Author Archives: Max Swisher

About Max Swisher

14-year-old web developer and writer. Avid collector of vinyl, cameras, and typewriters.

iPaperPad

Posted on by

Not magical or revolutionary, it’s a paper pad

The iPaperPad

As we ALL know, the iPad was recently announced on February 27th. And it already has a competitor.

The iPaperPad is sold as a three pack for $24.99, which is MUCH cheaper than Apple’s incredibly overpriced iPad.

The iPaperPad has many advantages over the iPad. For example, the battery life. Everybody was amazed by the iPad and its amazing 10 hour (which actually means 6 hour) battery life. The iPaperPad utilizes well-known technology to achieve a remarkable feat: Unlimited battery life!!! Apple is yet to come out with a product for only $24.99 that has UNLIMITED battery life!

Battery life isn’t the only advantage over the iPad. We know that the iPad has a 1280X768 resolution. They call that”Hi-Def”. The iPaperPad takes an incredibly strike at Apple’s iPad, once again, with the utilization of well-known but under-used technology to create an amazing feature: Unlimited DPI. In fact, the iPaperPad can’t even be defined in such ways. The screen has yet another a benefit over the iPad: It works with numerous input devices. The iPad only works with a finger (it works with a marker too, but that might not be a good idea..), but the iPaperPad was tested with a pencil, a marker, a crayon, a sharpie, the possibilities just go on and on! You can even write on it with a feather pen. Apple’s iPad can’t even compete with that.

But it doesn’t even end there. The iPaperPad is coded in such a code that a 2-year-old can become a developer. It is coded in a well known system called “Imagination.” This system doesn’t use any confusing numbers. You just draw what you want and it comes to life.

The iPaperPad opens up many possibilities for game development as well. Known games like hangman will be redesigned. There will be a gold rush of app developers to create intuitive programs for the iPaperPad.

The iPaperPad even has multitasking. You can draw a picture while playing hangman. You can take notes while doodling. The iPad does NOT do THAT.

The iPaperPad lacks one thing from the iPad, though: Networking/Wi-fi access.

As you can tell, the iPaperPad will be a true competitor to the iPad at its amazing price and features. Did I mention that it’s 100% recyclable, quite unlike the iPad? OOH, and it’s flexible!! The iPad would just crack in half if it was exposed to the forces that the iPaperPad takes. Jealous? Get one below.

And, it’s already shipping!

iPaperPad Homepage

iPaperPad Amazon Page

Apple Time Capsule!

Posted on by

Sleek!

As you saw in this post, I wrote the following:

Time Machine is incredibly specific about the things it is happy about.

And I’d agree. But when you get the Time Capsule, because it is made for time machine, al of your problems disintegrate.

Wireless Networking

The Time Capsule is actually an AirPort Extreme and a 1/2TB hard drive built in. The Time Capsule has dual-band connecting 802.11g and 802.11n. On the back, you connect the Time Capsule to [ethernet] WAN and then using the AirPort Utility to configure all of your options. Then, plug in a wireless printer! To configure it, go to the Print & Fax pane in system Preferences. Click the + icon and select your printer from the list that appears. Tada! You can now wirelessly print to your USB printer! Then, in the WiFi menu in your Mac’s Menu bar select yur time capsule’s network name, enter a password and now you are connected to the internet through your Time Capsule!

Time Machine

The Time Machine Icon

Once you have configured your time capsule using the AirPort Utility you can now backup to it with Time Machine. Time Machine comes on very mac and is a functional backup tool. To start using time machine, open the time Machine preference pane in System Preferences and turn the big switch on. If a dialog doesn’t automatically appear click Select Disk…. In the dialog that appears select your Time Capsule (Usually Data on [your Time Capsule’s Name]) and click Use For Backup. It will then backup all of your data in what is called the initial backup. This one first bakup wil usually take about 3-7 hours depending on how much data you have (4-5 for 30GB in my experience). It will backup wirelessly, so feel free to move around the house while it backs up. After the initial backup is done, it will create a backup of new files every hour. DON’T WORRY! It doesn’t replace duplicate files, so the backup’s size shouldn’t change that much over the use of it unless of course you make some huge deletion or addition.

Uh-oh, you deleted that one special file[/folder]! It’s easy to get it back using using Time Capsule with Time Machine. On your mac, open a finder window where the file you deleted existed (before you deleted it, of course). Then, open the time machine APPLICAtION (NOT System Preference Pane!). The finder window will then slide up to a cool wormhole-like interface with windows going back. Each window going back is hourly into the past. You can quickly navigate using the lines on the right of the interface. You can click a window a ways back to fly over to it. Now browse  found the file you want to restore in one of the windows! Before bringing it back to life (or your hard drive) check to see if it is in any more recent backups: you probably want the latest version of it. Once you’ve found the latest version, click on it once to select it. Then, in the bottom right, click restore. The file will be”magically pulled from the past into the present” with a cool effect. Tada! your file has now been revived (or stored on your local hard drive)!

In case you have a LOT of data, you an always select particular parts of your hard drive to backup. If you are a system file experimenter (like me) you probably want to keep backups of your whole hard drive, as that will include the configuration of all of your setting etc, which when reformatting you can restore from a backup an hour before the one with the screwed over file (happened many times when messing around with system settings, I screw over one file which gets backed up, so make sure that if you had screwed a file and the hard drive hadn’t crashed you use a backup older than the most recent one!).

Just in case you have a LOT of data, you can select which folders you want to exclude in the Options… dialog in the Time Machine system preference pane. If you tend to accidentally screw with your system files and you happen to destroy your mac (or part of it) doing so, Then when reformatting you can actually reformat using a backup from your Time Capsule. If I were you, I would use a backup prior to the one that was made when your mac was screwed over (as a result of screwing with a system file) or else it will just be the exact same. OORRR, while in the reformat menu you can select restore from the Time Capsule but DESELECT SETTINGS AND CONFIGUREATION. This will put all of your applications and files back, but leave the system config files (the ones that would screw up your mac) brand new right from the disk. Smart!

Whoops, I forot to mention: If (and possible when) your Time Capsule runs out of space because of backup, it will delete older backups first instead of giving you a “Out of space, delete everything” kind of error. Once again, smart!

Network Disk

Your time machine will show up in the Shared section of the left sidebar. Click on it and authenticate using the parameters you setup with the AirPort Utility, and there will be a share called Data by default. Double-click it and if you bacup using Time MAchine, you will see a .sparsebundle there. You can now utilize that HUGE hard drive in there to save stuff on. Just click and drag any file into the Data share of your Time Capsule in finder to store it on the 1-2TB hard drive. Sweet!

The Time Capsule is available at a 1TB version for only $300 and a 2TB version for $500.

Homepage

Store Page

New GMG Sites!!

Posted on by

Now before reading this post, remember: This is the main site you want to follow!!

We have launched the following new sites:

Good Morning Geek Forum

Get all of your tech questions answered here. Also, please answer other people’s questions, as If there is no one answering and only asking then that wouldn’t be too helpful, would it? So the more people you can get answering questions on these forums the better, for you, me, and anybody else who might want to join. Did I mention that anybody can join, and there are absolutely no ads? Now remember: I have complete control over al user accounts and posts, and I will be moderating. If there is a spamming account, gone it shall be! Now to get to the forum is a little tricky: http://forum.goodmorninggeek.com will take you to a launch page, but to get to the forums etc. you need to go to http://forum.goodmorninggeek.com/forum . Trickey, right? I am still looking for a solution to this, but soon I might just have a big black button that says “PROCEED TO FORUM”. We’ll see. Currently, I have forums for the following topics: iPod touch & iPhone, iPod, Mac, and windows. Windows has Vista, 7, and XP under it. To create an account on the forums just go to http://forum.goodmorninggeek.com and on the left click Create new account. Then, put in your desired username and email address and a password will be sent to you. to login, go to http://forum.goodmoringgeek.com/forum and put your USERNAME (NOT EMAIL) in the username box and in the Password box enter the password that was in your email (you can copy and paste the password as well). To create a new forum topic login and in the left sidebar click Create Content. Then click Forum Topic. enter the name for the thread and select the forum it needs to go under. Type in some additional information for the questions and click post. Yr post will show up in the right sidebar under what’s new so other people can see it. To reply to thread, you will need to comment on it (sorry, it was the best I could do, but it works). Have fun on the Good Morning Geek Forum!

Good Morning Geek Community

Do you want to share your thoughts with the world, but don’t want to start a website or blog? Maybe you have started a website or blog, but you don’t get that many views? Well, Good Morning geek Community is your place to post your tch thoughts and have them read by the world. Remember, the views are powered by you, so spread the word of community.goodmorninggeek.com so everybody gets more readers! As I mentioned up there, http://community.goodmorninggeek.com is the URL. To post something to GMGC, you need to sign up (which is free!) by doing the following: On the main page click Create New account on the right sidebar. Enter your information and an email should arrive with your login info. Enter the information in the right sidebar and click login. To create a new post to GMGC, login and in the left sidebar click create content. Then, click create new post. Write that post and click save, and it will appear on the homepage. Have fun!

Tech Savvy from the start!

Posted on by

I was browsing my family archives of photos using the new Cooliris recently and I came across a quite funny photo. It features Me as a two year old showing a laptop screen to my Dad. I added a caption to make it even funnier. This explains quite a bit…

Wow...

Altec Lansing expressionist ULTRA

Posted on by

Disclaimer: All opinions in this post are only my own and were not influenced in any form by employees or representatives of Altec Lansing.

I have quite a thing for Altec Lansing speakers. I had a pair of extremely old speakers which were working beautifully, and I could pump them pretty loud. But then I was introduced to these. Thanks quite a lot to Altec Lansing for sending me these speakers to review and for keeps. I really enjoy ’em!

Design

These speakers are quite elegant, and feature a beautiful glass design that leaves absolutely no impression of these speakers being “sub-standard”, in fact quite the contrary.

Geometrically simple glass with 3" drivers and 1" tweeters

The large sub shared the same geometry as the other speakers, elegantly linking them.

Another quite interesting aspect of the system is the control unit.

Cool controller design!

To change the volume, simply twist the middle section of the control unit. You can determine your level of volume using the lights that appear. Also, while playing music, the lights flash in some cool patterns that you are unlikely to find anywhere else. Press the Treble and Bass buttons to control the levels of, well, treble and bass. On the side you will find a headphone jack and an AUX input, both very convenient!

But in this side of the review I came across a pretty minor problem. The cables for the sound system had an incredibly hard time stretching across my three monitor array and back down under my desk. I was barely able to squeeze the cables to fit, but I eventually did accomplish that. This may not be an obstacle for all persons, but if you have a huge multiple yard monitor array to stretch across, you may need to find some kind of workaround (try putting the subwoofer on the desk!).

Sound

I must say that as far as speakers go, these deliver crisp, separated, clean sound. The large subwoofer delivers bass that can literally shake the ground. The best thing about the system is that you can hear each range of sound incredibly clearly. It doesn’t seem to merge them together, almost as if every range was being played from a different speaker. This thing can get up to quite a bit of decibalage… How much, I have no idea as I don’t have one. But I’d bet it’s pretty high! The sound is really amazing even when at full blast. At full blast there is no muffling or distortion. You may go deaf (EXPRESSION!), but other than that it’s quite a remarkable sound system. You really just can’t describe the sound that this amazing system emits. On bass rich songs, you can literally feel the bass drum hit you (almost). The ground shakes and it just about literally emits a shock wave of sound that will hit you with force (literally!). You might as well just be at the concert itself.

Yet I have come across a problem. When there is no music pumping through the system, you get a fair amount of quite annoying background noise. Like a hissing kind of sound… No, this is not a particular manufacturing defect, I have heard of it on many forums online.

But I actually think of it as a reminder to turn the speakers off to save energy, as that may benefit the cause of this high energy bill; after all, 200 watts is quite a bit of power sucking, plus I’m starting to get worried about the structural integrity of my floor, and I hope that I won’t be falling through anytime soon.

Conclusion

Here is a basic list of pros and cons:

Pros:

  1. Rich, deep sound
  2. Can blast right through the floor (almost)
  3. Clean elegant design
  4. Bass rich, but not too much!
  5. Real glass, not cheap plastic
  6. 200-watt power

Cons:

  1. A fair bit of background noise
  2. Cables a bit short for multiple monitor arrays

I’m not going to count that last con as very few will encounter this same problem, and as I said, this can be worked around by putting the sub on the desk, which may result in an investment in a new desk after the sub blasts right through it (almost).

So the average score averages out to 8.7/10… OR FOUR [point 3] OUT OF FIVE STARS!

The Altec Lansing expressionist ULTRA system sells online for $199.95, which I think is a great price for this quality.

Once again, thanks a lot to Altec Lansing for sending me this speaker system for free to review and keep!

For more info and purchases, visit the links below!

Altec Lansing homepage

expressionist ULTRA

Tweetie for Mac

Posted on by

Looking for a balance between the minimalistic Twitterific and the feature rich TweetDeck?

Well, you have found you match, and it’s name is Tweetie.

Tweetie is a simple yet feature rich free app for Mac. The free app is ad supported, but DON’T WORRY! The ads appear in-line with tweets, and use the same format, and don’t flash at all! The ads are provided by Fusion, and I’m sad to say that I’ve actually clicked on many of the ads because they looked interesting, and I actually bought an iPhone app that was being advertised.

Start out by looking at the interface.

Sleek, simple, stylish interface!

As you can tell, these are simply the tweets of people I follow. In the left you can click the variety of icons, that are self explanatory [but just in case, @= replies, the envelope=DMs, the magnifying glass=search].

If you look at the replies (@ symbol), you can see there is a blue dot above it. This indicates that there is a tweet in that category that I have not read. Once I have read the tweet the dot disappears.

Lets take a look at the replies tab [just click on the @ to get there].

Same sleek interface, but filtered everything but replies.

You can reply to a tweet at anytime by clicking the curvy arrow at the top right of each tweet. You can also repost (AKA retweet) a tweet by right clicking on a tweet ad clicking repost. You can set if it does ______(via @_____) OR RT @_____: _________ I prefer the RT @____:__ because it is more commonly used. You can change that in the preferences.

The DM (envelope) tab is quite interesting.

As you can tell, DMs are sorted into conversations with each tweeter (tsk-tsk) you have sent and received DMs with. Click on a user to see your conversation with them.

Almost like iChat!

You can click the big reply button in the top right to DM someone back.

The search function is also very interesting.

Search for Tweetie by entering tweetie on the previous screen and pressing return!

To search, click on the magnifying glass. In the search box that appears in the top right, enter a term (in this case it was tweetie), and press return. the box will disappear and tweets for your search will appear in the window. Visit any other tabs and come back to the search and the search term will disappear!

Another great cool feature of search is having multiple searches in different windows.

This function only available in searches.

After you open it in a new window, go back and enter another term. The window will remain with the same search terms, and you can open as many windows (which means as many searches) as you want.

Plenty of searches for popular twitter clients!

Also, did I mention you can use boolean search terms with the search (such as AND or OR)?

Wow, I almost forgot

1 to create a tween, just press Command-N. a small window will open where you can type anything. Type in a URL and press Option>Command>S to automatically shorten it. Then, just press command>return and the tweet will be off. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser so on any page, you can click on the bookmarklet and a tweet will open with the URL in it. Cool! Also, you can even assign a global hot-key so in any app, anywhere, you can press this key sequence and the new tweet window will open, and not bring all of the other tweetie windows with it. Awesome!

Among all of these great things there are a couple of extra things that Tweetie does.

Tweetie has seamless support for multiple accounts, so you can have it look like this:

Click on the other icon to see replies, dms, etc. for that account!

Also, you can enable a small menubar icon which does one simple thing: indicate when you have unread tweets. When you have unread tweets it looks like this:

Click on the icon to show the tweetie window!

But when you have no unread tweets it looks like THIS:

Blends in fine!

I hope you enjoy tweetie, and for $20 you can disable ads, which by the way look like this:

Simple, interesting, in-line ads.

Ad-supported Download

Registration Homepage

Homepage

Review: GelaSkins for Laptops

Posted on by

As you may know, I recently attended the Macworld Expo, which I sadly thought was a bit of a letdown [link].

But I did get something cool, and that would be a Gelaskin. Thanks to Macworld, I was able to get mine at HALF PRICE!’

I got the Gelaskin with a piece of artwork called Cohabitations by Philip Straub, and here’s what it looks like on my Mac:

Stylish!

One of the great things about this thing is that the surface is scratch resistant. Yay!

There are so many great aspects of this, and because of my 100GB of hosting space at mediatemple, I’ll happily list all of them.

The adhesive is sticky, but not gooey, which gives easy removal. Yay!

It’s not bulky at all, its very thin. Yet it is quite durable!

As you may tell by that picture up there, there is a border of aluminum around it (actually it’s the lid of my MacBook which the skin dosn’t [and isn’t supposed to!] cover up). This makes it so it’s easier to put on, it shows of the “still-aluminum-ness” of my MacBook, and it doesn’t have to be aligned completely perfectly. This also makes it less prone to waring at the edges.

I must say, this is a great way to get “protection with style, not bulk” for your iPod, phone, laptop, and so on. GelaSkins makes custom cuts for a large array of devices. You can even make your own Gelaskin using your own image and text. Cool!

Gelaskins range from $15-$30, depending on your device.

Get your own at gelaskins.com!

Macworld 2010: a Letdown?

Posted on by

Well, of course I went to Macworld. This is the first Macworld without Apple, and my first Macworld myself.

I went and as I found, I couldn’t see anything that was interesting AND affordable, making it quite boring for me. Sure, there was MacDictate but lets go through the list:

#1: Would it benefit to my lifestyle?

#2: Is it affordable?

Well, MacDictate; I don’t need it, therefore it wouldn’t benefit to my lifestyle. Plus, it is how many hundreds of dollars?

Lets see…

Scoche Earbuds. Would it benefit to my lifestyle? No, I already have a great pair of earbuds. Nope.

And so on.

To guage that this was in fact NOT USUAL for it to be so boring was my good friend Spencer Schoeben (netspencer.com), who I came across and assured me that Macworld isn’t usually like so.

In fact, I came back with absolutely NO VIDEO at all. And I won’t be coming back tomorrow.

But I did pick up a Gelaskin at half price, because it was so cool and of course it was at half price, review coming soon.

What did you think of the Macworld Expo (if you went)?

Blue Snowflake

Posted on by

This was yet another goodie I got for free at TeensInTech, but this one I won in a raffle.

Blue is known for their amazing high quality sound products, and I don’t think that the small budget snowflake is any exception. It has amazing quality sound, and  you can listen to a recording here: Snowflake Recording

Yet I did in fact encounter a problem. It seems that when it came, it was not assembled correctly, and I took it apart and turns out the motherboard with the microphone was not properly connected to the motherboard with the USB slot. After removing the bracket so it could connect properly, the thing finally worked. and as you can tell by that recording, this microphone can capture some REALLY good sound, but it does a great job capturing background noise

Sadly, the Snowflake is USB, so I can’t connect it to my (soon to arrive) Kodak Zi8, but after all, this thing was a freebie.

Overall, the Blue Snowflake is a high quality microphone great for chatting and some recording, but it is definitely not studio grade, and the price of $80 is questionable compared to what I’m getting here, with the failed factory assembly and the background noise.

Snowflake Webpage

Altec Lansing OrbitM

Posted on by

I recently attended the TeensInTech conference, which was quite fun. But they also gave out so maby goodies, that I paid $35 to go and came back with more than $100 of free stuff and I got to meet Steve “The Woz” Wozniak. Worth it? Ya. One of the things they gave away was the Altec Lansing OrbitM portable speaker. And it’s worth far more than the money I paid for it.

The design is overall very simple and elegant.

As you can tell, it is very small and cylinder shaped. It plugs in through a standard 3.0mm jack on and iPod or mp3 player. It also comes with an adapter to plug it into the 2.5mm Jack on a cell phone. It runs on 3 AAA batteries and even comes with this convirnient carrying case, complete with caribiner.

The unit comes with a slip of paper that says to turn off all base or treble enhancement settings. I must agree with them!
The sound is full and deep. The tiny little thing can go really loud too! The sound is just simply pleasing, and you don’t need a small speaker preset to get great sound out if this thing.

Basically, this is probably one of the best speakers of it’s size in current existence. It usually runs for $40, but they were given out fir free at the Teens In Tech Conference, held annually. This speaker totally rocks, and I got it for free!

Spewing Star: 4X6 Print giveaway

Posted on by

I’ve decided to do a free giveaway of a signed 4X6 print of Spewing Star (click here).

I will give it away to the fifth person to send an email to art@goodmorninggeek.com.

If you win I’ll reply requesting your address and soon this 4X6 glossy print of Spewing Star will be yours!

Just to let you know, there is a small smudgy type thing on the left side towards the bottom. Everything comes at a price :-).

I’ve done my best to get it off, but if it is going in a frame, then you should be fine.

5th person! art@goodmorninggeek.com!

My thoughts on the new iPad

Posted on by

The iPad was THE BIG announcement on 1/27. It is the once-rumored tablet was awaited for months, and it’s finally here. the wall street journal said, “the last time I saw this much excitement about a tablet it had some commandments written on it.” Well, here it is with positive and negative opinion, but here are my thoughts:

Many of the negative opinions state that the iPad is just “an oversized iPod Touch”, which I don’t disagree with. But it’s so much better. Between the amazing redesign taking advantage of the bigger screen Also, the keyboard is now almost full-sized. Plus you can get the keyboard dock for it to use a physical keyboard, or if you already have the apple wireless keyboard you can connect that through bluetooth as well. I completely forgive the keyboard for these two things.

Another amazing thing is the iBookstore, the store of iBooks. I find it quite awesome, but the prices NOT so awesome….

The iPad has a custom built silicone chip called the A4, built by apple’s hardware team in constant with the software team, which gives an amazing level of performance. this is absent in the iPod touch and iPhone. I assume you have heard of the game DoodleJump, #1 in the App Store. Now imagine playing that on a ten inch screen. who can’t call that awesome?

10 Hours of battery life? Wow….. That’s a lot…. The movie watching experience is so amazing due to the LED backlit display, which also has IPS allowing you to view the iPad from 178º with a completely clear contrast of color etc.they have also redesigned the iWork suite for the iPad. Now I’m sold. Yet only a few more months….. Did I mention they are coming out with a 3G version? Check this out: for 250MB per month, you only have to pay $15. Even better, for UNLIMITED 3G data you can pay a monthly fee for only $30!! Also, there is NOO contract, and you can cancel anytime. There is still one HUUUGEE flaw in well not exactly the device, but the network the 3G plan is on: AT&T SUCKS!!! I might be okay If I didn’t have any dropped calls but all of the dropped calls and lack of service AT MY HOUSE made me switch…. I have had 1 dropped call since I’ve had Verizon, and that doesn’t mean the 3G data coverage would be any better….

But I must say my favorite feature is the price. Everybody was so sure that it would be $999, which apple mentioned was predicted at the announcements. But the price for the lowest end 16GB WiFi only model is……. $499!!!!!!1 WOOHOO!!!! For 32 to 64, you need to add a hundred bucks more…. worth it? I dunno… Also, the same applies for the WiFi +3G version, but it all costs an extra $130 for the 3G radio… Overall, my opinion concludes to….

OMG I WANT ONE