For those interested, the new Apple Store is supposed to be opening in the same space as the old Sharper Image location which is located at 120 W. Jefferson in Naperville, IL (across from Anderson’s Bookshop).

Apple has already started posting for job openings and walking by the other day, construction is well under way (and no I didn’t have my phone / camera to take pics).

I, for one, am looking for a closer place to go spend my hard-earned money.  Looking forward to this location opening up! :)

Easy.

Click the Power Button (top of the phone) and the Home Button (front of the phone) at the same time. The screen will flash and the picture will be added to your Camera Roll… Cool trick! :)

Luckily my dad has a Sprint EVDO card that he uses to get online with his MacBook, but I didn’t want to have to depend on using his computer during our whole trip. I got to thinking about how we could share his connection and immediately fired up the “Internet Sharing” functionality that is available in Mac OS X.

I flipped open the “Internet Sharing” preference pane, selected to share his EVDO connection through Airport and immediately went to my machine. I saw the new network that was created, immediately connected to the network (thinking “how easy was this?) and… nothing.

I went back into the Network Preference Pane on my computer and saw that while I was connected to my dad’s “Airport Network”, I was not getting a real IP address (getting one of those nasty 169.x.x.x self-assigned addresses). Those are no fun to deal with ever and was thinking “now what?”.

After poking around the network configuration on my dad’s computer, I finally saw that he too had a self-assigned IP address for his Airport. It turns out that the Sprint EVDO card actually uses PPP to connect and there’s no real place to specify an IP address. I decided to flip back to the configuration of his Airport and give him a hard-coded IP address (opting with the ever popular 192.168.1.1). From there I went back to my computer and gave myself a hard-coded IP address (going with the next logical address of 192.168.1.2). I added my dad’s IP of 192.168.1.1 for the Router field within the preference pane and then… nothing.

So now I was getting frustrated and just out of pure frustration, I fired up Terminal and tried to ping my dad’s computer. No problems… Ok, cool. Now for kicks I decided to ping the IP address of the Router that gets populated when he connects through EVDO. Guess what? I was hitting it! It was all coming together now. I had Internet connectivity, I just didn’t have any DNS configured.

I quickly fired up OpenDNS.com (on my dad’s computer, remember I still couldn’t resolve URLs), got the two OpenDNS DNS addresses (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 for those keeping score at home), applied my Network changes and the rest was history.

I know this is a long story but I wanted to put this out here for two reasons…

1.) I wanted to make sure that I put this somewhere so if I ever have to do it again, I’ll remember how to set things up.

2.) Just to prove how great the Mac OS is. I don’t think there’d be anyway to do this on Windows… If there is, I’d love to know. :)

I listen to a lot of podcasts. For me, they have pretty much completely replaced my listening of live radio. The radio that I do listen to is “timeshifted” through pretty much the programming coming from NPR such as Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, This American Life, Car Talk, etc.

One of my favorite podcasts has to be MacBreak Weekly. As you can tell by the title, it has a technical slant but is always very entertaining and the topics of conversation can vary quite a bit. As I listen every week, I always think to myself that there are certain things that always occur during the show that could mesh well with pairing a drinking game alongside it (not that my mind is always focused on alcohol ~ especially while listening to the show since I’m usually driving).

With that all said, I now introduce the MacBreak Weekly Drinking Game… Please feel free to add on or make any suggestions! :)

### Take ONE drink…
* anytime “the” Twitter is mentioned
* anytime Merlin Mann or Alex Lindsay mention their respective babies
* anytime you can hear/tell that Leo Laporte is looking something up while they are talking
* anytime Chris Breen’s hair is referenced

### Take TWO drinks…
* anytime Andy Ihnatko references anything related to comic books
* anytime Alex Lindsay mentions anything related to Africa
* anytime Merlin Mann brings up the Mac SE Backpack

### Take THREE drinks…
* anytime the “Rathole” theme is played
* anytime someone’s iPhone gets to close to a microphone and starts that GSM chirping sound
* anytime Scott Bourne starts talking about something that he randomly bought that costs more than an average person’s yearly salary

### Take FIVE drinks…
* anytime Alex Lindsay starts getting technical about something and you start getting the head-bobs/start drifting off to sleep :)
* if there is any special guests outside of the normal “crew”

### FINISH your drink…
* anytime Leo Laporte buys a new computer and it is updated within a week of purchasing
* anyone switches from MacOSX to Vista :)

disclaimer: marusin.com does not condone the abuse of mixing alcohol and podcasts…

Not that I’m an expert on the topic of podcasting, but I got this interesting email from Apple today with some how-to’s/best practices and figured that I’d put it up here so I didn’t lose track of it for the day that I kick my ass in gear and producing some content! :)

Greetings from the iTunes Podcasting Team:

The Apple TV “Take Two” software upgrade has been released, making it easier than ever for people to enjoy your podcasts wherever there is a TV. A whole new audience will understand the benefits of podcasts as soon as they experience them this way.

Recommendations to help you create the best possible experience for users:

1. Apple TV viewers are immediately aware of video quality. If you encode your video podcast at 320×240, we strongly encourage you to increase the resolution to 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). When encoded well, video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still play on iPhone and video-compatible iPods. To ensure compatibility, we recommend that you encode using QuickTime’s “Movie to iPod” preset or Compressor’s “Apple > Apple Devices > H.264 for iPod video and iPhone 640×480″ preset.

2. When you perform the final encode on your video, enable fast starting. Most recent versions of QuickTime enable this setting automatically. But it’s easy to undo the setting by making changes to the file after the encode. If you do make a change after the encode, be sure to “Save As” again.

3. Apple TV displays a large version of the podcast art (the file referenced in the tag). We recommend that you use a 600×600 square JPG or PNG file.

4. Several new introductory video tutorials have been developed for iTunes, including one for podcasts. If your web site offers how-to information for new podcast users, please consider linking to it.

For those hosting podcasts on their own servers, consider the following recommendations:

5. To reduce wait times, iTunes and Apple TV use byte-range requests in some circumstances. For example, Apple TV 2.0 employs this functionality when the user accesses the podcast directly over the Internet. We recommend hosting episode files on HTTP/1.1 servers that correctly support the HTTP byte-range request specification.

6. Please ensure that your HTTP servers return the correct MIME types in the Content-Type header. Failing to do so can create errors. A list of MIME types can be found in the iTunes podcast technical spec.

Useful links:

1. Installing the free upgrade on an existing Apple TV
2. iTunes Store Podcast Technical Specification
3. iTunes Video Tutorials: Get Free Podcasts

Many thanks for listing your podcast on iTunes.

Best regards,

The iTunes Podcasting Team

Good stuff!

Low and behold, there are a ton of “Power User Preferences” that can be done through the command line for version 3.1 (I’m running 3.1b3 -> direct download link)…

Power User Preferences

The following list shows preferences that can be set with the command line. These preferences can be used to configure Twitterrific for special uses.

To set one of these “power user” preferences, quit Twitterrific and issue the following from a command line:

% defaults write com.iconfactory.Twitterrific [preference] [type] [value]

where [preference] is the name of the preference, [type] is the data type and [value] is the data value to use (shown in the table below.) After restarting Twitterrific, you should see the new preference setting.

To delete the preference and return to a default setting, use:

% defaults delete com.iconfactory.Twitterrific [preference]

Make sure that you match case when typing the [preference] key—baseurl is not the the same as baseUrl. Use man defaults for more information about setting defaults with the command line.

Preference	Type	Default Value	Description
connectionLogging	-bool	NO	When this preference is set to YES, Twitterrific will log connection information to the Console. This is helpful for debugging Twitter problems.
processTweetScriptPath	-string	None	A path to an AppleScript that will be used to process each new tweet that arrives. The script parameters are described below.
protocol	-string	“http://”	Allows Twitterrific to be configured for other protocols, such as “https://”.
baseUrl	-string	“twitter.com”	Allows Twitterrific to be configured for other servers supporting the Twitter API.
filterOwnTweets	-bool	NO	If this preference is set to YES, Twitterrific will not display your own tweets. It will only display the tweets of your friends.
tweetScreenNameFilter	-string	None	Defines an ICU regular expression that will be used to filter incoming tweets based on the screen name of the tweet. If you want to block everything from @crackheadjoe and @chattypatty, you would set this preference to “(crackheadjoe|chattypatty)”.
tweetTextFilter	-string	None	Defines an ICU regular expression that will be used to filter incoming tweets based on the text of the tweet. Setting this preference to “[cC][aA][nN] [hH][aA][sSzZ]” will let you avoid LOLCAT inanity.
maximumStatusCount	-integer	200	This preference specifies how many tweets from your timeline to hold in memory.
maximumMessagesCount	-integer	20	This preference specifies how many direct messages to hold in memory.
sonicTwooshTechnology	-bool	NO	The vocal stylings of Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch inform you when a posted tweet is exactly 140 characters long.
growlMaximumShown	-integer	5	This value sets the maximum number of Growl notifications that will be displayed after a refresh. If there are more than the maximum, a summary is displayed.
displayScreenName	-bool	NO	When this preference is set to YES, “chockenberry” will be displayed instead of “Craig Hockenberry.”
pinScrollingEdges	-bool	NO	This preference changes how the view is scrolled when “keep same view” is selected. If your view is at the very top of the list, that position is maintained.

What can I say, that price drop was really smart for Apple to woo the would-be iPod Touch buyers into the iPhone (which was me a few weeks ago).

So far, I haven’t really had the time I’d like to immerse myself in it, but from what I’ve done with it so far it is clearly an awesome device. I have found only four real faults right now:

1.) Let me control whether I want it to vibrate when I get new emails. Right now the vibrate feature is all or nothing (phone calls and emails). This leads into #2…

2.) Don’t vibrate when I get a new email when I’m on the phone. That is absolutely annoying and I feel like I’m getting electrocuted everytime this happens.

3.) Let me flip the iPhone horizontal when reading/checking email. It just seems like that would make sense to be a feature?

4.) Damn, that screen gets dirty/greasy rather quickly! :)

Any must-have sites/apps, please let me know. I haven’t messed with Installer.app, but it’s on my radar of todos (probably once I’ve had the phone for a few weeks). It’s still June 29th in my world. :)

Yes, the AppleTV gets a bad rap around the web but I’m here to tell you that I love it. If I weren’t dependent on HBO Sunday nights (and some other guilty pleasures), I seriously would be thinking about scrapping all things cable/satellite and would be saving myself close to $100 a month. So now that you know that I love my AppleTV, does that mean that you would too?

The AppleTV is not for everybody (yet)

I strongly believe that Apple is on the verge of releasing an video rental service through the iTunes Store (hopefully in HD). Do I have proof of that? Um, no. I do think that is/was the intention for making the device HD only (it only had HDMI/Component Outputs on the back). I also think that the functionality that they are going to release on the new iPod Touch (and an update to the iPhone) where users can purchase items directly from the iTunes Store will make its way into the video side of things (very similar to “on-demand” functionality). This would really make the AppleTV more attractive and easy to use.

I’m not the only one online who is thinking about these concepts. 9to5Mac.com just wrote a post about Apple getting into the Movie Rental business. It really makes sense and would be the kick-in-the-pants that the AppleTV needs.

So what do I watch?

Yes, I’m somewhat geeky. I’m proud of that fact and not afraid to admit it. I’m the kind of person that is constantly checking email and my RSS feeds. With that said, I guess I’m lucky in the fact that I have access to more video content with a nerd-slant than I could ever watch. There’s also a bunch of other stuff that even my wife watches tolerates.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite video podcasts (in no particular order):

- DiggNation (yes, a geek-ish show but definitely entertaining if you keep pace with Kevin and Alex on “beers”).

- ForkYou (their tagline is “Food with Philadelphia Charm”. You may recognize Scott McNulty’s wittiness from The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

- Washington Post HD Podcast (put that HDTV to good use. awesome looking documentaries from the Washington Post.)

- Tom Green Live (yes, THAT Tom Green. he puts out an hour+ long show every weekday out of his living room. awesome/real guests and dial-in video/calls through Skype. this show is raw and my favorite.)

- Tiki Bar TV (if you’ve been online for any time, you’ve caught Tiki Bar TV before. looks awesome on the big screen.)

If you know me, I’m sure you’re assuming that I will be at the Apple Store this evening in line to pick up an iPhone at release. It’s not unusual for me to be the typical/rabid Apple fanboy:

- I was there day one back in Fall of 2001 to pick up the very first generation iPod (having just gotten back from our honeymoon in Ireland).

- I’ve bought every OS X release at the “Launch Parties” that Apple has thrown at their stores.

- I’ve even been to two Apple Store grand openings (dragging Liz to the Chicago – Michigan Avenue event).

What you’re going to read in the next sentence may surprise you…

I think I’m passing this time around.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the iPhone is one of the sexiest/sweetest gadgets that I may have ever seen. What pains me is the “lock-in” that comes with cell phone service. If the device was coming out tonight that was everything (including WiFi) but minus the phone, I’d be taking off work and sitting in a lawn chair all day waiting for it (I seem to have done this before for other “gadget launches”). It just pains me that such a cool device and all of its features cannot be used without active phone service (and the day I stop service/upgrade to another phone, I can’t continue using it as even just an iPod/Internet device ~ am I wrong in that assumption?).

I guess the other part that turned me off is that the data plan is being reported to be dog-ass slow (that’s a technical term). I’ve been living with highspeed Internet connectivity on my phone for almost a year now and I can never go back. Hopefully this gets bumped up in the near future as it probably (subconsciencely) overshadowed the “lock-in” issue to me. Besides all of these excuses, I have another little gadget that’s on order that you’ll be hearing about soon enough (not to mention the majority of my money is tied up in a new house and baby on the way)!

Until further notice, I’ll be living vicariously through David Pogue’s iPhone Diary video on YouTube and following all of the buzz on the Internet (and coming to my senses and picking up the second revision next year or the day I need a new phone!) :)

If any of you that I know are picking up your iPhone at launch, let me know. I’ll take you out for lunch or something and use it as an excuse to check it out (and I promise we won’t go for buffalo wings or something messy that will get your new phone all greasy)… :)

Good luck, you iPhone consumers… I’m jealous already.