DailyTechTalk

Watching Steve Jobs’ “Let’s Rock” presentation from yesterday and I can’t help but notice that Steve is getting old. According to my calculations, he is only 53 years old but is certainly showing his age while presenting these products. Steve has always been a geek 2nd and a businessman first. Despite not being a total geek, he was very intimate with the products being showcased but since 2007, I’ve seen Steve using more cue cards, having more issues with controlling the iPods and clearly staring at the prompter to see what’s up next.

It may be memory loss with a combination of shaky hands but he is certainly getting older. Many CEOs can run a company and don’t do public hands on presentations of the products but Steve has a very visible role at Apple so each time he comes on stage we are watching his every move. If Steve was to remain in his office at Apple and not make public appearances from this day forward, I’m sure talk about his weight loss and signs of aging would never be brought up but when Steve takes an iPod nano and fumbles with the click wheel skipping over a few songs while reading the instruction card, it’s obvious that he’s not young anymore.

Steve even brought Phil Schiller up to play some games on the iPod Touch. Steve tried to pinpoint a specific song on the iPod nano and skipped over it back and forth a few times. He lowered his glasses to read instructions on a card on the table and the entire presentation, he was staring at the prompter at his feet to see what was coming up next. There were many obvious pauses in the presentation and when it came time to read off the iPod Touch pricing, he didn’t even know what it was and paused for 5 seconds to review the pricing prior to hitting the next slide.

Commenters will say that I’m being overly critical and I should leave him alone. I’m just saying that yesterday’s presentation did not force me into a reality distortion field at all because Steve wasn’t the smooth salesman that he used to be. The excitement and buzz of attending a Steve Jobs keynote was lost and now it’s just an old man showing off products that are targeted to people born in the 90s. Sorry Steve. I love Apple and the beautiful products. Your position as CEO is critical to Apple, Inc. but maybe it’s time to step down and let someone else take over the presentations from here on?

I’m extremely thankful that Apple is consistently releasing updates to the iPhone 2 software to improve stability and resolve issues. The latest update for iPhone should be out this Friday but there are a few websites linking directly to the download link. As a responsible blogger, I’ll keep these links to myself for now. Apple said that these updates will be released on Friday so it’s best to wait until Apple’s official release of the software.

Early reports are saying that these are the change notes for the software:

-Genius Playlist Creation
- Dramatically reduced backup time to iTunes
- Improved email reliability
- Faster installation of 3rd party apps
- Bug fixes involving hangs or crashes of 3rd party apps
- Faster loading and searching of contacts

I’m still having issues with GPS and reliability / slowness and that’s not mentioned in the change notes.

Apple held a special event dubbed, “Let’s Rock” today at The Yuerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. I was going to attend the meeting but there were conflicts with scheduling but I didn’t miss much by not attending the event other than witnessing Steve’s awesome presentation skills.

Steve took that stage at 10AM local time to revise and refresh every iPod, make some announcements and release iTunes 8.0. iTunes 8 packed some new features, the iPod classic got a price drop and the iPod Touch received a slight redesign and some extra features that bring it on par with iPhone 3G. The big news was a new iPod nano. The iPod nano is Apple’s highest selling music player since its release and the new design adds a wider screen for better movie viewing, an accelerometer, more colors and a new design that’s thinner than the previous nano.

It has been a while since Apple has made me say “wow.” The last time Apple truly amazed me was when the MacBook Air was released in January of this year and the original iPhone was announced in January 2007. Lately, changes have been progressive and not revolutionary but there are some specific details from today that I think are pretty cool. You might want to read Apple’s Press Releases from today if you aren’t familiar with the announcements.

The iPod nano finally goes video with a widescreen display. I haven’t confirmed if the screen is true 16:9 aspect ratio but Apple does some very inventive things with the new screen real estate. Turning the iPod nano sideways changes to coverflow mode and videos all play in landscape mode for the best possible viewing experience. While browsing for the next song, the current playing song shows in the bottom 20% of the nano’s screen. The new nano has a glass screen which might not be a good thing but certainly makes for a more crisp picture when viewing photos and movies. The nano comes in 8 colors and 8 or 16 gigabyte capacities. I’m sure it’s a retail nightmare to stock 16 different nanos to a few hundred Apple Stores but all of those choices should equal many more sales for Apple.

The iPod Touch is the same thickness as before but the edges mimic The iPhone 3G as they taper down to nothing on the edges. The back is still stainless steel which means scratches will remain highly visible. I am extremely happy that Nike+iPod integration is built in to the iPod Touch because the only reason I keep using my 1st generation nano is for the Nike integration.

iTunes 8’s killer feature is the genius playlist that works like Pandora but for music that is already in your library. I can assemble 25 - 75 songs just like a particular song or artist that I like and iTunes puts it all in one playlist. It also shows songs that are in The iTunes Store that I can purchase to make my playlist complete. iTunes 8 also adds support for HD television episodes which is going to be awesome but HD episodes only play on your computer and not the iPod or iPhone. Apple also announced that NBC is back on iTunes which completely rocks. I personally thought NBC was dumb for ditching Apple last October and it’s nice to see them back in business.

That’s all for Apple news today.

I’m here at Might in San Francisco and I’ll be liveblogging as long as the battery lasts. I’m using the Netshare app to pull 3G data rates from my iPhone. Feel free to Digg this as I post content and updates from ROFLThing

Here’s the schedule:

5:30. The Star Wars Kid
6:10. Ben Huh (i can has cheezburger)
6:50. Sean O’Steen (fail whale fan club)
7:30. Fred Turn of Stanford University
8:00. Open Bar nd time to dance!

Star Wars Kid Story:

Started in 2003. Went to Kazaa and spread like wildfire.
File was originally named “jackass_starwars.wmv” Andy renamed it “starwarskid” and posted it to waxy.org.
After 10 days, the blog post received 1 million pageviews that day.
They tracked down the kid and interviewed him.
A fundraiser to help the kid out to get an iPod as a thank you for the laughs and they raised $4300 dollars. It was being downloaded 500K a day.
30 of waxy.org’s friends were hosting the video from him.
The downloads equaled 2.3 terabytes of downloads.
Links to: pennyarcade, fark, metafilter, slashdot and wired news.
It took the media 3 weeks to discover the meme and continued for 6 months.
go here to download the 1.6 gigabyte apache log. In July of 2003, the kid’s parents filed a lawsuit against the kids that posted the content.
Waxy.org founder shipped the iPod and other donations to the star wars kid and thought it was over.
The meme continued spreading through pop culture in video games and TV shows.
Starwarskid is the most viewed viral video ever (900 million times)
The first viral video was dancing baby and then “all your base” also showing the “metalica drummer” which was a guy doing airdrumming.
Before the internet, Memes were localized.

Our buddy Sam Levin, just launched AppMinute which is an iPhone App News and Information site. Sam and Tim Robertson are publishing this site daily and it’s worth adding to your RSS reader. I’m hooked and love reading blogs that are specific to certain topics.

I just submitted the following to Shure, Inc.

I have a pair of Shure SE530 headphones purchased last year. The left ear isn’t working. It works if I fiddle with the cord a bit. I’m hoping I can get some support for this. Please help.

I have been a proud Shure earphone user since 2005 and my longest review every written (8 pages) is on the Shure SE530 (link). Their personal earphones are awesome and I won’t go to any other brand. I just hope that my incident is heard and Shure makes this right. I’m actually unsure of my warranty status but these things are in my ears 6 hours a day for the past 2 years.

UPDATE: Shure responded

So even without the extension cables or the use of any adapters at all you still have this problem? If that is the case the earphones will need to be sent in for evaluation. Click the link below for information on how to send them to Shure for service.

Only send the earphones, do not send the I-phone adapter unless you feel there may be a problem with that device as well.

“I-phone”? Are you serious?

I received a press release from a company called “Keyscan” who is touting their all in one scanner and keyboard combo. This is, by far, the weirdest combo of peripherals since someone decided to integrate a printer into a laptop (really sucked for paper jams). The combo is $159 MSRP and comes in black or white. It’s only compatible with Windows Vista & XP because they know there’s not a Mac user in the world that would purchase this product.

I’d love to see one of these in action because I’m just curious how it compares to a full size desktop scanner. Check it out.

In response to my rant earlier about how much I hate these Web 2.0 Jumpcut videos, I decided to try it out myself but a little different. My video doesn’t have any actual jumpcuts and is more “natural” Check it out.

I am completely fed up with the state of video on the web. From here on, if you do a video that cuts every 3 seconds as you jump around the freaking screen, I will stop watching. I don’t care how much I love your videos. The whole thing where you’re over here and now over there every 3-5 seconds, gives me a headache. If I want a rollercoaster, I’ll go to six flags. It’s annoying as hell so just stop it already.

Maybe it’s my fault for owning a 24″ monitor and sitting 6 inches from it as I watch these web 2.0 style videos full screen but all of you are making my head hurt. I think America is just too ADD to concentrate on one subject for longer than 5 seconds because for some reason, these videos are very popular. Ze Frank started this whole movement and now everyone is doing them. Thank god there’s some sanity because my friend Justine Ezarik just mocked the style in her latest video prior to New Media Expo.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see below:

Just received this in my inbox:

Hello adamjackson1984,

We at MacNN Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

Episode 5 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. We sit down with Blip.FM and discuss everything there is to speak of in reference to their new web site that is “twitter for music” We also cover some details about their parent company, Fuzz.

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I could spend hours playing on this website and if you’re a hardcore Adobe CS user, this one will make you LOL for hours. Instead of playing around, I’m going to blog about it to everyone can enjoy it.

Dear Adobe…

My birthday is tomorrow and I have two gifts in mind. Laura said she’d get them for me but I thought I’d post here so it would make it easy for Mom, Dad and friends to contribute. THANKS EVERYONE for making this blog and the first 22 years of my life and awesome ride.

Two weeks ago I started a competition for the best Adam Jackson Face.

Yeah. I started The Adam Jackson Face just over 4 years ago.The first time was on May 20th, 2004 while my parents were driving me to my High school graduation and I had just gotten a new digital camera. I snapped a funny photo and it had started. The Adam Jackson Face evolved over the years and really hit its peak in 2007 when I grew a mustache and goatee and that made the face even better.

I think the competition has been a huge success so far with a lot of awesome submissions. You can view the submissions here

Please head over to ResoluteOpinion and vote for the best Adam Jackson Face.

Click Here to vote

As many of you know, I am a very prolific Twitterer. I post everything I am doing including thoughts to Twitter and it’s time to change things (at least temporarily). Everyone would love to follow me on Twitter but doesn’t because I post way too much. In fact, while at the Mashable Monthly party on Thursday, over 20 people I spoke to have followed me on Twitter and then said that they stopped due to the volume of tweets. Investigating my Twitter folder within Outlook showed that thousands have followed me but only 950+ remain.

With all of this in mind, I think it’s time to start things anew. I’m not dropping the adamjackson Twitter name but I’m doing things differently every week until I find the right formula.

March 2007 - Today: I have been posting everything that I do and think of on Twitter which equals 23,500 Tweets over the past year.

For the next week, I’ll be posting what I’m doing but no more than one tweet per hour and each Tweet will be encouraging enough to get a reply. I’m feeding for replies not by volume but by integrity of my post. Before, I had tons of replies due to my volume of posts. Now I’ll be doing fun and interesting posts that get replies. This will be going on for a week as an experiment. Wish me luck. Also, I’m going to try to go an entire week without losing a single follower. Since I joined Twitter, it was 10 new followers a day and 8 of those followers would go away quickly. Let’s continue that growth trend without losing a single follower.

This might be interesting.

A couple days ago, on my blog, I posted an open letter to AT&T Wireless regarding their expansion of the 3G networks. I had seen absolutely no progress, so I felt that the letter was needed, especially with no coverage in the closest metropolitan area, Ocala, FL. I wanted the letter to get around, so I Dugg it and I even added the Twitter for AT&T News.

The next day around 2pm, I was contacted via e-mail by a Seth Bloom of AT&T Corporate Communications. He wanted to know when and how I could be contacted. I gave him my info and began the wait (I’ve gotten good at it).

Soon after making contact, I loaded up Twinkle, and to my surprise someone was tweeting that they had 3G in my area. My first thought was that they had just bought it, and they were excited. Being a sceptic, I turned my 3G on, and to my surprise, my favorite little icon was smiling back up at me. Luckily, I had some driving to do that day, so I was able to see if I had gone insane or not. Verdict I wasn’t [although, according to my Qik viewers last night, I am anyway].

Today, I was called. My iPhone sang Jared’s tune for me, and I immediately muted everything and tweeted it. Through the earpiece, I heard a woman saying to me “Hello Colin, this is — from the AT&T Mobility President’s office” [I honestly forget her name...I'm really sorry]. She and I had a really nice talk. The main question was “how do you like your new 3G service?” which I loved the sound of, since it gave me the feeling of responsibility for it.

The other question was the 3G coverage in Ocala. Sad to say, there is none, nor is the new towers even planned, according to her. She did tell me though, that if you’re ever wondering about the expansion of 3G in your area, check with your local AT&T reseller or call customer service [611] and they’ll be able to tell you.

After 3 months of living in San Francisco, I’ve given in and decided to sticker my MacBook Pro. With the help of the Speck SeeThru case that I picked up on Wednesday, it wasn’t too much of a challenge. The case protects every corner of my MacBook Pro without compromising any functionality and allows me to sticker up my laptop without damaging the resale value.

Finding stickers to cover my laptop was not an issue. Stickers are sent to me all of the time and they are free flowing at every party I attend so without further delay, the photo is below. Thanks to Andrew Mager for taking the photo.

Episode 4 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. We take a trip down to Palo Alto to meet the team at Speck Products. Speck makes awesome protective cases for all of the major phones including iPhone and cases for iPods and notebooks. This short video is a look inside their studio and we review their new lineup of 3G iPhone cases. Big thanks to Speck and Sam Levin for making this possible.

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If you love what we’re doing so far, do me a favor and review our podcast on iTunes. (link)

This won’t be a full post but I wanted to link to a Wiki page for the beloved Dog-cow. Moof was a fantastic icon of the early days of Apple & Macintosh and every Mac user should know and love the character.

Dogcow on Wikipedia

DIGG THIS!
STUMBLE THIS!

I received an in-depth document that details tons of Adobe CS4 information and it’s mostly info regarding Photoshop CS4, Bridge CS4 and the launch date of the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite.

First of all, the launch date is going to be around or during Adobe Max which takes place November 16th-19th in San Francisco or at the end of September around the 23rd. Adobe Creative Suite product cycles are around 18 months and Adobe CS3 was released on April 16th, 2007 so Adobe Max would mean 19 months since the last release. Let’s take a look at some features that may or may not be included in Adobe CS4.

Adobe Photoshop CS4:
Codename: Adobe Stonehenge CS4 Extended. Splash screen is Stonehenge.
1. Interface is similar to CS3 but there are small and minor polishes that complete the look.
2. Support for “Extensions” under the “Window” menu
3. The extension manager is in every CS4 application
3. “kuler” which is a Intranet color pallet collaboration tool for sharing color swatches with others on your team.
4. Flash Support (more on this later)

Adobe Panel Configurator 1.0 (Alpha Version):
1. It’s a way to create Photoshop toolboxes.
2. Choose from over 860+ commands, tools and application features and create your own toolboxes that work in any CS4 application
3. Supports Actions and Scripts too
4. Drag and drop text fields into these toolboxes
5. Support for SWF and Quicktime video files in toolboxes (not sure why)
6. Export the toolbar file and open it in any CS4 application.

CS4 Suite New Features:
1. Flash SWF support across all applications
2. You can open SWF files in any app and play them
3. A tool for developing flash content without any coding experience is coming

Adobe Bridge CS4:
1. New Interface (cleaner, more like Apple’s Leopard Finder)
2. Sidebar and search tool location are just like Mac OS Leopard
3. Folder navigation just like Windows Vista Explorer
4. Labels and star ratings are easier to access.
5. Filtered searches are now much faster even across thousands of images
6. List View in Bridge
7. Auto Photo Downloader to download photos from your camera is now easier and better than Bridge CS3
8. Improved slideshows. Spacebar starts slideshow (like quickview in leopard)
9. From Slideshow, just hit “r” and Adobe Camera Raw opens automatically.
10. Review Mode: (full screen review of photos)
a. Just like a full screen version of Apple coverflow
b. Loopt tool built in
c. Open all photos and review photos and drop photos out of view that you don’t want and other stay in full screen
d. Upon leaving review mode, photos you kept are now selected in bridge. Ones you dropped are still there but not selected.
e. Ability to create photocollections from within review mode
11. Collections are just like Playlists in iTunes. Ability to group photos. Location of photo is not changed.
12. More sharing options
a. Upload directly to FTP within Bridge
b. Web gallery templates are easy and uses the same templates available in Lightroom 2
c. Ability to create flash galleries with a few clicks and upload instantly
d. Uses the Opera engine to render galleries within Bridge
e. Photoshop Web Gallery is going away and being replaced by Bridge Web Gallery
13. Bridge CS4 Menus (in order left to right)
File - Edit - View - Sttacks - Label - Tools - Window - Help

Adobe CS4 Applications are exactly the same as CS3 but the text in the icons is black instead of white.

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