Speaking of RIM … on Tuesday they are going to venture forth with another touch-screen Blackberry. The development and impeding launch of the new handset has seen a bare fraction of the hype and hullabaloo that preceded the Storm, and I think this might be a good thing. After the disappointment of the Storm – a fabulous piece of hardware that was fatally crippled by RIM’s aging and user-hostile generic OS – coming in with zero expectations and no preconceptions is a good thing. If the 9800 is just another Storm, well, no harm no foul. But if the whispers are right, and the mandarins up in Waterloo have finally opened their eyes and grokked onto the idea that the user experience is actually important, then we may just have a sleeper hit.

So – fingers crossed, and here’s hoping that sleeper hit is indeed where this is going. RIM is full of smart people with smart ideas who somehow end up turning out the same product over and over because the people at the very top of the company either can’t or won’t open their eyes and see what increasingly-sophisticated customers want in a mobile computer. The smart people need to start winning out over the top people, and soon, or the Blackberry platform is going to go from being “dated” to “irrelevant” in a very short time. And that – for everyone – would be a shame.

If you point your browser to “blackpad.com” you get … nada. Blank page. But if you look up the whois record, you will find that the domain is being held by CSC on behalf of some outfit called “Research in Motion” in Waterloo. Which gives some serious credence to a story that just moved on the Bloomberg wire, RIM will release their first pad computer in November, and not surprisingly it will be called the “Blackpad”. I don’t have a link to this yet, since Bloomberg has a short embargo time between items hitting the wire and those items showing up on their web archive. When I do get a link, I will slap it in here.

I can’t decide if they name is “yea” or “nay” yet. Still mulling on that one. But it sure beats the hell out of “Slate”.

UPDATE: Link to the updated Bloomberg story.

I love Apple’s “Magic Mouse”. I use a MacBook all day, and I get hardwired into using the assorted multi-touch gestures on the trackpad. Then I go home and have to go back to an old-fashioned mouse is it is like being crippled. No tapping? No pinching? No squooging? It’s like being sent back in time to the era of cassette tapes and Quark Xpress. Just wretched. The Magic Mouse was a wonderful way to bridge the gap – you get your desktop mouse, but with all the gestures you have been used to using all day.

The best of both worlds, right?

Er, no. Manually hauling the mouse around to do the basic cursor movements was still a drag. It just wasn’t as seamless and as fluid as doing everything with touches and flicks and squooges. It was an annoyingly incomplete experience … better than the retro-mouse alternative, but still not entirely sublime. Which means, as we stumble towards the point of this less-than-lucid post, that I am over the fucking moon at the release of the Magic Track Pad. Mouse be gone, this is what I have been waiting for. It probably helps that I am a trackball guy from way back – if you don’t have that same background then your mileage is definitely going to vary – but you should be giving this a try.

Tactile heaven.

Stupid name, yes. But, if you are a publisher looking for direction on how to provide content in the new age of mobile media, this would be a great place to start. Or you could, you know, just stick your head in the ground and block certain browsers. Let me know how that works out for you.

If the final product here is anywhere as interesting as this demo it’s going to be a winner. No word yet on pricing or frequency, but if this sort of thing strikes your fancy you can sign up for email updates here. You’re welcome.

In past rantings on these pages I have mentioned the fact that the vast majority of “financial analysts” desperately want Apple to fail. They don’t understand the business model – the idea of selling a few premium products for a nice profit instead of boatloads of low-end crap is completely foreign to them – and because of that they hate and fear the company. When you hear an analyst talk about Apple and say that they “expect” lower revenues or poor sales or a downturn, you can safely substitute the word “hope” instead.

They hope – desperately hope – that the wheels will fall off. Spending time and money on innovation and a refined user experience is like some sort of financial small pox to these people.

The point of all of this is that we are getting close to the third quarter earnings report. Between now and then you will hear a lot of stuff from “the street” about revenue slowdown, stagnating sales, new competition from Microsoft, etc and so on. Remember the names of the people who say these things – they are to be mocked and reviled. To anyone capable of independent thought, it’s obvious that this quarter’s revenues will be scary huge – from the retail throughput, I would guess the biggest revenues ever for a non-Christmas quarter.

Don’t forget where you read that. And yes, the title of this thing is a Spaceballs reference. May the Schwartz be with you.

The fine folks at BP (Busted Pipe?) have been less than forthcoming about the nuts and bolts of what – if anything – they are actually trying to do about the giant gushing oil well of doom in the Gulf of Mexico. Things may be changing, though … they have actually admitted that this “top kill” thing might or might not work, and if it doesn’t work things will actually be a lot worse than they are now. Cold comfort, I know. But they are also providing a live video feed of the wellhead as they try this possibly cockamamie scheme over the next two days, which gives them at least a bit of cred here. It’s Java and HTML, so no flash needed, hooray. UPDATE: This handy diagram will help you figure out what the video is actually showing when the ROV drives around looking at something other than the gushing pollution.

Better late than never, I guess. Just don’t tell that to all the dead birds. And big ups to Ginger Snaps for the link.

UPDATE: If you want an “in depth” look at what the oil is doing below the surface, this feature from ABC is quite good. Now with H.262 encoding!

Animated GIFs have long been the bane of the interwebs. But I have to bow down to this one … it is a complete visual time-suck is the easily greatest animated GIF of all time. I can take no credit for it at all, it was a totally random find. Someone, somewhere has an awful lot of patience.

I have committed more than a few pixels to extolling the many, many virtues of Soma FM on These Very Pages over the past handful of years. This week (and next, barring some sort of unforeseen but sadly-not-unprecidented disaster) they are offering something new and wickedly original. Mission Control is a new (and necessarily short-lived) channel that mixes the brain tentacles of electronic ambient music with the live feed of mission audio to and from STS-132, the last hurrah of the United States space shuttle program. It runs until shuttle touchdown, scheduled for May 26, 2010.

It’s funky and cool and hey – you just might learn something. They offer the usual spread of iTunes playlist feeds in AAC and MP3, a firewall-friendly MP3 feed, and the Soma pop-up player – which would be a cool idea if it wasn’t Flash, but it is Flash so it pretty much sucks. And, as always, it’s presented sans commercials and 100% free-as-in-beer free.

Lucky Canucks will be able to get their mitts on the iPad (officially, since there are a lot of hosers out there who have gone across the border to pick them up) on May 28th. The pricing follows that of the U.S. lineup – the same gaps from model to model, with an across-the-board fifty dollar offset:

WiFi Only
16 GB – $549
32 GB – $649
64 GB – $749

WiFI + 3G
16 GB – $679
32 GB – $779
64 GB – $879

The only caveat here is whether or not Rogers (who claims to have the rights to the “first network of choice” for the iPad in Canada) will follow the startlingly fair and reasonable pricing model of AT&T for 3G access. Given Rogers’ general disregard for their customers and long-standing history of general thievery when it comes to data plans, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

So I was pawing through Gruber’s blog the other day and he was ranting on about his magical recovery of a blown hard drive. It’s not really worth reading since he pissed around bass-ackwards and got his data back in three semi-redundant steps instead of just one easy one (which shows that he doesn’t actually know how Time Machine works) but he said something in passing that stuck with me and I feel obligated to pass along. To wit, he keeps all of his work documents in his Dropbox folder.

Now, if you have been reading these rantings of mine for any length of time you have seen me pimp Dropbox before. And it does deserve ever kudo and/or accolade that I can heap upon it. But for reasons that are entirely mysterious I have only ever used Dropbox for personal files – some blog backups, files i manually want to get from one spot to another, photos to share, that sort of thing.

In other words, I was being an idiot.

The amount of free storage space you get with Dropbox is pretty expansive, and the security is first-rate, so it makes complete and utter sense to use it as the place where you keep all of your work. Period. My top level “Work Crap” folder (which had various and random sub-folders) has now been moved from my desktop to my Dropbox folder. It makes zero difference in the way I work, the hierarchy is exactly the same, the folder names are the same, but now I have access to those files anywhere, anytime, no matter what. Why I assumed that was only useful for personal files is beyond me. Better late than never, I guess.

So – if you are using Dropbox, you might want to think about using it a lot more than you are now. All of your work, all of the time. And if you aren’t using Dropbox, now is the time to take a look. Click here to get started. You won’t be sorry.

DISCLAIMER: The link above goes through a “reference” from my account. That means that if you sign up for your own free account after following that link, I get more space. Every member of Dropbox is provided with a link like that, kind of a finder’s fee for more clients. If you want the clean “no reference, no disclaimer” link, here it is. Signing up this way works exactly the same, and you get the exact same account. Since some people are suspicious of this sort of thing, I thought it would be nice to give you the choice.

I have pimped Adobe’s “Kuler” technology a couple of times in the past. Now you can tie into this incredibly useful tool in a super portable way with Saturation. Down at ye olde home improvement big box looking at paint? Trying to decide on fabric for curtains while at the mill store? Now you can hit the guts of the Kuler package with a seriously slick (and an addictively fun) iPhone interface.

Cost: Free.

Recommendation: Highest.

So you probably have never heard of a company called Open Text. That is because, quite frankly, the are about as far off the technology curve as the suspension in a Pontiac Sunfire. If you wanted a nutshell synopsis, “outdated technology chasing solutions for a problem that generally no longer exists” would be as close as anything.

In fact, the only thing more outdated and hopeless than a server-side document management system is a client for smartphones that are so staggeringly primitive that they can’t access the server-side stuff on their own. So – of course – the mopes at Open Text have spent most of the past year or so developing “Open Text Mobile”, a Blackberry application for their most low-tech clients. Tomorrow they will launch the thing and if the whole shebang is met by anything but massive yawns it will be a complete and utter surprise. In fact, if it wasn’t for this mention here you might not hear about it at all.

Keep this under your hats, though. Its supposed to be a super top secret hush-hush dealie until tomorrow. Why? No idea. It’s not like anyone is going to care anyway. But hey, maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. Or something.

It’s been two hours since the unveiling of the “iPad” (sorry, I have to stop and gag now, I mean come on guys, that name is major suckage) and a whole bunch of people have emailed me with the same question:

“How does this ‘change’ anything? It’s not doing anything new!”

Well, actually, it is doing two things that are completely new. One of them will probably not be mentioned by anyone tomorrow when the mainstream news hits, and the other one will be mentioned, but in a manner that is one hundred percent and completely wrong. Follow along at home and you too can laugh and point at stupid people in the morning.

Thing one: Content providers no longer have to work within the limitations of a standard browser. Imagine if every magazine had to use the exact same format in print – whether it is Chatelaine or Men’s Health or Home & Garden or Hustler, doesn’t matter, same layout. That would be ridiculous beyond imagining. Yet that is the state now for online publishing via web. Sure, a few outlets have tried to do their own custom application on the traditional desktop, but that always fails because people have an aversion to downloading and installing shit … except on the new generation of smartphones, where people are used to “click and install” and are totally down with the idea of grabbing an application to deal with specific data instead of just surfing a web page.

Think about it – until the iPhone (and it’s Palm and Google progeny) people never used one app to check restaurant reviews, another to read books, a third to watch sports scores, a fourth to browse drink recipes, etc etc etc. Never. But now – happens all the time.

So the upshot is that content providers – if they have the brains to realize this and actually follow up on it – now have complete control over how their readers-listeners-viewers-whatever interact with their data. You have the opportunity not only to win customers and make revenue on your output, but how that output works. The possibilities are endless, and the opportunities are there for the taking. This is the big change at the user end – a win/win for both the consumer and the publisher, and a watershed that will put the brave and the innovative in the winners’ circle and will put the timid and the stupid in the garbage can of forgotten crap.

FENDERHEAD ALERT: You will see startling large numbers of media “analysts” and “experts” report this as a negative on Thursday. These people can safely and immediately be dismissed as idiots.

Thing two: This device could not have been built by anyone as little as six months ago, and right now this device can only be built by one company on the planet. No one else has access the silicon needed because until Apple designed and built them, the chips didn’t exist. Memory with the speed and power profile needed here, the video processor that can drive full HD in this form factor, the processor that can drive pages this fast within the limitations of the form factor – only one company in the world has these things because they built them from scratch. And without these things, you can’t do anything comparable, period.

The reason Uncle Fester showed a not-really-working prototype of an HP “tablet” a couple of weeks ago is because the day before a few select members of the press saw the working version and pretty much laughed Fester out of the room. He didn’t dare show the assembled press a “tablet” that could only drive video in 16 colours after you detached it from the main laptop and was so slow that you could literally see the windows opening pixel by pixel by pixel.

So now everyone plays catchup. Some companies are going to be bright enough to understand that controlling the chips and the hardware built from those chips and the operating system that makes it all go is a staggeringly huge advantage … one that right now only one company in the world has. And they will start digging in and working to get onto the same playing field. And some of them will make it, but they will be playing 12 month catch-up and it isn’t going to be pretty. And the rest? The ones who don’t clue in and just keep buying chips off the shelf and trying to make their functions fit the limitations of someone else’s silicon? A long slow slide into complete irrelevance. Unless you are named “Motorola” and then you will just be out of business in two years.

FENDERHEAD ALERT: You probably see a vanishingly few member of the media pick up on this tomorrow. Any reporter or media source that doesn’t mention this as the most important part of the story can safely and immediately be dismissed as an idiot.

Enjoy your night. I’m off to play with the new SDK until my eyes are burning. If you have any sort of stake in any sort of media, you should be too. Unless. you know, you’re one of those idiots.

No, I am still not going to make any predictions. No way. Not a chance. Like everyone else, I am doing the wait and see thing.

But … as you read through the endless drivel that will be written later today about Steve Jobs’ latest creation, watch for one phrase. If you see anyone talking about how the Apple Tablet/iBook/MaxiPad/whatever is going so save “print media” then may immediately label that person to be a complete idiot. See, nothing is going to save “print media”. Period. That ship has sailed, and anyone who still talks about “print media” after today is completely and utterly clueless. The problem isn’t the “media” part – people have more of an appetite for media (including the news and information that the dead-tree brigade has been selling in their rags all along) than ever before, the problem is the “print” part. The print part is broken, and in fact has always been broken, it just managed to hang around for years and years because there was no viable alternative.

After today, there will be. It might not be whatever Apple releases today – there is a small but non-zero chance that whatever they show today is “too much, too soon” and people just wont get it – but the die will be cast today, and media will forever change. Maybe not right away, but it will change, and the change will be one way and very, very drastic. Either after today or at some point in the very near future people will expect to have instant and full-time access to all of their media needs – books, news, music, “television” shows, movies, everything – in one spot, on one device, and in an enhanced and interactive format, and they will judge which items they consume (and by extension, pay for) by one criteria and one criteria only: Quality.

So how do you make the leap to the “new world” if you are an “old media”? Frankly, the answer is easy and obvious – but the groaning old fossils who run the “old media” outlets are too stubborn, too stupid, and too old to understand. All you have to do is this:

One: Whatever you are now spending on writers, reporters, photographers … double it.

Two: Whatever you are now spending on designers and production staff … double it.

Three: Whatever you are now spending on IT … keep it the same.

Four: Whatever you are now spending on management and editors … cut it. At least in half. And preferrably by 90 percent.

Five: Take all of the content you are now cranking out like never before and create it and present it for mobile digital media first and foremost. Use this platform as the canvas you create on from the ground up. Then offer an enhanced version on your traditional web site. And finally, if you really think you have to, you can reuse that content in whatever dead-tree publications you still insist on producing.

Now, for the benefit of the old sales and business relics that are still running the show, I will explain what is going on here, since you are generally stupid and are currently doing exactly the opposite of those five simple points.

Points one, two and three: In a world of instant digital media, where there are no longer any barriers to entry and anyone with some ideas and some drive can now publish things, consumers are going to make their choices based on which content is most interesting, which is most relevant to them, and which is the easiest and most appealing to look at. You need lots and lots of professional content, you need to be relevant to a shitload of tiny fragmented audiences, and you need to have a better layout and navigation scheme than you newly-created nine million competitors. And your creation and delivery systems have to work all of the time.

Point four: The one thing people no longer really want or need is you telling them what content they can get or what sort of spin it should have. Audiences are more sophisticated and want to make their own decisions – they want unfiltered data and they want to parse it themselves. They would much rather have a raw report from three different humanoids and then make their own mental edits and conclusions than to have you do it for them. Get off your high horse and stop wasting time and resources and money on filtering that your audience no longer cares about and will eventually start to resent.

Point five: Go back and read the first part of this item. Your print thingies are dead dead dead. As long as you continue to see new media as an “electronic version of your print product” you are doing nothing but hamstringing your potential new bread and butter with the considerations of your crappy dinosaur product. Get with the game, or get out of it. Shit or get off the pot. No one is going to put up with archaic bullshit just because it says “New York Times” or “Globe & Mail” at the top. After today content and quality are king, and your nameplate cachet no longer means anything.

Sadly, this simple advice is going to completely miss any media organization that has people at the top with either a business or sales background – which means pretty much all of them. The winners here are going to be the young, the hungry, the new, the brave, the people who use this model to get their information out there when they never could before. Just like iTunes took control of the music industry out of the hands of the record labels and put it back in the hands of the artists, this will take the right to publish away from the “chosen few” and give it to everyone. And when everyone wins, the stupid old dinosaurs usually lose.

Nope. Not at all. I will not even hazard a guess. Not even to the name of the thing which will probably be “iBook” but you didn’t hear me say that.

But I will say this. When you watch the coverage or read the recaps or whatever you do with the Apple event on Wednesday, remember this little anecdote.

A few months ago, after Jobso’s rather concise dismissal of the whole concept of a tablet, he came in to a small meeting with some of his inner circle at Apple and halfway through a sentence about something else entirely unrelated stopped and said “Why do we have television networks and broadcasters anyway?” There was about 20 seconds of silence at the table, and then Jobs got up and left.

This is not an uncommon way for conversations with the man to work. And if you were one of his inner circle you would have immediately known that his comment and subsequent silence and blow-off of the rest of the meeting actually meant this:

Broadcasters and television networks are nothing but a filter between you and content you may want to enjoy. They control the distribution, and because of that they control the advertising revenue, and because of that they get to decide what you get to watch and what you never see. Sort of the way the record companies and music retailers were before iTunes. Now you have a situation where no store manager gets to choose what you can buy. No slob of a record company executive gets to choose what you can hear. Anyone can put their work on iTunes, no middle man, no “choosers of taste”, no distributors, just the people creating the work and a storefront where the listeners can get it. And consumers have realized they like this. A lot. And if music consumers like this a lot, then consumers of all media will probably like this a lot too. And if they do like it then we better make sure we do it first, and best. Especially best.

Yes, I know, that extrapolation is not entirely obvious to you or I from the words that came out of Jobso’s mouth, but the people around him are paid staggering amounts of money to make that mental leap. Just go with it. Either way, shortly after this “conversation” he started putting his full-time attention to whatever-it-is that they are announcing this week.

Remember that on Wednesday. The idea of all media – books, music, current news, periodicals, movies, what we now call television, everything – available in a direct pipeline from the creator to the storefront. Anywhere, at any time. Open to all. And driven by pure demand instead of the money in the pockets of a few “tastemakers”. With the “entrance fees” to providers so low that it is just as viable to cater to a small market as much as a big one. It might not be the message that comes out on stage. And it might not be obvious for a while. But it could very well be the end game.

Stay tuned.

So tomorrow good ol’ Uncle Fester will get up and show off the fabulous new Microsoft tablet/slate/flat thing/whatever the hell they are going to call their little touchscreen device. The thing won’t be available anytime soon, and if you guessed an actual street date of “close to Christmas 2010″ you would probably be more or less right. They are rushing the thing out into the public eye now so they can beat Apple to the punch – you will be seeing a very similar event from Apple in the last week of January.

There is a statistically valid chance that the mockup they have tomorrow will not even be a functioning item … they are that desperate to look like they came out with a tablet first.

The problem here is that “being first” is completely missing the point. Instead of being first, you want to be the company that gives you an actual reason for needing to own the goddamn thing. You probably own a smartphone, so what compelling reason is there to spend your coin on another smartphone that is too big to put in your pocket and doesn’t even make phone calls? You probably already have a laptop, so why would you want another laptop that doesn’t do as much and gets a really dirty screen?

Or, as Steve Jobs famously put it last year, “What is the fucking thing good for except surfing the web while you shit?”

See, that is the question that the winner in this particular game is going to answer. Not “When can I buy it”? Not “Who made one first?”. And definitely not “Does it come in pink”?

Right now, none of that matters.

The chance of that question being answered tomorrow is generally slim, because coming up with that sort of answer is not Microsoft’s strength. They make and develop products for established niches and markets, or copy ones that are already in established niches, or if worse comes to worst, they steal something they need to get into an established niche or market. And give them credit, they are very good at these things … but innovation is definitely not their forté. So the tablet will in all likelihood be based on some sort of technology that already exists, and it will do functions that are already being done by something else. Something else you probably already own.

The smart move for Microsoft at this point would be to wait. Because the man who last year said that tablets weren’t good for anything beyond reading in the can is now putting his absolute and undivided attention to the creation of a tablet. Which means that at some core level the concept has changed, and the pickiest man in the world now thinks that this is a product that you absolutely have to have.

What’s changed? Dammed if I know. I can’t even figure out the most basic concepts. How will you carry it? If it is small enough to put in your pocket, then how is it better than your phone? If you cant put it in your pocket, then why not just have a laptop? Does it stand up? if not, how can you watch media on it? Does it fold? If yes, then you are back to a laptop. How do you get data into it? Does it have a keyboard? Do you type on the screen? How? Two hands? Thumbs? Yeah? Great, now we are back the phone you already own.

And – most important of all – what could it possibly do that will make it “insanely great”?

When development started on the iPhone, El Jobso told the assorted geek teams that there would be no phone at all unless they were able to come up with something that was beyond a phone – something that would change the way people thought about portable computing forever. If you have an iPhone, and you are like the average iPhone user, you reap the results of that mindset every time you do something – surf the web, manage photos, book a taxi, deposit a cheque in the bank, whatever – on your phone instead of your traditional computer. People never reached for a pocket device for nearly every facet of their day-to-day digital lives before, but now you do it automatically and probably don’t even think about it. You are doing freaky science-fiction shit fifty times a day and it’s no great shakes. The iPhone is not a phone that happens to do other stuff … the iPhone is a little computer that happens to make phone calls. That is the semantic leap that changed everything.

If the driving mindset behind the iPhone was changing the way the average mope thought about portable computing, then it is not a terribly large logical leap to think that the mindset behind some tablet thingie must be to change way that the average mope thinks about some other core facet of computing. But it is going to take a greater mind than mine to figure out how to do that. And if Microsoft shows a product tomorrow that does stuff that other things already do, it means that it is going to take a greater mind than Uncle Fester’s, too.

A couple of quick notes for the folks who wondered:

The unlocked and untethered iPhone 3.1.2 is indeed still up and active, ready for your general enjoyment (with instructions!) on the iPhone unlock page.

The instructions for getting onto your corporate Cisco VPN if your IT department hides and encrypts the group password in a PCF file are still up and still valid. You can check them out here.

It’s cool. I got ya covered.

I was chatting with my pal Shaun the other day and the topic of horrifyingly intrusive web advertising was flabbergasted to find out that he had never heard of ClickToFlash. I was more than happy to clue him in – it was akin to a duty. Flash has morphed from its original purpose as an interesting and efficient way to deliver content and is now a despicable scourge of the same sort as H1N1 or The View.

Fortunatelty, Flash is easier to deal with than either of those other two abominations. Just download ClickToFlash, restart, and off you go. You only get the flash you want, when you want. Wanna watch the latest episode of Homestar Runner? No problem. Wanna see bumper-face guy? No problem. Don’t wanna see yet another full-page take-over-your-screen ad aimed at morons? Once again, no problem.

ClickToFlash. It’s simple, it works, and it is free. Save your sanity – just get it.

Long-time browsers will know that I swear by SuperDuper for quick, easy, and reliable backups. This week SuperDuper just got a whole lot better with the release of version 2.6.2 – it is optimized for Leopard and Snow Leopard and it does everything the previous version did at about twice the speed. Actually, some of my cronies have reported over three times the speed. Either way, it is entirely awesome. And, as always, basic backup functions are completely free – you only need to upgrade to the paid version if you want specific incremental functionality.

And no, it isn’t nagware.

If you are already a SuperDuper user, upgrade now. And if you are still on the fence. this is the time to get off of those pickets and give it a test drive. You will be glad you did.

I have been following the “Dropbox” project for a little while, and while I was intrigued by the idea I also didn’t see any ultimate value in Yet Another Syncing package. OSX users already have a full suite of multi-box sync tools, Linux users usually prefer to get their own solutions together, and Windows users, well, they don’t seem to terribly mind losing all their files or having access issues from time to time. It’s part of that whole “Windows experience”.

Besides, USB keys are cheap, easy, ultra-reliable, and everyone has a freaking drawer full of the things by now.

However, as of right about now I am a fan of Dropbox. They added some sweet web functionality to the thing, so now your files sync between computers and they sync to your Dropbox web page, where you can retrieve them from pretty much anywhere. Better, you can keep your files private, or give access to fully public folders, or restrict certain folders to your pals and colleagues. Instead of just a sync package, Dropbox is now a nicely-thought-out and super-simple secure on-the-go repository for your crucial bits of data.

Also, I totally overused the hyphen there.

As a super added bonus they have dropped an iPhone version in concert with the new functions. The desktop application (for OSX, Linux, and Windows) and the iPhone client are free. 2GB of online storage is provided with the basic free* account. You can upgrade to more as needed, and for as long as needed – the idea thing if you are traveling for a couple of weeks and suddenly need more space to dump photos or presentations or whatever.

You can download everything you need right here. If you are not sure if this product has any value and want to know more, check the tour here. And for random rantings from the geeks behind it, check out the blog here.

Definitely recommended.

*Free, of course, comes with a price. When you sign up you agree to get the Dropbox newsletter, which may contain ads and offers from other companies. However, this is clearly stated in the Terms of Service, along with a link to the appropriate spot in your account information to turn it off. Nothing hidden or snaky here, thankfully.

For those of you patiently waiting … wait no more. I have posted 3.1 firmware files – unlocked and jailbroken – for both the original (first-generation) iPhone and the iPhone 3G. There are “vanilla” versions and “full-on geek” versions of each one, pick your poison appropriately. All files, as well as easy instructions, are on the unlock page and ready for your downloading pleasure.

Enjoy.

I was halfway through a long and totally gushy post about Google’s “Chrome Frame” project, wherein they use Microsoft’s own tools to replace the guts of Internet Explorer with a web engine that actually works (cough cough WebKit cough). In a nutshell, it has the potential to let people who are stuck using IE due to work constraints or whatever (I assume at this point there is no one left on the planet who would use IE by choice) have a real web browser. And, to put it mildly, it is fucking brilliant.

But then I was pointed to this bit from Jimmy Ray and thought “okay, why bother re-writing what he just wrote when I could be lazy and just point folks to his stuff?”

So yeah, this is me being lazy and just pointing you to his stuff.

One thing about the “Genius Mix” feature in the new iTunes is that you have to go to the “Store” menu of iTunes and use the “Update Genius” selection. Only after you do that will the “Genius Mixes” item show up in your toolbar. You’re welcome.

So here we are – a mere 36 hours from Yet Another Apple Event. And all sorts of fenderheads are out there working themselves into a lather because they have convinced themselves that the long-rumoured Apple “tablet” will be handed down to the masses tomorrow.

Er, no.

These people need to get a grip. This is an iPod event. Period. When Apple has a music theme for an event (and I will go way out on a limb here and guess that “It’s Only Rock And Roll” is really a musical cue) that event is about iPods, iTunes, and … well, that’s it. Done. Finis.

Yes, there will be a tablet eventually. The thing is in the works, and you will see it sometime in 2010. And it will fill a need in a way that will startle you, and it will be insanely good (of course) and there will be rejoicing by all.

Just not now.

So – what will we see tomorrow? Here is a quick rundown, from the for-sure to the if-pigs-fly possibilities:

A new iPod Touch with a camera, compass, and virtually everything else in an iPhone except for that phone part: Definitely. The new SDK for the iPhone OS has explicit support for these hardware goodies in the iPod Touch code library. A couple of people involved in writing that code library have told me just what a crapload of work was involved. People don’t do that just for fun. Combine that with the age of the current iPod Touch and this one is a no-brainer. Probability: 100%

The last ever traditional iPods: Yep. This is the swan song for the device that changed entertainment and the music industry and interface design and what we expect from handheld devices forever. Look for the last ever “old-school” iPods with bigger-than-ever memory and lower-than-ever prices. No, they won’t tell you that these are the last ones, but they are. Probability: 100%

Full HD video on video-capable iPods: Probably. The timing of this event, just a couple of days before Microsoft launches their “last gasp” Zune with HD video is not a coincidence. Look for the repositioning of the Touch (and possibly the nano) from hand-held entertainment devices to portable whole-home entertainment devices / portable computing solutions. Probability: 80%

A startling new iPod nano with the iPhone OS as its interface: This might be less far-fetched than you would think. It’s not exactly a secret that the iPhone OS will be the interface of the future for all of the iPhones, and possibly all of Apple’s “handheld” devices (see the “wild guess” below). And there is reference to the nano in the current iPhone SDK. But how to integrate that sort of OS with the smaller form factor and screen? Honestly, I have no idea. One incredibly far-fetched idea is that the entire surface of the nano might be a touch screen – front, back, sides, all of it. There have been mentions of nanos with “freaky shells” floating around the Apple campus for the past month of so – could that be what they are? Probability: 50%

The splitting of the Shuffle from the iPod brand: This could be a real surprise for a lot of people. Shuffles sell in staggering numbers, but the fact of the matter is that Apple is committed to the iPhone OS as their handheld/portable interface. And for obvious reasons, the Shuffle just cant get onto that particular bandwagon. They aren’t going to axe the Shuffle, but they might change it drastically and send it out to do battle as its own product and its own brand. Probability: 45%

An all-new iTunes: Maybe, maybe not. The fact that iTunes is the only core piece left on the OS X platform that is not a full 64-bit application irks a lot of people at Apple. 32-bits is so ghetto now. But – there are more installs of iTunes on Windows machines than there are on OS X machines. And there are no viable tools for 64-bit application development in the Windows world as of yet. Rewriting iTunes for Cocoa would be a snap for Apple, but then they get into the nightmare of divergent versions on the two computing platforms. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the answer is “don’t” and we end up waiting for this until next year and the launch of the tablet. Probability: 35%

The super-awesome new media format that makes music and art and interactive media a single integrated and essential unit and by extension makes you want to buy albums instead of just the singles you want: Hmmmm. This is a poser. I am sure you have heard about this, possibly under the nom du guerre “Cocktail” and you can probably understand why the record companies want this so badly. For years they were able to sell entire albums on the strength of one or two songs and you had to buy all the dreck as well. Now people can pick and choose what they want, and quality counts. This is an ongoing idea to get more quality and value into the “package” so that you might buy the album even if you dont care for more than half the songs. Is this ready for prime time? Probably not. But someday … maybe. Probability: 20%

Steve Jobs making an appearance on stage: Nope. Forget it. He is back to work and healthy, but the torch has been passed. He won’t be on stage today unless it is just to introduce Phil or thank everyone at the end. Probability: 5%

Finally, under the heading of a “wild guess that you can file away for next year, look for two rather startling things: One, the tablet (when it comes) will be a huge break from Apple’s traditional “laptop” structure and actually use the iPhone OS instead of OS X. Two, the combination of the iPhone OS and the new “socially-based” iTunes will be the first solid steps into “cloud” computing for the average joe. Your library will follow you everywhere no matter what device you happen to be using, regardless of actual storage, and you can interact with your friends and cohorts on a “social media” front wherever you happen to be. Remember – you read that here first.

I am a complete sucker for innovation – especially in gaming. If it is new and cool and different and fun, I will be the first in line to pluck my simoleans down for a title. Everything from Animal Crossing to Guitar Hero to Boom Blox – I’ll search it out and be more than happy to pay. So when something that reaches up into that part of the stratosphere and it is free … well, you can connect those dots for yourself.

And when you do connect those dots, you end up with Word Ace – a combination of a word game and poker that is 100% winner-winner-chicken-dinner. The guys at Self Aware Games took scrabble, mixed it half-and-half with hold ‘em poker, added a dash of really slick on-line play, in-game chat, and an achievement system, and they brought it in at the low low price of free. So yeah, that works for me. Big time. The game is available for the Palm Pre and the iPhone and if you have either of those devices you need to take a look.

You can find all the details here (note: that is an iTunes store link) and see what else the gang at Self Aware is up to over here.

Best. Update. Ever.

Period.

Well, except for this.

As you may or may not know (mostly because satellite radio is still completely irrelevant to most people, for reasons we have discussed previously) the two big players in the game – Sirius and XM – recently completed their long-discussed merger. And, to not a lot of people’s great surprise, it hasn’t helped much. Sure, it stopped the fracturing of the market and the division of the consumer dollars, but that doesn’t help much when the market is pretty much dead in the first place.

However – and remember where you read this – next week SiriusXM and Apple will announce the migration of satellite radio to the very device that killed the market before it ever started: The iPod. On Wednesday we should see a small, simple, and cheap attachment for the iPod that will take satellite radio portable. The underpinnings on the iPod side of things were added in the latest version of the SDK so the interface should be pretty slick. Better, other developers are free to use the radio integration as well – se we may see some cool third-party uses of the satellite feed that drive even a few more sales.

Will this make enough of a difference to save satellite radio? Maybe – there are almost 80 million iPhone and iPod Touch units out on the street already. If the interface is good and there are attractive subscription incentives and even a fraction of those people subscribe, the industry could see it’s market share doubled or even tripled overnight.

Also, there is an outside but not-completely-unrealistic chance that when Apple splashes down the new iPod Touch hardware in September (just three days before the new Microsoft Zune) that there will be some sort of irresistible incentive to get iPod and iPhone owners to give satrad a try. Keep your eyes peeled and – if you are a fan of this particular struggling business – your fingers crossed.

Apple moved pretty quickly to patch the “text message” vulnerability that was revealed at the Black Hat conference this week. Look for Google and the Symbian people to get their own updates out within the next couple of days, but don’t hold your breath for a fix for the HTC phones that run Windows Mobile anytime soon. Next year, maybe. Kudos the the Black Hat geeks (who are generally cool and awesome) to dig this one up, and kudos to the gang in Cupertino for taking care of it in a hurry.

However, that is not the point of this post.

The point is that the 3.0.1 update makes a small but not trivial change to the baseband section of the iPhone OS, and if you have an unlocked or jailbroken phone, taking this update will hose it. No bricks or anything, but you will have to put your phone in DFU mode and do a full restore from your local firmware image, and the whole thing is a pain in the ass.

I will work up an OS file as soon as I can to account for the fix, but in the mean time: Do not update your iPhone if it is unlocked, and do NOT accept weird SMS traffic from sources you don’t know (which is not something I should probably have to tell you in the first place).

I’ve posted up a nicely unlocked and jailbroken version of the 3.0 iPhone firmware for all of the “2G” folks in the crowd. If you have an original iPhone, have it unlocked, and want to upgrade to all of the super awesome features of the 3.0 version … this is your lucky day. Two versions of the firmware – one with Icy and Cydia, one without – and complete instructions are posted right here.

As the cool kids say, “Woot”.

A REMINDER: If you have a first or second generation iPhone that is either unlocked or jailbroken and you want to keep it that way, do not upgrade to version 3.0 just yet. A bit of patience is in order, but you also need not fret, you will probably be able to upgrade this weekend. I have done my phone with the standard tools from the dev team, and it works just fine. But my pal John did the same thing and his was a big ol’ botch. As soon as the kinks are worked out, I will post a handy one-shot firmware target for your downloading and installing pleasure.

Stay tuned.