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Well, the crowd has spoken, so I’ll rise to the occasion, I guess. (Oh wait, that was only one person or 1/15th of my known audience.) Anyways, I’m posting her to cover the latest Apple announcement event because my sister thinks I need to cover it.

The iPods have gotten an overhaul for the holidays. The iPod shuffle is the most boring, as usual, as it now comes in a set of their new, rather muted colors. White and blacks are replaced with more gray-leaning tones, and the hot colors have given way to more bland colors.

The most popular iPod line ever, the iPod nano, has gotten the biggest overhaul. The new nano is a bunch wider, but that’s to fit a gorgeous high-resolution 2″ screen. With the higher-quality screen, they can now fit the controls snugly on the left side and give you more eye candy like album covers on the left side. Also, Steve Jobs seems to be the only one who actually browses by Cover Flow, so it’s on here too. Another big step is this tiny thing that fits in the palm of your hand plays videos for hours. I don’t know who wants to watch a movie on a 2″ screen, but if you want to now, you can. These little guys are only $149 for 4GB and $199 for 8GB.

With very little fanfare they introduced the iPod classic, which used to be just called the iPod. I heard some Mac pundits say that they doubt the iPod classic will be around for long, but there’s still some of us who like to carry all 15,000 songs in our picket for those road trips. And with 80GB for $249 and a whopping 160GB for $349, these things are even smaller and have more capacity than ever before. Plus, the bigger screen and all the new features of the iPod nano are in there too. Oh yeah, both the iPod nano and iPod classic have a couple new games included on the system, including a quiz game and a click wheel version of Breakout called Vortex.

We were all wondering when the iPod would become more like the iPhone, and today it happened. The iPod touch is an iPhone nano in an iPhone’s body, basically. The beautiful, large touchscreen takes center stage with this product, of course. Also, for as low as $249, this new device is what Apple is turning into a PDA platform, because the iPod touch has wireless and Safari built in. It’s quite impressive, but why leave out Mail and Google Maps? Also, I totally don’t want YouTube on my iPhone or iPod touch, but . Why wants to watch all those crappy videos? The only ones I watch are behind the scenes videos of bands, really.

The last big product news was the quick mention of an iPhone price drop. Until this week, iPhones were $599, but now they’re only $399. This is getting close to selling them with a small profit margin, and I guess Apple decided to go for market penetration instead of big profits faster than any of us expected. Hopefully the stockholders will figure out this is a good thing, honestly. A day after the announcement, Steve Jobs vowed in a letter that they’d be giving all the early adopters a $100 store credit, because apparently people don’t know how early adoption of a technology product works. (Or, for that matter, any technology product.)

The final item is a nice upgrade to the iTunes Music Store that we’ve thought may be coming for a while: the ability to purchase songs on your iPod touch or iPhone anywhere with Wi-Fi. They call it the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and songs downloaded directly to these devices are synced back up with your computer when you connect to iTunes. The interface looks pretty good, but what about the real good features? I want a podcast client that I can update at any Wi-Fi spot if I’m really gonna buy one of these things!

In the “crappy” department of the event, Steve Jobs announced that you can now get music ringtones for your iPhone. Sure, you can get a ringtone from over 500,000 songs in the iTunes store, and you can select any bit of the song via a handy ringtone maker. But, why not just make them from any song in my library? Of course, because some idiot actually pays $2.49 to listen to a song ring on their phone. Thankfully, Apple’s gonna be slightly more civil, only charging you $2.00! Please, I’ll stick with the beautiful ringers that come with the phone.

And, finally, the CEO of Starbucks came to announce that Apple and Starbucks are teaming up. When browsing the iTunes Store near a Starbucks, you will be able to browse a list of recently played songs as well as some special collections that Starbucks put together. The only thing good on their menu are the Izze’s fruit drinks since there hasn’t been a Jones Soda there the last couple times I’ve been in to the home of the $5.00 coffee.

All in all, the Apple event was interesting and I think Apple will sell well this Christmas season. Who knows when they’ll start opening up their new iPod/iPhone platform.

Ever knew where you were but needed to know the zip code? Bookmark this Zip Code Map site and you’ll be set for life. Look at this in all its glory:

A number of times in the last year or two I’ve seen this phenomenon where the street is taken over by a couple hundred bikers. I had noticed it a couple times, but it seemed like maybe it was a one-time or seldom-practiced demonstration. After seeing it a couple more times and hearing that they did it in San Francisco as well, I realized it was a much bigger event.

Although the event, which is called Critical Mass and happens throughout the world in many major cities, is very unorganized by design, it obviously is a program that promotes cycling in one way or another. Here in Minneapolis, as in most places, people gather on their bikes and ride through the streets of the city together on the last Friday of the month. In Minneapolis they bike north on Hennepin Ave. through downtown and then down University through the U of M area.

The first Critical Mass event took place in September 1992 in San Francisco as a protest of how unfriendly to bikes the city strets were. Since then, it seems that Critical Mass has become worlwide and less goal-focused. One constant, though, is that the large mass of a couple hundred bikers have decided to bike through the streets of cities disregarding any sort of traffic rules, stoplights, or cross traffic. Because it is so big and so purpsefully unorganized, it also seems that members seem to relish the incidents with police or citizens.

I think that, in general, Critical Mass gives the wrong impression to society. Those who are trying to get home from work through downtown are just annoyed by a couple minutes of cyclists blocking their way. I enjoy biking around town, but I respect all rules and signals while biking, of course. I just think that, if anything, the general populace (and maybe the city) will just consider Critical Mass to be a bunch of annoying hippies trying to piss us off and not some sort of protest. Plus, I thnk the Twin Cities, at least, has plenty of support for cyclists with plenty of bike lanes throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul and a pretty extensive network of trails. It seems that it’s pretty unneccesary to me.

I found some new features on Google Maps recently, so I thought I’d use a real-world example to demonstrate them. Last night I was going to leave work by biking to the light rail station, riding the light rail downtown, and then biking the rest of the way home. Before I left, though, I found out that there was a pre-season Vikings game last night. In case you didn’t know, the train is packed full, and I mean really full, of drunken rednecks on the way to the Vikings game, and it’s not pleasant for someone who’s just trying to make his way home from a day of work. So, I thought this the perfect time to ride my bike all the way home, without any MetroTransit involved.

To get started, I put in my work and my home locations into the search box:

Here’s what I got:

It immediately gave me a nice looking map, but it’s all on major freeways. I’m not going to bike on those! However, those smart guys at Google think of almost everything, and just about then I spotted a checkbox that said, “Avoid Highways”. Once I checked that, I got something more like this:

Now that’s good. I can do that. I quickly looked through the roads and made sure I was familiar with them and knew where I was going. There were a couple parts in the Richfield area that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been on, but I knew it was straightforward enough that it would work. I loved the idea of taking the frontage road along 77 and taking Park Ave. through south Minneapolis, because I knew they are not too highly trafficked and that most of Park Ave. has a nice bike lane. I knew that I wanted to stop at my mailbox downtown like I usually do on Thursdays, so I wanted to see a closer look at the downtown route.

I happened to hover over the route line and a friendly note popped up saying “Drag to change route”. So, I clicked on the line and dragged it over to the mailbox place. The route and directions automatically readjusted.

However, I’ve had the experience of trying to bike down 7th St. S., and I know it’s congested and leaves no room for bikes. Because of experience and consulting a map of downtown bike lanes, I decided that 9th St. S. was a much better option, with a nice, dedicated bike lane on the left side of the road. So, I just clicked on the route and dragged it off of 7th St. and voila!

However, this was not too helpful. I didn’t want to make my trip more confusing by going off Park Ave. and biking around the Convention Center. Thankfully, I just clicked on the map again and made the map route me through Park Ave. and 9th St.

Of course, since I was running late and missing dinner anyways, I decided to make another stop for dinner. (Besides, I wouldn’t want to use the 3rd Ave./Central Ave. bridge because it’s got very little room for biking on the sides. I usually take the Stone Arch Bridge, which it’s sad this bike/walk trail isn’t even shown on Google Maps.) So, I dragged the line up to Chipotle, of course.

Instead of zooming out, I just clicked on “Show All Directions” and it snapped back to the full view. Also, all the stopping points (and the stopping points I made to just make sure the route was to my liking) were reflected on the turn-by-turn directions.

It ended up being a great 12.6 mile bike ride, and it only took 65-70 minutes, if you don’t count stopping to fill a tire with air, stopping at my mailbox, and eating some Chipotle. But it was a lot of fun, and it was almost an adventure. Thanks to Google Maps, though, it made the details of where to go really easy. (No, I didn’t print them out and refer to them every couple miles or anything like that - I kept them in my head.)

Geeks are all about the effect without the hard work or expense of actually doing it. I mean, I love the cool lighting effects of candles, but who wants to pay the craploads of money and worry about that wax everywhere. And, I don’t know about yours, but the ones my sisters buy are really potent smelling!

Luckily for us, ThinkGeek’s helping us out. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can get all the fun of candles without the hassle. Plus, you can even fool your friends. These LED Candles, while turned on via the bottom, will turn off with just a soft blow of your breath. Even cooler, though, is that they’ll also turn on with just a bit of air. Now that’s something fun. Plus, even better, they’re just $9.99 for a six-inch wide candle! All that great look without that cinnamon smell and spending $30 at Yankee Candle Co.

UPDATE: Now the candles are a couple bucks more, but they include the option to change the flame from a natural white light to a really chill blue. Fun!

I have not yet been home, but just two hours ago the 35W bridge over the Mississippi River just two blocks from my house. At least three people are killed, according to the latest reports. Please pray for everyone in Minneapolis and anyone whose families are affected.

Well, here we are at the second time around. On Saturday, because I could barely stand not having a phone, I went to the Sprint store and bought myself a Palm Treo 755p. I figured, well, it’s $400 cheaper up front, and I can keep my plan a bit lower than what I would get from AT&T. Plus, it’s still Palm OS, so I can use all my favorite Palm apps. And, yes, Palm OS 5 is a bit more slick. It’s got Bejeweled and a nice Google Maps app. But that’s where the fun ends.

My last Palm phone (the Samsung i500) was small and functional. It was a flip-phone, so the screen was well-protected. It worked as a phone because it was just a bit bigger than most cell phones but had all the Palm functionality. It may have been running Palm OS 3, I think, but it still did everything I wanted it to. I could check e-mail, I could write notes, I could read the Bible.

Yeah, I can put all my old apps on this new phone, including Pocket Quicken. But the form factor sucks. It looks and feels like I’m carrying around a PDA, not a phone. There’s 49 buttons on the phone, compared to the Samsung’s 28. With no protection for the large screen, I feel like I need to get a case, but I can’t find a case that I like at all. And, most of all, there’s no way to use Graffiti. On my old Palm, I entered all the text by writing on the writing pad area instead of pressing a bunch of keys. It was a much better use of space than putting 35 tiny keys that, if any smaller, would be impossible to press. I’m pretty sure I could type faster with writing letters out than hunting and pecking on a mini-keyboard. So far, it’s been totally frustrating.

Unless the condition improves over the next couple weeks, I may forgo the Palm and go with the first-generation iPhone. It’s not going to be too much better, but at least I won’t be frustrated with the basics of the phone. I just won’t have Pocket Quicken, MyBible, or Bejeweled to keep me on top of things and entertained. What I will have, though, is the ability to only carry my iPhone around, and not a phone and an iPod. One a weekday basis, I really only listen to podcasts, so I would save my iPod for trips or doing the dishes. Also, if I wanted to, I could be watching that podcasts I currently listen to the audio version of while on the way home from work. It won’t be perfect, but right now, it seems like it’ll be better than the Treo, that’s for sure.

Well, the night I had been expecting for a while came. I was kinda hoping it wouldn’t come for about 6 months, but it did.

My Samsung i500 smartphone fumbled out of my hands and went in an arc about 7 feet to the ground. The battery, of course, fell off of it, but that’s happened before. However, this time, it didn’t recover, because it doesn’t get past the very first loading screen no matter how long I wait. I tried resetting it but it won’t do anything.

So now comes the questions. Do I go with a Treo 755p and stay with Sprint or go elsewhere? Do I get a first-generation iPhone with lots of missing features and hope Apple will be nice to us over that long two-year contract with AT&T? Right now, I’m thinking the Treo because there’s some important Palm apps I use almost every day that the iPhone does not have. But, after visiting the Sprint website, it looks like I might have to be paying $10-$15 more per month for services with them. That, by the way, puts it on the same monthly price as the iPhone, although the iPhone costs more up front. I can’t believe I’m paying more to these greedy, annoying cell companies.

A couple days ago a new movie trailer surfaced online from director Wes Anderson, director of fine films such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. (Also, if you’re a fan but not a longtime reader of my blog, don’t miss the commercial he did.) The trailer of note is for his fall release, The Darjeeling Limited. It looks like a signature Wes Anderson flick starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman. In this film, the three leads seem to be brothers who are reunited and go on an emotional journey to India together. It should be fun.

In more industry-specific news, it seems that this new release will be distributed by Fox Searchlight and not Touchstone Pictures like all of his earlier films. Also, Anderson has had an upcoming project of animated film of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which will apparently be his next release in 2009. That should be interesting.

In more homely news, a couple friends noticed the release date for The Darjeeling Limited is September 29th or somewhere around there. Many of my friends who currently live around the country will be in Indiana for the weekend, so maybe we should have an excursion to the local theater together?

On Saturday, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book of the series, was released worldwide. It seems that, like the last couple books J.K. Rowling wrote, it will go down in history as the world’s fastest-selling book.

The book’s US publisher, Scholastic, said that an approximate 8.3 million copies were sold on the first day in sales. Scholastic prepared well, though, running an initial printing of about 12 million copies. The last book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, sold approximately 6.9 million copies on release day. Amazon.com reported that they had pre-orders of 2.2 million copies, for most likely the biggest order by one retailer. (That’s a bunch of trucks coming to their warehouses!) UK sales are estimated to be around 3 million copies, according to a BBC News report.

Are these numbers big? That’s a good question. In the first day of sales, The Incredibles on DVD sold 5 million copies and ended up selling a total of 17.5 million in the first nine months. There may be a couple higher-selling DVDs out there, but that’s still near the top. An estimated 93.2 million viewers tuned in for this year’s Super Bowl, which I think is interesting. It tells me that free stuff paid for by advertisers gives you a much bigger audience, but would anyone pick up a book if there were ads for cars and food every 10 pages?

Even though it seems like tons of people have copies, it only comes out to 2.7% of the United States population bought the book on the first day. I guess it must be a bunch higher around my group of friends, though, because it seems about 10% have a copy at our house.

Just for fun, I’ve put both of the UK book covers here at the bottom:

The UK Version

The UK Adult Version