Your Tech Weblog

I've made a buncha tweaks to this tech blog

I made a few tweaks to this blog.

I've listed all my work-related RSS feeds along the upper right, so you can easily subscribe to my tech-related YouTube, Flickr and Twitter content.

A Flickr badge on the right also gets you to my photos, and the Twitter section a bit below that keeps you up to date on my tweeting.

There's a brand-spankin'-new feed for my Tech Test Drive columns that run Mondays on TwinCities.com.

This page has all my tech videos for your streaming delight.

If you'd prefer to download the videos (such as this recent one) for your computer, iPod or Apple TV, there's a new podcast feed. I'll also provide PDF content via that enclosure-friendly feed.

I've also updated a buncha Pioneer Press and MediaNews Group (including the list of Pioneer Press blogs) along the left.

Enjoy!

HD movies on the TV: Apple TV, Vudu, etc.

What are the best ways to get high-definition movies onto your HDTV?

I tried a bunch of them, ranging from Apple's recently updated Apple TV and the competing Vudu box to high-def flicks on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

I'm most impressed with Blu-ray on a PlayStation 3 as far as video quality (the competing, equally good HD DVD is about to be killed off) but the Apple TV is a terrific multipurpose device that is coming into its own (thanks in part to its new movie rentals).

In a video, I compare the Apple TV to Vudu. Here's the YouTube version; the TwinCities.com version is embedded after the jump; and for those availing themselves of my new podcast feed, here's a link to a QuickTime file.

As HD DVD dies, an early adopter looks back

 

The Blu-ray victory over HD DVD this week has left early adopters of the latter high-definition movie-disc format fuming, and mulling their next moves. 

One such HD DVD stalwart, Andrew Buck, sent me this: 

I admit it, I was an HD-DVD supporter. I am not one of those fanatical fanboys, but rather a consumer who loves high definition content.

My cable company doesn't give me enough HD channels. The networks don't give me enough HD content. The movie studios haven't released much decent HD content, and even supposed high-definition broadcasts such as the Super Bowl only achieve marginal HD quality; depending on which camera is being used, the content ranges from brilliant clarity to unfocused muted colors comparable to SD broadcast quality.

The news (of HD DVD's demise) especially hurts because, before the holidays, HD-DVD forums were all buzzing about a BIG exclusive announcement that would paralyze the opposing format. It appears that Warner switched in the 11th hour and shocked the HD-DVD camp.

Toshiba was so unprepared for that news, they closed up shop at CES 2008 and walked away from the show. What pathetic pansies. They lost this war as pathetically as they fought it.

It never ceases to amaze me how a multi-billion-dollar company could be so clueless about how to market a tech product. Shortly after launch, when you walked into a Best Buy store, you saw a Blu-ray display with a row of Blu-ray media and Blu-ray logos all over. The HD-DVD players were usually sitting on a shelf without being connected to a monitor and not showing any HD content. 

Then engage the 17-year-old who just went through eight hours of Blu-ray training and had a chance at winning a Blu-ray player in the end-of-month drawing, and you would see that Toshiba never had a chance.

Web applications free me from the desktop

I'm a recent Flickr convert after resisting the photo-sharing service for years and ignoring the plaudits of its rabid fans.

Now that I'm on board, there are a couple of things I really like. Item one: Unlimited storage of full-resolution pictures for one modest yearly fee. Item two: Web-based photo editing via Picnik, which is now nicely integrated with Flickr.

Notice a trend here? This is all Web-based photo organizing and modifying, with no desktop software involved, which goes to the heart of my most-recent Tech Test Drive column on Web applications. That piece focuses on e-mail, word processing and RSS handling, but the Flickr/Picnik combo fits right in.

In fact, I cut computers completely out of the equation when uploading to Flickr because I accomplished this directly from a loaner Nikon D60 courtesy of an Eye-Fi card. I could then organize my shots on any computer, and make tweaks to my favorites using Picnik.

I will say that Picnik is sloooow, which means desktop image-editing software still has a big place in my world. But the Web editor is bound to get better. I look forward to it.

Blu-ray is victorious; Will Apple get in gear?

I keep delaying a new-Mac purchase partly because I crave a Blu-ray burner in the machine, right out of the box (I don't want to mess with third-party retrofitting).

Will Apple (a supporter of Blu-ray technology) finally offer that as an option now that the Blu-ray format has triumphed over HD DVD (per an article of mine today)?

There has been speculation about this for years now, but Apple has remained mum about its intentions.

A great candidate for Air as a main machine

In my previous post, I explored the idea of the MacBook Air as a primary computer and not just a secondary one (as the conventional wisdom holds).

Not long after writing that, I got the below from a friend of mine about his wife, who now uses a 17-inch MacBook Pro:

She is a prominent attorney in the Twin Cities. Her laptop is vital to her very busy career, she's never without it. But with being a few inches under 5 feet tall, it's a workout for her to drag that "cafeteria tray" around town to meetings all day long.

We were in the Apple Store in Roseville to finally get a peek at the MacBook Air. My wife immediately fell in love with it.

I suddenly realized that she is the perfect candidate for it. She uses her laptop for work e-mail, word processing and not much more. She only has a small amount of photos and music on her laptop, and just a few kids shows from iTunes.

She'll never ever edit video on it or anything -- doesn't know how to and would never want to. She probably has only used about 20 percent of her existing hard drive anyway. She works wirelessly and doesn't have many accessories to necessitate multiple ports.

The light weight and small size is perfect for a busy mobile professional like her. She also is always near an electrical outlet whether at her law office, the coffee shop or home. So I think we will be buying her one in the next few months. I am actually very excited for her and it makes a lot of sense.

MacBook Air in my office as main computer

Pioneer Press reporters have to pull periodic weekend shifts, which means moving temporarily off their beats (consumer tech, in my case) on a Saturday or a Sunday to chase breaking news or cover a dog show.

This used to be a royal pain for me from the tech perspective because I invariably ended up on an ancient Pentium III PC with an abysmal screen. I fixed this by grabbing whatever Macintosh I happened to have on loan and setting that up as my temporary newsroom workstation.

Such gear has typically included an Apple Cinema Display hooked up to a MacBook or MacBook Pro, but this time I tried something a wee bit different: A MacBook Air propped up on a Griffin Elevator and jacked into Ethernet with Apple's USB adapter for this purpose.

This setup presented obvious challenges: With the Air elevated out of easy reach and its single USB port in use, how would I type? I couldn't plug in a USB keyboard or mouse unless I set up a USB hub (which, like setting up a display, was a hassle I wanted to avoid).

Apple has a great solution for this: It's wireless mouse and compact keyboard connect beautifully to the Air via Bluetooth. That's what I'm using to write this post; not bad (though I do miss certain keys found on Apple's bigger wired keyboard).

I took some digital photos with an iPhone, but uploading them presented another challenge: No USB for plugging in and transferring my photos. Fortunately, TypePad offers an iPhone-uploading option to get photos directly from an Apple phone to the Web (and into a photo album, as I did, or onto a new post).

Those wielding conventional cameras instead of iPhones could have used the cool Eye-Fi card for wireless uploading to blogs or photo-sharing sites.

So, I got around the Air's physical limitations extremely well, and turned it into a decent desktop station.

I imagine this could be the sole setup for some Mac users, which runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Air is really just a second machine for well-off people able to afford multiple Macs (I said this in my recent Air review).

Gruber and others do a good job of debunking this notion.

Related: Love for MacBook Air grows.

Related: My tech-columnist cousin Dwight Silverman unboxes his MacBook Air loaner, as I did earlier.

My MacBook Air review hits Apple; reaction

I reviewed the MacBook Air in my Tech Test Drive column on Monday. The review has just popped up on Apple's Hot News page (hell-oooooo, megahits!), generating a few comments.

Glenn Fleishman, my counterpart at the Seattle Times (among other hats he wears; this dude is tech-writing demigod) quotes briefly from my column and then adds his comment as follows:

"If my hunch is correct, business-class airliner cabins will be filled with corporate types whipping out their MacBook Airs for work amid admiring glances from seatmates."...

And then cursing 3 hours into a 5-hour or 12-hour flight when the battery dies! It's stylish, yet ineffective. You did survey the battery life well, I know, but I am really still struck by the combination of fashionable, sexy, expensive -- but lacking the right function for real business traveler. Unless they're always in business class or first class on planes with power jacks.

Another person riffs at length on my reference to the ill-fated Power Mac G4 Cube:

I got one because I recognized it as a good design with great potential. The reality is that it is easy to confuse engineers with new bright shiny toys that aren't quite ready for prime time. My experience with the Cube was that it was an interesting design for a niche market but slightly too expensive for its performance and expandability.  It was also in my case not nearly as reliable as other Macs that I have owned. I don't think it bombed per se but it was not a cost effective solution.

Apple starts to roll out its Apple TV 2 update

My pal Mark Fawcett just updated his Apple TV, and is now able to rent movies (in standard and high definition).

He sent me the pictures in this album.

My Apple TV is updating as I type this.

The UpTake pushes online-journo envelope

I've watch the UpTake, a St. Paul-based citizen-journalism outfit, with fascination.

Their live online coverage of Super Tuesday was a high-tech tour de force (albeit with a few technical glitches) involving Web-streaming cell phones and TV-like quasi-stations on the UpTake's home page.

I cover much of this in a Pioneer Press article today (see page PDFs one and two). I'll further dissect these Web tools in a freelance piece I'm doing, so watch this post for an update.

Here are pointers to recent UpTake videos related to today's article (in roughly chronological order, from the Iowa caucuses through Super Tuesday).

They star Chuck Olsen of Minneapolis (seen above in New Orleans during Mardi Gras for his Super Tuesday co-anchoring duties) or Steve Garfield of Boston:

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