Brian Minor

So this article would have started out with how great this little device is for how little the cost, but since it broke on me the other day after only using it for a week my thoughts on it have taken a slight turn.

Don’t get me wrong the device is great and it will give you more then double the iPhone’s battery and all that for about $15 bucks is amazing/ Others backups hold half the capacity size and sell for almost 3 times as much.

But the flaws come into play with the design. The item is very large and connects to the phone with no support other then the connector itself, making it only safe to use when laying flat on a surface. Putting it in a pocket or other unstable surface could lead to damaging the device or worse your iPhone or iPod itself.

So I would still recommend the MonoPrice backup solution is you are wanting something that will give you the best bang for the cost, but be warned that you must me very careful with it cause it could end up costing you more then you planned.

Side Note: I am currently in talks with MonoPrice to try and get my battery replaced I will updated this page with my progress when I hear back from them.

It seems like almost every carrier is doing a top 5 (some even 10) list. With these lists they allow you to add 5 to 10 “friends”and no matter what carrier/provider they use, you can call for free and not waste any of your minutes. They all seem to have their own little names. AT&T calls it the “A-List” and Verizon calls it “My Fave Five”. But in the end it’s all the same.

Most of you are thinking, yeah, we know this already, but as I was changing some setting in my beloved Google Voice account I noticed that they allow you to change the number that appears when you received a call from someone. You can have either their number display, which is of course the default and what most people would want. But they also allow you to always have the google voice number show up with every call.

So my workaround is why not just add your google voice number to your top 5 list and give everyone that number. Then change it so that all incoming calls come from your google voice number and never waste your minutes on incoming calls again.

But thats not all, google voice allows you to make outgoing as well, by calling your google voice number, then dialing the number you want to call. So no wasting minutes on outgoing calls either.

Okay, now I know for some of you this just wont work. A lot of us love to always know who is calling before we answer the phone, but google helps with this as well. Google Voice give you control of what numbers you want to ring straight through, but it also give you the ability to have callers announce themselves first and/or just announce their number or name (if in contacts) and then gives you the ability to answer or send to voicemail.

Also, keep in mind you can still give out your real number to the other 4 in your list and anyone else who is worth wasting your minutes on. This workaround is meant to be given out to all those that call you constantly and love to talk for hours or perfect as a business line.

If you think this is something you could really use and want to give it a shot, I have 2 Google Voice invites to give out just leave a comment below and I will pick 2 at random and send out the invites later this week. Just be sure to add the tag “I want an Invite” to the beginning or end of your comment.

So MacHeist is at it again, but this time it miniaturized and free. Before I begin I do want to mention that I did actually participated in the last MacHeist. There were a couple apps, that I wanted to have and a couple I wanted to try out so, I figured might as well. Overall, I have been pretty happy with my purchase. I don’t use the apps all that much, but at the same time I don’t regret the purchase.

This time they are offering 5 apps for free and a 6th app free when they reach 500,000 participants. The total value of the nanoBundle is $154 bucks. So you may be thinking wow, free?, I gotta have this, just as I was when I first heard about it. But then I took a look at the apps they are offering.

Here are the apps:

ShoveBox

Catch all the little scraps of information that you can’t immediately act on, but don’t want to forget. ShoveBox sits up in your menu bar, waiting for you to drag in text, images, URLs, and more.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is a simple, but powerful app that provides you with a distraction-free writing environment. WriteRoom does one main thing and does it incredibly well: It’s all about writing…

Twitterific

Twitterrific is an exquisite app that enables you to make the most out of your Twitter experience. It has a clean user interface that’s designed to take up little of your precious desktop space.

TinyGrab

TinyGrab is a simple, powerful app that enables you to quickly share screenshots of everything on your Mac.

Hordes of Orcs

Hordes of Orcs is a Tower Defense strategy game where you build walls and towers to defend your village from orcs gone rogue.

And if enough people participate

Mariner Write

Mariner Write is a fast, streamlined word processor that’s useful for everyone… professional writers, educators, students, casual computer users, and everyone in-between. It has a simple, elegant user interface so that you can create beautiful documents the very first time you start using it.

If you ask me most of them are pretty worthless. I guess if you don’t already have a better word processor, then Mariner Write would be nice once it is available, but the others really don’t seem worth the process to even download them. I already have a better twitter client and my the other seem pretty pointless.

But hey thats just me. Let me know what you think.

So last Friday I finally received the much anticipated (at least by me) Magic Mouse in the mail (see unboxing video below) and have been using it everyday since.

The mouse is pretty amazing, I’ve been using the Mighty Mouse for close to two years now and the transition from one to the other was easy and smooth.

Normal everyday use with the mouse is great I don’t have any issues with the scrolling or multi-touch options. Over all I love the mouse. The only issues I’ve had is when I took it home over last weekend and edited a wedding using Final Cut Pro.

The mouse is worthless for using with FCP, the vertical scrolling cause the playhead and all the other controls to go nuts while trying to edit. You basically have to not touch the mouse while the video is playing. My main issues came when using the multi-cam edits in FCP. I use this feature a lot with weddings and it works great, but not with this mouse. any slight vertical scroll and the play head go 5-10 minutes back or forward and you have to relocate your place. But I forced myself to use it thinking I would eventually just get used to it and I really thought I had, till I was finished with the edit. Thats when I notices that a ton of my clips where off by a signal frame. I have no clue exactly how it happened, but I know it had to be the Magic Mouse and that it took forever to correct.

So I’ve taken the mouse to work with me where I rarely, to never use FCP, so the harmony is back and I am loving the mouse. It’s slim, comfortable, and glides easily on the desk. So i would recommend it to other just as long as their not heavy FCP users.

Side note: I’m really hoping to find a way to disable the vertical scrolling just in FCP I think that alone will solve all my issues. So if you know of a way please let me know.

And now, onto the video:

I’ve been using VMWare’s Fusion application for the last few years and at the $79.99 dollar price tag, it is well worth the it, but as I was installing all the programs on my new Mac Mini for work I figured I would give Sun’s free VirtualBox a shot.

VirtualBox is a free program that allows you to install virtual machines on your mac. To be honest it is pretty amazing and has all the features that I needed and used in VMWare and its all for free.

It allows you to do the fullscreen and seamless modes just like Fusion and it loads everything fas. I honestly don’t notice a performance hit with the Mac Mini, which to me is a big praise.

But, just so you all know, VMWare did just recently released a new version and I haven’t really looked at the additional feature it adds, but I really doubt that I will give it a look, cause as for work related items I am all about going with VirtualBox.

So it took me 3 years and 11 months, but it has finally happened! I was actually able to talk work into buying me a Mac Mini to use as my full time computer!

The Mini is an amazing little device, not the most powerful, but more then enough for coding websites, doing some minor video editing and installing a virtual XP box so I can still troubleshoot all the annoying phone support calls I get.

Most of you know I have been working with the Hackint0sh installer and actually had a decent amount of luck with it, but no matter how much I put into it, my performance always seemed lacking. I am sure if you built your PC with just the right equipment you may actually not even notice.

I have had the Mini for 3 work days now and I just finally got everything I believe I need installed. And the thing is still running like a top. Lets just say I am one happy employee.

Anyways enough about it here is the unboxing if your interested. Sorry for the poor camera work I really need to get one of those tripod things for my iPhone.