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Free Expo Hall Pass to Macworld Conference & Expo 2009

September 11th, 2008  |  Published in Events  |  Comment

The Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
January 5-9, 2009 (Expo: January 6-9, 2009)
macworldexpo.com

Whether it’s a profession or a hobby, Macworld is the place to learn the latest editing, printing and sharing techniques for digital photography and shooting video. Several sessions are spread throughout our conference programs, highlighting the latest editing techniques. Whether you are a beginner or advanced, the Creative Safari conference program offers a hands-on approach to mastering your photography and video making skills. Visiting the expo floor you can even learn from seasoned photographers in the Digital Photography Experience.

Special Offer
Register using priority code MKA31884 before September 26, 2008 and receive a FREE Expo Hall Pass.

Apple Shines The New iPod Touch

September 9th, 2008  |  Published in Technology  |  Comment

Not to be outdone by the new colorful and surprisingly thin iPod Nanos, the second generation iPod Touch made its debut as well in Apple’s September 2008 Special Event entitled “Let’s Rock”.


So what’s so different, a new body. The new iPod Touch looks like it came from Quicksilver’s board. It definitely got some ideas for the iPhone 3G’s contour, but its shiny and made from polished stainless steel. I won’t be surprised if we see Apple comes out with this chasis on the iPhone 3G in the Winter (pending the sale of the new iPod Touch of course).

 

Other new features are:

Noting the built-in wireless support for Nike+, this sucks if Apple can’t just push a firmware update for iPhone 3G owners. I won’t necessarily be running with an iPhone as its freaking just too much to worry about and a distraction, but it just makes sense and a goodie for all Apple fans alike.

In terms of price-point, if comparing with the previous one, the new iPod Touch starts at $229 (8GB model) and is definitely worth the upgrade if you are looking to have the feature-set of the iPhone 3G w/o the phone. Now, if being compared against the iPhone 3G and basing on the fact that you are also looking for a phone, I don’t think its a good buy. Other than the subscription fee to a mobile carrier, the only feature that the new iPod Touch has over the iPhone 3G would probably be its built-in wireless integration with Nike+ (for now). With that said, if in the situation I just stated, I would still get an 8GB iPhone 3G over this new iPod Touch.

Apple Introduces New iPod Nanos

September 9th, 2008  |  Published in Technology  |  Comment


Apple Introduces New iPod Nanos, originally uploaded by stechico.

Apple introduced its new fourth generation of iPod Nanos today in 9 flavorful colors. Here are the features that set it apart vs. its predecessors[1]:

  • Colors of course! Silver, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, pink, (PRODUCT) RED and black.
  • Built-in audio recording features.
  • “Genius technology” which automatically creates playlists from songs in your music library that go great together, with just one click.
  • UI/UX improvements with the help of the accelerometer. This allows it to behave like the iPhone/iPod Touch between switching from Portrait to Landscape modes.
  • Improved 24 hours of music playback or four hours of video playback.

I just wonder if its still necessary to buy the Nike+ piece since this new Nano now have an accelerometer built-in. If any, they should modify the Nike+ piece to work with an iPod 1GB+ Shuffle; which will be tempting for me to buy and use when running. Better yet, just a standalone Nike+ piece that can sync on its own to the Nike+ site.

  1. Paraphrased from Apple Insider article. [↩]

Sync iPhone and Google Calendar via NuevaSync

August 20th, 2008  |  Published in Technology  |  Comment

I have been tinkering around trying to get GCALDaemon working again after the update to Leopard, but it just hasn’t been the same from its former self of 1-to-1 sync. Thought you can find different applications that may allow you to do this, it’s one thing to get it for free and do through the power of the crowd. But things have been looking grim lately as getting GCALDaemon to work with Leopard is still up in the air. Enter NuevaSync.

NuevaSync allows direct, over-the-air, native synchronization of certain smart phones and PDA devices with public PIM, and calendaring services including Google Calendar. NuevaSync does not need any software installed on your device because it uses synchronization protocols that are already built in.

I had given it a chance. It requires you signup w/ nuevasync.com. Yah, I know its another account to keep track of from the many services out there, but hey… if it works–it works. The setup is pretty simple. You pretty much just have to follow the instructions which were written in terms of a 7th-grader–easy enough.

A couple of facts that I found out along with NuevaSync’s FAQ:

  • It currently supports the following mobile devices:
    • Apple iPhone 2.0, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2.0
    • Windows Mobile based PDAs and smartphones
  • You’ll be doing push/fetch to NuevaSync’s “Exchange Server”
  • Adding an alarm notification on an event will default to a “Pop-up” reminder in the event’s Google Calendar (gCal) version. Vice-versa; you’ll need to select “Pop-up” as the type of remind when creating the event in gCal in order to have it also available in your iPhone.
  • Having your iPhone’s setting of “Push to OFF” and “Fetch to Manually” will still enable to NuevaSync to perform its job while allowing you to save your iPhone’s mojo.
  • It can sync to multiple calendars under your gCal account of those Calendars you have a permission to write to. You may find out which ones via going to the NuevaSync status page.
  • Even though you can sync with multiple calendars, creating an event in your iPhone would default to your main calendar. This you can say would be a step back if your trying to keep things very organized and categorize your events (i.e. Personal, Work, Project A, Project B, etc.).

Sounds good right? So, if you aren’t really using more than one calendar or don’t care if the events from your write-permitted calendars are merged together into one in your iPhone, I’d definitely recommend you to give NuevaSync a try. But don’t worry, they have that item in their TODO:

So when will you support multiple calendars on the Apple devices?
Soon, it’s one of our top new feature priorities.

Anyways, I hope this helps. Please do let me know if you happen to find new, interesting things about it. Have a good sync!

Find Duplicates in Address Book

August 15th, 2008  |  Published in Technology  |  2 Comments

Ever had the situation where you have synced your iPhone (to iTunes OS X) and happen to sync both the contacts from your Address Book and Google Contacts? Or, just happen to add someone’s new contact info as another contact-card? Well, here’s how I cleaned and merged duplicate contacts so that my Address Book performs like a champ.

  1. Launch Script Editor (Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor)
  2. Paste the following code snippet 
    tell application "Address Book"
    set biglist to {}
    set theGroup to count every person
    if not (exists (group "Duplicate Entries")) then
        make new group with properties {name:"Duplicate Entries"}
    end if
    set the_names to the name of every person as list
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in the_names
        set this_Name to item i of the_names
        set theName to name of person this_Name as string
        if this_Name is not in biglist then
            copy this_Name to end of biglist
        else
            add (people whose name is theName) to group "Duplicate Entries"
        end if
    end repeat
    save addressbook
end tell
  3. Save your newly created script (would usually default to ~/Documents/AppleScripts/), and just open/run it

Now, the easiest way to figure out if its running or not (at least for me) was to run the Activity Monitor and sort by CPU. I simply just waited to see if Address Book would climb to the top doing 90+, and back down to nil. When this is done, you should be able to see a group called “Duplicate Entries”. From there, you may now sort through the details and delete the ones that you don’t need.

Note: You can also do a quick merge via Address Book itself from duplicate contacts. However, you won’t be able to see which contacts are being merged as its just a set-it-and-forget kind of deal. If you do not care and simply just want to get rid of those dupes, you can do so by doing the following:

  1. Launch Address Book
  2. Select Card from its menu
  3. Then, select Looking for Duplicates… and just go through the following prompts after search results finishes
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