June 2008

This is a replacement for .Mac and now provides push of mail, contacts, and calendars to the iPhone. 

When I first heard about MobileMe, I wondered if I’d be able to keep my mac.com email address.  For the first couple of years of .Mac, it was pretty much the only reason I subscribed to .Mac.  Later on, I did find the sync of calendars and address books to be pretty useful.

Apple answers the question of Mac.com email:

As a MobileMe subscriber, you can continue to use your mac.com address for email. You will also be issued a me.com address with the same user name that you can use if you prefer. The choice is yours.

UPDATE: The new 3G iPhones prices shown below are AT&T subsidized prices with a two year contract

UPDATE: New 3G iPhones with GPS.  Otherwise, no other major surprises.  A 16GB iPhone will now cost you only $299, an 8GB $199.  At these prices, the iPhone should attract a lot of new buyers.  But, the question that I have is whether or not the $299 16GB phone is worth the upgrade from my original iPhone.  The main new features are 3G, GPS, and twice the storage capacity.  I think this will be one of those wait and see situations.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference begins today in SF with Steve Jobs’ keynote address.  Big news expected is the announcement of the 3G iPhone and lots of new applications for the iPhone.  I’m excited for the applications, but I’m afraid that once I see the new iPhone with all its new features, I’m going to be wanting one of those too.

The keynote is 1:00pm EST and I’ll be following it through a live blog at Macrumorslive.com.

From ESPN.com: Nadal’s fire and emotion propel him to fourth French Open title

Roger Federer is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, but Rafael Nadal thoroughly  dominated him at the French Open for his fourth straight French Open title.

It’s amazing to watch the power and spin that Nadal gets on his forehand.  It’s a freakish shot.  No one else in tennis can hit a ball like Nadal does with the amount of topsin that he has.  It seems almost impossible for one of his balls to go long because the ball just “dives” back down on to the court like it’s attracted by a magnet.

There was no secret to Nadal’s approach to Federer.  Attack Federer’s backhand. As the chart showed during the TV broadcast, Nadal hit 100% of his first serves to Federer’s backhand.  Nadal didn’t even bother changing direction once in a while to mix things up.  On clay, Nadal’s shot bounces so high after it hits the ground that Federer had difficulty coming over the ball with his one handed backhand.

Now, this makes Wimbledon that much more interesting.  Federer has dominated Wimbledon like Nadal’s done with the French Open.  But, after watching Nadal play, I think he has a strong shot at unseeding Federer if Nadal can get through to the final.

From CNN.com: ‘Freakish’ online searches inspire play

A new play in Philadelphia is based on the real life searches of an anonymous AOL subscriber, User 927.

The story’s central clue is the real-life online search log of an AOL subscriber — identified only as User 927 — that was released to the public two years ago in a well-publicized privacy gaffe.

Alltop said he was astonished when AOL intentionally released some 19 million search requests made over three months by more than 650,000 subscribers.

The logs were meant to help academic researchers, but they were posted on a public site and quickly circulated once a blogger discovered them.

Although AOL had substituted numeric IDs for the subscribers’ real user names, there were enough clues for The New York Times and The Washington Post to track down two of the users and identify them by name.

The identity of User 927 is still unknown. But Alltop was fascinated enough by that subscriber’s freakish queries, including some disturbing sexual imagery, to commission a 90-minute play around the search log.

The searches of User 927, culled from the AOL search logs are pretty frightening and strange.  Definitely a hint of mystery and kind of makes you wonder what kind of person this is.

From Yahoo News: Japanese woman caught living in man’s closet

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Stories like this just freak me out.  I can’t believe the woman actually lived there for a whole year without being detected!  If it were my closets, I guess I could understand.  Hmmm, maybe it’s time to be cleaning out the closets this weekend.

NYTimes.com: Continental Cuts 3,000 Jobs as It Grounds Planes

Continental Airlines said Thursday that it would cut 3,000 jobs and retire 67 Boeing aircraft from its fleet, becoming the latest airline to announce capacity reductions in the face of high prices for jet fuel.

Today, it’s Continental.  Yesterday, United.  Other airlines have gone bankrupt.  Airlines are trying to curb losses by cutting back on employees and reducing size of their fleets.   Airline troubles are being blamed on rising fuel costs and a slowing economy.

Can the airline industry recover from this latest challenge?  It seems to me that this time things may be spiraling out of control.  Lower capacity and higher fuel costs means higher fares for passengers.  Higher fares cause a decrease in demand as passengers seek alternatives or reduce travel.  Lower demand means excess capacity.  Airlines cut capacity, causing the cycle to continue.

At some point an equilibrium will be reached with fewer airlines, fewer cities served, and higher costs.  With fuel costs high it may be prohibitively expensive for new startup airlines to emerge in the future to service routes that have been dropped by the existing airlines.  Perhaps this is the breaking point for the airline industry.

Took some more iPhone photos, this time of Findlay Market in Cincinnati.

Arstechnica is reporting that Mac OS X 10.6 is code-named “Snow Leopard” and is Intel Mac only.  Three of my computers in the office won’t be able to make the upgrade, including two Dual Core PowerPC G5’s.  These are still very nice machines.  In fact, one of these is my daily computer that I use at work.

If “Snow Leopard” is really the name, it’s a little awkward since the current OS X is “Leopard”.

I can hear the following conversation:
“What version of OS X are you running?”
“Leopard”
“Do you mean Leopard or Snow Leopard?”

Have the run out of large cat names already?  It’s still just a code name- it’s possible the name could change when it is finally released.

From Wikipedia
Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)
Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)
Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

UPDATE:  It seems that this update may not have many new features, but an optimization of the underpinnings of the system.  So, the name “Snow Leopard” may be apropos. 

Cartoonist Jim Borgman’s take on the almost end of the Hillary campaign

So true.  I can’t think of a better representation than this.

Jones Fish Hatcheries Redlegs Run for Home 5K, Saturday, June 7, 2008

This a fun 5K that ends near home plate of Great American Ball Park.  I ran this race a few years ago and I really enjoyed it.  That year, they had Cincinnati Reds legend Joe Nuxhall pose for pictures with every runner!

Jones Fish Hatcheries is a the title sponsor for this race.  Kind of strange sponsor.  Usually, there’s some kind of synergy between advertiser and event.  Does being a sponsor of this event bring greater market awareness to Jones’s little fish hatchlings?  Don’t all their customers already know who they are?

Jones Fish Hatcheries Redlegs Run for Home 5K