September 7th, 2010

Flip Frickin’ Video0

       Flip Video

Ok… this is possibly the most fun gadget I’ve ever owned. It rivals the iPod Touch. I’ve written a detailed review over at the The Geek Gather website which you can find here:

Geek Gather: Flip Frickin’ Video

Enjoy!!

“Juiced” .Mac Service0

.Mac Image

On the heels of Barry Bond breaking the all time homer record last night, I thought it was appropriate to blog about my joy for Apple finally “Juicing” the .Mac service. Yes, just like Barry taking steroids, Apple has injected the .Mac service with 10x the store capacity for the same $99/mo cost. I’m not going to go into the details of all the other upgrades because you can read about them at www.mac.com.

I do however want to comment further on this update as it relates to me. As many of you know I am a certified Apple Consultant and have a .Mac account. I moved away from using the iDisk on my .Mac account several months ago because of the lack of storage capacity. Instead I setup a WebDAV with my scheldberg.com Dreamhost hosted domain where I can take advantage of the 240GB of storage I have available. So will 10GB from .Mac and all the integrated iLife apps to take advantage of it make me rethink using my .Mac account? Maybe… I will definitely be getting a copy of iLife ‘08 to check out all the cool new ways to share my photos, videos and design my web site.

Yugma Free Web Conferencing2

If anyone is looking for a cross-platform web conferencing tool this is your answer. This tool will work with PCs and Macs as well as with any web browser. It’s JAVA based and is the easiest conferencing setup I have run across on the internet. I’ve looked at them all from Adobe Connect to WebEx to Microsoft LiveMeeting and none of those products have the cross-platform ease of use as Yugma. And the kicker is that it’s FREE to use!!

Now lets not get to carried away. There are some features of Yugma that you have to pay for. Here is a list of what’s included in the free version vs. the paid version. The free version allows you to:

  • Have up to 10 attendees to your meeting
  • Ability to share your desktop
  • Audio Teleconferencing (they have a long distance number you can call and you enter your meeting ID to have a conference call)
  • Use of Annotations and Whiteboard
  • Ability to change presenters
  • The use of public chatting within a session
  • Customer support VIA the FAQ’s and Forum online

The paid service which comes in flavors of 10 ($9.95/mo), 20 ($29.95/mo) and 50 ($99.95/mo) attendees per meeting has all these features plus:

  • 100MB of file storage for document collaboration
  • The ability to share your keyboard and mouse controls with other attendees
  • Ability to sign-in to there web page and schedule a meeting in advance (this allows you to send out the meeting information to attendees before the meeting actually starts)
  • Ability to record a session for future playback
  • Customer support VIA web and phone

Give this product a try. I love the easy at which you can host and attend a meeting and the simplicity of the tool. If you have tried other web conferencing tools you will notice this right away. Let me know what you think. If you would like a free trial period of the paid product please let me know. I can get you setup as I am a customer of Yugma.

Skype Ver 2.0.0.6 for Mac0

Hello World! I remember programming that line in my very first C++ class 10+ years ago. I wonder if they still do that? Anyway, I’m back! It’s been quite some time since I have posted to my blog and I apologize to all those who care. So you are asking yourself what epic application or event has happened to wake Scottie from his deep sleep? Skype Ver 2.0.0.6 for Mac which was released October 23rd. One word UnFuckenReal! I have been playing with the beta version of Skype with video for Mac since it was released. I loved it and it brings me great joy that Skype has released it’s first none beta version of Skype with video for Mac. So how is the video in this version? One word, UnFuckenBelieveable! I’ve been a big fan of iChat for many years and Apple is the pioneer for video chatting through an IM client. Skype just happened to do it better. The biggest gripe I have with iChat is it always seems like there’s something wrong with the firewall or settings somewhere that prevents the video from coming through. I have NEVER had a problem connecting with Skype video. And how is the audio you ask? One word, you guessed it, so I’m not going to say it again. I’ve also tested the quality of the audio and video between a Mac and a PC. There is no difference. The audio and video are great.

Bottom line people if you’ve ever wanted to get into the video chatting arena now is the time. I’ve tested all the other services such as AOL, Windows Live and Yahoo and they all are TERRIBLE. They don’t even come close to the ease of use and quality that skype has. Head over to www.skype.com and get yourself a copy. Thanks Tim Eian for skyping with me this evening and sparking me to write this post.

Upgraded to Treo 700p0

First impressions… It’s lighter, the keys are a different shape and some of the keys are in different places. Instead of combining the green button and the phone button they now have two separate buttons. Why? Beats the hell out of me. I don’t think I’ve pressed that button once since I’ve had the phone. One thing I love with the upgraded phone is the upgrade done to Versamail. Now when I sync with Active Directory for work it syncs the contacts as well as email and Calendar! Very, very cool. Now I can keep totally in sync all within Entourage. I love the high speed EVDO network built into the Treo (I have Sprints flavor). It is much faster than the old 1x network.

Other than that I need to play around with it some more. There are a few other minor GUI changes with some of the Treo/Palm apps. Nothing major. Ohhhh… I almost forgot… they have a little application on there called pTunes (I can only assume it stands for Palm Tunes). I just thought it was funny. I transferred a song over using BlueTooth and it sounds pretty good with the new two earbud stereo headset they include.

Pandora - Free Streaming Music3

A friend at work just showed me this today. Crazy! Go check it out. Beautful interface.

read more | digg story

FPS Doug0

I searched and didn’t see this video on digg. It’s a classic, I laugh my butt off every time I watch this. “Sometimes I think about joining the Army, it’s basically like FPS except with better graphics.” This is my first submitted digg.com item so I needed to blog it.

read more | digg story

13″ MackBook (Black) on order!0

I had the priviledge of ordering a new black 13″ MacBook the other day for work. We will be testing it as a replacement for the current iBooks we have in the hands of our field staff. I hope Apple sells Windows OEM with the MacBook once Leopard comes out. How sweet would that be. I’ll post again once I’ve had a chance to play with it. My delivery date from UPS is scheduled for this Monday, May 22, 2006. Can’t wait!

17″ MacBook Pro is here!0

Wow, what a beautiful machine. The $2799 price I think is a little high even with the specs. However, if you were going to use it as a multimedia center at home as well as using it as a computer you might be able to justify the price. It does come with 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive and a 8x Dual layer super drive.

Google Calendar is Here!1

Well, it’s finally here. Google calendar has launched in beta today. As many of my friends know I am on a mission to find the best online calendaring application out there. I hope Google has developed something good. I currently use 30boxes which is going to be tough for me to move away from. I noticed that they did not include the beta of the calendar for my scheldberg.com domain that they are hosting my mail with. I hope they do this soon because I would be ALOT more likely to switch to Google calendar if it were all in one place. Right now I have to login to my old Gmail account which I don’t use anymore in order to use the calendar beta.

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