In case you missed it, Panic Software released a cool iPad app this week called Status Board. It’s an app that let’s you have various “panels” that can aggregate information for display on your iPad or out to a TV via HDMI ($9.99 in app purchase) or Airplay. The app comes with various panels like a clock, weather, calendar, email, Twitter, and RSS. These have settings and views you can select and you can resize and place them to customize your Status Board. The app also has three panels, Graph, Table, and Do-It-Yourself that can be customized with your own data. You can add data via CSV files or JSON and build view with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. All very cool and very extensible.
I played around with making my own Status Board panel and in just a little bit of time was able to build a panel to show Apple’s current stock price. Panic even provides a nice little sample in the form of a How Many People are in Space Right Now panel, which is what I based mine on (just view source ;) ). When you’re done there is even a URL you can build up to share your panel with other Status Board users. If you’d like my $AAPL Stock Panel just click this link from an iPad with the Status Board app installed:
My iPad mini arrived to day and as is tradition now I took the time to video and photograph the unboxing. Here is the video and you can find the photos here on the Maccast Facebook page and here on Flickr
The new iPad arrived today and while the unboxing experience is almost identical to that of the iPad 2 I still wanted to get you some unboxing photos. I also threw in some macro shots of the new iPad’s retina display versus the display on the iPad 2. There is also a pair of photos comparing the iPad 2 camera to the one in the new iPad.
I don’t often cover new product releases, but this year when I asked what you wanted me to cover at Macworld the resounding answers was “anything Thunderbolt”. Unfortunately there wasn’t much Thunderbolt on the floor at Macworld but a week earlier, at CES, Elgato had announced they were bring a Thunderbolt SSD (Solid State Drive) to market soon. If you listen to the Maccast you know I am a fan of Elgato’s video products, so it was awesome when I opened my email today and got the news their new SSD drives were now shipping. Technically, according to PR, they are shipping in Europe now and in the US in about a week (see the US doesn’t ALWAYS get stuff first), but who’s splitting hairs? This is “something” Thunderbolt! The new Elgato Thunderbolt™ SSD comes in two sizes. A 120GB version for $429.95 USD and a 240GB version for $699.95 USD. The enclosure is metal and pocketable and, since it’s SSD, there is no fan or moving parts so of course it’s completely silent. Likely though, the biggest deal about the drive is the speed. As you can imagine when you couple the performance of SSD with an advanced interface like Thunderbolt the results are amazing. According to El Ggato’s product page the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is capable of transfer rates in the range of 270 MB/s1, more than 3 times what you could get with a typical Firewire 800 drive. If you need a portable rugged drive with the fastest possible performance on your Thunderbolt Mac Elgato looks like they have you covered.
1 Transfer rates on a 15″ Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz i7 using QuickBench 4 “Extended Test” (Read)
Steve Sheridan posted this video that Allison Sheridan (Nosillacast podcast) and I did at Blogworld this year. Thought it might be of interest to some of you.
Here’s some Sunday geekery for you in the form of my iPad 2 unboxing video and images. You can find more photos on the Maccast Flickr page or on the Facebook Page.
I have an update to bring you on yesterday’s post about a tent showing up outside the temporary location of the Knox Street Apple Store in Dallas, Texas. Thanks to some guest reporting by David Collins we have been able to confirm that the guy inside the tent is Justin Wagoner. Justin has made a bit of a name for himself online by being first in line for several Apple launches.
The one big question we had was “Why”? Justin simply said he was on spring break and it would be an adventure. He told us he expected lines to start forming sometime Wednesday and that he set up camp around 9:30 AM Sunday morning (3/6/2011). Another reason we’re guessing Justin is in line for this event is that he doesn’t own an original iPad. Last year when it was released he said he saw the iPad as a luxury accessory, so we asked him about his change of heart for this launch. Justin mentioned that the iPad was an unknown quantity and there just weren’t that many apps specifically designed for it. The iPad’s growing popularity, actually using one at the Apple Store on Knox Street, and the now over 65,000 apps seem to have changed his mind. Justin can now see a real case for the utility of an iPad. Despite his launch day enthusiasm for some Apple products, Justin is a bit more reserved for others. He did not buy the first generation iPhone until a few months after its release.
This will be the 4th iOS product launch event where Justin has been first in line. Whatever his motivation for sure it ends up grabbing attention. For past events Justin has received news coverage from local Dallas news affiliates, CNN, Yahoo!, and others. He also has a web site set up at ijustinofficial.com and is posting updates on twitter, @iJustinOfficial
Special thanks to David Collins for the photos and helping with coverage for this piece
In case you missed it, Panic Software released a cool iPad app this week called Status Board. It’s an app that let’s you have various “panels” that can aggregate information for display on your iPad or out to a TV via HDMI ($9.99 in app purchase) or Airplay. The app comes with various panels like a clock, weather, calendar, email, Twitter, and RSS. These have settings and views you can select and you can resize and place them to customize your Status Board. The app also has three panels, Graph, Table, and Do-It-Yourself that can be customized with your own data. You can add data via CSV files or JSON and build view with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. All very cool and very extensible.
I don’t often cover new product releases, but this year when I asked what you wanted me to cover at Macworld the resounding answers was “anything Thunderbolt”. Unfortunately there wasn’t much Thunderbolt on the floor at Macworld but a week earlier, at CES, 
