Iphone 3GS?

I watched that whole two hour presentation this morning. The only place to watch it was Ustream where like two guys were using the webcams on their computers to show us the keynote. I know I shouldn't complain, but that was painful. Engadget's live blog was really nice though to give me a visual I could see, and the with the Ustream Audio (video was really bad) I was set. They did like 1.5 hours of apps, updates to the MBP line, and then used 10 mins to bring out the iPhone 3GS.

Now, it wasn't that I wasn't excited for it, but for some reason I feel it was a bit underwhelming. I knew this was coming in an Engadget post this week. Faster specs + video, and that was really all there was to it. I don't know what else I was hoping they could do, but I just felt like i needed more.

I don't have any apple products that I can think of, and I was hoping the IPhone was going to be the first one, but now I'm debating what else there is out there. Questions: Is at&t actually going to allow tethering (for free)? Is At&t going to lower the price of the monthly plans? These two things need to be addressed before people start buying I'm pretty sure. If they don't do these two things, it might be the dealbreaker in some cases IMO. At the end of the day, you can still find me at the Apple store looking at their phones but never actually signing up for one.
/sad trombone.

edit:
The real announcement today what was really worth while was the Snow Leopard announcement. $29! for this fall! That almost blew my mind. We were definitely predicting $99+ or so.

I just uninstalled Itunes.

Goodbye Itunes, hulu player, and boxee. Hello Miro:

Although I've used miro before, it wasn't until I got fed up the array of programs I was using to listen to podcasts, watch my movies, and watch TV online. What really sparked my curiosity was when Hulu released their desktop app. I downloaded, and decided that I wanted more, and looked at boxee again, and finally fell back to miro.

Not only does Miro download all my revision3 shows, but it allows me to browse hulu within miro, play all my movies, and even play songs through grooveshark (all you have to do is add it as a site.) I must say this program puts everything else to shame, and has a very good interface, and plays all my HD podcasts just fine.

The only thing wrong with it is the fact that my HP laptop's remote doesn't seem to work with it (mind you i'm running windows 7, the remote probably doesn't work at all right now.) but such a minor flaw is nothing compared to the ability to watch everything on an HD tv, and an amazing software experience to go with it.

www.getmiro.com

Windows 7 RC1

Oh its here!

Right on time too. May 5th at 12 Am they download immediately came up. (which is odd because I'm in central time and usually things don't get released until 2 AM, also known as pacific time.) Anyways, their whole download manager was a pain and I managed to do a direct download via through firefox.
I did a clean install and literally sat in my room and watched Windows 7 install for about 45 mins. Not bad, about the same as the Vista install process I'd say.
Once I got everything up and running, I immediately notice some rather large changes, but everything else felt familiar.
Start Menu/Aero
Same as Vista, but the preview function is ridiculously better. Say for example I have Steam up. Only one Steam Icon shows up in the task bar, but a simple mouse-over and three preview windows show up. Hover over the preview window, and it removes whatever windows you have up and shows you that Steam window. From there just click on it, and you're in Steam.
Another feature is the "show desktop" button. It's in the bottom right and imediately displays the desktop and moves all your windows out of the way.

As I click around, I notice that there's not that many apps. There's no Windows movie maker, no Messaging, no calender, etc. That's because they're pushing for cloud computing with their Windows Live applications. Everything is availible for download, but you have to do it through windows Live. They claim they want you to choose your own movie making software, mail software, IM service, etc. But it could also be that they want you to use all of their software because it works seamlessly together.

From here out, this is a review with the perspective after I've been using 7 for almost a month.
One thing that isn't Microsoft's fault, but Mozilla's. (Or whoever writes addon's) When I open up Internet Explorer, it opens all my tabs, and all the tabs work with "aero peek" (the preview feature I mentioned earlier.). However, with Firefox, only one tab shows. This is annoying, and the reason I'm on IE right now, as opposed to FF or chrome. Hopefully this will be fixed in the coming monthes.

As far as compatibility, just about everything works. The only thing that has been an issue the this program "Eamonn" which is for a service called JACT which tracks your video game play time. Besides that everything runs like a charm.

I love the new themes, and power settings. I'm pretty sure I get like 20 more minutes of battery life out of Windows 7 than Vista. What they say is true, Seven boots faster, and shuts down quicker. Everything else I can think of is great, and at this point I suggest you try it yourself:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

The olde internet

So I just checked my yahoo email address, and it's almost like a completely different person in comparison to my gmail account. I get stuff on there from my myspace, spam, and other things ive subscribed to over the past few years. And if you look on my gmail account, there's school stuff, facebook related things, netflix, and Amazon. I find this funny and idk why.

Aim buddy list where have you gone?

Does anyone remember how back in the day, everyone you know would go home after school and get on AIM? (some weirdo's on the MSN + Yahoo too.) Man, there were buddy icons, subprofiles, themes, and the people that had like seven screen names they changed every two weeks. I remember having ten people on my buddy list at once thinking it was a big deal. The internet continued to evolve and and I think my AIM buddy list topped off around 2006 with 250-300 buddies. Sad how right now around 9 o'clock on a school night, I used to have around 20-30 people on at once. Tonight it's a pitiful 6 people plus the never ending list of people set to 'mobile'.

The problem today is that everything is too diverse and people are too diverse. I guess texting on phones really killed Aim, but did it? The only people that ever actually IM me are on xfire, steam, or the sad messaging client that some call facebook chat. Funny how in a world where we're all supposed to be connected, there's so many ways to do it that everyone is on something different, therefore creating the same problems as before. That's a shame. (btw there's no real idea to this post, just talking out loud.)

So as many people have noticed, facebook did change recently. (note also that even though my first two posts have been about facebook, this blog isn't strictly about facebook, it's just been on my mind recently.) Facebook definitally changed for the better, and here's why. Now that you have a real feed, you actually have something to do on facebook. Instead of having to seek out everyone all the time, the feed tells you everything that's going on, and actually gives you something to do for about 10-15 minutes. Which is perfect, because that's all the time you need to spend on facebook anyway. You can comment, like status's, and get a general feel for what's going on.  

One problem I do have is the fact that there's so much outrage with its new release. Welcome to the internet people! It's not 2003 anymore, sites update their look, and its usually for the better.

The real thing is, no one actually knows how to complain about things. If you're going to complain, do it correctly. Just saying "Change it back!" gets nothing done. Actually critiqueing a site would be commenting on the fact that the right side of the homepage just fills like filler space where they have no idea what to put there. I suggest putting the weather and some sort of news there. Make it be a portal type homepage, that would be sick. Also too, facebook should really work on improving their chat by either making it a standalone download, or embedding it into the page, and not on that bar on the bottom of the page. (which is just taking up space in my opinion.)

Gotta love people.

Ratz off to ya Facebook!

Well everyone, it's over. Facebook is done. 25 things, and the images where everyone is tagged in has pretty much done it. Initially when I joined facebook, I thought, "Wow, finally a place where there's no bad layouts, and there wasn't three videos and music all loading at once on people's profiles." It was great!

That was, until they decided to add applications. What a mistake facebook, everyday for the first month those applications started i had to log in and hit ignore on every dumb application people sent me. Also just recently, I added some applications myself, to see what this buzz from the past year was all about. Oh gee, I don't know, how about ads upon ads for some stupid app that tells you you're cool. I don't need a facebook app to tell me i'm cool. In fact, that would be opposite of cool.

I've ranted about this before, but it wasnt until just now that i felt a blog post (the first real one.) was in order. I am right now completely unable to access my facebook from google chrome, why? I don't even know, but i'm using internet explorer to access it right now. So it's probably not facebook's fault, but do you know what is facebook's fault? Losing 10% of all images on the site. Really facebook? How does that happen? It's a good thing you don't actually store any real important information.

I'm not quitting facebook just yet, but i'll definitally be on the lookout for something better. And no twitter isn't the next facebook, mainly because that's not what twitter is. I'm sure whatever the next big thing is, it's approaching closer and closer every day.