Obrigado Gisele Bündchen

Great news! Gisele has been photographed as part of a new Apple ad campaign. Why is this great news? Because it gives me a good enough reason to put her picture on the blog.

Obrigado Gisele!

Gisele Bündchen - Site Oficial

I can imagine how the ads will look:

Gisele and Jade Goodie.

Gisele: "Eu sou Mac" (I am Mac).

Jade: "Aym PeyCee"

Nuff said...

Apple - Nike iPod

Apple - Nike iPod - Sync

Surely this has to be contender for best new class of gadget 2006? The Nike+iPod sensor and receiver seems to be a kind running partner slash personal trainer. One of the more interesting aspects is the ‘Connect, Compare, Compete’ idea as seen on the page linked above. I wonder if the sensor that fits in the shoes can be forced into any old trainers?

It's going to sell MacBooks

macbook man | A Whole Lotta Nothing
Quite hilarious!

MacSaber!

MacSaber: Turn Your Mac Into A Jedi Weapon

Oh man, this is awesome. At last there is a real use for the Sudden Motion Sensor, as everyone knows I’d never drop my MacBook Pro! (^_^). Hours of Mac Jedi fun!

Open Letter to the Mac Community

Open Letter to the Mac Community

Weirdness!

EyeTV 200

Elgato Systems
A small silver Firewire powered box that converts analogue video signals to a digital MP2 or MP4 feed. That’s the basic idea of the Elgato EyeTV 200. In truth, however, it’s much more than that. The EyeTV software allows for remote TV scheduling and export of recorded TV to almost every video format, including .3GP (for phones), H.264 (iPod) and MP4 for PSP.
I’m surprised just how many reviewers miss opportunity of the Elgato systems when reviewing the Mac mini as a media centre, it really does complete the package . . . and then some!

The nice thing about getting a TV signal to a LCD TV via a Mac (DVI out) is the upscaling the Mac performs, going from 720px to 1280px.

NeoOffice 2.0

NeoOffice is a Java based port of Open Office for OS X. The generic version of Open Office on OS X uses X11. I find that NeoOffice, being OS X native, is a lot less clunky. Even so NeoOffice is still rather sluggish, especially on my poor likkle G3. Goodnews however! NeoOffice for Intel macs is almost ready. Either way I certainly recommend it for OS X users.

Meantime here's a link to the latest Alpha 3 version of NeoOffice 2.0: NeoOffice Download for PowerPC

T3 - Sky HD delays

T3 - Sky HD delays
Crumbs! HD is having such a painful birth in the UK! Can it really be THAT difficult? Any of our foreign readers had experience with HD? We would love to hear your opinion on the subject. Does it really make much difference on a regular sized TV?

Apple iPod Hi-Fi

Apple Store - U.K. - Apple iPod Hi-Fi
The Apple Store (UK) has 77 reviews of the HiFi averaging 4.5 stars. That’s a pretty fantastic average, so I guess it’s safe to say the it’s worth the money. I’d love to hear one in action, my main concern would be the lack of stereo separation. I do love the look of it though, the thought of having a beach party with the iPod HiFi providing the tunes is rather splendid. One wonders if they’ll do a smaller, cheaper version.

Ofcom rethinks ban on iPod gadget

Wha!!? I didn't know that using an FM transmitter with you iPod like an iTrip was illegal in the UK! Fascinating. They were banned in 1949, now that was forward thinking! ;-)

BBC NEWS : Ofcom rethinks ban on iPod gadget

Says it all!

Notice the Digg rate?

HP Compaq nx8220 Business Notebook

When HP bought Compaq back whenever it was I was worried how things would pan out. Would HP ruin what was a strong laptop product line from Compaq? Would Compaq dissappear?

After some teeting troubles we're now seeing some really solid units coming out of HP. The current Compaq NX range being an excellent example. I've seen a number of the models in this range and have been impressed. The build quality is very good, I'd put it above Lenovo and a mile above Dell. The designs are very nice too. The whole feel of these laptops is solid and stylish.

The HP Compaq nx8220 is a really nice unit. The big 15.4" WSXGA+ screen is very crisp. The metalic finish is very solid. The Pentium-M 760 chip, although not the latest Core Duo, is a very solid chip. Rounded out with 1GB of ram, 80GB of hard disk space, Wireless G standard networking, DVD writer and Bluetooth. This is a very solid product.

The HP Compaq NX8220 is an ideal power laptop for a professional or a home user.

Price Range: ~£750 inc VAT

HP Compaq nx8220 Business Notebook

Stealthbook '06 - The New Apple MacBook

Well after all the rumours it's finally arrived and hooray it comes in black! The Apple MacBook with Intel Core Duo.

Apart from the cool looks and the nift chip this beauty also has a nice 13" WXGA panel, upto 2GB Ram, plenty of disk space and optical options too. 2x USB and 1x Firewire as well as the option to extend the desktop via an external screen.

If someone can sort me out with £1025 I'll get one in to review.

Meantime checkout the Apple Store:

Apple Store - U.K. - MacBook

FlickrExport

If you're a Mac user who uses iPhoto and Yahoo's Flickr photo sharing service then you'll want to check out FlickrExport by Connected Flow. It's a free plugin for iPhoto that adds the ability to export photos from iPhoto to Flickr with almost no fuss. I've been using it since almost the first day I joined Flickr and I love it. It's not without it's bugs, sometimes it will stop uploading halfway through an upload but more recent versions seem to have fixed this problem.

With FlickrExport you can easily rename, resize, edit tags, decriptions and add albums to the photos you want to upload. It also advises you on how much of your monthly upload bandwidth has been used (20MB for free Flickr accounts and 2GB pro accounts).

So if you use iPhoto and Flickr be sure to get FlickrExport. If you use iPhoto but don't use Flickr then I recommend you give it a try, it's free and it really makes sharing pictures so simple.

Zelda | Twilight Princess

Oh my, it would seem that the Gamecube will get a one final outing this year. Twilight Princess looks to be quite amazing. If only they had launched this instead of Wind Waker - not that Wind Waker was a bad game, it was just not what most people expected or indeed wanted. Sometimes in the lifecycle of a games console it’s important to give the people what they want rather than showing them the way forward.

Oh dear, oh dear . . .

At E3 Sony, Nintendo and now Microsoft have all laid out their plans for the coming year. It would seem that Microsoft have a pretty good reason to smile. Sony’s PS3 is going to be way to expensive to be taken seriously (the 3DO comes to mind), and the Nintendo’s Wii (I still think this is a crazy name) seems to be nothing much more than a Gamecube with a rather interesting controller and an internet connection.

I’m sure Nintendo could point to their DS success as a reason for the limited graphics system in the Wii, but that would respresent a failure to realise the difference between the needs of the TV gaming and Handheld gaming.

The Wii will get off to a flying start, possibly even breaking records, only to quickly disappear altogether. This is probably for the best, as then Nintendo can get on with making great games for all formats, something which they really should have done at the end of the N64 era.

The XBOX 360 coupled with XBOX live is starting to look more and more like a winning combination.

Warner Bros. to sell movies via BitTorrent

Warner Brothers sees the light and embraces the best file trading system out there. Only one glitch... well no actually about 3 glitches:

1) DRM - No DVD playback, oh pleeez!
2) Price - DVD price for a film which has no extras, cannot play on a DVD player and has no physical property!?
3) Peer-to-Peer - They'll be using my upload bandwidth, see above.

It's a start but the movie studios need to let go and truely embrace the digital age.

read more | digg story

channel4.com Video on Demand

After overhearing a radio ad for Channel 4's new video on demand service I thought I'd go and have a quick look at it. Now the advert uses the Macintosh start-up sound to represent watching tv on your PC. Only one problem Mac users:

channel4.com - VOD:

"Can I access the episodes from a Macintosh?

Episodes are not available to Mac users because the Mac version of the Windows Media Player does not support the features we use to protect our content from unauthorized use."

DRM = Dirty Rotten Media

LiteOn LVW-5115GHC+ DVD±RW Recorder

When I decided to replace my ancient hand me down VCR with something a little more modern (and working) I had a number of requirements:

1) Value for Money
2) Recording Compatibility
3) DIVX / Xvid Playback

In the Lite-On LVW-5115GHC+ I was able to satisfy all of my requirements. It's very reasonably priced, around £100, supports all the DVD and CD flavours (except Dual Layer) and has full DIVX & Xvid support. So what's it like to use?

Once you've connected it up and powered it on you'll need to navigate the menu system to get the recorder configured. The menu isn't impossible but it's also not as easy as it should be. Anyhow once you've got the date and time you won't need to access the menu too much. Of course if you're like me and get your TV through the analogue airwaves then you'll need to access the TV tuner menu. I can confirm that reports about the lousy quality of the tuner in this recorder are true. The reception isn't as good as the reception I was getting through my LG TV. A digital tuner would have been nice but I guess the £100 price point wouldn't have been possible. Anyhow after a lot of tinkering I managed to get all 5 terrestrial channels in more or less ok quality.

Recording in SP (Standard Play) mode provides 2 hours of 'DVD quality' MPEG video. The settings below that really aren't worth talking about. There is also a HQ (High Quality) mode that gives a higher bit rate MPEG 2 video. In it's standard form the recorded media can only be played in the recorder but if you finalize the recording then you can play the disc in any DVD player or computer.

Lite-On offer a one year warranty on this model also they make firmware updates available via their website. Running a firmware update is very easy and many updates improve performance and compatibility.

If you're looking for a good DVD recorder that offers a good range of playback options then you can't do much better than get a LVW-5115GHC+.

Specifications

One of the best reasons to get a Mac

Since my switch from Windows XP to Mac OS X, over a year ago, I've had a grand total of ZERO viruses. In fact until last week I'd had no pop ups either (now I have 1 for some reason). Just because there are no viruses on the Mac right now doesn't mean it'll be safe forever, just as Windows won't be a terrible as it is right now forever. At present though the totally different security setup in OS X is a huge reason to switch.

More about my switch soon.

114,000 Viruses? Not on a Mac

---Update---

Check out the new Apple Ads