Time Capsule will be my new wireless network at home. It will also be the first layer back-up for the family photos, the music library, and all those Redwire Files that are just waiting to be zapped by a hard drive crash. Still need some redundancy and offsite back-up, but I’m excited about this first layer being accomplished with the style and intuitive usability of an Apple product.

If this rumor article from Ars Technica ends up really being legit, this seems like something that will finally change the phone industry forever. Not like the iPhone hasn’t already done that.

A phone-sized phone seems to make sense in ways the regular old iphone couldn’t. I could never carry around a device as big as the iphone…I put my phone in the pocket of my jeans (on the days I remember to bring it…). I wouldn’t want something as big as an old school palm pilot cramping my style in my front pocket and I’m not a strap on a leather harness to my belt kinda guy… But, I would carry a slimmer “iPhone Nano.”

If this makes it to the marketplace this summer, it could sway guys like me to actually forking over the cash for a monthly data plan and ditching the home phone…

In the kitchen with Moby

Tony Morgan on Seth Godin…
Your Branding Sucks

FortyOneTwenty
Hot church media

A surly group of friends doing great work, from their passion, here and in Rwanda.
Scallywags - I’m continually amazed by them.

Safari is still the best browsing experience, but Apple still needs to fix a few things.
$10,000 exploit

I hate sounding like an Apple fanboy all the time, but it’s hard when you’ve worked on both sides and can easily see the advantage of the Apple experience. I don’t usually have to do much in Power Point, but when I do, I hate it.  

Today, I had to throw together a “state of the church” slideshow for a meeting on Sunday. I decided to use Keynote instead of Power Point. 

Wow. What a better user experience. Almost everything is easier in Keynote than on PP. Apple did a great job. I’m using one of their built in templates. When it came down to making a chart, I could believe how simple they made it. It was also so easy to make it look professional, that I didn’t even try to “design” a slideshow, I just used the template.

Ups:

• Fast
• Intuitive
• Clean and Uncluttered
• Puts the polish on for me
• Nice built in templates
• Animation is a hundred times easier on Keynote than PP
• Font consistency. A dream come true. PP is always trying to resize things

Downs:

• Still not crazy about how Apple deals with the font pallet. It seems clunky for the most widely used tool in the program.
• Floating pallets are still a clutter factor when you have 5 of them open and they don’t lock into a position. 

On the days when I’m a designer, I’m in Adobe Illustrator all day long. Until now, finding the exact version of a file I want has been somewhat cumbersome. With this Quicklook Plugin for Illustrator, it’s a breeze.  Now I cruise along finding things more efficiently…because I can see inside all of these files without ever opening Illustrator…Sweet!  

Ars Technica has a first look review of the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

I’m oddly excited about this. Everyone knows I’m an Apple Fanboy, and I love Pages, I’m just not so keen on Numbers.  Overall though, Microsoft has done something smart with their Mac line of products for years…Office for Windows and Office for Mac are developed separately. Not that they aren’t talking and including similar features, but if you’ve been on both platforms, you would recognize that some features (Mail Merge for one) have been much easier and more robust on the Mac for years.

The not so smart thing that Microsoft did, was they didn’t talk internally about cross-platform compatibility. They released the Office for Windows update last year, with no compatibility on the Mac for the .docx file format. — Not so brilliant.  

Anywho…it really looks like this is a huge upgrade and extremely well designed from a Mac perspective.

Can’t wait to get my hands on it…should be available at Macworld next week or sometime in January…

Hasta la Vista-link from kem

I was looking for a new printer driver for my printer/scanner since I upgraded to Leopard. 
Here’s the list I had to choose from: Notice the difference?

• Mac OS X
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows 98SE
• Microsoft Windows ME
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Starter
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP x64

One full version for everybody. No mess. No fuss. 

So take a look at them,

but also notice how amazing this web gallery is that I made with iPhoto.
I didn’t even try. I just put the photos in an iPhoto album and clicked “web gallery.”

It automatically synced with my .mac account and created the webpage and gave me a link to share. You can preview the photos in multiple ways, including in “CoverFlow” style ipodesque.

You can also download the high-res version to go make your own prints.

I just pushed one button.

Guy Kawasaki posted a top ten leopard tips post from Take Control Books.

He added a few.

And i would add another.

#13 Stop opening files to see what’s in them.
Highlight just about any file, click the spacebar and let Leopard give you a preview without slowing down your computer by opening programs.

I love how Mail in Leopard now has “To Do Lists” and “Notes.”  

Special Features of Mail/iCal’s To Do Lists: 

• Synced with iCal
• Categorized by iCal Calendar (home, work, soccer schedule, etc…)
• Deadlines on to do’s (pick up milk for the cake batter by Wednesday at 4pm)
• Alarms (Little reminders through email our alarm beeps that remind you to do what you told yourself you need to do. 
• All shared over .mac or your network so they sync on multiple systems.

One of my favorite new features in Leopard is the ability to have RSS Feeds in Mail. Mail is the mac equivalent of Outlook - Though both have features that the other should dream of and aren’t really equals…
When new items post on a blog I’m following, it will come into an inbox in my mail program just for RSS. Now, it’s almost like bloggers are sending me mail, even though they don’t know they are…. 
I love it.  

I barely have to hop into Safari.

Leopard has been running on my mac for about 2 hours now.
It’s a beautiful thing. The first thing I noticed is that safari is screaming fast. The animation of everything is absolutely beautiful. Not sure about the new Finder yet.
Stacks are my new best friend.

Absolutely love the simplicity of them and the look doesn’t hurt either.

Safari all of a sudden has a fantastic RSS reader. No need for bloglines. 
I’m going to keep playing this weekend.