Monthly Archives: March 2010

Incase Neoprene Sleeve Plus

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Do you have a laptop? Chances are you do. And because you are reading this, chances are, it’s a Mac. Probably a MacBook or MacBook Pro. And I’m guessing you travel with it (after all, it’s a laptop). Instead of just throwing it into your suitcase, protect it. And now with just any case, protect it with a custom-fitted incase neoprene sleeve.

These cases don’t fit with any laptop. They are custom-fitted for particular computers. The 13-inch version works with the new 13″ MacBook and MacBook Pro. If you have a 13″ MacBook (late 2008, aluminum unibody) it works as well (that’s what I have).

The computer snugly fits it, so it doesn’t bump around in the sleeve. It is lined with a faux-fur interior, which will not scratch that precious laptop in a million years (as long as you don’t get sand in it for some reason). It even has a cool protective border around the edges, so in case something bumps in to it your MacBook will be just fine.

And last but DEFINITELY not last, you are rushing through airport security. Avoid everybody in the line behind you yelling at you for taking too much time, because this sleeve is airport safe. Just slip the whole thing out of your backpack and safely through security it goes. Another benefit of this is you don’t have to expose your MacBook to where all sorts of things go (in the bins, I mean). If there is sand in one of those bins and you put your precious but bare MacBNook in there, SCRRRRRATCH! Not good, and that will NOT put a smile on my face. Also, if any of you consult support from me (feel free to by emailing support@goodmorninggeek.com), I highly recommend use thus case. It is available in multiple colors and also for 15″ MaxBook Pro, among many other diferent computers.

Let me warn you, it’s $40 (er, $39.95), but definitely worth it. Get yours below!

13″ MacBook and MacBook Pro

15″ MacBook Pro

17″ MacBook Pro

MacBook Air

I’m getting an iPad. Why?

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Yup, you saw the title. I am in fact getting an iPad. Why?

Recently, My iPod touch got soaking wet, and died. I could go out and get another iPod touch, but there is the iPad coming out. Although the iPaf is simply a huge iPod touch, it isstill useful if you don’t already have an uPod touch. If you had the choice, the iPad has more potential. Longer battery life, a bigger screen, and the super-speedy A4 processor. The iPad has more flexibility than the touch. It as the normal app store PLUS special iPad apps like the new beautiful NYTimes reader. It ha a stunning LED backlit display. AND, it has the iBookstore. The built-in apps were all beautifully designed for the new screen.

Say you already have in iPhone/iPod touch. Why do you need an iPad? you don’t. But if you don’t own an iPhone/touch, then you should consider the iPad. Prepare for an iPad Review!

Writer’s Block?!

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You may not know this, but I keep a list of things to post right here on GMG. When I get a new idea or find something cool, I add it to the list. It’s like a box where I put things in to deal with in detail later.

And so far, that has worked. But my list is starting to run low…

I have reviewed quite a bit of freeware for the mac, and every day I check for something new. But where did those developers go?!

SOOOOO, I have a bit of writer’sblockphobia. The fear of having writers block. WHICH is EXACTLY why I need YOUR help!

Please, suggest a how-to, freeware app, or iPhone app under $3.00 in the Suggestions tab to the left. It really helps this place going!

Also, please click one of the ads in the sidebar to help towards reviews of paid iPhone apps! 🙂

Thanks to all of my readers, now is your time to make a difference to the content that appears on THIS site!

–Swishadagr8<->Max

How-to: Get Facebook Chat in iChat

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Many of us use Facebook, and have probably noticed that there is a chat function. Also, man of us use AIM in iChat. Personally, there are always more people on facebook than on AIM, so I can chat with a ot more people. Here’s how to integrate it with iChat so you don’t have to login to facebook every time you want to chat with someone or let someone else chat with you.

Luckily, Facebook recently launched their Jabber thingy, which has done well.

In iChat, click in the menubar iChat>Preferences. Then click accounts, where you should get a tab like this.

The Accounts preferences is shown here.

Now, just click the little + in the bottom left, and you are shown this screen.

For account type, select Jabber.

For the Account Name, you need to find some info.

Login to facebook.com and click on profile in the top right. It should go to your profile page with wall postings and your profile picture. Next, look in the URL bar of the browser. It should say http://facebook.com/user.

What is says where user should be is what you put in front of @chat.facebook.com. So for this example, the Account Name would be user@chat.facebook.com.

Your password is your password that you use to login to facebook all 5 times a day.

Now click done and wait. The new buddy window will appear, but it will say connecting. It may take a while for it to connect, and times may vary. for me it took about 45 seconds, others about 5. Whatever, but it still works!

After is connects, you will see all of your online facebook friends. Double-click a friend that has a green dot next to it and start chattin it up!



How did Google get their Street View Images?

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Many of us use Google Maps. If you don’t have a GPS, it is usually the #1 site you will go to to get directions. It is mostly accurate, clean free, and of course, by Google.

But one thing that many people find useful is Street view. Before they go, they can see whta their destination should look like so you arent frantically searching for house numbers when you supposedly arrived.

If you have played with Street View before, you may have found that you can drag 360º PLUS go up and down. How were these images captured?

And just in case you havent played with Street View before, click here to go to google maps and click the little golden dude over the vertical zoom bar on the left of the map to get a street view of times square, NY. Click and drag the image to pan this 360º panoramic snapshot. The truth will be revealed now…

It’s a normal monday. La la, coming home from school, lots of traffic WHOW WHAT IS THAT!!

It took me a few seconds to realize t but it was the same kind of rig that google used to get their Street View shots. Here’s the pic I took with my phone:

Wow...

As you can tell, it is this sphere mounted on top of a car. the sphere has numerous cameras in little holes that all take pictures at once. Then, someone puts them all together. So if you see this UMO (Unidentified Mobile Object) around your town, start jumping around in hope that your streets may soon have street view in Google Maps.

Have you found something cool just like this, but have nowhere to post it? Don’t want to start your own blog because you might not actually have THAT MANY thoughts to post? Post it to the community for free at http://community.goodmorninggeek.com!

iPaperPad

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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!

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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!!

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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!