Archive for the “System Tech” Category

End Of Life

For the past several years tomorrowland has been a personal technology blog about all the things that made MY life futuristic and fun.  When I started that iteration of tomorrowland.com back in October 2008 it was my goal to blog every day, which I did for several months.  But over time my attitude changed and I moved away from the desire to blog with such regularity.  Eventually I had to ask myself “What is the point?  Why blog at all?  What do I get out of it?”  I suspect many PERSONAL bloggers have gone through this cycle.  At first they’re all gung-ho and then eventually they realize how much personal time is being wasted and how many other things they’re missing out on and how little money their advertising has brought in.  Sure there are those out there who are trying to make something real out of it.  Turn it in to a business or be seen as journalists.  But for me it was always mostly just therapy.

Then there was the time that I was at CES and in the middle of a discussion I mentioned to someone at an audio company that I had a blog and it basically ended the conversation.  Suddenly I was seen as a ‘journalist’ and that was that.  Let me be clear – I am not a journalist.  If anything I was a journal-er… meaning that I was journaling, or basically writing ‘a diary’ that I allow other people to read.  In general I don’t believe that bloggers are journalists.

Next is the fact that if I’m honest with myself I can admit that when I started blogging in 2008 it was a distraction that took me away from another important project I was working on.  There are posts in here that took several hours per night for several nights to complete.  I spent money on products, did photo shoots to try to get good pictures and would send links as tips to all the ‘real’ tech blog sites. Then would check in every few hours to see how many reads I had.  And all of that effort sabotaged the other project that I should have worked on.  And eventually I did get back on track and get that other project moving again.  But how much quicker could I have been successful in that other venture had I stayed focused on that instead of being distracted with this?  I’m not the sort of person to look back with regret.  But I do try to learn from the past.

Therefore as I’ve mentioned before, I won’t be blogging much any more or maybe not at all.  It doesn’t mean that tomorrowland.com won’t see any new posts.  From time to time I might get the itch and post something – maybe just for the therapy.  Or maybe someone else will jump in and post here.  But it sort of doesn’t matter.  The fact is that THIS post will probably only be read by 5 people.. and I’m ok with that.  I’m ok with zero people reading it.  The therapy works the same either way.

Old content

Since I feel that most of that old content is still relevant (or maybe has some historical value) I plan on leaving it online and reachable from the same old links.

Comments

I’m mostly shutting down comments. The comment system here is like a giant glue-trap for spammers.  Without the love and care a daily blogger can give this place, comments just bogged down with questionable things that honestly many times I can’t tell if they’re real comments or fake ones.  Here are a few examples:

“This is the most informative article I’ve ever read”  - Really?  How flattered I am right now that you would say that!  Even though you sound very much like an alien robot trying too hard to sound both human and english-speaking.  I’m gonna vote spammer on that one.

“Fantastic blog! I definitely love how it’s easy on my eyes as well as the facts are well written. I am wondering how I can be notified whenever a new post has been made. I have subscribed to your rss feed which really should do the trick! Have a nice day!” – Whatever.. Even if this one isn’t spam who cares.  But again sound like a very general comment to me.  (oh plus the link on the poster’s name takes you to a RX site).

“What a globe we are living in!! It just exhibits us all up to the fools we are…”  Wait.. what’s with the dot dot dot at the end?  Couldn’t bother finishing the sentence?  SPAM!

“This is getting a bit more subjective, but I much prefer the Zune Marketplace. The interface is colorful, has more flair, and some cool features like ‘Mixview’ that let you quickly see related albums, songs, or other users related to what you’re listening to.”  and it goes on like that for a few more sentences.  See this one can be tough because it sound like a real person giving their opinion… except that it was a comment in a post that had nothing to do with this.  Plus.. who gives a crap about the Zune anyway!

This next one is tough and represent a new strategy in comment spamming… “Hey! Just wanted to thank you for this article. It’s the best one I could find on how to do this. I wish more people took the time like you to inform people of this stuff. I love mac but why in the hell would they place sata ports THERE!?”  See it starts off sounding very spammish but then ends totally on the subject matter that the post was about.  But the poster’s name link that takes you to some dude’s photo site.  SO I let this one slide.  People do have websites.  But still.. I almost deleted it because, again, no new info was given here.  Not like he said “I found it easier to slide the power supply out FIRST and then use a little tape to hold the sata connector in.”  Something more than just “you’re so cool thanks for posting this.. oh and since this post is about sata ports.. I’ll say  ’sata ports’ in my comment so it will get past the spam filter.  Yeah on second thought this one is clearly just a post to get their web site name out there.

I’ve actually seen a trend of comments that are completely on subject but have a slight oddity to the language that could be a real non-native-english speaking real person who wanted to comment… but then have a single link to some other site.. maybe a legit comment, maybe not.  Honestly I don’t have the time or energy to figure it out or worry about it.  The truth is that if someone has a real question about something I posted, feel free to send me an email.  But otherwise, comments are just too much work to manage.  So we will be completely disabling comments on all old tomorrowland.com posts.

While the world waits for Apple to release official news about their new tablet computer, a few smaller (and lesser known) companies are releasing their own touch screen tablets.  Archos has a few models out, there’s the viliv, and then there’s the whole CrunchPad thing which is now called the JooJoo.  And I’ve never played with any of them.  I have however been (for some reason) drooling for an iSlate for the past year or so.  And in my impatience I prematurely ordered a Camangi WebStation and am ready to report the bad news…

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TLP001 – In the premiere episode of “The tomorrowland.com Podcast” I review the Promise SmartStor NS4600, and discuss setting it up, using it as a media server, and explain how to set up a dynamic dns so that you can access it remotely and stream videos to your iphone over the net.  Click Podcast in the header bar to watch the episode here in HD!

With less than 30 days until WWDC I’m starting to get anxious about what new Apple iGadgets might (or might not) be released.  Will Steve Jobs be back from his curious sick leave to unveil the next big thing?  Or will it be another disappointing and uneventful keynote?  The rumors have certainly been flowing recently and whether they’re based on anything real or are just wishful thinking on the part of a few fan boys, they’ve got me hopeful that my dream mac might be in my hands soon enough.  Either way, what might be has been enough to make me hold off on upgrading my first generation iPhone – hoping that I’m only a month or two away from that third gen iPhone hardware to go along with the 3.0 iPhone software.  But what will this new iPhone be?  And what of this controversial mac tablet?

About 2 months ago I was mocking up my own concept for a mac tablet when real life got in the way of blogging.  Since then I’ve blogged very little.  I’ve also seen (on other sites) a couple of very cool mockups, one that would be completely awesome but is at least a few years off due to it’s flexible OLED design, and another that is extremely close to what I was planning.  Whipping up a fake now would be completely academic.

Being somewhat of a fan boy myself it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between my wish list and what I expect will really be released.  But here’s my take on WWDC 09… Read the rest of this entry »

This week I sold my old G5 along with a 23″ Cinema Wide Display, a BlackMagic card, Sonnet Tempo eSata card, and a Sonnet Fusion 500P populated with 5 x 500GB hard drives. It was a complete edit system including lots of fast storage, but as part of my “out with the old – in with the new” theme, it all had to go.

Hindsight certainly is 20/20 and I like to review technology after the fact to reflect on how well it worked. Overall my G5 was a great machine and it was difficult to let it go. But a couple of the components were very hard to let go: the monitor, and the storage…
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Like many others, I downloaded the beta of Safari 4 and am trying to get used to the new window layout.

One of the new features shows all your top visited sites as a grid of thumbnails. While on the surface it’s an interesting feature, it’s a bit annoying in it’s current state.  It also raises some interesting questions about things like “are advertisers paying for impressions for ads that are only shown on thumbnails?” But that’s probably a topic for a different post.

The feature also falls in line with a new trend at Apple – which is to take control away from the consumer and make certain choices for them. I originally thought of this Top Sites page as a cool way of keeping track of the main sites I want to visit each day. However, the way Apple sees it your Top Sites are explicitly the pages that you actually visit the most. Rather than giving you a list-view of sites and allowing you to drag pages into there from say, your bookmarks, all you can do is rearrange pages, and remove the ones you don’t want to see in your top sites. When a page is deleted the next most visited page is animated into place. It’s an annoying task to try to get specific pages on there. BUT NOW there’s currently no way to a secret way to manually edit those Top Sites.  (SEE UPDATE AFTER THE JUMP!)

SO! If you want tomorrowland.com to be one of your Top Sites you’ll need to start visiting us more often and convince the Safari 4 gods to make it one of your Top Sites.

But there’s more.. When I was trying to organize my Top Sites I accidentally deleted tomorrowland.com, which is certainly MY Top Site. So HOW do you get it back?

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The upcoming Dell Mini 10 looks to be a great machine, and if my hunch is right it could be an even better hacintosh than the Dell Mini 9.  The bigger, higher rez screen and real (as in reasonably sized) hard drive will put it in a different category over the 9.  Plus the normal keyboard helps too.

UPDATE: Apparently my hunch was wrong. Several commenters have pointed out that the graphics card in the Dell Mini 10 is not compatible with Leopard. A real shame since from all other accounts it would appear to be a good candidate. None-the-less, if you do want to order one for a windows machine the rest of the post is still applicable…

The official launch of the Mini 10 isn’t for a week or two, but here’s a little known fact: Even though there is no pricing information on the website, and no online order form, you can order one today if you know how to do it.  Read on for details, specs, and pricing info…

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The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has finally appeared on Dell’s website, although it’s not actually for sale yet. The big question is will we be able to install Leopard on it like we can on the Mini 9′s?

There’s already a ton a buzz and speculation going on in the forums. I’m sure once they start shipping they’ll be hacked within a few hours. Read the rest of this entry »

I normally don’t link to outside blogs but this one needs to be mentioned because it relates to my Dell Mini 9 Leopard install video.  Here’s the story on Gizmodo, here it is on 9 to 5 Mac.

I found it odd that Wired had posted a video on how to install Leopard on an MSI Wind when a) it was sort of old news, and b) it was a much more complicated process than the one I used. But even more odd was the fact that they were suggesting people download a hacked version of Leopard from Pirate Bay. Apple eventually got wind (pun intentional) of it and early reports were that they were suing Wired. Now that the dust has settled it appears that Wired has just been asked to pull the video.

Will I be asked to pull my video?  I hope not – but I also doubt it.  The fact is that in my video you can see me break the seal on a brand new Leopard box. No where do I ever suggest stealing Leopard – quite the opposite. If you’re going to experiment with Leopard on a non-apple box I think you should go out and get a fresh copy.

I’ll also give the update that our Dell Mini Hackintosh is still working great.  However, if and when Apple releases a reasonable replacement for it, we’ll sell the Dell and buy a real Apple.

[digg=http://digg.com/apple/Four_CES_2009_Products_Apple_Needs_To_Plagiarize]

Apple has always often been the innovator. The company that sets the trends. We’ve seen it time and time again with the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone. And not just full products but also ideas and technology, like adopting firewire early or dropping floppy discs early, or integrating touch so well. Think about how the touch capabilities on the iPhone has influenced a plethora of copy cat products.

Some might believe that Apple innovated the GUI and the mouse. But they DIDN’T, they stole plagiarized those technologies during a visit to PARC, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. Some of Apple’s best innovations have been things that they’ve RE-invented. But Apple hasn’t really innovated anything since the iPhone – and that was years ago. Every MacWorld and WWDC since then has been mostly disappointing.

It’s time for Apple to “innovate” again. There are 4 products I saw at CES that Apple needs to look at, reverse engineer, license, or plagiarize. Read the rest of this entry »