The Thoughtful Geek

These are my links for March 2nd:

• Icons: Icon Grabber Converts Favicons to Image Files – Web application Icon Grabber takes a Favicon, the little icon in the address bar, and saves it to PNG, GIF or JPG format from any web site.
• Kindle 2 Review: Sheeeyah, More Like Kindle 1.5 – After spending a week with Amazon's $360 Kindle 2, I'd like to say we were wrong about it not being a big step forward, but for better or worse, it's the same Kindle as before.

  The annals of gadgetry are littered with revisions that just aren't meaningful, like the 3rd Gen iPod with its solid-state buttons, or the slimmer, lighter but substantially unchanged PSP-2000. But after waiting a year and change for Amazon to get serious about its Kindle platform—serious enough to keep the thing in stock—I was surprised at how banal the modifications were. Why didn't they just lower the price of the $400 original to something like $300 or $250, and build more?

• Twitter CEO Evan Williams Interviewed on Charlie Rose [Video] – Twitter CEO Evan Williams let us know last week that he was making an appearance on Charlie Rose, and today, the video is online.

  In the interview, which lasts about 20 minutes, Williams explains the Twitter phenomenon, some of the applications the service has spawned, and also offers some of the reasons he thinks the company has been so successful. Check it out below:

Finally the new Mac Desktops have arrived.

As expected, Apple announced long-overdue and, in certain places, eagerly-awaited refreshes of its Mac desktop PCs, including the Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro. There are two separate announcements–and no special event, as often happens with Apple–one for the consumer Macs, and one for the Mac Pro (which is still a luxury item and not worth discussing).

Here’s the consumer Mac announcement:

Apple today announced updates to its iMac® and Mac® mini desktop lines, including a 24-inch iMac that is priced more affordably than ever before and a Mac mini with powerful new integrated graphics. For the same $1,499 price as the previous generation 20-inch iMac, the new 24-inch iMac delivers a 30 percent larger display, twice the memory and twice the storage. [via the SuperSite for Windows]

Check out these really cool Lego creations.

Link

Technorati Tags: lego

Apple’s iPhone seems to be handily controlling the mobile web market at 66%.

Net Applications’ February results show the iPhone operating system having managed over nine times the usage of its next smartphone competitor, Windows Mobile, which had just 6.91 percent of the traffic measured across tens of thousands of sites.

Other smartphone platforms haven’t fared any better, according to the metrics. Google’s Android and Symbian were both locked in a tie for 6.15 percent. Research in Motion’s email-centric BlackBerry OS was used less often at just 2.24 percent and was even outmatched by PalmOS devices, which represented 2.37 percent of cellular web use last month.

Why the particularly wide gap exists between Apple and its rivals hasn’t been explained. However, the data backs up AdMob findings which showed the iPhone getting half of all US smartphone traffic and a third of smartphone use worldwide during the month before. The use has previously been credited to a spike in Apple device ownership after the holidays as well as to the relative strength of the Safari web browser. [appleinsider.com]

I am going to download it right now.

The iPhone 2.2.1 update just hit, and it promises to fix various Safari, Mail and Camera bugs.

It applies to iPhone and iPhone 3G (no iPod Touch yet
iPod Touch’s update seems like it’s here too), and doesn’t seem like it
introduces new features. We’re installing and looking into it for more
info. The update is 245.7 MB, in case you’re on dial-up at your
grandma’s house.

Jailbreakers should hold off on installing until it’s confirmed that 2.2.1 can be jailbroken, and unlockers should definitely hold on. [link]

I look forward to hearing more info about this, especially since my cell phone does not get reception in my office.

[Link]

We heard a lot about femtocells last year. A femtocell is a device that allows your cellular phone to connect to the Internet for calls to provide better coverage indoors. So far there have been a few of these femtocells launched.

AT&T has offered details on its first 3G femtocell it is calling the AT&T 3G MicroCell. The MicroCell requires a broadband Internet connection and will support up to 10 3G cell phones in a home or small office. Up to four simultaneous voice or data users are supported at once.

For times when there isn’t available space to support more users or you walk out of range of the MicroCell the handset will automatically switch to the standard AT&T 3G network. Calls started on the MicroCell will automatically change to the normal network without interruption. A couple important details like pricing and availability are missing.

Technorati Tags: at&t, 3g, cell, broadband

These are my links for December 6th:

• Simpsons, eh? Apple Will Remember that Name! | The iPhone Blog –

These are my links for December 6th:

• Simpsons, eh? Apple Will Remember that Name! | The iPhone Blog –

Make sure and go over to Techie Dive and enter to win the HP drawing.  Click her to enter.

For information about the giveaway go to the HP Magic Giveaway page.

If I were to win, I plan to give one of the laptops to my church. They could really use a new laptop to run the powerpoint during worship.

If you haven’t already make sure and go to Notebooks.com and enter the HP giveaway.  Go here to enter.

For more details see the HP website at http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/blogger-magic/.