it's well known that Steve J didn't think any more than 1 USB port was needed on a laptop, never mind that Dell's ship with like 8, whatever.

For those with USB port EVDO cards, all that's needed is a USB extension, since to date, I think only 1 EVDO modem actually fits.

For those of us sporting ExpressCard... well we're SOL, sorta. I found one Amazon, after seeing a similar thing mentioned on engadget.

I tried it out on the MBA as soon as it arrived, seems to work well, you'll want to be careful since now your facny EVDO modem is just laying out on the desk, or your knee or where ever.

So my AIR will now never be adrift without the intertubes, except in Europe where EVDO doesn't exist :(

I still wouldn't buy one with my own money. It's just too specialized.

Tom and I ordered them for using at the conferences. We typically use our personal machines, which is great, but mine is a MBP, and his is some kind of 12 ton windoze thing, neither are light by any means.

So this way we can carry a little less weight for checking people in, looking things up, doing keynotes, etc.

The other upside, for me is travel. My wife and I are staying in Italy a week beyond 360|Flex Europe and blogging and surfing the web will be much nicer without a 3 or 4 lb MBP. I'll be in Japan in May, again, a lighter machine will rock.

Plus, my MBP is my dev machine, it's much more important and when I travel I sometimes worry about it, losing it or being damaged, would really impact my work.

So my thoughts...

it's nice. it's too small to work on all day, but as a second machine, it's pretty nice. I won't say how light it is, because I knew it was light, and those reviewers who repeat the obvious are kinda lame. Battery run time, easy to argue, weight, kinda hard, I figured Steve wasn't fudging.

Combined with .mac I think it really comes into it's own as a second machine. I moved all my conference stuff to .mac and created aliases in my regular docs folders. I have my iDisk available offline so the files are always there. So far it's pretty smooth. I like it.

I definitely doesn't feel powerful enough to do development, and the Hard drive (we opted for SSD) is WAY too small for that. My MBP has my code, CF and Flex, my iTunes library, my iPhoto library (not really that big), and gb's and gb's of other data, no way 64gb, or even 80, could handle it.

The battery seems ok, I've yet to run it down. The power adapter is pretty whack. It's yet another brick to carry (should I take both machines) and it seems like the plug could easily have been a flat spot in the body to accommodate a standard mag safe plug, but this way consumers have to buy additional plugs, more $.

The fancy multi-touch trackpad.... haven't used it. Firefox doesn't recognize it (obviously) and I can't fit my photos on it, and using it in the Finder, just makes my icons all the wrong size. So I'm not too bummed my MBP doesn't have that feature.

It does boot fast, i'll give it that.

My final verdict (for now at least) it's a good second laptop for travel (we should all be so lucky to have that kind of coin) and presentations, it's no way a primary developer laptop. It may very well work ok for someone who doesn't compile code, or run photoshop often. We're leasing these two, so we can have some write offs for 360Conferences, plus if they suck, we'll buy them for the 1$ fee (cuz we're paying so bloody much) and use them as conference terminals for whatever.

When i first heard about Plaxo and the whole "Global Address book" hoo ha, I didn't sign up. When a few friends and colleagues signed up and invited me, I passed. Why? I was waiting to see where they'd go. Finally just a few days ago, I got another invite. "Ok, it's been a year or so. they're still around, more people are using them, i'll sign up."

An always up to date address book is definitely a nice thing, when I think about my Blackberry, my Mac, Google, etc all being their own (more or less) little silo's. But now...?

No sooner have I mined my Gmail address book, my LinkedIn account, etc, than i see that TechCrunch is reporting, they're up for sale.

Great, just great.

My wife and I have entered contract on a new home. We're moving on up... to Denver. Leaving the 'burbs (Highlands Ranch) behind. Our offer was accepted on Saturday. Of course there's no pictures yet, mainly because when we went up Saturday to look around, we didn't know that our offer had been accepted.

I'll probably go up this week sometime to take some pics as well as a few measurements, we'll be putting a small artificial grass dog run up on the deck for Terrance and Phillip.

We're crazy excited! We close in less than a month, hopefully in only two weeks or so.

Ours is the one next to the pool, which isn't built yet, and won't be for some time.

Having no kids the burbs isn't really the place for us in the first place, so it'll be a nice change (increasing) of pace, to be where other people actually go out after 9pm, or enjoy a night out for drinks with out kids around.... Ah I can't wait!

So last night I came across a post on TUAW about two new GUI jailbreak apps. GUI? no need to put my linux hacker hat on?

iJailbreak (for intel macs only, for now) is great. There's a few commentors bitchin' about it not working, my guess is maybe they weren't patient. Some reported it taking 5 minutes, I'd say mine took 10. I was literally sitting around for a while watching this little "Please wait, this might take a while" screen.

The UI is great, in it's simplicity. The prompts walk you through every step. In the end, several reboots later, you're the proud owner of jailbroken iPod Touch.

The picture kinda sucks, I've never been good at taking pictures of electronics...

So far I've installed

Stumblr

iShare

iSplit

TextEdit

Chat

and Finder

All in all my iPod Touch makes a pretty good newton 2.0, so far, as for being an iPod... well my old 4th Gen iPod Photo is still on active duty. I'll probably en up pulling all music off of it, and just using it as a PDA and video player, which it so far is excelling at. As I play with it more I'll post updates.

First saw this on the SF-F blog

" Commercial director Joseph Kosinski is in final negotiations to develop and direct "Tron," described as "the next chapter" of Disney's 1982 cult classic. Sean Bailey is producing via the Live Planet banner, as is Steven Lisberger, who co-wrote and directed the original film. "

How frakkin' cool!

And from Sci-Fi Wire

"Kosinski, who last month signed on to helm the remake of Logan's Runfor Warner Brothers, will oversee the visual development of the projectand have input on the script, which is being written by Lost writers Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Story details are being kept secret."

Talk about cool stuff on the movie front.... Tron, Robotech... jeebus!

Now that apple has released (I know, not recently, but I've been busy) their myTunes widgets, everyone who's ever wondered, "What does John buy on iTunes?" can now rest easy. Your question has now been answered :)

Oh Yes! Oh yes it can!!! (He says, giggling like a school girl)

Enter Better Gmail. I've been trying to stay current on my lifehacker reading and saw Better Gmail mentioned.

"Better Gmail? What's this? Can Gmail get any better? surely not! What's next, a Chupalacabra moving in next door?"

Low and Behold, Better Gmail is indeed Gmail, better.

It's a combination of GreaseMonkey scripts as I understand it, packaged into a nice little wrapper. I love the floating Signatures, love the saved searches, love the attachment reminder and the attachment icon (This one really. I often end up "looking for that PDF so and so sent me")

It's a great addition to Gmail, which is my primary email client. All my work (Red Omega) email goes through my gmail account, as do the various emails we use for 360Conferences work. Better Gmail is a must have firefox add on

Obviously the iPhone (I dub thee, MacBerry) is on everyone's mind right now. Mine too. My thoughts are here.

I'll be buying one, well two. My wife needs a more than phone device as well and this one having push IMAP from Yahoo is 100% what we need since her whole life is in Y! mail and calendar.

AppleTV was a disappointment to me. I'm a TiVo owner. I've been working on convincing my wife that an Apple based media center type set up would be great, the only caveat is that it has to have TiVo like capabilities... When I first of the iTV, I thought it would answer my prayers... It didn't, by a long shot.

It doesn't have DVR capabilities. No DVD Player (blue Ray, HD, or even old skool). From what I gathered at the keynote and looking at the specs all the AppleTV is, is a middleman to let you watch iTunes Store purchased stuff on your TV. I don't want to purchase content on iTunes. I have lots of DVDs and there is still some good content on the TV airwaves, I want that. I know (from the numbers at the keynote) that lots of people are buying their TV and movies from iTunes, that ain't me, so AppleTV isn't gonna grace my living room any time soon, much to my disappointment.

Other news... well it wasn't announced at the keynote but Apple is going 802.11n. They released a new Airport station, with N, and have admitted that many machines came with N capable cards. I haven't figured out 100% if pre Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros are in that category or not.

A fairly big one; Apple Computer, Inc is gone, dead, no more. Apple, Inc rises from those ashes. Not surprising as they're really pushing for consumer electronics as much or more than they are pushing computers. Phones, TV doo-dads, DAPs (that's the iPod).

What wasn't talked about:

• iWork '07 (which even Amazon had on their page for a minute or two) They've got the spreadsheet app to release, and frankly Pages needs some more features, cuz I'd love to use it if it held even a candle to Word (blech)
  
• Leopard previews (which I'm glad for since I hate seeing what will be available and then having to wait. Time Machine, Spaces... I want that now! so I'm glad I didn't get to see more things I have to wait for in my OS.
• .Mac changes. Mostly just rumored, but come on Apple... 100 bones for a gig of space that you have to share with your email... really.

Having a home office rocks. It kicks ass over a cubicle any day of the week. Except when I need something I got used to in corporate life. Like having my work backed up, free coffee, a view from 9 floors up that DIDN'T look into my neighbors kitchen....

But tonight the topic is backups. Most people don't do it. That's a fact. I used to be one of them. Until I found Carbonite.

There are lots of options. online and off. I like carbonite. the interface while semi childish, is cake... i can't imagine it being any simpler to use.

It integrates into windows allowing you to right click a file and decide if it'll be backed up, OR if that TYPE of file will or won't be backed up. Of course you can configure it by folder also in the control panel.

There's been debate about what is better, blah blah. That's up to you. If you want online storage, which isn't backup. check out mozi or even AOLs new thing which I can't recall the name of, or dot mac even (mac not required though silly to use without).

But for the average, or even power user, Carbonite is great. It runs quietly uploading files as I change them. I had to do a re-install of my OS a while back. installed Carbonite, went into recover mode and was all set. it began bringing my files back down to the proper location with out problem. I went on installing software and when I was ready the files were done downloading.

One more thing, the space is unlimited. not 5gb, not 1, unlimited. I have over 11gb on carbonite right now... and still going.

They offer a free trial. don't take my word for it. Give it a shot.

What's better, they've teamed with Staples to sell it in stores.. so you if you want a box and a disk.. you're all set. BETTER YET. right now you can get it free after rebate... Click here, give your zip, and order away.

Got my invite to Google analytics last night, and since I couldn't sleep, no not because of Google I set up this site, my other blog and Nicoles site with the tracking code.

We'll find out shortly if the hype is well placed.