Short Order Techout here there be geeks

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.