Consultant | Musician | Networking Expert | Technology Freak | Daddy

Sony has finally confirmed a LOT of the rumors that were flying around and there is now a PS3 Slim and Firmware 3.0.  The price point of the PS3 Slim is $299.99 with 120GB hard disk.  That is totally awesome, tempting to buy a second one just so I can play my Blue-Ray movies in another room in the house.   Firmware 3.0 looks pretty cool, I like the animated wallpaper and I certainly like the way they updated the upper corner to include more information.  I hope there are some extra little bonuses that they didn’t mention, but for some reason I am a little doubtful.  I for one would like to see some MKV support and would like to see some expansion of the chat system.  I welcome any software update they do, seems a little weak, but that hardware update and price drop is a very welcome sight!  Hopefully they can get more development and heck more exclusives, after all, I think most of us pick up one of these for a little gaming action and well that certainly doesn’t seem to have a lot of focus like it should.

TomTom for the iPhone is now available according to http://iphone.tomtom.com/, however I haven’t found a place that is actually selling the hardware yet.  I still haven’t seen anything that states if there is a monthly service fee like the majority of the navigation software for the iPhone and well I so far am going to take it that there isn’t.  The stand-alone units do not have a monthly fee, so I would assume this one won’t either.  The price is somewhat high, according to the store it is $99.99, but from all the early adopters, there are some really good reviews.  I’m really interested in the car kit though, so guess I’ll keep watching for that.  Don’t know if I’d bite the bullet for this yet, plus I already have navigation built into the car, so don’t really need this one, but I’m sure some friends would like to have it.

This is a really cool method to get notifications on OS X and if you are familiar with Growl and Fluid, then this will be a breeze to setup.  If your not, there is an article with a complete walk-thru and some decent instructions.   You can go here to get everything setup and going:  lifehacker.com

You also can do this with Windows by using the code here.

I ran across this Dashboard widget for Google Voice called GV Connect and it works great, it allows you to send SMS and make phone calls without having to go to Google’s website.  It also provides notifications for voice mail.  My favorite feature of this widget is the ability to pull directly from your Address Book and Contact lists by just typing out the name of the contact.  I highly recommend getting this application just for the ease of use alone.  You can also download it here.

Well since there isn’t a Google Voice app available for iPhone and may not be one, I thought I’d post one of the workarounds that I found at MacOSXHints.  The following code you will need to execute, make sure to update the variables located at the top of the code to reflect your information.

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set pin to "YOUR_PIN_HERE"
set gvnum to "YOUR_GV_NUMBER HERE"

tell application "Address Book"
  repeat with thePerson in people
    set nums to the phones of thePerson
    repeat with num in nums
      if the (label of num) contains "GV" then
        tell thePerson
          delete num
        end tell
      else
        set gvPhone to {label:"", value:""}
        set label of gvPhone to "GV" & the (label of num)
        set value of gvPhone to gvnum & "," & pin & ",2," & the (value of num)
        tell thePerson
          make new phone at end of phones with properties gvPhone
        end tell
      end if
    end repeat
  end repeat
end tell

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This is a really cool application, LiquidMac, it uses the SMS on Apple laptops, this is from the author website, I think it explains it better than I will….

“Liquid mac requires a macintosh laptop computer with a sudden motion enabled sensor. This includes MacBook family, MacBook Pro family, and some of the latest PowerBooks. It mimics the behavior of liquid by creating a particle system that reacts to the computer’s orientation.”

NiceCast allows you to broadcast your audio (iTunes for example).  This application seems to cover all the things one would require for broadcasting, allows multiple sources to be used and well it is very easy to share any audio or a specific audio source.  If you have a need to share/broadcast any of your audio via iTunes or other sources, I would highly recommend NiceCast.

I thought I would list off a few of my favorite Dashboard Widgets for OS X.

Weather Underground – One of my favorite weather related sites, the application is very well put together and extremely informative, the web cameras are a very nice additional touch.  Out of the many options available, this is a nice addition for weather.

[Download] [View]

iStat Pro – provides a ton of system information.  This is useful for a ton of reasons, it is extremely  configurable.

[Download] [View]

Woot – This provides at a glace what is currently posted on Woot or its branches, like Sellout and the price of the item available.  If you are not familiar with Woot, check out http://www.woot.com

[Download] [View]

I’ve been messing with Google Voice, its certainly awesome.  It sucks that Apple has dumped the Apps for the iPhone, especially after approving them first.

Setting up Google Voice was really easy, about the only thing that is complicated or difficult is picking a phone number.  From the Mac side of things, I typically use Address Book to keep my contacts up to date and to keep them in sync with other applications and services that I use.  It is easy to get your contacts to Google, if you hadn’t already, by going to the Address Book’s Preferences and in the General Section, putting a check box in Sync with Google.

Some of the features I like about Google Voice is the voice mail saving in *.mp3 format, the SMS features, and the ability to have it ring multiple phones.  This service is by far one of the biggest and coolest free ones in awhile.  So hopefully it will stay that way.

Some other plugins and applications that I have ran across that seem to work well with Google Voice:

• Firefox Plugin
• I’ll post more as I run across them and update this post or post a comment….

Apple has now, FINALLY, release the iDisk application for iPhone.  My first thoughts with this application, what in the heck am I going to use this for? It nice to have the access, I think it would be even better if I could edit at least a basic text file.

Obviously it would be awesome to have the ability to edit an Office style document, but I really didn’t expect to have that ability.  So far I think I’ll drop my resume on there just so I have another method to quickly grab it and share it.  I do see potential with this application, but I think it won’t fill any needs I have at this time.  The file sharing ability might come in handy for some instances.