Window 7 Whopper @ Burger in Japan

Not sure if they're having this in US, but in Japan, you can get a Windows 7 Whopper at a Burger King in Japan for the price of 777 yen (about $8.50) for the first 30 customers everyday from now to the 28th.

This burger comes with 7 patties. Guess why!

Via Yahoo Japan News (Japanese)

Dyson's bladeless fan

Known for its powerful vacuum cleaners, Dyson has a new fan for gadgeteers.

Yes, I know, this has nothing to do with iPhones, but it's too cool of a gadget for me to pass by.

First of all, this fan has no blades. So it's safe and you won't worry about blades hurting your kids or pets.

Second, you can disassemble the fan, so you can store it away. Now if you live in a city like Tokyo, where space is not plentiful, this is awesome. Well, the summer has gone by, so I'm guessing I'll consider this next year.

Third, you looks like it's from the future!

Check out Dyson's site for more info. There are a couple of models, and prices start at $299.99!!! A hefty price for a fan alright... I think I'll wait for version 2 =)

Tips on clean install of Snow Leopard

So this week, I installed Snow Leopard on my iMac and MacBook Air. I decided to go with a clean install this time.

Found a nice guide at Cult of Mac - How to upgrade to Snow Leopard the right way

Spring cleaning

The Cult of Mac article mentioned Singular and Omni Disk Sweeper for cleaning up your Mac before the install. Singular seemed to get stuck for me during scanning, so I gave up. For sweeping I used Grand Perspective.

Preparations - Easily forgotten things

Deactivate your accounts on iTunes

Backup lessons downloaded and purchased via Garageband

MobileMe users' benefits

You paid for a MobileMe account? Time to make full use of that. This time around, I used MobileMe to hold the iCal and Address Book data. So no backing up there.

MobileMe users also get access to the Backup application from Apple. With this, you can easily backup and restore your email, Keychain, and Safari settings (bookmarks, but more importantly, all those autofill data and stuff). So in summary, used Backup for:

• Keychain
• Mail
• Safari

Apps where data are in the clouds

We surely need more of these in this world! Makes life a lot simpler - just enter your account, and everything is synced. For me, I only have two apps:

• Evernote
• Netnewswire (a wonderful free RSS reader for Mac and iPhone and syncs with Google Reader).

And the apps with data that have to be manually backed up...

These include:

• Bento
• Delicious Library 2
• iMovie
• iPhoto
• iTunes
• iWeb
• Things
• Together

And finally, those documents

Here's where I sweep my computer and gather up all my files and documents created with:

• GarageBand
• Logic
• iWork
• Microsoft Office

Dump everything in one folder, and after the install, put them back in their new house.

The process

It looks like Apple has decided to hide the erase and install feature to make things more friendly for users. While doing to, it has made it not so friendly to those who want to start out on a clean slate.

Users will have to manually boot up their computer with Snow Leopard DVD, use disk utility to erase the hard drive, and then perform the install. Anyway, it's no biggie.

Overall things went pretty smooth. There was a slight hiccup with Air. (See my previous post for that). Enjoying the new Expose features and the minor improvements. Programs are working snappier (which could be due to the clean install, and not so much Snow Leopard).

After the install

Two things I did in particular after the installation this time.

• Use Bento to create a database and keep track of serial numbers of programs
• Installed Shades so that I can dim my iMac screen. (Why can't I dim my screen on my iMac?!!! Please Apple, fix this!)

Programs I decided not to install yet

I decided not to install iShowU, Skitch, Wiretap Studio. I'm going to see how far the new QuickTime and screen capturing can take me.

How to: Clean install of Snow Leopard on MacBook Air

Finally blocked out some time to do a clean install of Snow Leopard on my MacBook Air. To do a clean install, you have to boot up the Mac with the Snow Leopard DVD. And then use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive.

Since I don't have an external DVD drive, I searched around, and it seems like on Macs, you can run a utility called Remote Install Mac OSX. Here's documentation from Apple. The app is pretty self explanatory and walks you through the entire process.

Beware if you're installing over wi-fi

I also took a look at the PDF guides on the Snow Leopard DVD. It does mention about Remote Install Mac OSX. If you're using AirPort (or via wi-fi), it seems that WEP protected networks don't work. And yes, in my case, I was doing it via wi-fi, and my network happened to be WEP. I left my ethernet cable adapter at the office.

I felt lazy and didn't want to change my Air Port settings, so I decided to share the Internet connection of my iMac without a password. I didn't have any important stuff on the computer, and hopefully my neighbors are all nice people.

In the end, all went fine. It took about two hours I think. Now I just got to restore the settings and get all those apps back in.

Two co-op games for Wii that I want this X-mas

Sure there are a lot of multiplayer battle and competition games, but where did all the cooperative games go? You know the games where everyone works together to beat the stages.

On the Wii, two games that I look forward to:

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Sins and Punishment 2

A sequel to a Nintendo 64 shooter. Here's a link to its Japanese website. It will be available in Japan on the 29th.

Picture of black Wii on display in Japan

Forgot to upload this. It's the black Wii on sale before the price drop in Japan.

Apology from Facebook

I happen to be one of the unlucky ones that couldn't access Facebook for a week or so. They finally got around fixing it, and here's the apology from them.

Anyway, it's great is working again. I've got photos I need to share!

Why Apple would want to reject the Google Voice app

I got my Google Voice invitation awhile ago, but I couldn't use it because I was in Japan. I was back in LA two weeks ago, and had a chance to try Google Voice out. And I can understand why Apple would want to reject the Google Voice app and still let apps like Skype on the iPhone.

How Google Voice works when you want to call a person

Instead of calling people directly, with Google Voice (GV), you tell GV to connect you to the person. So GV is like an operator. So here's what happens:

1. Go to GV via the web, find the contact you want to call, and initiate the call.
2. GV will call you first.
3. After you pick up, you will hear a ringtone connecting you to the person you want to call.

In the case you don't have web access, you can call the GV, and then dial the number you want to call. GV will then connect you.

You might be wondering why wouldn't you just call directly from your phone. The reason is by calling directly, your phone number instead of your GV number will be exposed to the receiver. Only by having GV connect you can you expose the receiver to your GV number.

Fully utilizing GV = say bye bye to Contacts

To fully utilize GV, you will route all your calls through GV, which means that you will be abandoning the Contacts app and functionality of the iPhone. And I don't think Apple is to happy for that.

For the users, this means that you might end up with two set of contacts to manage - one on Google and one on your phone. And that could disrupt the user experience. If your contacts aren't synced properly, there might be cases when you want to email someone from your phone and find their email isn't there or outdated.

Impressions of GV

Personally, I think it's a wonderful, but "geeky" service right now. What I like the most is the ability for me to attach and remove numbers from the GV account. That means I can just hand out one universal number, and when I'm in town with a different mobile number, I can simply assign that.

GV also offers call screening, which is a nice feature, but annoying to your friends. You do have the option to turn of call screening for selected individuals / groups, but that just mean more configuring work for you to do.

The other thing I like about GV is that is emails you when you get a SMS or Voicemail. It's also nice that they are consolidating communications from the phone. Once they integrate this with GMail, you can have all the communications consolidated. And that would be cool, and kind of scary...

And finally, there's also a neat feature of "Do Not Disturb". When this is turned on, every call placed to your GV number will be sent right to the voice mail. So it's very useful if you don't want to take any calls or you're outside the country.

Ways of using GV when you're out of the country

GV currently only works in US. Though once you activate the service, you'll be able to access the page from other countries. So you could still check voice mails.

Now back in Japan, I was thinking how I can still use it. And although it's not free, with the help of Skype, you can still receive calls via GV when you're abroad. I have yet to try it out, but here's how I imagine it would work:

1. Get a Skype online number that's based in US.
2. Make sure you have credits or an unlimited Skype calling plan to the country you're in.
3. Forward all Skype calls to your international number.
4. Hook up the Skype number to GV.
5. So every time someone calls your GV number, it will connect to the Skype number.
6. Skype will then forward the call to your international number. This is also the part that will incur fees, meaning the NOT FREE part.

Hopefully, I'll try this out one of these days. That is unless Google rolls the service out internationally before I do =)