Short Order Techout here there be geeks

Its Friday already?  This week flew by and I have to say that not a whole lot of interesting things happened folks.  I think the community at large is taking a large inhale as the anticipation for Snow Leopard builds.  I know that I have digested every tidbit as it has come out from Gina at Lifehackers early claims that you had to have Leopard on the drive to install, then Mossberg broke that was false, now we can upgrade Tiger with Snow Leopard…

Now we have posts flying around trying to dumb down the anticipation.  The first half of the week was news to the tune of OMG OMG OMG with the last half of the week showing posts on “Why you should wait”.  While all of this is going on every other feed presents something else the OS does that I didn’t previously realize.  All in all, its been a week of Snow Leopard news and prep.  I really hope to get back to regular content soon enough as well as expand to a whole new section on App reviews in the coming weeks, hopefully with video.

What was I saying?  Right, Snow Leopard (imagine that).  Having thumbed through the list of Apps that are/are not compatible last night and finding that mainly Growl and Cyberduck are the two I am most concerned about as well as “Reader Notifier” which is my favorite convenience, I have decided I am in good standing.  I am not going to upgrade all the Macs in the house out of the gate but today, focus on my own Macbook Pro.  I ran a SuperDuper Clone last night and wired it into my Base Station so I can reference / access all of my files and the plan, as it stands, is to swing for the fences and do a fresh install.  At this point, I am sitting back, and waiting for FedEX to come.  If he isn’t here by 10:30 I am going to get a pitchfork, a torch, and go looking for his ass with the rest of the village.

Okay, how about some non Snow Leopard items from this week, brief though they are.

1. Flixster: A great app for finding show times at your local theaters, buying tickets online, and reading up on newly released DVDs receives an update and can now manage your Netflix Queue.  /Crowd goes wild
2. Facebook 3.0: The new Facebook App is released to masses and the masses go wild.  I was really starting to lose interest in Facebook as the previous iPhone App was complete crap, and logging in from a Computer is an inconvenient, inefficient, waste of time.  This might just revive my Facebooking as I already spent 20 minutes doing a couple of “Pick 5s” from my phone this morning.  Did I mention I can also post to the Short Order Tech fan page?  #Brilliant
3. Quake Live came out for the Mac and its a great waste of 10 minute chunks of your life.

Alright, well, thats it for the Friday Wrap this week, going to make a last check of the Snow Leopard prep and will be back later today to make some notes as I go through the process.  Happy Friday!

Well, this weeks follow Friday entry is unfortunately flat.  I spent most of my week bringing two new domains online and starting two new blogs.  As a result of this, I spent all week in Wordpress Private Server Bootcamp and haven’t had time for much else.  I am really impressed with Wordpress so far and have really enjoyed getting it installed and working in the cloud on my hosted domains.  You are welcome to go check them out, I got www.bushwilliams.com which is basically just a personal portal to all my social networks as well as an infrequently updated personal blog.  The other is my new project which is www.fit.bushwilliams.com.  I am using this subdomain to track a new fitness project where I am gunning to lose 30+ pounds.  I have dubbed it “Project Porkins”, and have really enjoyed keeping it up to date over the last week.  Okay, so on to what I have managed to glean from the Tech world over the week in between wrestling with Wordpress:

1. Twitterrific for the iPhone was re-released, and its amazing!  I switched out tweetdeck for it on both my iPhone and my Desktop, and am glad to be back with a program that remembers where I left off.  There is a free version with add support or the pro version for $3.99.  If you are a tweetaholic like myself and haven’t tried it, go do yourself a favor.
2. Facebook 3.0 is still not out, and the die hard Facebookers are frothing at the mouth about it.
3. I scooped up a new Camera this week and found a great site for cheap batteries for your various devices.  I haven’t had a change to review them yet as they should be arriving today, but look for a review of my experience with www.BestBatt.com later this week.
4. In the iTunes world, I have been using Handbrake to back up my Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs.  This project has been blood, sweat, and optical media as a couple of episode just will not display on my AppleTV no matter how I try to rip them.  I even went so far as to rip those titles with Mac the Ripper and then try and use handbrake to convert from a Video_TS folder.  I have used Quicktime pro to export the files to Apple TV, and had all but thrown up my hands.  That is, until I made a last ditch effort and clicked “Make Version for AppleTV” in iTunes.  I didn’t expect much as I figured this was the same as Quicktime but lo and behold, it worked.  iTunes, boldly converting where no converter has been able to before.
5. In other Geek news, Gene Roddenberry would have celebrated a birthday this week.  I honored his name day by sitting down with a “Tribute to Gene Roddenberry” documentary followed by a viewing of the STTNG episode “Hero Worship” which was the show being shot the day he passed away.  Happy Birthday Gene, your the man.
6. In short cut land, I found that CMD+F will pop up a “Find” window that you can use to search for specific words in a text document or webpage.  Thats good stuff.

Finally I would like to go on record for Apple prediction number two:  While the idea of a shiny new product line from Apple seems exciting and excellent and why wouldn’t I want whatever it is?  Eh, I have been wracking my brain on this whole tablet thing and it just doesn’t make any sense.  I think its a little too novelty for Apple and am now staking my claim that the Apple Tablet is not going to happen.  Instead, let cross our fingers for something much more practical such as oooh I dunno, an open format Apple TV with built in tuner, DVR software, and a subscription to the iTunes store?  See you all next week, hopefully from our first “Follow Friday” post on Snow Leopard.  Have a good weekend.

Its Friday, August the 14th and this is the first of a series of weekly Follow Friday posts where I will give a few quick nods at the things I learned this week in the Tech World or thought worthy of a mention.  So, here goes nothing:

1. The Apple Caps Lock Key: You have to apply some pressure for it to activate, a quick tap wont turn it on.  This was designed so you can avoid taking your mild mannered blog post and turning it into an UNINTENTIONAL RANT…  Trivially brilliant.
2. Adjust your Macs volume the @TCHughes way.  Hold down Shift while you work the volume up and down keys and the accompanying bubble popping sound will be silenced.
3. This one will likely showcase that I am indeed still a Newb in many regards, but holding down CMD+SHIFT+A will open your Applications folder.
4. Techzilla Daily for 8/12/09 highlighted my favorite new feature, the quick Application close.  When using CMD+TAB to switch between Apps, you can let off the TAB key and hit Q (so thats CMD+Q) to close the App you have highlighted.  Very schnazzy.
5. Snow Leopard did not stealth ship, despite my best efforts at uncovering a global plot to bring happiness to the front door of millions.
6. @TCHughes pointed me to GDGT.com and cost me two good hours.  (Softcore Geeks need not follow link)
7. Now for a couple of App Mentions and we are outta here:
   1. The TWiT App is another brilliant find by @TCHughes this week.  Bring the TWiT.tv network to your iPhone with live streaming, chat room integration, and On-Demand play back of previous shows. Video quality of the streams is excellent.  Being a TWiT fan boy, this is probably my favorite new App at my favorite price, free. 
   2. Doom for iPhone drops from $9.99 to $2.99
   3. Star Defense for iPhone drops from $2.99 to $.99
   And thats all folks.  Thanks for checking out my first Follow Friday installment, see you next week.  If ever so inclined, feel free to leave the useful bits you picked up this week in the comments section or send them to @shortordertech on twitter or Friendfeed.  /Cheers!