire to own them, and I don’t support them. I don’t know ANY other “early adopter” who owns either one. It’s as simple as that.

The problem here is that every decision being made in the high-definition hardware arena is being made in favor of the Lords of All Media. NOT YOU. Your job is to buy their stuff, and to take what you get, and then to pay for all-new stuff when they decide that you should.

Basically, NOTHING in the HD world is being designed without the big corporate media-owners getting first crack at protecting their profits. They want to control all aspects of the signal; from the disk surface, to the pixels that land on your screen, and all hardware in between. That’s a problem, because the general public has not been graced with any guarantees that one component will allow the next one in line to function.

No wonder folks have already cracked the existing HD-DVD copy-protection scheme.

This sort of consumer-hostile thinking led to the failure of the “iPod-Killer” Zune media player. You would think that manufacturers would learn, but they just keep flailing way.

I was reading this fascinating article about the horrors of trying to make high-definition media work with Windows Vista, but it’s awfully techno-nerdly, so I’ll hand-edit the following quote so that non-nerds can get the gist:

“I’ve just had my first experience with High-Definition content being blocked. I purchased an HP Media Center PC with a built-in HD DVD player, together with a 24″ ‘high definition’ HP flat panel display. They even included an HD movie, ‘The Bourne Supremacy’. Sure enough, the movie won’t play because while the video card supports HDCP content protection, the monitor doesn’t. (It plays if I connect an old 14″ monitor)”

It’s all bad news, which is why I’m very curious about Apple’s future HD plans - They are gently shifting into the high-definition hardware and software market, and I believe that the other manufacturers are anxious to follow Apple’s lead. If ANYBODY can tame the messy, incompatible hardware, software and delivery channels without pissing everybody off, it will be Apple, and everybody else will gladly follow the leader.

The sheep need a Border Collie!

Any idea how I can find out who manufactures our Dell 3010cn laser printer which we have here at work? We’re trying to buy replacement cartridges without going through Dell, and figure somebody must make them for whoever the manufacturer of the printer is. The label on the back says “manufactured for Dell” so we know someone else is building them.

- Go to Google Maps

- Type in your local mailing-address (example: One Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014) and search for it.

- Click on “Find Businesses”

- Search for

toner recycling

- Each business entry will have contact-info, and some of them will even have web-links for their home-pages.

CALL THEM and ask them directly. If the “engine” inside your Dell is a common one, using common cartridges, every toner-recycling shop will be fully aware of it. It’s their business to know.

Toner-recycling (which is what you really, really want) is THE most cost-effective way to pay for toner, and it’s ecologically friendly. It’s also very, very local by nature, which is why I sent you to Google Maps. Many local places will even stop by to pick up the old cartridges to be refilled, and will drop off the fresh ones at the same time.

It’s to your advantage to develop a long-term relationship with one of your local toner-recycling shops.  It’ll save you thousands of dollars!

Dateline: Macworld Expo 2007

Photoshop CS3

I spent some time watching the Photoshop CS3 beta demonstration today, and it was wonderful - The main impressions I’m taking away with me are:

- It’s jammed with new, very worthwhile features
- It’s a lot faster (on Intel Macs), and
- It’s going to be worth the upgrade, but…
- We will all need to take tutorials to find the best new tools.

Once Photoshop CS3 comes out in final, production form, I will probably be giving overview classes, just to motivate everybody to learn more.

Apple Consultants Network

I spent some time chatting with the folks representing the Apple Consultants Network today, and I think that I’m going to re-join. I used to belong to the ACN back in the very first days, but it didn’t suit my needs at the time. According to everything that I’m hearing, it’s time to give it another look. I expect that I’ll be getting referrals from other local consultants, once they find out that my specialty is CREATIVE people - Fussy, non-linear, high-maintenance types. I love ‘em!

MOST nerdly consultants get a bad case of the hives from folks like that. Creative folks don’t communicate in the same fashion as technical types, and they tend to talk right past each other. I’m unusual because I can speak fluent Geek (sometime it feels like Ancient Geek), but I relate better to artists than to accountants.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of vendors, products, publications, handouts, demos and people that I haven’t written about, and I feel guilty about it (that darned Catholic Guilt!). Instead of trying to feed you the whole smorgasbord via two-fingered typing, I chose to absorb the entire show osmotically and to use what I’ve learned in future writings. If you’re one of my local clients, you can grill me directly, next time that we see each other!

I’m very glad that I came here this week… It’s wonderful to be at the very tip of the wave of change, and everybody here is on the same blissful high. I haven’t seen anybody be a jerk. I’m surrounded by Techno-Hippies!

Dateline Macworld Expo 2007

I don’t have a unifying theme for this posting, so I’ll just ramble (in a really endearing way) for a bit:

The iPhone

I’m finding it difficult to express how the upcoming Apple iPhone has avalanched over everyone’s consciousness here. It’s clearly a big hit with the early-adopter nerd crowd. From what I’m hearing, it’s all that anybody’s talking about in Las Vegas at the CES convention. Lots of people in Nevada are wondering if they are attending the wrong convention!

This photo doesn’t begin to show how many people are jammed around the Apple pavilion. The seats are full of nerdy oldsters, and they are surrounded by hundreds of avid people who don’t move a muscle (or blink much) during the entire presentation. It’s a standing-room-only show, over and over, all day long.

The AppleTV Box

I griped about the lack of support for geeky file-formats yesterday, but I’ve relented a bit since then. Who knows? Maybe Apple’s two supported file-formats for high-definition video will force the rest of the world to stop coming out with exotic video-clips that require a dedicated techie to enjoy. I really don’t relish finding player-programs that constantly need to be upgraded in order to support some new, alien video format. It’s time to settle down and go with the simplest answers. Thanks, Apple!

I Think That I May Have Instigated A Fight

I went up to one of the guys from Apple’s Aperture Team and asked him whether they had inspected the new Photoshop CS3 beta yet. He told me that nobody had said anything about it to him, so I pointed him to the Lynda.com booth about 200 feet away and told him that they featured some free Quicktime tutorials that clearly demonstrated how Adobe Bridge (that comes free with Photoshop CS3 beta) is a direct rip-off of ALL of Apple’s Aperture interface design and features. He got a hard glint in his eyes and thanked me very fervently.

I suspect that Apple’s team is going to be very angry at Adobe for designing software (included with Photoshop) that is designed to kill off Apple’s pro-photographer business! If scuffling breaks out while I’m here (or a naked knife-fight), I’ll video-capture it for you on my Treo 650. Yes, my next phone will be an iPhone.

Warm, Tender, Affectionate Thoughts about Microsoft

I admit it - I’m a complete pig for being pampered. I’ve been tramping around the Moscone Convention Center for the last few days, lugging my computer bag and getting back-aches. One of the high points of my day is to arrive at the Microsoft Blogger’s Lounge. I sign in, sink into a big, comfy chair, hook up to a nice, fast Ethernet cable and grab a soda. MmmMMmmmm… Nerd Paradise.

I’ve been writing these messages from the Lounge, and it’s so much better than sitting on the sidewalk outside the Apple Store, getting pigeon-poop on my butt while I leech the free Airport signal after the store is closed. I can afford to pay ten dollars a day to get Internet access at my hotel, but I object on moral grounds.

To me, it’s sort of like being charged for water, or electricity, or sewage pipes (or air) in the modern age. The Internet is CRUCIAL in the new century, and being charged for it (when the competition doesn’t) is just plain dumb. No hotels without free internet from now on!

What’s In My Plastic Bag

Everything that I’m buying during this trip is a Business Expense, but I’m still being very frugal in my choices. My wildly-profligate days are over. So - What items have I found that I’m willing to spend money upon?

- I couldn’t resist the Expo Discount Price for Micromat’s Techtool ProToGo software, which simplifies the process of creating digital “doctor’s bags”, in the form of those little keychain drives that contain all of the best diagnostic-tools for a computer consultant’s needs, along with a bootable copy of the operating-system.

I can whip out my keys, plug in a thumb-drive, re-start while holding down the Option key on the Mac’s keyboard, and start up my favorite diagnostic programs that will help me to fix the Mac’s problems. It’s a heck of a lot faster than booting from a CD - around 1/3 the wait. I have better things to do with my youth and beauty than wait eighteen minutes for Disk Warrior to boot frm a clunky old CD!

- I bought three MacAlly IceCams - They were cheap, and they will allow more of my family-members to video-chat with the rest of us. You can’t get iSight webcams from Apple any more, and the used-iSight market is pretty expensive for what you get.

So, I bought three webcams that will work (adequately) with older Macs, and this will shove a few family-members further along the path to long-distance web-chatting pleasures. I love my family, and want to see them more often.

- I bought a few MacWorld 2007 shirts. Two of them say “Mac Daddy” on them, and the third one is a nice “bowling-shirt” design.

What I WISH Was In My Plastic Bag

- I’m quite attracted to the NEC Multeos flat-screen LCD monitors. I’m planning to sell my 1961 Imperial Crown Convertible on eBay starting March 1, 2007, and I have only ONE “frivolous” purchase in mind after I sell the car and several tons (no exaggeration) of parts. I want a big-screen display for the living-room.

I’m limited to a certain physical size for the display - It has to fit between the hammered-copper sconces on the wall of our 1918 Craftsman-style bungalow’s living-room. Also, it shouldn’t be an eyesore design that will clash with our “turn-of-the-century front parlor” decor. Whatever monitor I eventually get, I’m tempted to construct a frame out of quarter-sawn oak that will make the monitor appear to be an antique from 1918!

So, I stopped by the NEC booth and threw some unusual questions at the reps standing around. All of my nerdly concerns were handled nicely… My main interest was in how Mac-friendly the plug-in connectors were. No matter how pretty a display may be, if it doesn’t just plug in and work right away, EVERY SINGLE TIME, I can’t be bothered. Right now, the Mac-friendly NEC’s are at the top of my wish-list.

If you are about to buy a big-screen monitor for any purpose, it must, must MUST support “1080P” resolution. If it doesn’t clearly say so, walk on by. Only the newest monitors can handle such enormous resolution, but you WILL want it someday, so don’t be a cheapskate.