One of my favorite Mac productivity applications is Quicksilver. It’s awesome. This afternoon I was changing some settings when I clicked on the “About Quicksilver” menu item and this gorgeous screen popped up. It’s the most elegant “about” screens I’ve ever seen. The Lao-Tze quote is pretty deep, too. =)

I’ve heard countless stories about people’s laptops being stolen. Thefts apparently occur in all types of places – airports, offices, restaurants and even coffee shops. With all the hubbub, you’d think that people would pay a little more attention to their computers when out in public.

I was at a coffee shop in SF last week accessing some free WiFi, and I noticed a woman sitting a couple tables away from me. She was working away on her Powerbook. At one point, she closed the Powerbook’s screen, got up and went to the restroom. She just left the laptop on the table. She was gone for at least 5 minutes. When she returned from the w/c, instead of going back to her table, she went outside to make a phone call. I watched her walk down the block and across the street. Another 5 minutes later, she returned to the coffee shop. She went to the counter and ordered a drink, then casually returned to her table a few minutes later.

I was astonished that her laptop was still there. I was also amazed that someone could be so blatantly irresponsible about protecting their expensive laptop in a public place.

Remember this fun game? (Requires Flash v6 or higher.)

Woohooo! I waited for this day for a long time. Apple released the Video iPod and it’s just the coolest thing ever! Of course I got one for myself… but what’s better than a new Video iPod?? Two! Yes, I got one for Codi, too! We’re hip, we’re cool, we’re out $600… Ha ha ha. Ewww…

  +     = Woo!

I found a cool site that integrates Yahoo maps and the inherent photo gallery capabilities of color iPods. The site is iWay and it’s easy to use. Just type in ‘from’ and ‘to’ addresses and you get a batch of images to upload to your iPod. When on the road, go to your iPod’s photo gallery and you have working directions. =)

Codi and I have had Comcast highspeed access for about 2 years. With no notice, our service was cancelled. It seems that a service tech turned in disconnect notes for the wrong address and they pulled the plug on us. After a while on the phone (I’m still on hold), I got one Comcast rep to hook us back up. I ran a speed test and was happy with the results!

I was talking with my friend Joe about telecom services when I was reminded of my early days in Russia when the Telex machine was the high-tech way of communicating. It was before Russia got fax, email, IM, etc., and it was long before ‘efficiency’ or ‘speed’ were important factors over there. I remember walking into the Telex room of my first Moscow office and being stumped by this long wall of thick steel Telex machines. It was all so low tech that I had to get someone to help me send a Telex message!

Today only, you can get a free version of DivX Bundle for making DivX video files. Normally $20 – don’t pass this up!!

Well, the iPod Nano has arrived and I brought one home this afternoon!

I heard the Apple announcement on the 7th like everyone else, got all excited about the iPod nano, then found out there were none – nada nano – in the stores. I was very disappointed. Even my friend Joe, who works at Apple, hadn’t seen the nano in person yet! I called the Apple stores again today and learned that all Portland area stores have the nano in stock. Sooo I got my shoes and car keys and went down to Apple to check it out.

When I got to Apple, there were no nanos on display. Apparently the exhaust fumes from the delivery truck were still wafting through the air, the nano delivery had been so recent. I went to the cashier to ask where the hell “where please may I find a nano?”. They were behind the counter in big piles.

A friendly lady had whipped her credit card out and handed it to the cashier, saying nothing but “4-gig white, please!” I still wanted to “see” a nano in real life, not in the shrink-wrapped box, so I asked the lady if her nano purchase was for a gift. She said no, so I asked if she would open it in the store so I could see it. She laughed at with me and obliged.

When she opened the box, we stared inside for a moment looking for the nano. All I saw was a sticker that looked like the player. We were both taken aback when we realized that it wasn’t a sticker – it was the nano itself, in it’s thin little nest in the box. She pulled it out of the box and we (and others now surrounding us) ooh’d and ahh’d at the smallness of the nano. It was quite a moment. I got goosebumps and the hairs on my arm raised up!

It was like a tiny slice of Tillamook cheese, or like a short stack of business cards, only narrower. Much to my surprise, the nano came fully charged and it lit up with all its color goodness. The screen is pretty, no doubt!

The Apple cashier mentioned that the nano displays pictures. Oooh! Ahhh!

Now that I was hooked, I had to get my own. I began to ask for the 2GB model, and the friendly lady beside me scoffed at me. “Two gigs? For only $50 more you get twice the storage! Come on!” So I went with the 4GB model, happily peer-pressured into an upgrade.

Friendly lady and I parted ways at the Apple exit, and I went back home with a little spring in my step. (Gasp! I just realized that in all this excitement, I haven’t even plugged it in to my computer yet! Doh!)

Note – you will need a scalpel or a blow torch to open the little package that holds the charger and headphones.

Here are some early pictures…

My silver iPod mini (which is less than 5 weeks old, and pictured above) goes up on eBay in the next hour or so along with some extra goodies. 10% or 20% of the eBay auction will be donated to the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief fund. If you want an awesome (and barely used) silver mini and you want to help the hurricane relief efforts, buy my iPod.

LINK TO EBAY AUCTION: Buy my iPod mini!

I performed my first ‘complex’ hardware hack! I recently read two nearly identical articles at Download Squad and Engadget which described how one could hack the new CVS One-Time-Use video camcorder on sale for $30 at CVS pharmacies. The hack turns the $30 “throw away” camcorder into a fully functioning camcorder with no limitations on number of uses.

The idea of the hack was, in my opinion, borne of the idea that CVS is charging a fine price for the camera, but overcharging for the ‘development’ process. $30 for a camcorder is great(!), but when you add a $20 to $30 processing fee for 20 minutes of digital video, it just seems like a rip-off. $60 for 20 minutes!! If a person used this CVS 10 times, he/she could have purchased a full-fledged digital MPEG4 camcorder like the ones sold at Sharper Image. That’s just silly.

I think that CVS would have done much better to charge $50 for the camera and $5 for processing each time, then return the processed camcorder back to the customer. Instead of customer cost going in $60, $120, $180, $240, $300 increments, the cost would have been $55, $60, $65, $70, $75 and so on. There’s less income up front for CVS, but they’d almost guarantee that customers would become habitualized and dependent on their $5 development fix. Once someone realizes they’re spending $180 per hour of recording, the champagne goes flat, the confetti hits the floor, and the CVS camcorder comes off the shopping list.

The hardware hack was created by a handful of geeks – serious folks who probably know way too much about the minute details of hardware-to-software configs, etc. I’m pretty good with electronics, having built many things like gliders, r/c cars, computers, etc., so I was eager to jump right in and see if I could pull this off.

So here’s how the hack went:
First, I looked for a CVS in my area. The closest one was 800 miles away. I looked on eBay and the camcorders are going for $40 or $50. So I called my mom in FL and she sent two of them to me. Thanks ma!

Second, I found a website that shows how to make the sync cable from an old Palm Pilot cable.

Items needed for the sync cable:

• Palm m100 cable ($25 retail or $7 on eBay)
• Spare USB cable (free)
• Soldering kit ($15 at Home Depot)
• Dremel kit ** I don’t have a dremel kit, so I used a saw and an Xacto knife! There’s hacking and then there’s “hacking”!!
• Patience
• Good aim

Here are a few pictures of my hacked sync cable:

By the way, be very careful when you solder the wires to the connector pins. I managed two solder burns on my hand because I was switching from soldering iron to keyboard and back too many times mid-operation. Ouch!

Once I got the cable built, I plugged it into one of the USB ports on my computer. My computer recognized the camera and said it needed a “Saturn” driver. I searched around a bit more and found this site that details both the cable creation and the software needed to hook up your CVS camcorder to your computer so video clips can be downloaded. I also found this site but I found that they made it seem MUCH more complex than it really is.

Again, if you look toward the bottom of this page you’ll see links to the single .exe file used to install the drivers and software needed to pull video from the CVS camcorder.

This is how the CVS camcorder looks in the Windows XP Device Manager:

This is the program (Ops) that allows you to connect the CVS camcorder and download videos to your computer:

And here’s a sample video. Of course, the video content is in AVI format, so you’ll need a video player that supports AVI and DivX.
Jason and Codi in Astoria, Oregon

P.S. The whole thing took an hour or so. It was surprisingly easy and fun.