Oops. Why would I be excited about a machine running Windows XP? Actually, I’m not excited about the Windows part. (Although they could do worse than XP.) I’m particularly excited about the fact that so many people have had luck running Mac OS X on a Dell Mini, and that my local cell phone company might make that prospect even easier for me by bundling the 3G wireless access. A little mini Mac OS X machine with unlimited 3G wireless is exactly the sort of thing that I probably don’t need — but that I wish I had anyway for my upcoming trip to Tucson, since I’m giving a presentation there and it would be very much fun to have the coolest gizmo in the room. (Shiny!)

And, OK, even if I couldn’t run Mac OS X on it, I’d probably still find a use for it — like taking it on sales presentations, sneaking off to the coffee shop to write opinion pieces or assigning it out to our reporters and interns who need 3G Web access while they report, blog and Twitter.

Assuming the data plan is as attractive as CS’ Blackberry plan ($50 a month for 500 minutes voice + unlimited data & text) then I may just be an early adopter.

My favorite trick of InstantWatcher might be the “expiring” feature, which tells you what movies to hurry and watch before they fall off the Watch Instantly service.

InstantWatcher the brainchild of Daniel Chao, who has also developed the site KindleFeeder.com for Amazon Kindle users. Which, of course, I covet. (The Kindle, I mean.)

For a few years now, I’ve been connecting my MacBook to the TV probably at least a few times per week, first to stream iTunes content, then, later, to watch a fair bit of Hulu, then to watch Amazon On Demand. The service changed frequently, particularly when we wanted to watch a particular show — Battlestar Galactica — because the rights situation with BSG kept changing…first you could buy it on iTunes, then it was gone; then it was free on Hulu, then the number of back episodes was cut down serverly; finally, it was easiest to just buy Season 4 on Amazon and stream it over the MacBook wired up to the TV.
(more…)

Might as well go ahead and download it, if only because you can.

The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

It’s been years since I’ve attended a Macworld Expo myself (I don’t remember how many, but certainly my last show was before I moved to Mississippi in 2001), but I remember them fondly, particularly as I was attending through the lean years, pre-Jobs, when there were few enough of us “Mac authors” still fighting it out with the PC snobs and the Apple dead-enders. I remember the Return of Jobs in Boston in 1997, although I wasn’t there for that one…I believe there was a QuickTime simulcast. I think I WAS there in 1998 for Macworld SF, and I’ve seen Jobs do his live thing a number of times since.

I remember the fight over moving Macworld from Boston to New York (I was there for at least one of those; I remember meeting one of my editors at a great bar on 9th Avenue back when I was living there) and then Apple’s subsequent pulling of the plug on that one, too.
(more…)

This could be big — if Netflix can figure out how to charge (and make money at) offering a fixed-rate streaming service that would give you access to high-quality movies and TV shows, it could be a strong competitor in this space. I’m already a huge fan of iTunes downloads, but just think if you could take it a step forward and download from a massive catalog at a monthly rate…if they can pull it off, I might just have to get the Rokr box instead of the Apple TV I’ve had my eye on.

To make it work, you need to visit http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin and opt in to the beta program. (This also means you’ll have to use Microsoft Silverlight for watching in Windows, apparently, so if you do often watch in Windows from your Netflix account, you might want to wait a while.)

Apple posted revenue of $7.9 billion and a profit of $1.14 billion, compared to $6.22 billion and net quarterly profit of $904 million in the year ago quarter.

Sales of Mac units reached a record high, up 21 percent over a year ago (2.611 million units; which also compares favorably to the 2.45 million in previous quarter) and iPod sales were up 8 percent (that’s 11 million iPods, about the same last quarter).
(more…)

The plug-ins allow you to create relationships between the blogs — for linking friends, messaging between one another, creating groups and, of course, collecting your photos into albums that can be shared. BuddyPress isn’t out of development yet, but it’s worth watching if you’re interested in a WordPress-based social networking solution…which could be interesting if you’re using WordPress for a CMS platform or for a groups site already via bbPress forum software.

It’s fun watching WordPress grow like this. For the past six months or more I’ve explored the possibilities with social networks; a white-label social network is tough to come by; that fact that one may soon be built on such a robust platform is an exciting testament to the power of open source.