Planet

I’ve been meaning to write up a piece about how I think the iPhone 2.0 software is the modern equivalent of winning the Super Bowl one year and then going 4-12 the next. I’ve never been so disappointed in a device after having such a wonderful experience with its predecessor.

By far my most annoying issue is with the GPS. There is a lovely bug where location services will stop running if 3G is enabled and you lock the phone. The only way to get the GPS to function again to go to the Settings application and toggle the Enable 3G button.

Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary until Apple fixes this stupid bug.

This new release fixes a startup crash and compatibility with some proxies, adds a “do javascript” command, updates the French localization, and removes the microformats feature. See nnwbeta.com for more detailed release notes.

When:

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 @ 7pm

Where:

Hotel Indigo (pic, directions from the Arlington Park Metra station).

Schedule:

Show & Tell
We'll start out the meeting by going around the table and talking about what we're currently working on or learning about. Handouts are welcome, or bring along your Mac and we'll hook it up to the projector.

Book Reports
Bring along the book you're currently reading, or one of your old favorites. Hopefully the book would have some relevance to programming, but we're fairly open-minded. Just give us an overview the book's topic, and what you liked (or disliked) about it.

Topics
Against my Doctor’s recommendation, I’m holding PSIG 117 the night before C4[2]. But I’m not worried, since Ben Gottlieb will be giving the big presentation.

Ben writes Newton Palm PocketPC some-new-fangled-PDA software and has some great hard-won experience to share. I would say more, but the walls have ears.

Dinner
If you want pizza, bring along three dollars and we'll all chip in.

Looking for Presenters:

I'm always on the look-out for folks to want to give a talk for a meeting. The talk doesn't need to be long (10 minutes is fine if your topic is small or you just want to tease the group) and you don't need to be an expert (just tell us why you think your topic is cool or your experiences). Toss me an email and I'll assign you a chunk of time.

Folks are wanting a little more detail than ”Strive to arrive at the hotel by Fri Sep 5 at 5:30 pm. It all comes to an end Sun Sep 7 around 4 pm” so I whipped up a C4[2] beta schedule that has a little more detail about what’s going down.

Sorry that schedule doesn’t have detailed speaker times, but since C4[2] sold out I’ve added additional speakers and I’d rather not tip my hand just yet.

Onlinenerd24: “I have several podcasts subscribed in iTunes. I use NetNewsWire as a local RSS feed reader. This morning I thought it would be nice to have new podcast episodes displayed in my feed reader as soon as they are downloaded.”

Last night I watched the Comedy Central special of one of my favorite new era comedians Bill Burr. Burr is probably best known for his 10 minute off-the-cuff rant on the city of Philadelphia after being heckled by 10,000 drunken fans.

I really think that stand up comedy is finally out of the cesspool that was the 90’s and back on the rise. I was too young to truly appreciate the genius of the 80’s comedians, but I’m certainly enjoying the Bill Burr’s, Louis CK’s and DL Hughleys of today.

While I have enjoyed the periodic Twitter political debate over the past few months, with the DNC, RCN and vice presidental selections it seems that everyone with 140 characters to spare wants to use them to push their ideologies or smash the oppositions.

If you are using Twitterrific on your Mac, you can use this filter to hide as much of this as possible.

Thanks to David Goldblatt for suggesting this awesome Lowepro Fastpack 250 as a solution to my bag conundrum. The Fastpack comes in black, red or blue and looks like it can hold a good amount of camera equipment and a MacBook Pro safely.

What I really like about the bag is the attention to design. There is a video on the site that shows how you can rotate the back on one shoulder and get easy, safe access to your camera equipment. No more having to kneel down on the sidewalk to pull gear out.

At $90, I’m hoping it is a good quality. It’s hard to gauge that stuff online. I ordered one this afternoon and will report back with my thoughts on it after using it for a few weeks.

With my new camera gear I’m scoping out, I am wanting to get a bag that I can store it in as well as use as my primary travel bag when flying. I tend to leave the camera behind for my yearly treks to Macworld and WWDC due to the space constraints of my messenger bag, so I am looking for a backpack that can hold the following:

1. MacBook Pro 15” + power adapter
2. Small USB drive
3. SLR body
4. 2 lenses (most likely in the 50mm and 17-135mm range)
5. Extra pockets for small accessories (Field Notes, pens, magazines, etc).
6. Fits under an airplane seat (not essential but would be nice).

If you have any suggestions, let me know.

What's that?



What's that you say?



You said you want to spend your Labor Day weekend creating exotic, elaborate optimization models with Excel 2008?



You said, "If only Solver was available for Excel 2008, I could get the jump on that crazy capacity-planning problem for my fall MBA class!"



Well, do I have some great news for you.



Just in time for the long weekend (and a little ahead of the promised "mid-September" delivery date), our friends at Frontline Systems have released Solver for Excel 2008. You can get Solver as a free download from the Frontline Web site (www.solver.com/mac); which, at less than 2 MB, should be a lightning-fast experience for just about everyone.



(Please note that Solver for Excel 2008 requires Excel 12.1.2, so if you have yet to update your copy of Office 2008, now would be a good time to run Microsoft AutoUpdate or visit the download page on Mactopia.)



My previous post on Solver and Excel 2008 contained the 411 about how to install and use this new version of Solver, so I won't re-post that here. Instead, I thought people might want to know some of the system and support information for the product.



Solver for Excel 2008:

    
• Runs on PowerPC or Intel systems;

    
• Works with Mac OS X 10.4.11 ("Tiger"), Mac OS X 10.5.4 ("Leopard") or later;

    
• Is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish;

    
• Requires Excel 2008 v. 12.1.2 or later.

I've been using Solver for Excel 2008 during its development, and I think Solver users will be delighted with what Frontline has created. The Mac Excel team has been working closely with our colleagues at Frontline for the past several months, and I'm confident that the product they've produced will make a lot of our mutual customers very, very happy.



Happy downloading, everybody!

emilyposts:

D90 D90 D90 

- GPS tagging

$1,299.95 - Amazon.com

- Pop up flash with ‘commander’ mode to interface with Nikon’s lighting system

Chase Jarvis advance testing Nikon D90 (via Justine)

- 12.3 megapixels (the same luscious chip that’s in the Nikon D300)
- D-movie function (that’s right, MOVIE function. 1280x720, .avi format, HD720p)
- High ISO/low-noise performance (Nikon’s ace in the hole. I shot this at 3200 and dug it.)
- 4.5 frames per second
- 3 inch, 920dot LCD with Live View

(via synmirror)

For Justin.

Even though I recently talked about wanting to get the Canon EOS 50D, I am now a bit conflicted about whether to keep going with Canon or make a jump to Nikon for my next camera. Right now I have a small investment in Canon lenses, but with my new body I will be making a substantial enough investment that there really isn’t any going back. Switch now or never.

What intrigues me the most about the Nikon D90 is the support for a GPS module, lower pricepoint and support for Aperture tethering. The GPS is the major feature because I am a habitual geotagger using Maperture or HoudahGeo. Moving to Nikon would also afford me the ability to replace two Canon lenses I have with a Nikon one that would be the ultimate walkabout.

When I was initially in the market for SLRs, Canon was really the only choice for an affordable starter camera. It’s amazing what two years can do.

Congratulations to Rich and folks for shipping BBEdit 9! Here’s what’s new. (The new Scratchpad sounds particularly useful, since I use BBEdit as a scratchpad already.)

Better Elevation: “IM+ doesn’t appear to be doing any proxying, instead connecting you directly to the server. This means that when you close the app, your connection is terminated, but the upshot is that none of your login credentials or private conversations are being stored on someone else’s servers.”

Connecting directly to the server is probably a good thing for folks who use chat at work.

Cocoa is My Girlfriend: “If you are using Core Data in a Leopard application then Sync Services is so trivial that you should be syncing if it makes sense. In this article we are going to cover syncing in a non-Core Data situation as that is quite a bit more complex.”

Macworld: “Coda 1.5 adds a variety of new features including Subversion, which allows users to check out code, make changes and check it back in. The update also allows you to find and replace across multiple local files.” And more, of course.

I use Coda to update the NetNewsWire Help book. Love it. Cool app.