Daily Techno-Babble

For the first time since I have been a user of the Blackberry system there is currently a significant outage of the service. CNN and other sites are reporting that the service has been offline since yesterday and that the folks at RIM are still struggling to bring the system back online. I can’t help but wonder if they are having issues with the latest Microsoft 0-day exploits since there have been reports of other systems being hacked through this latest hole popping up all over the web over the last several days. Rampant speculation aside, those users who depend on the Blackberry service for work related activities must be starting to really twitch right about now….

One year ago this week I took the plunge and canceled my Comcast cable TV service and replaced it solely with a Verizon DSL connection and content I have downloaded through the iTunes music store because I was sick and tired of paying over $50+ per month for tons of commercials and content I never had the time or the desire to watch. The cable companies always seem to make so you have to pay for the top of the line package just to get that one show you really want to see. So after one year of nothing but iTunes (and a handful of other downloadable content sites) am I still a believer? You bet! What started out as pure frustration regarding yet another cable bill increase quickly evolved into one of the most rewarding decisions I have ever made. So what did I watch? How did I managed to pull this off, and most importantly, did I save any money? Read on for those answers and whole lot more.

Technorati Tags: apple, AppleTV, cable TV, video

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the initial buzz about AppleTV has had a chance to die down I figured it would be a good opportunity to discuss my own impressions and experience setting up and playing with this new device. First off, one major misconception regarding the AppleTV is that it will compete with Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition software product. This could not be further from the truth. As many other AppleTV users have already discovered, this device is something much different and does not attempt to be all things to all people. Although the AppleTV has some very compelling features for those who exclusively use iTunes to manage their media library, folks who don’t use iTunes won’t find anything useful about this product.

Technorati Tags: airport, apple, gadgets, ipod, AppleTV, review, video

Read the rest of this entry »

Having been a long time fan of the Blackberry 8700c from Cingular I found myself being drawn to the latest edition to the Blackberry lineup, the 8800. Several of the new features such expandable memory and the GPS navigation seemed to make a very strong case for the cost of getting an upgrade. So I took the plunge and picked one up at the local Cingular store and after one month of using this new Blackberry I have quite an interesting review for everyone. If you are interested in making the upgrade from the 8700 to the 8800 then you won’t want to miss this review!

Technorati Tags: blackberry, bluetooth, cell phones, gadgets, review

Read the rest of this entry »