DailyTechTalk

Insight in Technology from Adam Jackson & Friends


A Keyboard & Scanner All in One (WTF!?)

I received a press release from a company called “Keyscan” who is touting their all in one scanner and keyboard combo. This is, by far, the weirdest combo of peripherals since someone decided to integrate a printer into a laptop (really sucked for paper jams). The combo is $159 MSRP and comes in black or white. It’s only compatible with Windows Vista & XP because they know there’s not a Mac user in the world that would purchase this product.

I’d love to see one of these in action because I’m just curious how it compares to a full size desktop scanner. Check it out.

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I Try a Jumpcut (FAIL)

In response to my rant earlier about how much I hate these Web 2.0 Jumpcut videos, I decided to try it out myself but a little different. My video doesn’t have any actual jumpcuts and is more “natural” Check it out.

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Stop It! (Web 2.0 Video)

I am completely fed up with the state of video on the web. From here on, if you do a video that cuts every 3 seconds as you jump around the freaking screen, I will stop watching. I don’t care how much I love your videos. The whole thing where you’re over here and now over there every 3-5 seconds, gives me a headache. If I want a rollercoaster, I’ll go to six flags. It’s annoying as hell so just stop it already.

Maybe it’s my fault for owning a 24″ monitor and sitting 6 inches from it as I watch these web 2.0 style videos full screen but all of you are making my head hurt. I think America is just too ADD to concentrate on one subject for longer than 5 seconds because for some reason, these videos are very popular. Ze Frank started this whole movement and now everyone is doing them. Thank god there’s some sanity because my friend Justine Ezarik just mocked the style in her latest video prior to New Media Expo.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see below:

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Thanks MacNN

Just received this in my inbox:

Hello adamjackson1984,

We at MacNN Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

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DailyTechTalk Show: Episode 5 (Blip.FM)

Episode 5 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. We sit down with Blip.FM and discuss everything there is to speak of in reference to their new web site that is “twitter for music” We also cover some details about their parent company, Fuzz.

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Dear Adobe…

I could spend hours playing on this website and if you’re a hardcore Adobe CS user, this one will make you LOL for hours. Instead of playing around, I’m going to blog about it to everyone can enjoy it.

Dear Adobe…

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Birthday Wishes

My birthday is tomorrow and I have two gifts in mind. Laura said she’d get them for me but I thought I’d post here so it would make it easy for Mom, Dad and friends to contribute. THANKS EVERYONE for making this blog and the first 22 years of my life and awesome ride.

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Vote for the best Adam Jackson Face

Two weeks ago I started a competition for the best Adam Jackson Face.

Yeah. I started The Adam Jackson Face just over 4 years ago.The first time was on May 20th, 2004 while my parents were driving me to my High school graduation and I had just gotten a new digital camera. I snapped a funny photo and it had started. The Adam Jackson Face evolved over the years and really hit its peak in 2007 when I grew a mustache and goatee and that made the face even better.

I think the competition has been a huge success so far with a lot of awesome submissions. You can view the submissions here

Please head over to ResoluteOpinion and vote for the best Adam Jackson Face.

Click Here to vote

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My New Twitter Experiment

As many of you know, I am a very prolific Twitterer. I post everything I am doing including thoughts to Twitter and it’s time to change things (at least temporarily). Everyone would love to follow me on Twitter but doesn’t because I post way too much. In fact, while at the Mashable Monthly party on Thursday, over 20 people I spoke to have followed me on Twitter and then said that they stopped due to the volume of tweets. Investigating my Twitter folder within Outlook showed that thousands have followed me but only 950+ remain.

With all of this in mind, I think it’s time to start things anew. I’m not dropping the adamjackson Twitter name but I’m doing things differently every week until I find the right formula.

March 2007 - Today: I have been posting everything that I do and think of on Twitter which equals 23,500 Tweets over the past year.

For the next week, I’ll be posting what I’m doing but no more than one tweet per hour and each Tweet will be encouraging enough to get a reply. I’m feeding for replies not by volume but by integrity of my post. Before, I had tons of replies due to my volume of posts. Now I’ll be doing fun and interesting posts that get replies. This will be going on for a week as an experiment. Wish me luck. Also, I’m going to try to go an entire week without losing a single follower. Since I joined Twitter, it was 10 new followers a day and 8 of those followers would go away quickly. Let’s continue that growth trend without losing a single follower.

This might be interesting.

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AT&T’s Response

A couple days ago, on my blog, I posted an open letter to AT&T Wireless regarding their expansion of the 3G networks. I had seen absolutely no progress, so I felt that the letter was needed, especially with no coverage in the closest metropolitan area, Ocala, FL. I wanted the letter to get around, so I Dugg it and I even added the Twitter for AT&T News.

The next day around 2pm, I was contacted via e-mail by a Seth Bloom of AT&T Corporate Communications. He wanted to know when and how I could be contacted. I gave him my info and began the wait (I’ve gotten good at it).

Soon after making contact, I loaded up Twinkle, and to my surprise someone was tweeting that they had 3G in my area. My first thought was that they had just bought it, and they were excited. Being a sceptic, I turned my 3G on, and to my surprise, my favorite little icon was smiling back up at me. Luckily, I had some driving to do that day, so I was able to see if I had gone insane or not. Verdict I wasn’t [although, according to my Qik viewers last night, I am anyway].

Today, I was called. My iPhone sang Jared’s tune for me, and I immediately muted everything and tweeted it. Through the earpiece, I heard a woman saying to me “Hello Colin, this is — from the AT&T Mobility President’s office” [I honestly forget her name...I'm really sorry]. She and I had a really nice talk. The main question was “how do you like your new 3G service?” which I loved the sound of, since it gave me the feeling of responsibility for it.

The other question was the 3G coverage in Ocala. Sad to say, there is none, nor is the new towers even planned, according to her. She did tell me though, that if you’re ever wondering about the expansion of 3G in your area, check with your local AT&T reseller or call customer service [611] and they’ll be able to tell you.

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Stickering my MacBook Pro

After 3 months of living in San Francisco, I’ve given in and decided to sticker my MacBook Pro. With the help of the Speck SeeThru case that I picked up on Wednesday, it wasn’t too much of a challenge. The case protects every corner of my MacBook Pro without compromising any functionality and allows me to sticker up my laptop without damaging the resale value.

Finding stickers to cover my laptop was not an issue. Stickers are sent to me all of the time and they are free flowing at every party I attend so without further delay, the photo is below. Thanks to Andrew Mager for taking the photo.

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DailyTechTalk Show: Episode 4 (Interview with Speck Products)

Episode 4 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. We take a trip down to Palo Alto to meet the team at Speck Products. Speck makes awesome protective cases for all of the major phones including iPhone and cases for iPods and notebooks. This short video is a look inside their studio and we review their new lineup of 3G iPhone cases. Big thanks to Speck and Sam Levin for making this possible.

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If you love what we’re doing so far, do me a favor and review our podcast on iTunes. (link)

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Fun Macintosh History “dogcow”

This won’t be a full post but I wanted to link to a Wiki page for the beloved Dog-cow. Moof was a fantastic icon of the early days of Apple & Macintosh and every Mac user should know and love the character.

Dogcow on Wikipedia

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Adobe CS4 Details (Bridge, Photoshop, Release Date)

DIGG THIS!
STUMBLE THIS!

I received an in-depth document that details tons of Adobe CS4 information and it’s mostly info regarding Photoshop CS4, Bridge CS4 and the launch date of the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite.

First of all, the launch date is going to be around or during Adobe Max which takes place November 16th-19th in San Francisco. Adobe Creative Suite product cycles are around 18 months and Adobe CS3 was released on April 16th, 2007 so Adobe Max would mean 19 months since the last release. Let’s take a look at some features that may or may not be included in Adobe CS4.

Adobe Photoshop CS4:
Codename: Adobe Stonehenge CS4 Extended. Splash screen is Stonehenge.
1. Interface is similar to CS3 but there are small and minor polishes that complete the look.
2. Support for “Extensions” under the “Window” menu
3. The extension manager is in every CS4 application
3. “kuler” which is a Intranet color pallet collaboration tool for sharing color swatches with others on your team.
4. Flash Support (more on this later)

Adobe Panel Configurator 1.0 (Alpha Version):
1. It’s a way to create Photoshop toolboxes.
2. Choose from over 860+ commands, tools and application features and create your own toolboxes that work in any CS4 application
3. Supports Actions and Scripts too
4. Drag and drop text fields into these toolboxes
5. Support for SWF and Quicktime video files in toolboxes (not sure why)
6. Export the toolbar file and open it in any CS4 application.

CS4 Suite New Features:
1. Flash SWF support across all applications
2. You can open SWF files in any app and play them
3. A tool for developing flash content without any coding experience is coming

Adobe Bridge CS4:
1. New Interface (cleaner, more like Apple’s Leopard Finder)
2. Sidebar and search tool location are just like Mac OS Leopard
3. Folder navigation just like Windows Vista Explorer
4. Labels and star ratings are easier to access.
5. Filtered searches are now much faster even across thousands of images
6. List View in Bridge
7. Auto Photo Downloader to download photos from your camera is now easier and better than Bridge CS3
8. Improved slideshows. Spacebar starts slideshow (like quickview in leopard)
9. From Slideshow, just hit “r” and Adobe Camera Raw opens automatically.
10. Review Mode: (full screen review of photos)
a. Just like a full screen version of Apple coverflow
b. Loopt tool built in
c. Open all photos and review photos and drop photos out of view that you don’t want and other stay in full screen
d. Upon leaving review mode, photos you kept are now selected in bridge. Ones you dropped are still there but not selected.
e. Ability to create photocollections from within review mode
11. Collections are just like Playlists in iTunes. Ability to group photos. Location of photo is not changed.
12. More sharing options
a. Upload directly to FTP within Bridge
b. Web gallery templates are easy and uses the same templates available in Lightroom 2
c. Ability to create flash galleries with a few clicks and upload instantly
d. Uses the Opera engine to render galleries within Bridge
e. Photoshop Web Gallery is going away and being replaced by Bridge Web Gallery
13. Bridge CS4 Menus (in order left to right)
File - Edit - View - Sttacks - Label - Tools - Window - Help

Adobe CS4 Applications are exactly the same as CS3 but the text in the icons is black instead of white.

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Coming up on DailyTechTalk Show…

Believe it or not, I have 30 minutes of video and 4 hours of audio recorded that hasn’t been posted yet. I am trying very hard to keep things spaced out so a new episode pops up once a week but I might break that rule. Here’s what’s coming soon to DailyTechTalk Show.

- An awesome interview with the creators of Blip.FM
- An even better interview with the boys of Yoono
- We talk with Louie, a die-hard Nokia N95 user who puts Symbian up against iPhone
- A video interview and tour of Speck Studios
- A video tour on the making and history of Rickshaw Bags

If you love what we’re doing so far, do me a favor and review our podcast on iTunes. link

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DailyTechTalk Show: Episode 3 (Comparing iPhone & Macintosh to Everyone Else)

Episode 3 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. It’s just me in this podcast. I have interviews for the next few shows. This episode focuses on iPhone and Macintosh against the world and comparing features for features.

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Projects Continue

I’m still working on some super secret stuff but the commitment to the podcast has continued. I just completed episodes 3,4, 5 and 6 of the podcast. As most of you know, I’ve only released 2 episodes so if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, there’s still a few more hours of tech talk for you. I’ve been co-working over here at Podango Productions which has really helped the creative juices flow. I really need to get down to business on my new project but I’ll have more info for you as soon as I get closer to the finish which is very soon.

Thanks for all of the support. Sorry the DTT blogging hasn’t been as consistent as it has been for the last 5 years :). I think that everyone deserves a little blog.

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Largest Record Collection in The World

I’m not a guy that reposts a lot of news from all over the net but if you don’t subscribe to Gizmodo, then you missed this post today about a guy that has $50 million dollars in records. Over 80% of these records can’t be bought in any other form of media. He’s trying to sell them for only $3 million. It’s a very cool and emotional video that’s worth checking out.

Honestly, I would buy these if I had 3 million lying around. I love albums and regret that I don’t have a day to day use for them.


The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

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DailyTechTalk goes Wordpress

I’ve had a desire to move to Wordpress for the past 2 years. Unfortunately, the makers of Wordpress never developed a tool to import a Pmachine Pro blog over to Wordpress. I purchased and have been using Pmachine since 2003 and have posted over 900 articles using the previous system. I waited for years and never found a plugin to make the migration easy. Well, it appears that someone has heard my cry and posted a script and another person posted a how-to for deploying the script.

It was quite a long process to get a theme, get plug-ins configured and finally perform the migration. The last step of migration has been going on for the past 5 hours. It’s a good feeling to be using Wordpress but the migration isn’t complete yet. The following things must be completed:

Complete the design of this theme
Add advertisements
Updated all other DTT Media blogs to latest WP version
Move all other DTT Media blogs to new themes
Configure analytics tools
Setup blogger accounts for all blogs
Clean all spam comments from DailyTechTalk
Catchup with quite a few posts that are overdue

There’s still a lot to do but I’m very relieved that the migration is complete.

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DailyTechTalk Show: Episode 2 (Macworld Bound)

Episode 2 of DailyTechTalk Show is up. It’s just me in this podcast. I have interviews for the next few shows but this one focuses solely on Macworld Expo which is coming up in just a few months. I like to do an introduction to Macworld while people are still planining.

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