Archive for January, 2011
I’m very particular on what I eat and this burger is one of the best I’ve had in a very long time. Be prepared for long lines during lunch and dinner. A shack burger will cost you $4.75 made from angus beef. But that will not be enough. You must get the double burger version. Vegetarian options available. Wide variety of drinks available from sodas to milkshakes. You must try this at least once.
Twitter, Frame Calculator, Courier, Sound Cloud
Thanks to the heads up by the people behind Mac Heist, there’s a Super Secret preferences pane just for those who purchased Tweetie that came with the Mac Heist bundle released a year ago. This is to be my first app download from the store.
Tweetie, which was purchased by Twitter is known just as the Twitter app and feels like “a Snow Leopardy” version of Twitter. Great feature is the ability to just start typing to be able to tweet and Growl notifications for the tweets that mention you or direct messages. Much better than sending you every single tweet. Though I wished it had Twitterific’s ability to see public tweets. But I can see on how that can be a problem by the sheer volume of tweets that will be loaded. Available for free on the app store.
Frame Calculator is a great app for those who work with video a lot (attn: film students). It’s a never ending problem on determining how much space your project is going to need. Free on the app store.
Courier is the first app I purchased from the store. I took advantage of the $4.99 (originally $24.99) price tag from Realmac Software to be able to upload media to a variety of sites I choose. There are preconfigured settings for mobileme, facebook, youtube, vimeo, flickr as well as the ability upload to an FTP site or an AmazonS3 account. Just enter your login settings for the desired service, drop the file and send it.
Sound Cloud
Sound Cloud is an app with the main purpose to share sound. Registration and the mac app is free. It gives you the opportunity to discover music or sounds from other people and share it with your friends. It works best via the iPhone app ($1.99) which uses your iPhone as a recorder and send it straight away to the service. The app requires registration via the web prior to use. But with any social service, it’s only good as long as your friends are with you for the ride.
There you have it! The first few apps I’ve tried and so far I’m pleased with what I’ve downloaded. I’m sure there’s more out there. I can’t wait until WWDC 2011 in June.
I knew I had to try the inflight wifi while going to New York. For this trip, the wifi was free. I quickly checked in foursquare and got the Mile High badge. Gogoinflight provides the service on this Delta flight who also services other airlines such as Virgin America and American Airlines.
Internet is provided in the air via two ways. One is via satellite as the signal is sent to receivers on the aircraft while the most common method is via cellular towers on the ground. This is the reason why inflight wifi is only available over land.
I will be tweeting more in the next four hours to see if Internet is better than television at 30,000 ft.
Fire up that software update button and go up to 10.6.6 to be able to access the Mac App store from Apple.
In true Apple fashion it is easy to navigate through the menu. Much like the iTunes store but for apps. All of the iWork, iLife and Aperture apps are available for purchase to download including Remote Desktop. The app is intelligent enough to scan you application folder for the apps but it only works for Apple applications (for now?)
The store is very Apple like. If you know how to buy songs and apps off the iTunes Store, the Mac App store shouldn’t be a problem. Though it seems like the interface is still missing something like a side window for it to really look like the iTunes store.
Could that be in the future? Both the iTunes store and the App store will eventually merge and then iTunes will finally just be about managing your digital assets in your computer? Maybe? I’m just guessing here.
I can see the market that this fills. For those who just bought a mac and are lost with the tens and thousands of applications available including which one is real and which isn’t, this is a great starting point. The Garmin Base Camp app for the mac is a good example of this. I remember eternally searching back and fourth through the Garmin website looking for the app compatible with my mac. I eventually found it but the App store would have saved me hours searching.
Great apps that are already here are the OMNI series (Graffle, Foucs, Plan, Outliner and so on). Most if not all of the apps on the MacHeist bundles of past are also here.
Popular games such as Bejeweled, Angry Brids, and Enigmo are now just a click away. Sorry PvZ (Plants vs Zombies) fans it’s not here (yet).
Paying for these great apps are linked to your Apple store account which is much easier than entering your credit card information every single time or trying to remember your Paypal account. Piracy of apps is also rampant. Developers would be happy about the DRM but according to macnn the DRM has already been cracked. Expect an update to be released very soon.
Will this be the future of buying apps? Yes. It makes it faster and easier for applications to find their customers and vice versa. Physical discs will still be around a little longer. But when this becomes successful, expect all the apps to be delivered this way. But what about applications such as Logic Pro (installation is roughly 90GB) In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time.
WordPress has kindly sent this year and review stats to me. It’s very helpful to see how many posts you actually made in a year and how much traffic is sent. Thank you all for coming to the site and I’ll do better this year.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 82 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 439 posts. There were 64 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was December 18th with 232 views. The most popular post that day was UP Lantern Parade 2010 Part 1.
The top referring sites in 2010 were otaku.fm, facebook.com, joystiq.com, twitter.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for up lantern parade 2010, morbol, marlboro final fantasy, final fantasy marlboro, and lair of the shadow broker.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
UP Lantern Parade 2010 Part 1 December 2010
Final Fantasy XIV Fall Update October 2009
Dragon Age Origins Awakening coming in March January 2010
Hands on: Dragon Age: Awakening SPOILER WARNING!! March 2010
UP Lantern Parade survival guide 2010 December 2010
Procrastinating in the Heat 