EclipseEmpire

I just watched a TED video by Gever Tulley on “5 dangerous things you should let your kids do”. It is great. He talks about giving kids the freedom to explore in order to make them stronger, smarter and actually safer. Watch the video after the break and more comments from me…
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Apple updated their MacBook and MacBook Pro lines today.  I have the original MBP released 2 years ago.  It is still very nice, but I do want a little more power.  I currently have a 2GHz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM.  My hard drive is only 80GB.  I am constantly removing old podcasts and moving music and video to my NAS.   Unlike most people who sell their old equipment to help pay for their new equipment, I now have to send it down to a family member.  Ever since I switched to the Mac in 2003, I have praised the Mac goodness to my different family members.  Now I have a niece that has a 12″ Powerbook, my sister and brother-in-law have a 17″ iMac (Intel), my sister has a new MacMini (Intel) and even my 9 year old son has a eMac.  This has increased demand for Macs in my family.  Before this, I would sell my 6 month - 1 year old technology on EBay to pay for the new stuff.  Now there is a technology hierarchy in my family.  So in order to get one of these new MacBook Pros, I will have to do it the old fashioned way, save.  Well, its off to the coalmine!
  

Apple announced a new line of portable computers during Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at MacWorld San Fransisco today, the MacBook Air. The new line is a complement to the existing MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Features of the new portable include being “the world’s thinnest notebook,” at 0.16″ to 0.76″ - thinner than the the thinnest part of a Sony TZ series laptop. Screen size is an LED backlit 13.3″ widescreen with a magnetic latch. The MacBook Air keyboard is MacBook-like, but with an ambient light sensor. The new machines feature a multi-touch trackpad, allowing the user to double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb, as well as pinch & zoom. Additionally there’s a 45 Watt MagSafe power adapter, a Micro-DVI out as well as Audio Out, 802.11n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR.There’s a 1.8″ hard drive for storage - either 80GB standard, or a 64GB SSD as an option. Intel shrunk the size of the Core 2 Duo chip by 60% to fit in the new machine. Battery life is approximately 5 hours. No optical drive is on the MacBook Air, but a SuperDrive accessory is available for $99. There’s also new software being released that allows the portable to “borrow” a Mac or PC’s optical drive. All models feature 2GB of memory standard.The case is fully aluminum (good for recycling), the first fully mercury and lead free display, circuit boards are BFR free, and retail packaging are 56% less volume than a MacBook.The new MacBook Air starts at $1799 is available for pre-order today, and is expected to be shipping in two weeks.

Check out www.mac-4-less.com for deals on all Macs!

Apple today revised the MacPro and XServe with a new architecture and the recently released Penryn Processors. The Mac Pro combines two 45-nm Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2GHz and up to 4TB of internal storage. The standard 8-core configuration starts at $2799.

“The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With 3.2 GHz 8-core Xeon processing, a 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory, the new Mac Pro uses the fastest Intel Xeon architecture on the market.”

The new Mac Pro features the latest Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors based on 45nm Intel Core (Penryn) microarchitecture running up to 3.2 GHz, each with 12MB of L2 cache per processor. According to Apple, the 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory achives a 61 percent increase in memory throughput.The new Mac Pro comes standard with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory.  This also means great deals are coming on the Xeon line check out  MacMall.com - The #1 Apple Direct Reseller  for details.  For deals on all Macs, check out http://Mac-4-Less.com 

I have installed a new theme for all you iPhone and iPod Touch users. Here is what the site looks like on your device:

And for you Nintendo Wii users, there is a special theme for you also. (Sorry no screen shot)

Pros: Fast, Easy to use, VMWare Desktop users will like this
Cons: Learning Curve for some Keyboard functions & Media Handling

Parallels Desktop is one of the best products I have found for my Macbook Pro. I purchased my first Intel Mac with some hesitation because at first there appeared to be no good PC emulation. Microsoft’s product does not work on Intel Macs and performs very poorly on my Power Mac G5. I discovered Parallels Desktop and I’ve been in love with it ever since.
I was able to quickly - even faster than some PC’s I’ve used - to load Windows XP Professional and other versions of Windows with ease! It’s awesome and for users of VMWare Workstation on the PC you’ll slip right in and feel very comfortable.
This product has eased my switch to the Mac and now I can run some PC only products like Microsoft Project and Visio under this emulation and have all the software I want to use, etc.
If your serious about switching to the Mac and still need a Windows product now and again Parallels is definitely the way to go. You can use it for productivity, etc. Training for that next Microsoft Certification exam, etc.
The only minor issues is getting used to some of the keyboard functions and special keys. Also handling some media between the Mac OSX and PC emulation is something you have to learn to work thru, but it’s not a big show stopper. You get used to it after a while.

Here’s a great deal I found for Parallels:
Buy Parallels Desktop for Mac and get $20 Apple Gift Card for free!

As some of you know, I purchased a new iPhone on launch day. A lot of people have listed their complaints, of which I only agree with one … not being able to store files on your phone. Now you can. Safari and “Mobile” Safari both are able to display data:URL files. There is now an easy way to create these files to store in your iPhone bookmarks:
Filemark Maker lets you store high-res images, text files, and PDFs on an iPhone, which Apple doesn’t allow you to do. By storing the data in a bookmark you can just open it in MobileSafari, even when the phone is offline. Free, source available.

The program is for OSX and it supports .doc, .xls, .rtf, .txt, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .pdf, or .html.

read more | digg story

Standard config:

If you change to a glossy screen :

This only works if you keep the other options standard. Weird.

We all know it was announced, however I have proof its currently in production…

I was at Universal Studios this week and this is what I found. My mission was to get into stage 42. The stage number is pretty appropriate too.

This is as close as I got.

You can find more info about the US version of the IT Crowd at :

http://www.nbc.com/Fall_Preview/The_IT_Crowd/

My wife Jennifer has decided to start her own blog. Her new domain will be :

www.uflythisway.com

She is going to share her experiance being a surrogate mother. Should be interesting.