Zeppelin Mini - another slick and expensive iPod / iPhone dock speaker

This speaker caught my eyes while shopping. It's nice looking, but what's cool about is that you can rotate the dock so you can watch your movies on your iPod touch, iPhone, and iPod nano.

This eye candy also will set you back $399.95! Will make a nice gift though =)

Links:

Zeppelin Mini website

Gadgets of my coworkers

Quite a while ago, I asked my coworkers on what gadgets they have and recommend. I was quite interested to see what gadgets they live by. And here they are along with my comments:

• Nintendo DS - I've been a Nintendo gamer since the NES, but I'm not a very portable gaming person. Since I play video games at home, it's hard to bring me to playing on such a tiny screen. But I do appreciate how it's convenient because sometimes I just feel lazy to turn on the TV and the Wii. As for me, the large screen DS is on my wish list.
  
  
• PSP
  
  
• iPod nano - Yes, the nano is one cool gadget. The latest version is simply amazing; a super tiny device that can play and take videos...
  
  
• Apple Wireless Keyboard - I agree with this one. What I love about them is they're so flat causing less stress when you type.
  
  
• Mighty Mouse - Although I think the track ball, which allows 360 degrees scrolling, is cool, when that track ball gets dirty, you've got a problem. You can't take it out to clean it. The Magic Mouse came in time for me. No more cleaning track ball!

And now the wish list:

• Viliv X70 UMPC - looks like a slick tablet... but at this point in time, it's probably safer to wait to see what Apple has under their sleeves...
  
  
• Smartq5 - an iPhone / iPod touch like device with a cheap price tag? Looks interesting.
  
  
• Mifi - A slick card-shaped gadget that turns you into a moving hotspot. Now, they just need a cheaper data plan.

What are the gadgets you live by? And what's on your wishlist?

Appliances to go with your Apple stuff

Looking for electric kettles, calculators, fans, mugs, air humidifiers to go with you iMacs and iPhones. Plus Minus Zero (a Japanese company) have designer appliances to go with your Apple gadgets.

Here's their website.

iZoom - tripod and zoom lens for the serious iPhone photographer

Princeton Technology has a kit that comes with a tripod, zoom lens, and a case to attach the lens. It can zoom in 8 times the original iPhone camera can, and uses optical zoom to give you much clearer picture quality.

The kit will set you back around $40 USD and can be found in Japan. Comes in white and black.

Source:

iZoom website (Japanese)

2010 Lucky Bag in Japan

As the day when Apple sells their lucky bags every year in Japan approached, while tempting, I have decided to sit out this time. Reason is to save money for the Apple tablet, slate, pad, or whatever you want to call it. (Personally, I think they're going to reuse the name iBook)

Lucky bags this year is priced at 35,000 yen (about $375 USD). And each Apple Store in Japan offered them in limited quantities. A few of the bags are deemed the "lucky" ones, and if you're lucky to get one of these, it means you'll get a MacBook Pro 13 inch along with a bag of goodies.

Seems that lots of people this year lined up showing that Apple has no fear of recession. And as usual, lines start forming from the night before.

The theme this year is music and if you stood out and waited in the cold, here is the list of things you got:

• iPod nano (Product) Red
• Apple USB Adapter
• Nike + iPod Sport Kit
• inCast Sports Armband Pro
• Crystal Jacket Set for iPod Nano 5G (special Lucky Bag version)
• Atomic Floyd TwistJax
• iHome iP38
• 2 free iTunes song card
• Apple Store special T-Shirt
• InCase Nylon Compact Backpack

According to Japanese blogs, the total value of all the items total up to around 75,000 yen (around $800 USD).

Definitely great stuff if you're new to iPod nanos. However, I'd imagine most people lining up at loyal Apple fans, so I'm not sure if they'll be all that happy.

Source:

Ascii.jp (Japanese)

super-sized Frisk

The Plaza in Japan is carrying these super-sized Frisks, my choice when it comes to mints.

Yes, who says things in Japan are always petite!

Trivia: The text on the TextEdit icon

I think I read this awhile ago on MacRumors. Anyways, I thought it's a pretty interesting trivia to past along.

Turns out that if you enlarge the icon of TextEdit on your Mac, you will find the narration text to the famous Think Different commercial.

A magical iPhone stand

I picked up this mobile phone stand at a Disney Store in Japan. Basically it has this anti-slippery surface that secures the phone. It's like magic. And best of all, it's about the same size as the iPhone. Only time will tell how long the surface can hold my iPhone. Pics below:

The stand itself.

Look, Mickey is holding my iPhone!

And one more shot of the iPhone on the stand. Magical, isn't it?

Turn your iPhone into a DSLR

Being tied up with work. Hopefully I can get some more posts up on a regular basis.

Anyways, here's something cool to share. The Japanese company Gizmon has two lens that you can attach to your iPhone. One is the fish-eye (about 40-50 USD), and the other is the wide & macro (about 20-30 USD).

The wide & macro lens is actually two lens attached together. When two lens are together, it is wide angle. Take off the wide angle lens attachment, it becomes macro.

The lens are mounted with a magnet to a mount that you tape to your iPhone. If you don't want to tape directly, you can always tape the mount to an external case.

To see some photos of the wide and macro lens in action, click here. (Japanese)

To see some photos of the fish-eye lens in action, click here. (Japanese)

Pair these together with some camera apps, and you can do some fun photography with your iPhone.

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 =)

An interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails

Interesting interview about NIN on Twitter and iPhone. Here's the link.

My favorite quote from it:

We took to heart lessons on how people steal music, watched how people steal music and interacted with people who steal and learned why people steal music. People aren't stealing music to make money. They steal because they love music. They want it as soon as it's out and that's a good thing. It isn't like people are boot-legging the music and making lots of money off your record, they just want it.

Why I liked the 090909 Apple event today + links

New iPhone OS updates and iTunes 9. And they're both free!

There was no tablet. There were no powered up iPod touches. Basically upgraded iPod lineup with a video iPod Nano. Doesn't seem to have anything that I really got to have for Christmas. And isn't that a good thing. I get to save money, or by something else =)

Here are some nice links:

• Live blog of event @ MacWorld
• The video of the event @ Apple
• And if you don't want to read or watch the entire thing, Engadget has a nice summary and collection of links.
• And if you're wondering why iPod touch had no camera, and iPod nano can't take pictures, here's the official answer from NY Times via TUAW.

Snow Leopard is here!

I got Snow Leopard via the up-to-date program. It finally got here yesterday. Except I'll be too busy this week to install it. Pondering whether I should do a clean install... that would take an entire day.