Spiderman’s Web

On most Macs and PCs (and even some Linux-based OSs) you’ll find a widget/gadget system. Wikipedia defines them  as:

Widgets are interactive virtual tools that provide single-purpose services such as showing the user the latest news, the current weather, the time, a calendar, a dictionary, a map program, a calculator, desktop notes, photo viewers, or even a language translator, among other things.

I used to be a Widget nut. I always was trying to find the latest Widget-engine which not only had good-looking widgets, but would also not take a huge chunk out of my memory. For years, I tried to center myself around widgets, but behold, I have seen the light.

Okay, so now I can understand where gadgets could come in handy. It’s basically a way to combine a ton of information into one location (your desktop). Okay, I don’t have a problem with that. Now, here’s the problem. Do you really ever see your desktop? For me, I always have iTunes open, a couple of Firefox windows open, and a blank Word document - all full screen. I will rarely ever make a pit stop to my desktop. In reality, if I ever did want to check the weather, see how horrible my portfolio is doing , or translate my French homework into English, I really just use the internet. Why? Because I’m probably already on the web and I don’t want to minimize all of my windows just to check one measly little bit of data. Besides, with all of those windows open, I need to find a way to salvage every little piece of the 1.5 GBs of memory I have. Let me tell ‘ya, whether it be Google Desktop Gadgets, Windows Vista Sidebar, the Yahoo! Widget Engine, or Samurize, they all take up a fairly hefty amount of memory.

I do think the sidebar-based gadget engines (Windows & Google) are better than the Desktop-based ones because of the fact that their always open on your screen. Then again, it still takes up memory and some valuable screen real estate. I also think Apple got it right when they created a Hotkey which would bring up your widgets and then they would go away one you are done looking at them. Still, valuable memory is at stake.

So, under certain circumstances, widgets do make some sense. Under most circumstances, I think they are extremely pointless. What do you think?

(by far my favorite iPod ad)

You’ve already heard our two cents over the iPhone 3G and it’s SDK (oh here’s Pedro’s write up on dat SDK), so let’s look at Apple’s new update to it’s grossly popular iTunes/iPod lineup. I’ve heard a lot of rumors that past month or so. Some of them came true and some of them didn’t. Some features weren’t even rumors! Here are some of my opinions of Apple’s announcements (by product).

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One thing that I really liked about Windows Media player was the fact that it had some really cool built-in visualizers. My family uses them for parties, I use theme when I clean my room, and I also use them when I have nothing better to do (a.k.a. procrastinating!). I don’t use Windows Media Player anymore, but I am still long for a good visualizer. On iTunes, you really only have one option, which hasn’t been changed for 5+ years. So, I thought that maybe I could download some more. Let me tell ya, there are close to no visualizers for iTunes. Sure, there are a couple for Macs, but on a Windows machine? Ha! You’ve got to be kidding me. I probably should’ve named this post “The Only 3 Visualizers for iTunes”. Although they are few in numbers, these are actually pretty cool! (Note: These are all for Macs and PCs)

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It’s been about a month now since the App store has been released to the general public and there have been some good and some bad applications. From drinking beer to checking stock quotes, you can find almost anything in the app store. One of the most awesome apps on there right now has got to be the MLB At Bat app. Combined with a clean interface and up-to-date scores, it is worth the five bucks. So, let’s take a look around…

Home Screen

1. First, you got a nice interface to greet you up front. Kudos to the MLB software geeks who created this app. It shows you all of the games for the day, along with each games current inning (or start time) and score.
2. In the settings (which we’ll see later), you can set a favorite team to display at the top of each day. So, instead of scrolling down to see by how much the Phillies are losing by, you get to see them lose right away!
3. Tapping each game will show you the current line score.
4. Along with the line score, each game has the current pitcher and batter. For the pitcher, it will display his current game record and ERA. For the batter, it will display his hits per at bat and their batting average.

There are three screens which you can scroll to. By scrolling to the left, you’ll see yesterday’s games along with the line score and the both pitchers’ new game record and ERA. Each game will still have its video highlights available for your viewing pleasure. By scrolling to the right you’ll see tomorrow’s games, which I’ll talk more about later in the post.

Under the "4" you will see a little world icon, which will take you to the MLB Live pitch-by-pitch page (optimized for mobile viewing). This will show who is on base, pitching, and at bat. The at bat summary includes what the ball was called (foul, strike looking, strike swinging ball), how fast the pitch was and what the pitch was. There is also a cool picture which shows where each pitch was thrown. Overall, a cool web app, but it would be awesome to see this feature implemented into the app.

Video ‘n’ Stuff

1. Nothing much to see here. By tapping the little video icon next to each game on the home screen (see above picture), you’ll get a screen highlighting major plays of the game. The little blue dot, like in iTunes, indicates whether or not you’ve watched it yet.

The video load time is not too bad. Over Wi-Fi, it loads fairly quick, but not ZOMG THAT’S FREAKIN’ FAST speeds (also known as "FiOS" fast). Although it’s fast enough to watch right away. Over AT&T’s EDGE network, it’s not that quick, but bearable. According to the MLB description of the app, it will "automatically detect your network settings and play video encoded for either EDGE/3G or Wi-Fi bitrates."

Ye Olde Settings

1. Here, you are able to set your favorite team. I wish that you could pick two of your favorite teams, as this would be very cool for people who like more than one team (GO DODGERS!!!).
2. If you would like to change your update frequency, you have the options of 1 minute, 30 seconds or 15 seconds.
3. You can also set the default video playback setting from Fill Screen to Fit Screen.

As you can tell, there isn’t much too see here, but are useful in most cases. Note: This comes with the 1.1 update. So, if you have this app and have no idea what I’m talking about, go check the App store for an update!

Until Nextime

1. By scrolling to the right, you’ll come to tomorrow’s games. By tapping each game, you’ll see the start time, name of stadium, and each team’s pitcher along with there current game record and ERA.
2. The little world icon will quit out of the app and open up a new MLB web page in Safari. The only new feature it will show is the predicted weather conditions for the game. It will also display the predicted pitchers and time, but you can see that in the app already.

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Overall, a neat little app which is a must for all MLB fans out there with an iPhone or iPod Touch. What sets this apart from other apps is the fact that it also shows video highlights from each game. I haven’t had any problems so far with the app and hope I won’t find any either. The only thing I would like to see is the pitch-by-pitch feature found on the MLB’s web app. It would also be nice to see MLB news and standings, but I don’t think we’ll see that anytime soon since it’s more of an app you check for scores, not for reference. If you have a lonely Lincoln sitting in your back account, I say go for it wait for next season! If you don’t like baseball, well, shame on you.

The Hookup: iTunes (this will open up iTunes)

P.S. The Phillies did lose 8-2.

UPDATE: According to the app description, this might only be available for the rest of the 2008 season. Here’s what it says:

MLB.com At Bat will provide this breakthrough service for the remainder of the 2008 season - including playoffs and World Series.

Seriously? Well, that just made this app suck balls! If I were you, I’d wait for next season. It is worth paying for it the rest of the season, but I’d rather buy Super Monkey ball if I had known that. I seriously hope they offer a discount next year for those of us who have already paid for it (preferably free),

According to Consumer group, producer of Consumer Reports, you should not use Safari! Due to its lack of phishing notifications and protection, they do not recommend that Safari users continue using the browser. Unlike Firefox and Opera, Safari does not notify you of known phishing sites, which can be a serious problem for people who take care of personal finances online.  According to the article, 6.5 million people have given out personal information to identity thieves in the past two years. Here’s an interesting statement made by Jeff Fox, the technology editor of Consumer Reports:

“The Mac [phishing statistics] were pretty interesting,” said Fox, who named it as one of the current survey’s biggest surprises. “Mac users think that they don’t need to worry about viruses and spyware, but e-mail is the weak vector on the Mac. (…) This is the one area where the Mac doesn’t have an advantage in security. (…) Significantly fewer Mac users were using antiphishing technologies, but they were pretty much identical to Windows users about giving personal information.”

So, even though people using Macs think they don’t need any anti-virus/spyware/malware programs, they have failed to see that phishing can happen to anybody on any operating system. In my review of Safari, I couldn’t find very much support as to why this browser wasn’t secure. Now, even though this won’t affect those of you who don’t check their bank accounts online, this could be very hazardous to some people. Just to play it safe, if you can switch to Firefox for the time being, I would.

The Hookup: Computer World (via TUAW)

For those of you still stuck on that iPhone “2.0” ship, that means you’ve still got that stupid recessed headphone jack. Now, you could buy an overpriced adapter at Target or the Apple store, but did you know that you can still use those old headphones you stole from the library? No? Well, good thing you found this post because you can!

Now, this method isn’t pretty. It requires you to cut about a centimeter of plastic from the bottom of the headphone jack. Here’s what I mean:

Before

After

As you can see, I’m not the best cord cutter in the world. Then again, I was using a steak knife without doing any measuring or drawing whatsoever. You can cut it how ever far back you desire, just make sure the the metal circle (as seen above) touches the bottom the iPhone headphone jack. This will work on most headphones or audio cords, unless of course they’re metal or extremely hard plastic. Luckily, this will still work with that ol’ 3rd generation iPod of yours (or any other standard headphone jack for that matter). It’s a win-win situation (unless you cut your finger, which would really suck).

So, has anyone else tried this besides myself?

Yeah, you knew it existed. You’ve used it on your best friend’s Mac, but you never thought once about downloading it for your PC. Well, now that its been a couple of months since the release of Safari 3,  it’s finally okay to go ahead and try it out for yourself. I’ve been using it since it was first released in June 2007 as a beta. Over the past year, I’ve came to some conclusions about how this is an awesome browser to why Firefox 3 is still the reigning King of Browsers.

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Since the WWDC 2008, the only two words we’ve heard about Apple is "iPhone" and "3G". Aside from all that, I recently stumbled upon some interesting news from the blog r3fresh. From more RAM to improved overall specs, here are the more interesting from the bunch:

-Blu-ray drives will be available on every mac computer (including Mac Mini). Blu-ray drives with burning capabilities available only on Macbook Pro and Mac Pro (at first).

Really? The Mac Mini is getting Blu-ray capabilities? Can’t complain about that. I haven’t seen many low-end computers offer Blu-ray disc drives. In fact, I haven’t seen any. This proves that Blu-ray is way over priced.

-The Macbook Pro will lose the old style keyboard for the new chiclet style similar to current Macbook.

Take a look:

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Sure, the new iPhone is coming out next week with 3G capabilities, an App store, and more, but you know what it can’t do? Play Gameboy games! Here’s a quick tutorial for all of you people dying to do make your iPhone useful.

Before I go into this, let me just say…

WARNING: THIS MIGHT ERASE ALL OF YOUR MUSIC. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY WITH APPLE. FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. NOT TO BE USED FOR ILLEGAL PURPOSES. I AM NOT LIABLE FOR ANYTHING ILLEGAL WHICH YOU MIGHT DO OR FOR ANYTHING WHICH CAN HAPPEN WITH YOUR APPLE IPOD TOUCH. PROCEED WITH CAUTON!

So, are you still up for it? Yes? Onward!

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Stevie J. just introduced it at the WWDC in San Francisco. The lowdown:

• Lighter, but bit fatter as well
• Faster 3G internet
• Built-in GPS
• $199 for 8 gigs!
• Open platform, App Store, Enterprise stuff, yadda yadda
• Flush 3.5mm headphone jack (used to be lowered so regular headphones could not work with it)
• Upgraded Speaker Quality
• Works in more countries

So, the boys in Cupertino have pretty much fixed everything that was wrong with the iPhone at first.

Jobsy also introduced “MobileMe“, a rebranding of .Mac that promises to sync your computer (including through Outlook on PC’s) to your iPhone/iPod Touch - contacts, mail, etc. Apple’s really building an empire here, and wants to sync it all up.

The Hookup: Lifehacker has a nice roundup of Gizmodo articles of what happened at WWDC

Editor’s Note: Although they did fix a lot of things with the iPhone, many people were disappointed that there is still no MMS capabilities, 32 Gb upgrade (I think that will come within the next 6 months), Copy/Paste (which is a real bummer), an upgrade to the camera (currently 2 megapixels), and turn-by-turn GPS navigation. Not too big, but some people were disappointed by the facy that the GPS wasn’t turn-by-turn navigation, but a 3rd party application will probably change this TOM-TOM says they have an app for the iPhone with turn-by-turn navigation. I’m pretty sure the lowered price trumps over all of these little tiny problems.

(picture from Engadget, a Weblogs Network Blog)