I had heard earlier in the day that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were going to be interviewed together by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal at the paper’s D5 conference. I’ve now been able to watch the 8:05 outtakes reel that the WSJ put together after it happened. There are some interesting ideals being spun around. My fave being that Gates starts talking about the Zune and Jobs pops in and says we like the Zune, too since the entire Zune development staff are customers of the iPod. I’ll have a complete report on my opinions of the interview after I’ve watched it all. You can find all of it here.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Damn Fine Idea!, Enlightening, Laugherating

One day in the world and the Palm Foleo is already drawing heat. The first one is from Wired’s Gadget Lab guy, Rob Beschizza. He does list what he believes are seven alternatives to the new Foleo, and there are some cool devices on that list. However, he badly misrepresents the Foleo by describing it as such,”…no hard drive, a new operating system, and a reliance on your phone’s connectivity.” It doesn’t need a hard drive, Linux is hardly a new OS, and it has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which means it is NOT dependent on your Treo to connect.

What Beschizza failed to mention, whether on purpose or not, was that while the device only sports 256MBs of RAM it also sports a CF card slot to which a minimum of 2GB can be attached, and likely much more. Rob also neglects to note that the Foleo features Opera 9, a very, very powerful web browser. While its not FireFox grade, its far better than Internet Exploder. Let’s not sell the Foleo short before it even hits the street, and besides, Rob’s alternatives are more than US$1,000 and most are over US$2,000. The Foleo will street at US$600.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion

Immediately after I find out about Palm’s triumphant new Foleo I find out about Microsoft’s scatological new “Surface” tabletop PC. Woot, I think not. At US$5,000-10,000 each, these monstrosities will inhabit hotel lobbies and mobile phone dealers and allow you to drag crap around on their 30″ touch screens. You can even put stuff on the top and it will scan a barcode it can find.

This is nothing more than a standard Windows PC with a large touch screen and some flashy software. I can go to The Bridge in Westchester and do the same thing with my feet in the theater’s lobby. Exciting! This is just another stupid project from Redmond that gets traction because they don’t know what to do with all that money they have.

Microsoft even said that the price tag would come down in a few years to make it an attractive purchase option for consumers. Ha! Is there such a thing as collective senility?

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion, Watchdog

It looks like I might have been wrong about Palm being dead and all. Hmm. Why would I change my mind? I’m sure you’ll hear about it sooner or later, but they have just announce their new Foleo Mobile Companion. This laptop-like Linux powered device is just kick ass! Go take a look. I won’t expect you back any time soon, but in case you want some details before leaving the confines of COT for a few hours, here they are:

The unit weighs 2.4 pounds, sports a 10″ display which can run in 1024×600 and 1024×768 resolutions, it has 256MBs of RAM, likely runs some kind of ARM-based processor, has SD and CF slots for memory expansion, and has a copy of Opera 9 built in. I’ll say one thing for Opera, they’re really kicking ass and taking names (installed in loads of mobiles, Nokia’s 770 and n800, and now the Foleo).

Pricing is set at US$599 and you can get a $100 rebate if you buy early. They will start to be available in early summer, so get your pocket books ready. I can’t imagine any real reasons why you wouldn’t want this thing.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools, Damn Fine Idea!, Opinion

Remember the heady days of The Talking Moose and Jared on the old 68k Macs? Man those were fun. There was also this one that barfed and some others which did really annoying things as a prank. In the later days of the Mac, as the PowerPC transition replaced older 68k macs, there was SimStapler from Freeverse. You can relive those heady days with a large collection of software from madman John Schilling.

Just to give you an idea of what you’ll find there’s MacBarfX which emits a barfing sound whenever you eject a volume. There’s EarthquakeX which makes your screen shake at random. There’s Conan The Librarian X which tells users to shut up when they get too loud. If you need something useful and aren’t out to torture your Mac pals there’s Smell-O-Mints, a nice looking table of Periodic Elements.

Most of these applets are Universal Binary and a lot of them run faceless so users can’t just quit them and stop the harassment. Have fun!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools, Laugherating

No. That’s not a barb directed at Mr. McGuiness. I simply wanted you to understand up front that the person I’m going to complain about here is a man and not a woman. I’d also like to point out that even if it was a woman, I’d still complain.

Laurie apparently thinks Apple’s line of world famous, award winning, powerful computers (some of which are used to make some of the fastest super computers in the world) are silly and pointless. To make his point he has produced four ad spots which mock Apple’s famous Mac & PC ads, only here the PC is the winner and the Mac is a loser.

Its sad, really, because in order to make his point he has to lie by omission. He suggests that Mac users don’t share, alluding to the Microsoft Zune’s Wi-Fi sharing capability. He also suggests that Mac users are drugged up, alcoholic, ne’er do wells who are late and can’t pay their bills. He also suggests that Mac users stay and home and make movies or create web sites for their cats with their buddies while Windows users hang out with fantastically beautiful women.

Not one of these videos is funny, insightful, or illuminating. In fact, its clear that Laurie is, indeed, a hater of Macs, and clearly doesn’t like Mac users either. Maybe Laurie doesn’t know that most musicians are Mac users. A lot of people in the film and television industries are Mac users. I know first hand that scads of people in advertising are Mac users. Even Al Gore is a Mac user.

So, who’s the loser now? I don’t know. Maybe the guy who feels so insecure that he has to take dodgey, questionable, anger-filled stabs in the dark at an ad series not only recognized as tops in advertising, but has also proven to drive sales at Apple Stores. Laurie advertises himself as a copywriter. Maybe he should use a Mac and he wouldn’t be so angry any more.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Mac Musings, Opinion

So, my wife is reading Mark Gibb’s latest column to me about some new Google customized homepage thing called PageFlakes. What a stupid name, I think to myself. Mark says that it does everything that Google’s does and way, way more. The way he worded it made it sound like the service replaces Google. Yeah. Whatever, I say. Boy, was I wrong!

PageFlakes is the ROCKINGEST custom hompage service you have ever seen. Seriously. You must check it out. Once you do you will be stuck. I don’t know how they’re going to pay for it (there are no ads at all on the site) and I have no idea what their business model is (maybe they don’t have one), but it just kills, man. It just kills!

Signing up takes two seconds because you can either customize it without having to get an account (cookies, of course) or you can take the extra 15 seconds to actually sign up. Either way you can choose what goes on the pages, where it goes, and how it works. There is some work they need to do, like making the PageFlakes browser a global option and not just per Flake, but it still takes the cake, the cart it was wheeled in on, the van that brought the cart with the cake, and the pastry chef who made it!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

Remember those little one-per-sandwich Buddig meat packages you could get at your grocer for $0.69? Yeah. Now they make these really big bags of the thinly sliced cuts, and I just found an incentive in one bag; music. Yeah, again. One free music download per purchase. First of all, I buy albums, not songs. Call me old school. Secondly, I drive Mac and the Puretracks service Buddig is using only supports Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP. No mention of Vista and they actually say no to Linux explicitly! Wow.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Laugherating

Here’s my list of ten things I find in Apple Inc. that are common to all computer and operating system makers in the world. Its nothing all that flashy:

1. Apple makes an operating system which runs on a computer.
2. Apple’s Mac OS X can run programs like Microsoft Office suite and Firefox, the second most popular browser in the world.
3. People can use Macintosh systems to email other people, no matter what kind of computer they are on.
4. Apple sells its computers and software in stores.
5. Mac OS X allows input with a keyboard and controls a small arrow on the screen with a puck called a mouse. Users can click on things they see on the screen with the button(s) included on the mouse.
6. Macintosh systems have optical drives which can accept CDs and DVDs which allow users to add more programs, listen to music, or watch movies. Many of these drives can also “burn” discs, which allows users to save important data.
7. Mac users can open almost any computer file as long as the correct software is installed, just like any other computer.
8. Apple computers sometimes need to be repaired.
9. Apple offers warranty support and there are numerous 3rd party support providers as well. Macintosh systems come in desktop and laptop formats, in various sizes, and for varying prices.
10. Apple products take up physical space.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion