Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Page 2 of 64

HOW-TO: Cleaning the Apple Keyboard

Published on Thursday, November 16, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, Random Stuff and Technology. 155 Comments

There comes a time, when your shiny white Apple keyboard gets so dirty that you can’t bear one second more. For me, that day was today. I love the Apple keyboard, it is nice, ergonomic and looks very sleek. However the only ‘disadvantage’ (if you could call it that) is that it is white. It gets dirty easily and you can see really clearly everything. A simple wipe of the keyboard with a damp cloth was not enough. There was still remains of tons of different things, and I wanted it off. You never really notice how dirty your keyboard is, unless you use a white keyboard, or something of a similar colour. But with the Apple keyboard, the outer shell is clear, so you can see everything there too.
This little how-to guide will show you how I cleaned my keyboard to perfection. Click on for the detailed guide (with lots of photos).

UPDATE: I’ve been dugg, TUAW’d and del.icio.us‘d.
UPDATE 2: I had to change the photos to get them from flickr as I am burning through my bandwidth really quickly. I am at 18GB, and my max is 21GB per month!

Continue reading ‘HOW-TO: Cleaning the Apple Keyboard’

Gaming News in Review: Part 2

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Movies, Noteworthy, PC, Software, Technology and TV's. 1 Comment

xbox hd-dvd

Part deux of the gaming news round-up over the last few weeks.

Could the Wii not support game saves to SD memory cards? According to the manual it is, but not according to the console itself. That’s what Joystiq found out. Lets hope Nintendo fix this in time for the release, as we wouldn’t want to replay an entire game when at your friends house, do we? [link]
Engadget’s Wii software walkthrough video and gameplay walkthrough videos allow you to see what it would be like if you owned a Wii. Shortly it will come true for a lot of people, or at least we hope.
Microsoft revealed the HD download service for US Xbox 360 owners. These will allow you to download 720p HD TV shows from CBS, Comedy Central VH1 and more. Deleted TV shows can be re-downloaded for free in either HD or SD. Movies are ‘rent-only’, whereby you have two weeks to watch a movie, but after you start watching, you have 24 hours to finish the film. After that the film will no longer play. During the 24-hours, you can watch the film an unlimited number of times. [link]
Engadget open the retail version of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and have a play around with it, naturally with tons of photos (above) [link]
The PS3 gets dismantled before it is even in circulation. The four part videos take you through a detailed disassemblement of the PS3 showing the CPU, heatsink, the blu-ray drive, etc. [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]
PS3 kiosk is a fake! The PS3 behind the glass in retail outlets are not even functional, no, it seems that Sony may be scared of the PS3 overheating or exploding, so they placed a separate version enclosed in the kiosk. The actual console is very well ventilated to make sure the heat dissipates as much as possible. My, my… [link]
Size comparison of the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The PS3 is the largest, and the Wii is the smallest (though it’s not like we didn’t know that) [link]
The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player is fully functional in PC’s. Hook it up using the USB, and some Toshiba drivers you can not only view the files on the HD-DVD, but if your PC can handle it, it can also play back the movie. Nice. What’s more, the Mac recognises the drive instantaneously without any drivers, but there is no software to playback the video. Oh well! [link]
A DVD ‘enhanced’ version of the Wii will be released to the US and Japan in the 2nd half of 2007. The current Wii’s contain the DVD drive, however they do not have the software capable to play movies. The most likely reason for not including the software, is to avoid licencing fees which would increase the price of the console. [link]

Gaming News in Review: Part 1

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Movies, Noteworthy, Technology and Wireless. Closed

the wii house

While I was unable to post during the last two weeks, there has been plenty of gaming news floating around, so be prepared for a awfully long post.

New Halo 3 Info: 1up.com have revealed lots of new information about Halo 3. There will be three different editions of Halo 3, a standard, a collectors and a Legendary edition. New brute weapons, Spike Rifle and Spike Grenade. The Mongoose ATV, like the Warthog, however there is no turret. A new assault riffle as the starting weapon, Bungie hope to improve the tactics of the game, so it is more fair. Save multiplayer, and single player gameplay videos and watch them again. The left and right bumpers are being used as the reloading buttons for your weapons, so what happens with the X button now? [link]
PS3′s SIXAXIS controller is completely disassembled to reveal its innards. A layer by layer documentation takes you through the motion sensing parts, the non-replaceable battery, and the rest of the gadgetry. [link]
The Wii house of fun in London. SPOnG managed to take a look around Nintendo’s secret house which is kitted up with Wii gear, for the press. They took lots of photos and described their experience with the various games and such. Photo shown above. [link]
70GB Hard drive for the Xbox 360 spotted. While the photo could be a fake, the most likely explanation is, Microsoft wants you to be able to store those Movie and Video downloads somewhere (currently for the US only, more in the next post) The video marketplace allows you to download various movies, tv shows and short films, some in HD, which obviously needs plenty of space. [link]
Sony fanboys hijack the Nintendo Wikipedia entry and cover it with “nintendo sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1″, for a mere few minutes, until the Wikipedia admins notice. “In the short moments before Wikipedia admins could get the correct page back up, the assailant successfully misled several would-be Nintendo fans to assume the company had gone out of business, then deciding to ‘switch teams.’ [sarcasm]” [link]
Engadget get down to business, and get hands on with their final production unit of the Wii. Plenty of high-res images of the unboxing, the console and all its accessories. What more could you want? [link]

I split down the post into two separate articles. It’s probably more helpful for the eye.

MacHeist Invites: Get it here

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. 4 Comments

I have seven MacHeist invites to dish out, and I will hopefully get more soon. To those who are unaware, and have been sitting under a rock for the past few weeks, MacHeist is created by the founders of MyDreamApp. The idea is, you follow cryptic messages and use all your geek knowledge to complete various missions. At the end, you will receive a code to put into the MacHeist safe to unlock the freebies for that mission. Lots of different applications (Mac-only, duh!) will be available to unlock during the six different missions. The first mission has started, and is nearly over, and you unlock three pieces of software in total that amount to a saving of $40.95. I won’t give any spoilers, so if you are seriously interested, then leave your email in the comments below. I will try to send out the email as soon as possible. This is based on a first come first served basis.

MacExpo: GreenMyApple

Published on Friday, October 27, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. 4 Comments

The presence of GreenMyApple was quite mysterious, that is because they weren’t there. Outside the Olympia Hall where the expo was taking place, there was a Greenpeace rep, handing out GreenMyApple leaflets, with a huge banner and even a flag. The leaflet can be seen above, it isn’t the best quality as I scanned it in after it had been crumpled up a bit in my bag! A pdf version is available here, which I created. This uses the same scanned images, but is at a higher resolution.

I was actually keen to go to their stand, as I wanted to talk to one of their reps and collect some information. I honestly had no idea how ‘bad’ Mac’s are in respect of the materials they are made from. I am all for saving the environment, as long as there is truth behind what Greenpeace say. They were nowhere to be found, so when I came home I did some digging around on the internet and found that their stall was taken down by MacExpo organisers who “claimed they received complaints from unnamed sources“. Speculation has it, that it may have been Stevie, who didn’t like the reporting that Greenpeace did a while back. They gave Apple a ranking of 2.7/10 for the enviromentally friendliness of Apple’s hardware. A detailed overview can be found here (PDF). Though this is purely rumour, I can’t see anyone else who would actually protest against such a thing, especially as it is for the environment.

The volunteers for Greenpeace have said that they will go back tomorrow (ie, today) to MacExpo to continue their campaign. Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace International campaigner at the expo said, “This reaction is totally over-the-top. Apple refuses to address our criticisms on their products, both for the recycling and for the use of harmful chemicals.” He added, “Instead of hiding their head in the sand, Apple should be a world leader in the greening of the electronics industry, not lagging behind.” He finished by saying that Apple should use cleaner components when making their product, to provide a free take-back program for recycling old Macs; and they challenge “the world leader in design to also be a world leader in environmental innovation” for Apple to have a “product range on the market by 2007 which is free of the worst toxic chemicals”

[via MacNN]

UPDATE: The real reason that GreenMyApple were thrown out of MacExpo, is because they were using ‘viral tactics’ to spread Apples, literally. Many companies were annoyed, that there marketing things were being replaced by green apples, and were randomly placing them in their booths. “The problem came to a head when one woman complained that they had placed an apple in her child’s pram and were taking photographs of him without her permission.” [link]

MacExpo: Parallels

Published on Friday, October 27, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. 2 Comments

Parallels had quite a small stand, with only one rep, but they certainly impressed me. I’ve never actually had a chance to see parallels in the flesh, and I’ve only heard about it on the Interweb. Apple don’t install it on their Macs in the Apple store so this was new for me. A few people were around the rep who was explaining Parallel, what it does and how it works. When he started up Windows XP on his MacBook Pro, the speed just blew me away. Maybe it was just a fresh install and nothing else was running in the background, but it booted Windows from the BIOS screen in around 30 seconds. Wow! As it was a small booth (around 5 foot by 6 foot) there was only one Mac, which we were unable to try out. However it still had a huge impression on me, and would consider buying it, in the case that I got a Intel Mac. It is a lot easier and faster than booting up Windows in BootCamp, although not everything may work perfectly. There are bugs and flaws, which will get ironed out in future releases.
They had a special offer for those at MacExpo, where you could get Parallels for £39.99 instead of the RRP of £49.99. If I had a Intel Mac, I would have most certainly taken up that offer.

Parallels

MacExpo: Google

Published on Friday, October 27, 2006 in Internet, Software, Technology and Web 2.0. 2 Comments

Google had a booth at MacExpo, not really announcing anything new, just showcasing their software for the Mac. Google’s booth was very well designed, not the best though (I would have to say Quark’s was the best), and around he front there were 6 Intel iMac’s which you could use to try out Google Maps, Google Sketchup, Google Earth and Google Video. Around the reverse of the booth there was a presentation area where Google reps were delivering various seminars on Google software and how to get the most use from it. Google’s stand was packed most of the time, so I only had a few minutes to have a look around, but it really is nothing new. They were also giving out a portfolio PR pack containing sheets about their software and a CD with the Google software on it.
A lot of companies were giving away marketing, and Google was not an exception. They had transparent packs of Google branded gummy bear and sour sweets, which were probably nothing more than Haribo with Google’s sticker slapped on them.

Live from MacExpo

Published on Thursday, October 26, 2006 in Apple and Technology. Closed

If there are no pictures showing up above, then please be patient as it might take flickr a while to set up the photos, or I have not uplodaded any photos yet. Click on the images to be taken to the relative flickr page. Click here to see all the photos I have taken so far. I will be adding more and more photos throughout the day so check back often.

UPDATE: I’ve just found out that apparently the flickr badge that was supposed to show up above, wasn’t being displayed correctly in most browsers. Sometimes Safari/Firefox would display it, other times not. Sorry for that, and I probably should have spent more time organising it and getting it all ready! It’s kind of late here, so I’ll post the full details, along with all the free stuff that I got at the Expo (don’t get yourselves worked up, it’s only PR stuff).

Firefox 2.0 is Out!

Published on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 in Internet, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. Closed

firefox logo

The much awaited revision of Firefox, 2.0, has officially been released. After a number of blunders yesterday it has finally been pushed out the door. A lot has been added to Firefox, in the background as visually. The UI has been improved and re-done, and gives it a much more elegant feeling. Firefox 2 now has built-in phishing protection for sites that pose themselves as paypal and sites alike. This is another step making Firefox a very secure browser. There is also a built-in session saver, so you don’t need to hunt for pesky extensions. The session saver will automatically restore the windows and tabs that you closed down last when exiting Firefox. This can also be done if Firefox crashes. Many more features such as inline spell checking, enhanced searching, advanced handling of RSS feeds and live titles. For a full list click here, or you can use the link below to be taken to the firefox download page.

Apple updates MacBook Pros

Published on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. Closed

Apple has updated the MacBook Pros, for the first time since its launch in January of this year. So what do the updates feature? Well the Firewire 800 port is now also built-in into the 15″ model, whereas before it was only in the 17″. The other main update, was that they finally receieved a processor bump, upto the new Core 2 Duos, which had been in speculation before. According to Apple, the Core 2 Duo makes the MB Pro upto 39% faster than its Core Duo counterpart. The 2.16Ghz model ship with a standard RAM of 1GB, while the 2.33GHz models ship with 2GB. This is much appreciated to those who felt that the previous RAM allocations were not enough, and no-one wants to buy RAM from Apple as it’s way too expensive. RAM is expandable upto 3GB now.
The Superdrives are now 6x dual-layer, while the 17″ MB Pro has a Superdrive of 8x Dual-layer. A lot of people commented on how Apple had only included a single-layered burner in the original MacBook Pro, most thought that it was because it was so thin. I guess the manufacturers have caught up. There is also a build-to-order option of a 200GB hard drive for those who need large drive space on the move. Apple also released a MagSafe Airline power adapter so that you can charge while on a flight that has a EmPower socket or a 20mm power socket. Apple notes: “The MagSafe Airline Power Adapter is not compatible with automobile power ports.” This is most likely because the cars don’t provide enough juice (ie current, ampage) to power the MB.