Mac Games and More The Blog

Picks are up: click here: mac games!

Check out a unique Apple friendly restaurant in France, Ma Pomme Tao here: Why travel to France

4th Saturday of every odd month, except where holidays conflict.

Premier Event: Saturday, March 22, 2008.

Mac Day L.A.
CBS Studio Center — “Radford Studios”
4024 Radford Avenue, Studio City CA 91604
Website: Macdayla (for details and required RSVP)

Check them out here: mac games!

Watch the slideshow at Geeksugar

From infoweek:
“Apple has launched a subsection of its site that offers dozens of how-to videos to try to sway Windows users and to help new Mac customers get started.
Called “Find out how,” the site offers video on the use of the Mac OS X and separate sections on how to create and manage photos, movies, Web content, music and documents. For Windows users thinking of taking the plunge, the site offers video on how to move data from a Windows PC to a Mac.

The videos are short, lasting only a few minutes at most. Along with the videos, the site offers text tutorials in all the categories. In the “move to Mac” video, Apple first tells visitors that workers at an Apple store will move data from a PC to a Mac for them. It also gives instructions on how to move data from an external hard drive to the Mac.

Other videos include how to run Windows on the Mac using Apple Boot Camp. It also suggests buying virtualization software from Parallels or VMware, if the Mac user wants to be able to run simultaneously separate windows for each OS. Boot Camp requires the Mac to be restarted when switching from Windows back to OS X.

People who want to take the videos with them can download them to Apple iTunes. From there, the files can be transferred to an iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.

The launch date of the site was not listed, but it appears to be fairly new. Apple is currently on a roll in selling the Mac. The company last week reported shipping 44% more Mac computers during the fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 29 than in the same period in 2006. In shipping 2.3 million Macs during the quarter, the company took in 47% more revenue than the year before.”

Here’s the link of the “How to” site for new Mac users: Apple

[via]

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Liquid Web
4210 S Creyts Road
Lansing, MI
48917-9526, U.S.A.

I like my house the way it is but some people would kill to have a home that resembled their favorite store, the Apple Store. How can you do that? Here’s a handy DIY here: Build your own Apple store

[via adlab]

From MacApper:

Alright so You have installed Leopard. You’ve started using Spaces, Time Machine, Stacks, and (my personal favorite) QuickLook. Wait a second though – didn’t Apple say there were 300+ new features?

If you look closely there are really tons of features in this cat that got lost in the crowd. I’m talking about the little enhancements that aren’t flashy or revolutionary, but are useful, fine-tuned, or actually improve or enhance the user experience.

Right after the jump is a list of ten that you might not have come across yet.

1. iChat Recording. After getting your buddy’s permission, video and audio chats can be recorded and saved.

2. iChat Invisibility. This was the only thing keeping me using Adium. Go online and talk only to the people you want to. No more getting bombarded with chats from people you’d rather not waste your time with.

3. Preview PDF Manipulation. Now you can add or remove pages from a PDF document by simple drag and drop. Especially useful for merging several documents together.

4. QuickLook Multiple Files. Select a few files and hit the spacebar. Especially useful for videos and pictures. You can go through them like a slideshow, or click on the Light Table view to see them laid out in a grid.

5…..

check out the rest of the list

From TUAW:

Although I can be a bit of a slob, I’m pretty anal retentive when it comes to keeping my electronics clean. That goes triple for my MacBook. Although I was pretty scrupulous with my last laptop, the glossy screen and black casing that shows all have required me to become even more attentive. Even though I don’t have people touching my screen all the time, I manage to accumulate build up of fingerprints, smudges and dust marks (most likely from the keyboard) that require giving the screen a full cleaning every week.

The Apple Blog has posted some some great tips/techniques for keeping your screen looking like new, and while they are directed for glossy screen owners, the same basic techniques can be used for any screen, be it iPod/iPhone, matte LCD screen (like on a MacBook Pro or older Apple laptop), iMac, etc.

The key is getting the right…

Read more

From Rob Griffiths:

Like most everyone else, I suspect, I was blown away by the MacBook Air’s reveal Tuesday. As a long-time fan of ultra-small notebooks (we still own and use a 12-inch PowerBook G4 in the Griffiths household), my initial reactions involved reaching for my credit card and loading Apple’s store in my browser. These feelings were reinforced even more by a visit to the Apple booth, where picking up the little machine probably doesn’t even count as exercise. There’s no denying that the design—curves everywhere, with nary a straight corner to be found—and lack of weight in this machine are truly amazing. It makes my 15-inch MacBook Pro look and feel like a lead paperweight by comparison.

But then—rare, for me—reason intervened and started posing questions that I should answer before purchasing the machine. “So what happens, Rob, when the hard drive has an error and you have to reinstall OS X?” OK, that seems easy enough. I’ll just boot off the Leopard DVD…oh wait, no, I won’t do that unless I fork over the extra $99 for the USB-powered SuperDrive. OK, so I’ll use FireWire Target Disk Mode…nope, won’t do that either, as there’s no FireWire port (and I confirmed with an Apple representative that there’s no “USB Target Disk Mode” option.) And I won’t be able to use that cool and oh-so-handy “borrow a drive from another Mac” feature, as the hard drive won’t be bootable. So barring the extra $99 for the SuperDrive, the only solution will be to boot from a USB2 hard drive that’s been prepared with a disk-based version of the OS X installer.

But really, how often does a hard drive get an error like this? Not so often, and $99 is a small price to pay for insurance, so the SuperDrive solves that problem. Time to order! “Not so fast, Griff! What about the hard drive space? 80GB isn’t much by today’s standards.” While that’s true, in a small ultra-mobile Mac, I’m willing to take the tradeoff in drive space. Even on my MacBook Pro, I’m only using 85GB of the 120GB space I have available. So really, this isn’t a major issue—besides, I fully expect that some enterprising soul will demonstrate that Toshiba’s new 160GB 1.8-inch hard drive works just fine in the MacBook Air, and they’ll probably do so within a day or two of the machine’s availability in two weeks.

So it’s time to order, right? I’ve been waiting for years, after all! “Well, just hang on a sec. There’s One More Thing you need to think about. You do realize, don’t you, that the battery isn’t removable?” What?

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MacWorld 2008 begins January 15, 2008, with the kick off of the keynote with Steve. Get the latest greatest and most up to date live coverage of MacWorld 2008 at the following sites:

Apple Gazette
Apple Matters
Appletell
Arstechnica.com
Daily Tech Talk
Engadget
Loop Rumors
MacRumors
Mac Scoop
MacSpark
MacTeens
PomCast
SteveNote Live
StuffUneasy Silence
World of Apple

[via]

Apple sometimes just doesn’t get it. So Apple wants to shut down the very excellent blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, which is a fan site, and a funny one at that. Here’s the latest in the saga.

Wah!!!

From Wired:

All Google had to do was futz with its search algorithm, and the entire PayPerPost world was thrown into total chaos.

The details are somewhat complex, but the gist is this: Google assigns a PageRank rating of 0 to 10 for every site it indexes. The ranking reflects the significance of a site as determined by Google — the higher the rank, the more popular the site. When Google modified its PageRank algorithm a couple of weeks ago, however, thousands of bloggers working for PayPerPost (“posties,” as they call themselves) found their rankings wiped to zero, which meant they were suddenly ineligible for PayPerPost work.

PayPerPost isn’t taking it quietly, though. Izea, the Orlando, Florida, business formerly known as PayPerPost, has rolled out a new product that it thinks will save its bloggers from the financial ruin wrought by Google.

PayPerPost’s business model has been controversial from the start. It recruits bloggers to post promotional content on behalf of advertisers in exchange for a fee. The advertisers are surprisingly legitimate: Sweeney Todd, the new Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp, for example, is among the products being touted by PayPerPost right now.

There are roughly 100,000 PayPerPost bloggers, many of whom have seen their revenue completely evaporate since Google modified its PageRank algorithm.

Because advertisers hire posties based on their PageRank scores…

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From NYT:

The foundation that runs Wikipedia has finally agreed to pay contributors to the online encyclopedia a modest fee for their work. But it won’t pay the thousands of people who participate in creating the wiki pages — just artists who create “key illustrations” for the site.

The payments are made possible by a $20,000 donation from Philip Greenspun, who said he was moved to give the money because of his experience seeing technical books he had originally published online appear in print.

“In comparing the Web versions to the print versions, I noticed that the publishers’ main contribution to the quality of the books was in adding professionally drawn illustrations,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be ‘Wikipedia is more up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.’”

The woman running the project for Wikipedia, Brianna Laugher, says the plan is to create a list of articles that need illustrations and then solicit the work. The first list is expected to have 50 illustrations and be completed this month. Contributors will be able to sign up for an illustration and have two weeks to submit it; if it is accepted, the illustrator will be paid…”

Continue reading

Don’t miss the special one-day shopping event on Friday, November 30th.*

Come to the Apple Online Store this Friday for a special one-day-only holiday shopping event. You’ll find dozens of great iPod, iPhone, and Mac gift ideas.

Mark your calendars now. And until then, start your research by visiting our Holiday Gift Guide to find iPod, iPhone, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.

Check it out

*Shopping event is available only at the Apple Online Store on Friday, November 30, 2007, from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. GMT and at Apple Retail Stores. Check your local Apple Retail Store for special hours. Sale prices are available while supplies last.

Check out this video that is a HOW TO boost your wifi signal using a soda can. Click here to see the video at Little Dumb Man.

If you’d like your visitors to really notice some new feature on your website, show them a short message you want everyone to see. Here’s what you can do: put a virtual ribbon to the upper right corner of your site with QuickRibbon.

This is a free tool that allows you to customize your ribbon’s text and colors and then generates some javascript to add to your website. Note: QuickRibbon.com doesn’t work with WordPress.

Quick Ribbon

From Macworld:

Vox is another blogging service from Six Apart, but it focuses on multimedia and social-networking features. It’s a great service if you want to keep in touch with a like-minded community, or if you simply want to correspond with a group of friends. There’s one catch: Although Six Apart claims that Vox will work with the final version of Safari 3, it wasn’t fully compatible with the beta available at press time. However, you can always use Mozilla Firefox or Camino.

When you set up a blog on Vox, you have your pick of hundreds of designs. Many themes complement specific interests, such as cycling, music, and travel. Some focus on cities (such as Las Vegas, New York, and Kiev), while others are associated with seasons and holidays. There are several layout options, but unlike with Blogger and TypePad, you can’t completely overhaul the design and layout. Also, Vox doesn’t allow you to publish to your own server; you’re stuck with the yoursitename.vox .com naming scheme.

When you create a new post, you’ll see buttons for inserting photos, audio, books, and videos. If you click on Videos, for example, Vox will let you upload a new video from your Mac or embed one from iFilm or YouTube. There’s also an Amazon.com tab that lets you search for a film and insert its poster art along with a link to the DVD. As for images, you can upload your own, search for a stock image at iStockphoto.com, or have Vox pull pictures from Flickr or Photobucket. Vox embeds these items in your post, allowing you to specify their size and alignment.

Of course, there may be times when you don’t want the entire world to see one of your photos or videos—say, when it’s a snapshot of you at a party, and you appear less than sober in it. This is where Vox’s community tools come in handy. You can assign people as contacts (or neighbors in Vox’s parlance), friends, family, or all of the above. Then you can designate posts as accessible only for friends, family, or neighbors. Also, since Vox’s front page gives you a view of your neighborhood—posts and media uploads from all your contacts—Vox is an easy way to keep tabs on friends or other users with whom you share interests.