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.

First let me do the whole reviewer disclaimer thing… On what can only be described as a moment of weak ignorance, I ordered a Camangi WebStation.  That was December 4th and I paid full price.  Normally I wouldn’t plop down almost $400 for a product that no one has seen or tested yet, one that in the early videos looked quite questionable, and one from a company that I’ve never heard of before.  But I did.  Against all common sense I hoped that it would be a decent solution to use until Apple gets theirs out.

At the same time I also contacted Camangi in an attempt to get an early “review unit.”  We did correspond back and forth a bit but ultimately they decided to not supply me with a “free” unit but rather promised to simply ship my purchased unit to me via a faster method than everyone else’s – so that I could review it (hopefully) before they start arriving to the 1000′s of people who ordered them. Therefore the unit I reviewed here is the one I paid full price for, and my buyer’s remorse is certainly adding to the sting here a bit.  But then again most things I discuss on this site are items that I’ve purchased.  So take that bias in to account if you feel it’s relevant.

My Couch Computing Concept

Our previous current couch computer is the hacintoshed Dell Mini 9.  It works well, is fairly fast (for an atom processor running OS X), it’s fully a mac, and cost about $300-$400 retail.  And it’s small.  We mostly use it for quick imdb lookups while watching tv and movies, and my daughter plays flash games on it.  So in my perfect world, the ultimate couch computer would be a smallish tablet, no keyboard to get in the way, easy to stow between couch cushions, but would be as fast and responsive as the dell or as an iPhone.  It needs to have full web capabilities, support flash video (unlike the iPhone), hulu, youtube, and all that.  It should also act as a PMP so that my daughter can watch videos on it in the car or wherever.  It needs to be multi-useful.

So I’ve been excited about getting this unit in – and I spent all Christmas watching the DHL tracking reports to see when it would arrive.  But on the other hand I didn’t have high expectations for it.  It has very little RAM and a tiny processor.  In my correspondence with Camangi I asked over and over about it’s capabilities, specifically with regard to playing video – but they would not answer those questions.  This made me begin to think that the reason they were avoiding my questions (and didn’t want to send me a review unit) was because they didn’t like the true answers.

The Missing Video Review

This was going to be a video review and I will post a video as soon as I can.  Last night was one of the most frustrating evenings I’ve had in a while and I was unable to get much video shot.  To really see this thing on video would prove what I’m saying here, so I want to get some kind of video posted. But in the mean time I did mess around with the WebStation long enough to know what it really is, and wanted to get this review out as soon as I could.  So let’s get started…

What’s in the box

The package arrived via DHL in a small brown paper box, inside which was the retail box.  The box contains the WebStation, a carry sleeve/pouch, a pair of cheap earphones that appear to have a microphone attached, a cloth to wipe the screen, a quick start guide, another booklet containing legal disclaimers, the power supply, and the stand to use it as a picture frame, which is basically a suction cup on a stick.

My first impressions were that the WebStation hardware seemed sturdy enough. It has 3 physical buttons on the front: home, quick menu, and return.  On the right side there are ports for headphones, mini usb, a reset button, a normal sized usb, and DC in.  On the left side are physical volume buttons, on the top is a power button, and on the top back is a micro SD card slot preloaded with an 8GB stick.

(same side from the back…)

On major thing lacking in the box is a real user manual.  The quickstart guide does tell you how to unlock the device, something you’d probably never figure out on your own.  But it’s very slim on details and instructions.  For example, I still have no idea how to load music on the device.  I assume that I need to add a “Music” folder to the memory stick, but that is a complete guess.  Another example is that I was surprised to discover that it would charge off the USB cable when it’s plugged in to my mac.  But also debaffled by the meaning of the “beep-beep-beep” when the screen went to sleep while plugged in to my mac.

Powering it on

When you first press the power button at the top, it takes about 7 seconds before you see the word “ANDROID…”  Total boot time is 54 seconds.  You are then presented with a lock screen that shows the time/date.  Unlocking it takes you to the Launcher, which is a menu of app icons.

Speed and Responsiveness

You have to admit that we’re all used to the way the iPhone works and in a way it is the standard upon which all other touch based gadgets are measured. Since the loss of my 3GS iPhone I’ve been back to using my old original edge phone and have been struggling with the comparitive slowness of that old thing. But the old edge phone screams in comparison to the WebStation.  Actions like touching and dragging to scroll windows are taken for granted on the iPhone, and the WebStation does do that touch scrolling thing, but seems to skip along the action.  One way to describe it is if the iPhone operates at 30 frames per second, the WebStation probably runs at about 5 to 10.  I also found myself accidentally triggering buttons when trying to scroll.  Something that DOES happen on the iPhone occasionally, but was happening A LOT on the WebStation.  And with the overall slowness of the unit, getting into the wrong menu is a pain because then you have to slowly navigate out of it as well.

Here are some speed/usage comparison examples between the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone:

Photos – First off, it’s not a multi-touch display, it is a resistive single touch screen.  So zooming in and out is done via on-screen zoom icons, not multi-touch pinch actions.  The fair comparison here is the responsiveness of touch-dragging scroll around on a photo.  When you first touch and start to drag it takes several seconds before the unit seems to know that you’re dragging.  Then it catches up and does it’s best to keep up with your finger, updating the screen about 5 to 10 times per second.  This sluggishness is generally felt everywhere in the UI.

Typing – When you click on a field where text can be entered, a virtual touch keyboard appears on the bottom of the screen.  Typing is best done one letter at a time, making sure that the UI has got your letter before moving on to the next.  If you type too fast sometimes the keyboard will just go away.  It seems to not be able to keep track of touches faster than about 5 per second either.  Of course this kills my couch computer concept as it’s sort of frustrating to even enter text.

I’ll cover web browsing and video playback in their own sections..

But first I have to say that I was excited about the WebStation being Google Android based.  I don’t even mind it NOT being multi-touch.  I think the overall interface is good, but the processor just can’t keep up with a real user.  If this was powered with the Atom processor from my Dell Mini 9 it would be a completely different story.  But the way it is now the sluggishness is just too much of a factor.

Web Browsing

I think the biggest test should be basic web browsing.  After all, the product is called the WEB station, and therefore should be optimized at surfing the web. The first test was to simultaneously launched both the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone to the home page of this website (tomorrowland.com).  Both devices were on my home wifi network.  The iphone loaded the page about 20 seconds quicker than the WebStation.  Then trying to test scrolling on the WebStation I touched and dragged the screen and instead of it scrolling it launched a link.  In order to ensure that you’re going to scroll you have to touch and hold until you see that it’s scrolling, then drag your finger.  Something that I would find hard to do when going back and forth between using my iPhone and this thing.

The next test is what sites work and what doesn’t.  Well, just like the iPhone, FLASH does not work.  This wipes out hulu and youtube and even my own tomorrowland.com/podcast page, and unlike the iPhone there is no youtube application.  This also wipes out all flash games, which was one of my desired uses for the WebStation.

I’ve already complained about the typing and the scrolling.  But one other thing I noticed is that most apps are web apps.  The ebook reader, and the app marketplace both use the web browser to do their thing.  So if one is slow they all are.

Video

All my hopes and dreams are crushed when it comes to video playback.  It’s no wonder the people at Camangi completely skirted all of my questions about video playback.  My big question to them was can it play full screen video at 30fps.  The answer is a big fat no way!  Not even close.  With the lack of a user manual to detail the specifications for the most compatible video formats I guessed and loaded a couple of samples.  The unit did come preloaded with the promo video from this page, but looks atrocious when playing back.  It seems a shame to not make use of that 800 x 480 pixel screen with movie watching.

The first video I tried was a 3 minute, 22 MB H.264 video running at about 1 Mbps.  Frame size was 480 x 324 at 30fps.  I suppose it was encoded to work on an iPod.  The audio played fine but the picture lagged very far behind, causing it to be grossly out of sync.  The video frames that played did so at about 5 or 10 fps.  Skipping to the middle of the video did catch it up, but it’s clear the device is not powerful enough to play video.

The second video I tried was a movie that was encoded to play on a PSP.  It also played very slow visually while the audio played normally.  It was also very much out of sync right from the beginning.  Very disappointing.

Harsh Conclusion

My suspicion is that the unit is basically a digital picture frame loaded with a cell phone version Google Android with a touch screen.  It came with a phone headset complete with a mic and answer button.  All through the menus there are mentions of things like “baseband” and “ringtones” but it’s not a phone.  And the weird thing is that I don’t think the processor in it is even powerful enough to run a phone.  Had they marketed it as a touch screen digital photo frame with a web browser and sold it for about $100 it would be somewhat reasonable.  And before you think about complaining about how hard I’m being on it, consider this: The WebStation is $390.  For $199 you can get an iPod Touch.  If mac made a 7 inch iPod touch it would blow this thing out of the water.  Completely.  Or for about the same price you could get a Dell Mini 9, or an Archos 7 – which are completely different products, but still something to consider.  Or you could save your money and wait for Apple to release the iSlate and I suspect that will be THE CE product of 2010.

Of course there is more to the WebStation that I didn’t have time to cover, but to be honest the rest really doesn’t matter.  The weather app is nice and works well.  So far I haven’t figured out how to load music on it and so haven’t been able to try out it’s ‘cover flow’ mode.  But essentially it’s about as powerful as a digital picture frame, and that’s very sad. Basically my plan at this point is to call American Express and find out what I can do to return and refund.  In my opinion the Camangi WebStation is a total fail and I can’t recommend it to anyone at any price.

I will update this post with some videos as soon as I get a chance.

Also – Thanks to gizmodo for ‘reprinting’ this review on their site.  It’s always nice to get a link for a hard night’s work.

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…

Steve Jobs

Let me start with the Steve Jobs thing.  I started writing this post a few days before it was announced that Phil Schiller and other executives would be giving the keynote.  I’ll just say that I wish Steve all the best.  I had hoped that SJ would be recovered enough to be present and give the keynote.  Although, as gizmodo.com pointed out, Steve did say that he would be out until the END of July.  And since WWDC is July 9th I should have known.  The fan boy in me would love to see Steve do the “one more thing”-thing one more time.  Still, I strongly believe, and have stated it here in the past, that Apple needs to move beyond Steve as a singular figurehead.  If someone else announces the next big thing it should prove to the financial community that Apple can thrive with or without Steve.

iPhone rev 3

I think there have been enough rumors floating around regarding a new iPhone that at least some of it has to be true.  Not to mention the clues within the 3.0 iPhone OS.  I think a faster processor, larger RAM, 32GB capacity, better camera, video recording and editing functionality are all a given at this point.  The open questions lie in the form factor, the possibility of a front facing camera, and the idea of 3G being bumped up by 2x or even 4x.

While I would love to see another update to the physical design of the iPhone, sadly I expect that it will remain the same.  As far as a front facing camera, it’s a feature that mixed with video chat would be awesome.  However if the form stays the same, I doubt a front-facing camera will be included in this version.  Also, Apple has a tendency to save features for later revisions and without a redesign of the iPhone’s body it’s highly unlikely that they’ll add in a 2nd camera.  I also don’t see a camera flash in this release for the same reason.  I hope that I’m wrong and that it’s all crammed into a new body, but I doubt it.

MacBooks

When Apple announced the MacBook Air I was very disappointed and felt like they missed an opportunity.  The idea that the product was so-named because it was ‘as light as air’ (or whatever the reasoning was) seemed like a waste.  To me the MacBook Air should have been a mac with built in wimax or 3G connectivity – the ‘Air’ then conveying freedom, or getting it’s connectivity from the air.  This time around it seems that 3G MacBooks are a strong possibility.  And I hope there will be a way to add the functionality to current MacBooks.

What about a smaller MacBook Air?  Could it be Apple’s answer to a netbook?  I doubt it.  Not to mention that it wouldn’t have a competitive price point.  No, my money is still on some sort of tablet.  Read on to see what I expect that to be…

Mac Tablet

This concept from MacFormat is about the closest you could get to what I was thinking.  The tablet could dock when at work or at a desk to provide that MacBook feel, attach to a real keyboard, charge the unit, and maybe gain other connectivity.  Undock it to take it on the go and the touch screen would take over working much like an iPhone.

One side note:  It’s easy to miss out on the sense of scale in this render.  Because the designer chose a thicker beveled edge, at first this device doesn’t appear much larger than the current iPhone.  But when you consider the keyboard to be a normal sized mac keyboard (which is the same height as the current iPhone) it means that the tablet would be standing over 10 inches tall.

But what operating system will this tablet use?  For the longest time I always assumed Mac OS because I wanted as much power as possible, and for example, the ability to run photoshop.  Then at some point I was led to believe that this didn’t make sense and the tablet would use the same OS as the iPhone.  Today, I bounce back and forth between the ideas. Will run iPhone OS or Snow Leopard?  It could go either way and there are benefits to each.  Here are the arguments – on both sides:

Number One – When the iPhone was first announced Steve said that it ran OS X.  We’ve since come to realize that this was quite a stretch.  Whether or not it was based on OS X, the iPhone’s OS is in fact it’s own thing.  Last year WWDC’s theme showed two roads.  Apple is good at FUD and good at sweeping things under the carpet.  They can completely change the rules in the middle of the game and their cult followers all say “oh ok.”  (Well, more and more people are complaining – but I digress…) They’ve since renamed the OS to iPhone OS.

Well, why call it iPhone OS if it is also going to support a whole new category of personal computing devices – devices that are not phones?  One simple answer is that the iPod Touch is not a phone, yet it runs under iPhone OS.  Does it make sense?  No.  But hey, it’s Apple.  Another answer could be that the tablet might actually be a phone and come with a decent range handset to go along with it.  An interesting idea – not sure how practical.

Number Two – Snow Leopard now has touch support, and patents, patents, patents.  These are of course arguments for the tablet being a ‘real’ mac, which as a consumer I might prefer.  Gizmodo did a nice write up yesterday on “Apple’s Tablet” which used some of these arguments to favor the tablet running Snow Leopard.  Check it out.  And as I said above, I would like a tablet with enough power to run MacBook Pro apps.  But the other side of this argument is that Apple tends to remove functionality that they think no one needs.  I could see Apple releasing a tablet as more of an appliance, initially providing only the core functionality that they think most users will want in such a device.

Number Three – As I write this my laptop is sitting, well, on my lap – and it’s HOT!  To keep battery life longer and the tablet running cooler they could use a different processor that runs cooler and uses energy more efficiently.  And let’s not forget about ARM and Apple’s purchase of P.A. Semi.  Of course a non-intel processor isn’t going to run Snow Leopard without a major port of the OS.  It would however be much less work to port the iPhone OS to such a platform.

Number Four – The gizmodo.com article I mention above argues that the iPhone OS wouldn’t work in a larger device because it would be more trouble than it’s worth to reconfigure the core interface for a 10″ screen.  Ahhh, don’t put it past Apple to figure that one out.  I doubt we’ll see a 10″ screen filled with tiny little iphone app icons, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t just create a totally different summerboard launcher similar to the Leopard dock.  They could also allow multiple apps to run at the same time on different spaces.

Giz also argues that current apps wouldn’t work refitted to a 10 inch screen.  Well again, that’s not thinking it all the way through. You have to consider that the iPhone OS always had support for multiple screen sizes.  The first thing you do in every program is check the screen size and fill your window to that size.  If an 10 inch iPhone OS device were on the market tomorrow developers could start writing apps for it tomorrow with no further extensions.  All Apple would have to do is give us a simulator for that device and if it has a different processor, a compiler for it.

Also let’s consider that not all current apps work on both iPhones and iPod Touches.  Just because an app is developed for iPhone OS doesn’t mean that it has to run on all iPhone OS hardware platforms OR even on the same microprocessor.

So no, as is Trism isn’t going to work on a larger tablet.  But it could easily be modified to run on it.  The concept of an iPhone OS tablet would give developers a new platform to develop on, more screen real estate to work with, and an opportunity to make more money off of current apps simply by modifying existing code.  It really could be a win-win.

Number Five – The App Store worked so well on the iPhone and is making Apple (and developers) so much money that they’ll likely want to repeat it.  And as I said, the current app store has apps for iPod Touches and iPhones.  It’s completely capable of supporting another device and distinguishing between them all.  One way or another Apple will eventually extend the app store to other devices – because it’s a cash cow.

Where does this leave us?

It leaves us waiting for WWDC.  Looking over my own arguements above I think I’m leaning toward the tablet being iPhone OS.  That app store arguement is hard to ignore.

Well, I hope Apple does announce a tablet in four weeks. And no matter if it’s Snow Leopard or iPhone OS, I believe that Apple will re-invent it enough to make it the next big thing – and hopefully revolutionize personal computing again.

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…

The original Apple 23″ Cinema Wide Display…

…was an awesome monitor.  As much as I complain about mac monitors, their high price tag and the singular input, I have to say that Apple makes good monitors.  They last and they have good color.  If not for the fact that this monitor was ADC I would have kept it.  But I couldn’t let myself pay $100 for an adaptor that still only gets me to Apple DVI.  Maybe if it were a breakout box that got me HDMI and other inputs, I would have considered it.

The Storage

Almost three years ago I purchased a storage solution which consisted of an eSata card, an eSata mini tower, and 5 x 500 GB hard drives.  I had originally intended to set it up as a RAID 5, but after I got it found that the solution wouldn’t do Raid 5, so I used it as 5 mounted volumes. The drives were fast and (thank God) I never had any data loss with them.

To prepare for the sale I cleaned up the Fusion 500 P and blew out all the dust. Taking it apart reminded me how well it’s made.  It is completely modular.  The fan is easily removed and makes it’s connection to power simply by plugging it in.  Typicaly for these types of eSata towers, each of the drives is screwed into a tray which also slides into place making it’s connection.  This make for easy clean up.

The unit holds 5 drives, all which run off a single multiplexed eSata connector.  The accompanying host adaptor card has 4 eSata connections.  This means that theoretically you have 4 towers with 5 drives each, or 30 drives.

To get my data backed up, I replaced one of the 500 GB drives with a 1.5 BG Seagate and moved everything over.  Then swapped a few of the drives out and repeated to a second 1.5 GB drive.  Each copy of 500 GB took about 3 hours.  Since these drives are connected eSata, it’s best to shut everything down, then swap out the drive.  Powering up requires that the drive be turned on first and then the system.

Speed-wise, the drives are quite a bit slower than a direct connected eSata, presumably because of the multiplexed connection. I never noticed it in use. They always seemed fast.  I never experienced any drop frames in Final Cut. But under benchmark they came in around 40 MB/s for both read and write:

The Fusion 500P was the hardest to give up because the technology isn’t very old.  The Fusion is still being sold today and after cleaning it up I realized that three years of use hardly shows. And all you have to do is swap out the hard drives for newer, bigger ones and you’re on your way to a 7.5 TB tower.  Also, in my new Intel Mac Pro, a RAID 5 IS possible – so you could add in some data protection.  But it’s gone now and I’ll be looking to replace it with something new for storage.  Keep your browser bookmarked here for what I buy and how it works.

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?

The trick is to Rest Safari…, an option on the menu bar under the Safari menu, but only leave “Reset Top Sites” checked.  Uncheck everything else.

Then when you go back into the Top Sites page things will be back to an un-edited state. Any sites you deleted will be back and you have a better chance of getting them organized the way you want them. After about 30 minutes of messing I finally got the sites I wanted to show as my Top Sites:

Visual History? – Oh Crap…

Another new feature is showing your history as thumbnails in a cover-flow model.  This feature raises new issues about browser history and personal privacy. You’ve always been able to view your history – but this is different. It’s one thing to see my history as a list of pages, but it’s a somewhat dark and revealing new thing to see it visually with pictures of every page I visited.

Obviously if you’re frequenting sites that are NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) this feature is going to be an issue for you. But for me it was more of a wow moment, bringing to light just how much web surfing I’ve done over the past few days. I would venture a guess that it’s a statistic most people probably don’t want their employers to see in a graphical presentation.

On the opposite side of the argument is another other thing I don’t like about this new history view – which is that it doesn’t show you the dates of those page visits. My most frequent use of the history feature is trying to remember what site I was on 3 days ago. For that you can still use the old way of viewing your history, but it would have been easy for them to have done a Time Machine type view with this – showing pages zooming back into time.

What do you think of Safari 4?  Have you downloaded the beta yet?

UPDATE: How to manually add your own sites to Top Sites…

My buddy Rich was messing with Safari 4 and figured out a way to manually edit your Top Sites. The trick is to drag a link to your desktop, then drag the link back into the Top Sites. That’s it. Seems simple. I’m just not sure why you can’t drag sites from other places, like from a tab or a bookmark. Maybe in the official release you’ll be able to. But this work around works great for now!

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…

The trick is to either call them or to do a live chat. The deal is not online, you can only get one through a sales rep – and you have to order it in a preset configuration.  The Mini 10 deal is $474, it comes in Black, has 1GB of RAM, XP Home preloaded, a 160GB hard drive, Wireless G card, and an integrated webcam.

I asked the rep if the 10 will eventually be offered with Ubuntu (which saves a few bucks if you’re going to install Leopard anyway). I also asked how different the architecture is and if it will support Leopard the way the 9 does.  He didn’t know but said (exact quote) “It may very well support Ubuntu (it should), and Leopard, we just aren’t offering it with those options at point-of-sale.“ I don’t know if he means never on Ubuntu or just not today. My guess is never because the integrated HD TV tuner will require XP.

If you’re hot to get the Mini-10 you can order one today!  The bad news is that he was showing 3/31/09 as a estimated ship date. I remember that it took about 5 weeks to get my Mini 9.  So their estimate is probably accurate.  They are expecting to sell out of these things and I’ll bet they will.

It really is time for Apple to get on the stick and do their own netbook. I’ve said it before, if they made a decent one I’d give up on all this hacintosh stuff and just pay the $$ to get a real Apple.

ANYWAY – That means that my Dell Mini 9, pre-installed with Leopard (shhh, don’t tell anyone), is officially for sale. Get those offers coming in. Just post offers in the comment section or email me at michael at tomorrowland.com.

Update #2

Dell’s website now has the Mini 10 for sale there too, although it’s the exact same deal I described yesterday and for the same $474.  Although now that it appears it won’t work support a Leopard install, it might be better to just add a larger SSD and replace the keyboard with one that has the quote key in the right place.

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.

A major annoyance of the Mini 9 appears to have been fixed in the Mini 10. It might seem like a minor thing, but the quote key on the 9 isn’t between the colon and the Enter key like it is on a normal keyboard.  The result is that when you type a word that has an apostrophe you naturally hit the Enter key instead of the ‘. From all the photos I’m seeing it looks like there are now two keys between the L and the Enter.

The 10 also boasts a 720P screen, 2 GB RAM, and real hard drives that will go up to 250GB. A couple of other cool options (which I expect will only work under windows) include a GPS and an HD TV tuner.

We’re still very happy with our Dell Mini 9, but when this comes out it might be time to give it to a relative and upgrade to the 10.  Of course it will depend on whether or not it can be turned into a hackintosh.  Or, alternatively, Apple could just release the netbook we’ve all been waiting for and we would buy that instead.

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.

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.

1. HP’s Touch Computers:

HP’s line of touch computers feel like the future. Why is Apple so far behind in touch when it seems like their iPhone started the trend. The HP TouchSmart tx2z series is a laptop with flip around monitor that turns it into a tablet – and it starts around $1000. The problem is that it’s Vista, and it’s a bit thick. But the idea is great and it makes me wonder if I could figure out how to install Leopard on it.

What Apple should take from it…

Touch IS the future! If you doubt it just look at an episode of Star Trek. My 3 year old already tries to touch computer screens now to move things around. She knows how an iPhone works and expects all computers to work that way. And while currently these computers run Vista – which sucks, Apple should be shaking in their boots about Windows 7. I fear that they’ll be the one’s playing catch up. What is Apple working on now? Snow Leopard? We need a full touch version of OS X in 2009 or Apple might completely lose the OS war and turn into just an appliance manufacturer.

2. The Sony Vaio P-Series:

Probably one of the most talked about products this CES has been Sony’s new wide-screen Vaio P-Series. It is an interesting size and I love the extra wide aspect ratio. It provides enough width for a real feeling keyboard, but is still small enough to fit in a purse or suit jacket pocket.  It’s lightweight, runs cool, and has a 60 gig hard drive.

But there are problems with this product. The main problem is the stupid joystick instead of a trackpad. Obviously with the keyboard taking up the full space there’s no room for a trackpad. But I got my hands on one of these yesterday and that joystick totally sucks. If it had touch and if the screen flipped around like the HP’s touchsmart, it would be unstoppable.

The other problem is the extremely short battery life. It’s rated at only 2 hours to 4 hours and if it’s like other products we know that really means about 2 hours, not enough time to watch a movie on a flight.

What Apple should take from it…

I would love to see a MacBook with this form factor – but it would also need to have an Apple spin on it. What would Apple do to improve this kind of design?

I think the main thing for Apple to learn is that people DO want and are going to be buying these smaller sized computers – in droves. I also think Sony has the right marketing approach to this product. At CES they’re showing it right along with the purses and handbags it fits in. This product will be heavily marketed to women.
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3. Toshiba’s Internet Viewer Prototype:

In a small plexiglass cube in the middle of the Toshiba booth is this prototype of a Wide LCD/DMFC Internet Viewer. There was no REAL information available about it. The stewardess claimed it has a touch screen and an optional wireless keyboard. And you can assume from the name that it’s powered by a direct methanol fuel cell.

What Apple should take from it…

Again, I think the lesson is that the market is going to be flooded with PMP’s and netbooks – all with multi-touch. People like small gadgets. This product idea has the looks of the Apple tablet that I’ve been wanting for while. Bigger than the iPhone but still small enough to fit in a pocket. On the go it’s you just use the touch screen but when you need it get the keyboard in proximity and it wirelessly connects. The iPhone has been great. It felt like the future the moment I got it. But now I want something more.

The other thing to look at is the battery. DMFC and other new battery technologies are also the future. From the side angle you can see that this unit is very thin. It’s hard to see scale in these photos, but they are planning 4″ and 7″ models. This is the 7 inch version.

4. Toshiba’s SCiB

While not a new announcement, Toshiba was showing a SCiB powered laptop that could charge 90% in 10 minutes. As I said above, new battery technologies are going to be huge selling points in the near future. I can’t wait for the time when I can plug a device in for 10 min and be good for a while, or fuel up a DMFC and have it last a week.

What Apple should take from it…

Be the first to put one of these power sources in your product.  With Toshiba building SCiB manufacturing plants, they’ll be cranking this stuff out this year and will need products to put them in.

To Apple:

Stop resting on the laurels of the iPhone and get back to thinking about the future! The future is touch, it’s mid to small sized devices that are powerful and do many many tasks, it complete wireless connectivity – including charging, and it’s power supplies that charge quick and last a very long time. Where is the touch iMac?  Where is the tablet mac? It’s time to get out there and plagiarize some ideas and sell them as your own. It’s time to get back to the business of creative innovative products that will blow people away.