Paul Stamatiou Paul is a 21 year old Computational Media student at Georgia Tech who loves Silicon Valley, technology and Apple. Learn more.
Perian is a project that allows your QuickTime (Mac only) player to play just about every video format, with the exception of Windows Media. Simply drag the Perian component to your QuickTime library directory and enjoy such benefits as DivX, 3ivX and XviD video compatibility. Before Perian came along, you would have to individually install each of these plugins.
Apple released 10.4.8 to everyone via Software Update tonight. The update comes in at 211MB (for the Intel version) and is fairly comprehensive with details listed on Apple Docs. Interesting updates include resolving “performance issues that could occur when connecting to a Comcast network” and “improved reliability of iTunes syncing with certain iPod models”.
Google has just updated their web-based RSS aggregator, Reader, and guess what.. it’s actually usable. I really could not stand the first version Google Reader, which was launched almost 1 year ago. The recent update brings the user interface design up to par with Gmail’s offerings. Continue Reading »
As of September 26th, 2006, the general public can have a go at purchasing the newest Top-Level Domain, .mobi. As the name implies, .mobi is restricted for sites that adhere to mobile-compatibility style guidelines. So what’s all the fuss about .mobi? Well for me at least, I find it to be an opportunity to buy out a bunch of popular domains first. I just purchased the Continue Reading »
Microsoft released Messenger 6.0 for Mac today. The most notable improvement has been the move to a Universal Binary with the ability to chat with Yahoo! messenger accounts and display your current playing track in iTunes trailing close behind.
Congrats to everyone at Yahoo! for the successful acquisition of Jumpcut. Jumpcut is a a social media service.. in a sense. It is similar to Motionbox which I briefly looked at, but allows users to upload not only videos but music and pictures as well. After you’ve uploaded some media you can “remix” and mash it up as you please, or leave that up to the viewers. Continue Reading »
Release Candidate 1, not to be mistaken with last week’s post about the RC for RC1, for Firefox 2.0 will be available here by 3PM Pacific time today. Mozilla states that this release candidate is very close to what a final product would look and perform like.
Facebook opened the flood gates this morning, allowing anyone to sign up for an account. Previously, Facebook was restricted to college students with a .edu email address, then it was opened up for a few corporations as well as high school students. Now anyone can join Facebook and enter a geographical network. Continue Reading »
The new iMacs have a Broadcom 802.11n network adapter that, while hidden in OS X, is visible in Vista. The speculation is that Apple’s upcoming iTV set top box will make use of 802.11n and at that time Apple will release a software or firmware update enabling OS X to use the adapter. Continue Reading »
It rained a little bit in Atlanta this evening and our cable connection, provided by Comcast, has been down for the last 6 hours. When I called 5 hours ago, they said it would be up in 3-4 hours. I just called again Continue Reading »
Earlier in the month, I mentioned how Amazon had released their movie downloading service called Unbox. Just from reading about it, I had thought the restrictions far outweighed the little advantages with overly large downloads that take hours, a sketchy piece of software that’s required to play each video, Continue Reading »
I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but better late than never. The 9rules content network of which PaulStamatiou.com is a member will be having its 5th submission round on October 25th. That gives you hopefuls some time to perfect your design and write some killer entries. Continue Reading »
The Inquirer got their hands on the latest flash drive offering from Corsair, the Readout. Simply put, the Readout is a 1GB USB stick with a screen, informing you of space remaining as well as number of megabytes left on the drive. Although it does look rather ugly. When is Apple going to make USB sticks?
After 9rules released their comprehensive new search feature on Monday, allowing users to search member content and receive results from Flickr, YouTube and Technorati, it was only a matter of time before someone created a Firefox search plugin. This got me thinking that it would be pretty cool if PaulStamatiou.com readers could have that same convenience. Continue Reading »
Derek has written a thorough tutorial showing Mac users the basics of cloning their hard drive. With an effective hard drive clone, if your primary drive ever goes down you can just boot from your clone, whether it be a second internal hard drive in your Mac Pro or an external Firewire drive. He also covers the software that can make it all happen.
Thanks to a suggestion from Bryan Veloso this weekend, I started using The Unarchiver, a small yet capable archive unpacker. It was designed to be a replacement for OS X’s BOMArchiveHelper.app and The Unarchiver exceeds what that could ever do, including support for Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and just about any other format you can get your hands on. Oh and it’s Continue Reading »
Today I bring to you my first impressions (a pseudo-review) of the Apple 24-inch iMac, joining my first impressions of the Intel Mac Mini and MacBook. Apple is known for taking bold steps and setting the pace for other computer manufacturers every time it unleashes an “out there” product. The 24-inch iMac is indubitably no exception; I mean who puts a 24-inch LCD display in a computer? Apple, that’s who. Continue Reading »
I thought Microsoft had forgotten about Mac users, but it seems like Office will be receiving a much needed update. Office 2007 for Mac will borrow heavily from the Beta released for PC users a few months back. A main feature of Office 12 will be the Ribbon which is sort of like a launcher to doing various tasks in Office, rather Continue Reading »
Newsfire and Acquisition creator Dave Wantanabe is currently working on a BitTorrent client for OS X dubbed Xtorrent. As with all of Dave’s creations, Xtorrent looks amazing. Try out the public beta for yourself. While it does look great, feature-wise I don’t think it’s any competition to Azureus, performance-wise it’s no Transmission and cost-wise, it won’t be free when it’s released. Update: Performance should be comparable to Transmission.
Yesterday morning was my Apple Genius appointment to turn in my MacBook to repair its random shutdown syndrome. However, there had been some miscommunication from the last time I spoke with the Apple Geniuses as I was under the impression that since the parts had already arrived, they would only need Continue Reading »
In an uphill battle to compete with extremely popular personalized homepages like Netvibes, Pageflakes and Wegwag, Google has expanded their own offering today. The recent trends of people keeping track of their favorite sites with syndication modules has led to these personalized homepages Continue Reading »
iLounge was quick to snatch up the newest iPod Nanos and pump out a great review. It’s probably the most comprehensive iPod review ever published, with comparison pictures from every angle, pictures of the new software features as well as Nano accessories. The verdict: Continue Reading »
I had no idea how many of you guys used coComment, the web service that lets you track and share your conversations, until I recently checked out the coComment Sites page. That page lists the websites with the most coComment-tracked comments and surprisingly PaulStamatiou.com is currently on the top 20 list, with digg dominating most of the list. Continue Reading »
Okay well it’s not quite 1PM EST when Apple’s “Showtime” keynote is set to take place, but it’s time to prepare your wallet for the festivities. TUAW claims to have gotten the schedule for tomorrow’s events, which includes the release of a new brushed metal encased iPod Nano, a widescreen iPod Video, iTunes 7 and Movie Store. Continue Reading »
Microsoft has released the beta for a spiffy looking RSS Aggregator codenamed Max. The Redmond folks have been doing some tech community-friendly things recently with the Windows Live Writer Beta blogging tool and now this. PC users can download Max Beta 1 here. Let me know what you think.
Some interesting news comes today from The Independent, stating that Nationwide Insurance will be the first company to insure your digital music. It’s about time insurance companies got up to speed with technology. If your computer is stolen and you have this specific type of insurance, Continue Reading »
With the rising popularity of online video podcasts and other video content along with sites like YouTube, it’s no surprise that people have begun embracing the culture and creating applications to easily manage the wealth of online video. There are several applications that help you do this, such as FireAnt, however I Continue Reading »
I wrote my first real post on this blog exactly one year ago today. This post marks the 473rd entry which means I’ve blogged roughly 1.3 times per day. Those posts have accumulated over a massive 6,700 comments. However, I’m not here today (actually, 2:01 am in the morning) to tell you the current status of this blog, you already know about that. Continue Reading »
If your MacBook is shutting down intermittently, please contact AppleCare for service.
Yep, that’s the only thing the Apple Docs page says.
Today Amazon.com released a video download and rental service called Unbox. With more reasonable prices from $7.99 to $14.99 to purchase a DVD-quality movie and $3.99 to rent a movie ($1-2 cheaper for TV shows), Amazon’s Unbox may prove to be more popular that the iTunes Movie Store… if those rumors ever come to fruition. Continue Reading »
Tom’s Networking took the new Wi-Fi Skype phone from SMC for a test drive and unfortunately it didn’t live up to their expectations. It doesn’t allow for text chat nor browser-based authentication for access points and has bad phone ergonomics that make it annoying to use for long periods as well as short battery life and bad sound quality (how’s that for a run-on). However, you don’t have to have a computer running Skype to get it working; it’s a standalone Skype solution.
Apple pulled a surprising move today and discretely updated the iMac and Mac Mini’s before the confirmed September 12th “Showtime” event. Hopefully this means that the event is going to show off many new products and that Apple had to get these out of the way. So let’s see what Apple unleashed today. Continue Reading »
A revamped Facebook launched today. The main site design pretty much stayed the same but when users login they will notice a few different things on their home page, such as the current events and status of their friends. Also there is a section called “Mini-Feed” on user profiles showing their recent activities such as edits on their profile, posts on others’ walls and added friends.
Jon from MondayByNoon has some lively conversation on his latest post which weighs the pros and cons of using full and partial RSS feeds for syndication. In a nutshell, full feeds are awesome for the user in terms of reading content and not having to visit the site if they don’t want to/have the time. However, it Continue Reading »
After hearing numerous reports about a problem with early “Rev A” MacBooks shutting down, I was comforted by the fact that I had not experienced this problem. Unfortunately for me, my MacBook exhibited its first signs of RSD (Random ShutDowns), also known as RSS (Random Shutdown Syndrome, not to be confused with Really Simple Syndication), yesterday morning. Continue Reading »
In response to the horribly inaccurate Back to School Cheat Sheet on CrunchGear, Derek Punsalan wrote an interesting rebuttal with a proper shopping list of his own. CrunchGear is coming under attack since the list Mr. John Biggs created was completely absurd for any college student, listing things like 55-inch $3,200 plasma TV’s, a $200 backpack, and a Continue Reading »
I know it’s a little late to announce this, but if you live in the US and have nothing better to do this evening, turn your TV on to ABC. As of this writing no one has scored yet but it is a huge game for us. It’s a home game but seeing as how I didn’t camp out, I was unable to get tickets. I did, however, see and get deafened by the jets flying over my house on their way to Bobby Dodd stadium just down the road.
The past few weeks in the Apple community have been chockful of rumors that Apple will hold a special event next Tuesday, September 12th. What they are going to release then is anyone’s guess. However, the special event will almost certainly update some current Macs with the new Intel Core 2 Duo (Merom core) processor and even bring a new Mac as Apple Insider claims. Continue Reading »
