Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines

This will be short, but I need to address it.  If you haven’t already heard about this, I’d be surprised.  But just in case, here’s the gist: Kevin Smith, yes, THAT Kevin Smith, who is the director of the new Bruce Willis movie “Cop Out,” and previously directed the films “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” got kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight Saturday for being too fat.  Southwest instituted its “Customer of Size” policy over 25 years ago, and the pilot enforced it by deeming Kevin a safety risk to the entire flight and demanded he be removed from the flight.  Knowing that he’s a celebrity, he took advantage of the groundswell and used his Twitter account, @ThatKevinSmith, to turn his massive following against the company.

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What’s all the buzz about Google Buzz?

Google announced yesterday its newest public project, Google Buzz.  Google Buzz lets you, “Go beyond status messages,” allowing you to, “share updates, photos, videos, and more.”  It enables you to “start conversations about the things you find interesting.”  Google has placed Buzz as a link inside of Gmail.  To say it best, Buzz is like the lovechild of Twitter, Facebook, and Google Wave.  From the Twitter perspective, Buzz allows you to post status messages, or microblog your life. From the Facebook angle, it allows you to post content, like photos and videos, and share it with your friends. The Google Wave functionality ties in because all the status updates are real-time with no need to refresh the page.

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Apple Announces The iPad

Today, Apple’s CEO and Co-Founder, Steve Jobs, took the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA to announce the product that everyone has been waiting for – the Apple Tablet.  Er, the iPad (Yes, that is the official name).  This device was perhaps the most anxiously awaited-for device in all of modern consumer electronics.  The Wall Street Journal said this past week, “The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”  After the event, however, equally as many people left awe-struck as highly disappointed.  What is it and what does it do?  Is there anything super special about it?  Are there any shortcomings?  What are the tech specs?  Read on to find out. (more…)

Apple Event Predictions

David Weiss from http://unweary.com/ has posted a “Prediction Score Card” for tomorrow’s Apple event.  Attached in PDF format you’ll find my thoughts.  Feel free to post what you think in the comments.  I’ll have a full post up tomorrow evening covering the event in full detail.

Download Mike’s Predictions

Some Apple News

Hey guys, I apologize for the lax updates.  I’ve been incredibly busy starting my new semester and beginning the preparation for the Apple Certified Technical Coordinator exams.  Regardless, speaking of Apple, here’s some Apple news from this week:

- Apple has invited select members of the media to the now confirmed media event on January 27th at 10:00 AM PST.  The title of the event is “Come see our latest creation.”  Will it be the much-rumored tablet, iLife/iWork 2010, iPhone OS 4.0 with true multi-tasking?  We’ll have to wait and see.  I will be writing a long wrap-up at the end of the day on the 27th.

- Apple released BootCamp 3.1 today for Intel Macs and finally includes support for Windows 7.  Apple promised that by the end of the year 2009, but they missed the mark.  It was finally released today.

- A rumor was published today claiming a new version of iTunes, combined with Apple’s recent LaLa acquisition, could allow iTunes users to move their entire library to the cloud so they can play their music on any device on the web.  Neat!

Google Officially Unveils ‘Nexus One’

Happy new year, everyone!  Today, Google held a press event at its headquarters to unveil the ‘Nexus One’ – aka, the Google Phone.  Google vice president Mario Queiroz said that the new Nexus One is a “superphone” and an “exemplar of what’s possible” on mobile phones running Android.  Several other people spoke at the event as well, including Google VP of engineering Andy Rubin, HTC CEO Peter Chou, and even Motorola’s Co-CEO Sanjay Jha. Shots and videos have been leaking for months showing off this device.  And even though we all knew the Nexus One was coming, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a stellar looking phone that carries a serious set of technical specifications that blows even the iPhone 3GS out of the water.   (more…)

MagicPrefs Adds a Little More Magic to Apple’s Magic Mouse

In October, Apple released it’s newest mouse offering, the Magic Mouse.  I wrote a review of it in November, here.  At first, I was worried that it was a little too low profile, but after about a week or so, my hand got used to it and I’ve loved it ever since.  The momentum scrolling is phenomenal, and the multi-touch gestures are fantastic.  They make navigating the web extremely easy while the momentum scrolling makes scrolling through large documents a breeze.  The only problem with it, however, is that Apple sort of crippled it when they shipped it.  It only supports a single two-finger gesture out of the box, and very basic, regular one-finger gestures.  The tracking is also incredibly slow. (more…)