beat.co.nz

iPod touch – the best gadget ever? Very distracting that’s for sure. I carry round a bag full of equipment most days – Minidisc (with cords, mics adapters and cables), camera, laptop and now iPod.

Sure, there’s a new 3G version on the way (in cities in NZ at least – 2G out of town), but good news is that new software will work on existing models – iPod touch included.

The touch screen is fantastic and typing can actually be quite quick – especially for those of us who went to two-finger typing class. With the announcement of the new models they’re getting cheaper on TradeMe – around $300 for mine – three or four months old. 8 gig is heaps of storage, and with Plaxo it can be synched across platforms and everything I need is there. Itunes playlists, calendars, bookmarks, work and home appts, podcasts (audio and video) contacts email etc.

Gmail account works better than others at the moment – no doubt there’s a solve out there somewhere – probably port settings, but not really an issue currently, I can send and receive if need be.

The screen is brilliant and clear and the self-tipping of the screen is cool. Zoom / expand and pinch / reduce functions are a little compromised with the screen protector, but I wouldn’t be without one.

Battery life is two days tops if wireless is on and used moderately, less if you used all day. Three to four days if wireless use is limited.

iPhone would be great too – with the camera and the phone, but wait a year and there’ll be another version and a lower price …

A great site with some fantastic links. A couple of examples: Flash Video Downloader and the FFX exporter plug-in for iPhoto.Very useful. Also has some nice pics of how apple used to be in the ads and in the flesh. Fantastic – note the hole in the skivvy in the second shot. 

Here’s a handy little thing for intel mac owners. Library books tracks your account information with the library and warns you ahead of time if the books are due to be returned.It works with Christchurch City Libraries and several other New Zealand libraries. It can be set up as a start-up item that checks your library account when you start the machine up (or when you connect to the internet). It can also send events to iCal to give you warnings there as well.Well worth a look. 

Daringfireball had an interesting take on the apple news today at WWDC 2007.

Interesting too that the built in search engines in Safari (and other browsers) earn money for the developers. That’s not widely publicised.

The new public beta version of Safari is on apple’s website.

free mac ware

This is a fantastic site for those hunting for useful software for mac.
Highly recommended, and it goes to show that most software is now available on the mac – even those that make it work more like a PC.