In cooperation with Ogilvy PR and the help of Rohit Bhargava, Intel has launched their blogger challenge. The Intel Blogger Challenge is a 5 week long challenge of sorts where 6 bloggers are asked to share their unique views on a different question each week. Each blogger was selected from a different niche. I am the resident tech blogger for the Intel Centrino Duo Blog, Bre Pettis is the video blogger, Mindy Roberts is the mommy blogger, Pim Techamuanvivit is the food blogger, Mia Kim is the gadget blogger and finally Jen Chung is the city blogger. Continue Reading »

I woke up to a great email this morning. Apparently I have been chosen as a Top 10 finalist for a $5,000 blogging scholarship for college students. The final winner is chosen via an online vote, so if you would like to vote for me you can. Do everything you can to spread the word about this and vote for me! I have over $100,000 of tuition to pay off and that number grows by $30,000 every year. Thanks, Paul.

Phill Ryu’s My Dream App might have just ended but a new online sensation is about to begin. MacHeist is the name and shareware (Mac app) love is the game. Okay that sounded a bit cheesy but I assure you MacHeist is going to be amazing. As with everything Phill Ryu, you are bound to find many Mac developers involved with MacHeist. Continue Reading »

For all the Intel Mac users out there, Apple has updated the Boot Camp beta to version 1.1.2. Unlike previous releases, 1.1.2 is a considerable update and is highly recommended for all Boot Camp users. Features for version 1.1.2 include support for the latest Intel Macs (presumably the new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros), trackpad scrolling and right-click as well as the ability to install Windows XP on any Continue Reading »

Visa USA has just launched a new online campaign entitled Business Breakthrough designed to help busy small business owners and entrepreneurs. The site offers valuable resources via an archive of video case studies that Visa calls breakthroughs. Each breakthrough deals with a different Continue Reading »

If you hurry up you can purchase the Disco public beta from MacZot for $14.95. Disco is a small and powerful CD/DVD burning application with a very unique twist - amazing design and it actually burns your discs. You’ll see what that means after checking out the Disco blog.

One of my highest-ranked pet peeves about blogging regards bloggers who don’t take the time to do a bit of researching before posting an article. This is aimed at “A-list” bloggers more than anything. They are usually in such a hurry to beat the crowd and get something published that the accuracy and factuality of their information is left in the back seat. Continue Reading »

WordPress version 2.0.5 codename ‘Ronan’ has just hit the servers. This version is a highly recommended upgrade for WordPress 2.0 users as it includes numerous security fixes, bug fixes and a performance increase. Download it now. Akismet is also updated in this release. Don’t forget to backup your server files and database before proceeding with the installation. Appropriately, today is Maxell’s inaugural “Fall Back-Up Day“.

Apple’s new .Mac webmail has gone live. The new .Mac webmail rollout features AJAX technology including drag-and-drop functionality as well as a familiar Mail.app interface. It also utilizes IMAP instead of POP3 so everything is left on the server regardless of what computer you check your mail on. I suggest signing up for a .Mac trial to give it a test drive. Don’t forget to check out the nifty quick reply feature (select a message and click the little arrow on the right). However, I think I will be sticking to my beloved gmail.

BeatnikPad has long been releasing optimized versions of Firefox for G4 and G5 PowerPC processor Macs. Today Neil from BeatnikPad has released optimized versions of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 for G4, G5 and Intel processor Macs. I just installed it on my Core 2 Duo iMac and wow, this really is faster, noticeably faster. Pages load faster, Firefox loads faster - everything. Continue Reading »

Reader Brian Pinard has reviewed the Logitech VX Revolution mouse. Unlike the MX Revolution mouse I reviewed this past weekend, the VX was designed with notebook users in mind. It has a smaller form factor, storage inside the mouse for the USB transceiver stick and is powered by only 1 AA-sized battery.

Things just keep getting better for WordPress.com users. Back in August, the WordPress crew unveiled the custom CSS upgrade for WordPress.com bloggers. Now, WordPress.com users may use their own domain or register a new one to pair with their blog. Continue Reading »

Linux users will be pleased to know that Redhat’s Fedora Project has unveiled Fedora Core 6 today. Due to the high traffic of the Redhat site today, downloading FC6 over BitTorrent is probably the fastest method. Fedora Core 6 features numerous improvements such as an AIGLX framework merged into Xorg, support for Intel-based Macs and a better installer. Update: Check out this FC6 review.

When an Apple contact told me last night that there would be new Macbook Pros today, I was a little skeptical. But alas, Apple came through this morning releasing updated MacBook Pros. The MBP hasn’t received an update since it was released in January of 2006. The most notable additions include a Core 2 Duo processor Continue Reading »

ArsTechnica, Lifehacker, 456 Berea St, Neowin.net, BetaNews and many others are reporting that while Firefox 2.0 has a scheduled release for tomorrow, the download is live. Get it for yourself: Win32, Mac, Linux. Update: It may not be final after all.

Update 2: It is really out now. It seems as though they were working out Windows and perhaps Mac bugs because the MD5 sum for the Linux “final” is the same as RC3.

Reading an article by Om Malik in this month’s Business 2.0 magazine earlier today, I began thinking of the successful web application and the future of the web. As broadband connectivity becomes cheaper and faster, there will be an undeniable movement towards the flurry of web-based applications that are sprouting up everywhere. The computer might evolve into nothing more than a terminal to your Continue Reading »

Logitech has always had a strong presence in the high-performance mouse market. They were the first to have a virtually lag free cordless mouse (MX700), the first large company to produce a cordless laser mouse (MX1000), and now the trend continues. Logitech has recently created what they have dubbed as the world’s most advanced mouse. Today I will be checking out the MX Revolution to see if it lives up to that epithet. Continue Reading »

Josh from Cooliris just emailed me to let me know that PicLens Beta 1 has been released. PicLens completely changes the way view online images. After quickly installing this currently Safari-only plugin, I took it for a spin by visiting my flickr photostream. Continue Reading »

For the past few days I have been playing around with Gawker, a unique OS X application that lets you easily record time lapse video. Gawker makes it incredibly pain free to create these time lapse videos with the integrated iSights on all new Macs. So when it came time for my roommate to build his new Core 2 Duo PC, I thought it would be a great opportunity to put Gawker through its paces. Continue Reading »

Over the last few weeks I have talked about applications and services that enhance iTunes, such as Qloud’s tagging plugin and Soundflavor’s iTunes add-on. Get ready to welcome one more application to this group, Tangerine. Tangerine is most similar to Soundflavor in that it can create playlists for you by analyzing the songs Continue Reading »

As mentioned earlier, Microsoft has been busy preparing Internet Explorer 7 for public distribution. It went live for download earlier today. You can read about it at the MSDN IEBlog or you can go to Microsoft.com/IE to download your copy now. Continue Reading »

Yahoo! will be holding a day-long camp on November 6th at Sunnyvale HQ to benefit their newly created online Time Capsule. The massive Time Capsule will be filled with various forms of media - video, images, words, drawings and sound. It will be put on display at the Smithsonian for a while, then it will be sealed until 2020. Yahoo! will open the time capsule then, on their 25th anniversary. Continue Reading »

Media Temple launched their latest offerings today along with a redesigned site. After logging in, current (ss) users will see a new button allowing them to migrate to the new (gs) platform. The (gs) runs at $20/month for 100GB of storage and a terabyte of bandwidth. I’m not sure how the pricing works for those that have already purchased the (ss) a while back. Continue Reading »

No I’m not quoting a rap song today, I’m talking about my MacBook problems. I got my MacBook back two weeks ago after Apple held it captive repaired it for random shutdown syndrome. That was an adventure in itself, leaving me without the MacBook for almost a month. Continue Reading »

CNET has launched a new site dedicated to video clips for everything from news to reviews. Anyone familiar with CNET knows that they are no stranger to video. Nearly every product review is accompanied with a short video review. CNET decided to take this familiarity with video and sprout an entirely new site. Continue Reading »

Coming up with a killer idea is no easy feat. I’m talking about that perfect idea that makes you consider dropping out of school or quitting your job to pursue it; something that could have a huge impact on a group of people, if not the world. In this article, I will attempt to present a method that might help you come up Continue Reading »

Dave from Jungle Disk pointed me to an Apple article for preventing .DS_Store file creation. These .DS_Store files are created multiple times when connecting to a remote file server, such as a SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS or WebDAV server. Although they Continue Reading »

Just an FYI for Transmit app users, version 3.5.5 is out. The update is primarily a bug fix, as you can investigate into with the official release notes. The most notable of the bug fixes remedies application crashes with failed SFTP logins.

Intel, the corporation responsible for your speedy Mac, has launched the IT@Intel Blog. It seems like all the big companies are catching on to this business blogging trend; I love it. A quick look around the blog will get you a page about the authors and there are some heavy hitters in there, including the Continue Reading »

Google has merged its separate Writely and spreadsheets web applications into Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The new service will further Google’s strength as an online office suite, currently competing with Zoho.

It has been along time coming but Media Temple is ready to unleash their latest offering, the (gs). What makes the (gs) so different from the current (ss) Shared Server platform? Everything. First off, Grid-Server technology ensures that your website can grow as fast as it needs without being limited by the server. That means (gs) customers won’t experience the so called digg effect. Continue Reading »

A startup by the name of Qloud (pronounced “cloud”) launched their public beta today for a people powered music search engine of sorts. Music search on Qloud can be done in three different ways - searching by music (artists/titles etc), by tags (genre and related terms) or by browsing through Qloud users. Continue Reading »

Burned laptop is the aroma currently in the air at the library as of now. A while ago, some guy’s laptop 20 feet or so away from me started overheating profusely and sounding its own overheating alarm or something. Fortunately the Continue Reading »

In Google’s eight year history they have never spent as much in an acquisition as they did today. Google announced earlier today that they have completed the agreement process and have bought YouTube for a whopping 1.65 billion dollars. Continue Reading »

I have been tracking Amazon S3 ever since it was announced back in March. S3 is an innovative, developer-oriented Simple Storage Service with extremely low prices - 15 cents per gig stored, 20 cents per gig transferred monthly. Jeremy Zawodny has written a comprehensive piece on how cost effective S3 is compared to maintaining his own backup server. Continue Reading »

In a few weeks, web developers everywhere will have a burden lifted from their backs. Microsoft will be rolling out Internet Explorer 7 to the public. Soon after the download is made available to the public, Microsoft will be pushing IE7 through XP’s Automatic Updates. Therefore there will be a massive migration from IE6 to IE7. Continue Reading »

The recently launched PopDeal is a web service that coalesces social media and shopping. Users can submit items, in this case links to online deals (mostly gadgets and computer hardware), and vote them Continue Reading »

Apple finally called and let me know that my MacBook had been repaired. I had given Apple my MacBook for 3-4 weeks to fix the random shutdown issue. It seems like they fixed it; they also replaced my discolored keyboard, trackpad and top housing for free. Getting to the point, this Continue Reading »

Soundflavor DJ is an innovative application (Windows only at the moment) that builds playlists on the fly, depending the the type of music you’re listening to. I haven’t tried Soundflavor DJ out as I have yet to install Parallels on the iMac, but I can assume the experience will mimic the perfection that is Pandora. Continue Reading »

Google, who has been rather quiet on the AJAX Search API front, has unleashed an updated beta release today. Most notably is the feature inclusion of GnewsSearch which allows you to attain Google News results for your web applications. The new API makes it easy for you to put the Google AJAX Search widget on your site, as well as other widgets. [Hat Tip]

Thanks to some great PR information from Allison Rhodes at OpenDNS, I have learned that PhishTank has launched today, at the beginning of National Cyber Security Awareness Month. PhishTank as you can probably guess from its spelling has something to do with online phishing, phishers and malware. Created by the innovative people at OpenDNS, it creates an openly Continue Reading »

Everywhere you browse online these days, you’re bound to find some new job board. They’re ubiquitous; there’s GigaOM Jobs, the 37Signals Job Board, TechCrunch’s CrunchBoard, Cameron Moll’s Authentic Jobs and countless others. Regardless of which one you end up browsing or using, the concept remains the same - pay a $200 or higher fee and list a wanted job. Continue Reading »