MacNN reports that Apple actually is fixing the rampant discoloration issues present on white MacBook laptops. My laptop suffers from this issue, even after I had put an invisible shield on the palm rest. The discoloring stems from a manufacturing defect in the plastic. Apple will replace the top case, presumably free of charge. Hopefully, I will just be able to take it into an Apple store and have the Continue Reading »

Twenty short years ago on this day I was born a very curious child in Houston. Soon after I was taking apart every electronic gadget I could get my hands on.. even the old 386 and Macintosh Centris 650, which was a great computer by the way. As some of my Greek readers have picked up on, yesterday was my name day. The best birthday present was the internship, which gets better everyday. Today I Continue Reading »

Open Office version 2.0.3, Apple iTunes 6.0.5 and Microsoft IE7 Beta 3 have all been released today. The Open Office update brings speed improvements, especially for Intel Macs, along with greater file compatibilty among Microsoft Office files. Meanwhile, the new iTunes release offers compatibilty for the Nike+ shoe thing. Microsoft’s third IE7 beta offers dragable tabs and the expected security and stability updates.

Working at Yahoo! is the ultimate experience. The amazing campus, engaging activities and great people definitely made an impression on me during the past two days. Everyone I’ve come across at Yahoo! is eager to meet new people and get to know them; yes, even the coders are sociable! Unlike other places where my friends intern, Yahoo! interns don’t make coffee and send out letters. For one, every building (there are 7 on the Sunnyvale campus) has a Starbucks-type caffeine vendor and the drinks are free! Yahoo! interns are part of a project that makes an impact Continue Reading »

If you use a Mac, go ahead and click the Apple icon and select Software Update. The long-awaited 10.4.7 update has recently gone live. The update includes fixes for audio in various applications, bluetooth connectivity and security updates.

Sony will be releasing a new version of their ultra-portable Vaio U series laptop next week. In place of the standard 30GB hard drive, it will feature 16GB of solid-state storage. There had been rumors in weeks past that Apple had been making deals with flash memory manufacturers for a possible 12 inch flash-based laptop. It seems like Sony has beaten Apple to the punch. There are many reasons for the move to a flash-based system. Aside from high Continue Reading »

AJ over at Devlounge has reviewed the new version of digg that launched earlier on Monday. However, he forgot to mention what I deem the coolest feature - the ability to undigg stories. Many times I will read a headline and automatically digg it out of excitement before reading it. Then I’ll read it and realize that the story didn’t go past my digg-worthiness threshold.

As reported by ArsTechnica, there has been a second case of a melting MagSafe connector. Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Pro models both use a new charging interface called MagSafe. Consisting of 5 magnetically attached pins (only 4 provide power), MagSafe safely disconnects from the MacBook if the cord is tugged or tripped on. However, one MacBook Pro user reported that his cable started melting while he was using it. The moral of the Continue Reading »

Warner Brothers has entered a deal with YouTube-type site GUBA to offer users VOD, video-on-demand, as well as DTO, download-to-own, content. I think this is the first step towards a movie download site as Apple is rumored to be incorporating in a future iTunes release. There are currently only around 200 of Warner Bros.’s video titles but that is soon to expand if the sales look Continue Reading »

Thanks to Chris, I have discovered a handy application for the popular, intelligent online radio station based around users’ music interests, Pandora. An application created by IntrArts Creative Media by the name of PandoraMan lets Pandora users login to their Pandora account and play music without the use of a browser. PandoraMan is a simple wrapper, coded in OS X’s native Cocoa language, that Continue Reading »

It’s time to fill you in on the past few days that I haven’t posted here. On Friday I flew from Houston to San Jose airport where Bryan kindly picked me up and took me to In-N-Out for a delectable burger. Bryan had a good chunk of free time so he decided to show me some of the geeky highlights. Of course, I’m talking about Cupertino, California where Apple has its headquarters. After a brief jaunt to the company Apple store to Continue Reading »

Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch reports that the long awaited update to the insanely popular Digg news and social bookmarking site will be coming on Monday. Furthermore Mike has scored some detailed screenshots of the new interface and what it brings. The largest part of the update, created by SilverOrange (of Firefox fame), is that there are more sections of the site. It won’t just be tech news anymore - there will be sections for science, entertainment, gaming, videos and Continue Reading »

Throughout the blogosphere I’m always seeing these blogs, that while they look great, are horribly slow and overburdened. Over the past few months I have become somewhat of a website optimization specialist, bringing my own site from an over 250kB homepage to its current 34kB. I will help you achieve some of the same success with a few, powerful tips. Most of these are common sense, but I can’t stress their importance enough. Continue Reading »

I recently discovered an application for Windows called Launchy. Similar to QuickSilver for OS X, Launchy can be activated with a simple key combination and open a prompt for easily launching applications and executing files. While it’s no where near as comprehensive as QuickSilver, it is no doubt a long awaited application for XP users. Continue Reading »

One minor annoyance people have with the K2 WordPress theme is that trackbacks and pingbacks are shown only as links with no supporting text from the trackback site. When it comes to having articles with many trackbacks, it is highly advantageous to be able to quickly spot out what each site is saying about your articles without having to visit each one. Fortunately you can easily add this feature with a simple WordPress tag. Continue Reading »

Opera Software’s featured-filled Opera 9 browser was officially released after a long time in beta. The new browser sports unique features such as integrated BitTorrent, thumbnail previews for tabs, IRC chat and a trash can where you can open recently closed tabs. Download Opera 9 and take a look at the new features, if Opera is your thing.

A Georgia Tech research team paired with IBM has recently demonstrated new Silicon-Germanium transistors capable of operation at over 500GHz. That is roughly 250 times faster than the transistors found in your common cell phone. These experimental transistors attained this speed at a temperature 451 degrees Farenheit below zero through the use of liquid helium. Researchers say that at room temperature these chips can Continue Reading »

One of the problems I have found with limiting my frontpage to only a handful of posts (for loading times purposes) is that when searching or going through the archives, everything is only shown in pages of however many posts I told it to show on the frontpage. For example, if my blog was set to show 8 posts on the frontpage, search results would be limited to 8 posts per page and the same goes for many different aspects of the site. This can become considerably annoying for your users. Thankfully, Matt Read has created an amazing plugin, Custom Query String, to tackle this problem. Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Yahoo! through my website. At first I just thought it was another piece of spam, but out of curiousity I replied to the email. Sure enough, the response I got did not contain a spoofed email header and seemed to be legit. Yahoo! wanted to let me know about a new internship opening. After several phone calls, dozens of emails and a pile of paper work, everything has worked out. This Friday I will be heading to Sunnyvale, California to work for Yahoo! as a Blogger Intern. Continue Reading »

The Inquirer states that Google is working on an updated version of Google Video where users don’t have a limit on upload size, opening the door for high-resolution video and the end of the pixelated online videos we are all so accustomed to. Google might be onto something. As of recently, YouTube’s (Google’s primary competitor) bandwidth costs Continue Reading »

Many people browse the web copying and pasting passwords and other personal information to their clipboards for convenience. They might have just signed up for a new service and copied the randomly created password from the registration email so they can sign in for the first time, or when they have forgotten their password. Unfortunately, the default settings in Internet Explorer make it easy for any malicious site to read your clipboard information, with a Continue Reading »

Parallels Desktop, the leading piece of virtualization software for OS X, has finally come out of its release candidate cocoon and become a final product. Parallels, as it is commonly referred to, is an advanced application that lets its users run other operating systems, from Linux to Windows, at near native speeds. Many web developers like using Parallels Desktop running Windows XP so that they can test websites in Internet Explorer. Continue Reading »

As I noted in my review of the Flock developer preview, Flock is a revolutionary web browser built around the needs of the modern day web surfer. Many things have changed since that developer preview. Code was rewritten, some things were programmed from scratch but the concept remained the same. The Firefox-based Flock aims to be your browser of choice with several key features aimed at the new generation of social web users. Continue Reading »

Launched today, Picasa Web Albums, seems to be Google’s attempt to dismount Flickr from the photo-sharing throne. With a free account, users get a sleek online interface and 250MB storage space. Similar to Flickr’s offerings, there is a subscription service at $25/year that provides 6GB of photo storage. Now if only Continue Reading »

Everyone’s favorite do-it-all web browser, Flock, has just achieved two great milestones. Along with the long-awaited release of their first beta (v0.7), Flock welcomes a new website designed by the talented Bryan Veloso of Avalonstar fame. Flock’s new website is the first major project for Bryan’s new company that is sure to create astounding things. The design is very slick and a much appreciated upgrade over the older, barebones design. The new site also Continue Reading »

After hearing so much about BarCamp from the Flockers and others in California as well as via flickr photos, I jumped on the chance to attend one. Houston had its first BarCamp this past weekend and I was happily in attendance. So what exactly is BarCamp you ask? Take a seat, grab a caffeinated refreshment and I shall tell you. Continue Reading »

While getting things settled down on my MacBook it became apparent that I did not want to rely on the calendar widget to find out the numeric date. I simply wanted to view the date alongside the time in the menu bar. Unfortunately this is not an option in OS X. However, with a slight of hand, you too can easily display the date in the OS X menu bar without the need of additional applications. Continue Reading »

If you’ve graced the pages of my flickr account lately, you will have seen two shiny new MacBooks. Yes, two. Chris, my housemate this year, opted for a black MacBook and got me to upload his pics as his non-pro flickr account went over the bandwidth allotment for the month. Meanwhile in Houston, I picked up a white MacBook just an hour later. Our system specs are essentially the same - 2GHz Core Duo, SuperDrive and 512MB RAM (which we will upgrade to 2GB soon). We both took up Apple on the back to school deal where we get 2GB iPod Nanos free after rebate. You can hear what Chris has to say about his MacBook and putting Boot Camp on it in his article. As for me, I won’t be Continue Reading »

As new technologies and services progess they become a vital piece of mainstream society. Inevitably, people start to use them as verbs, with “Google” being the most common. I was sitting around the other day thinking about this and decided to create a small list, hopefully that you can add on to in the comments. Enjoy! Continue Reading »

Microsoft has decided to offer Windows Vista Beta 2 (build 5384.4) to the public for free. I can only assume this is Microsoft’s way of letting everyone know that they have an actual working product and that progress is being made regardless of the delays. This is a great strategy to let people know what to expect in the next version as well as get a sneak peek of what they will be paying so much for. Screenshots show that the beta is of the Windows Vista “Ultimate” type. Continue Reading »

As a follow up to the MacBook post, I am now selling my Mac Mini. I figured it would be better to have one primary machine, which meant selling the Mac Mini to make way. As you know, my Mac Mini is a one of a kind, completely maxed out model with a 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB of RAM, Superdrive and a 7200rpm 80GB hard drive. Just about everything has been changed and it is fast. Here is the craigslist posting I made for it, where it is up for sale at $999 USD (buyer pays shipping). If you buy it and have a blog, I’ll give you a complementary sponsored link for one month. Continue Reading »

I have always been interested in electronics and DIY projects since I was very young. So when I saw an instructables page for the Minty Boost battery-powered USB charger, I jumped on it. Small Altoids-tin based projects are nothing new. Many people have come to utilize the low cost and ease of modifying the Altoids case. There have been dozens of interpretations of an iPod charger. However, most utilize a low current, expensive 9 Volt battery. The Minty Boost has well-composed circuitry that uses 2 AA batteries which are cheap and plentiful while offering 3000mAh each as compared to the 500mAh for a single 9V battery. Continue Reading »

This June marks the beginning of the 3rd year I have owned my Dell Inspiron 300m notebook PC. Since then it has been discontinued by Dell and taken some healthy abuse from me in the form of daily treks to class, journeys about the nether regions of campus and those few times I threw my backpack across the room, forgetting there was a laptop inside. It has served me well. It kept me sane in the most boring of classes and allowed me to catch up on some news or do a quick blog post while devouring a meatball sub or chocolate-chip bagel with egg and cheese during lunch in the Student Center Commons. Continue Reading »

CNET Reviews has published a quick guide to cell phone radiation. Most interesting of the review, however, is the top 10 list of cell phones with the most radiation. Oddly enough, Motorola dominates the list with 9 phones. Every cellular phone in this top 10 highest-radiation emitting phone list has a SAR, or specific absorption rate, of over 1.5W/kg just shy of the FCC maximum of 1.6W/kg. In comparison, the models with the lowest radiation are around 0.33 and lower. Continue Reading »

After two weeks or so of deliberation, Scrivs and team at 9rules HQ have selected 111 people to join the 9rules Network, out of the 700 that applied. Round Four was the round determined to really expand the network and they’ve done just that. There are some really great blogs that have now joined the 9rules network (they still have to accept the agreement though). I can’t wait until the communities page has updated with all the new sites and categories. I would like to point out that my roommate Chris Morrell is now a 9rules member. He must Continue Reading »

There is a reason why I’m always that guy using one of the few Macs stranded away from the sea of PCs in the library. It’s not because Apple’s OS X is superior to Windows in terms of stability and speed, but more along the lines that OS X lets me be extremely productive with several key features. I am adept in utilizing each system to its potential, having used both for years on end. Macs just let me do more. Here’s why. Continue Reading »

I hadn’t really thought much of Yahoo’s new Tech site when I first heard of it in an email from my sister that works in PR. However, after having received tremendous publicity, Yahoo! Tech caught my eye and I decided to take a more in-depth look at what Yahoo brings to the table with this site. I like to think of Yahoo! Tech as competition to the successful CNET, the ultimate tech reviews site and community. Continue Reading »