I will be at the San Diego Macintosh Users Group (SDMUG) Meeting tonight (4/6/2005). If you are in the San Diego, CA area and want to meet me in person I invite you to stop by. The meeting starts at 6:30 PM (PST) and is at the Madeira Room at the Ramada Inn, 5550 Kearny Mesa Road, San Diego, CA. You can find directions and more details on the SDMUG web site. Hope to see some of you there.

Artist and MacCast listener Dorothy Yamamoto is looking foward to the upcoming “Tiger” release as much as all of us MacGeeks. She sent this great image along with these comments:

Like most MacCast listeners, am anxiously awaiting Apple’s Tiger OS release. And like my painting here, “The Big Cat,” the tiger is waiting for Steve Jobs to give the go-ahead. I’ve been studying Jeremy Sutton’s terrific “Painter Creativity” book and instructional DVDs and applied his “single brush” assignment in which you must use only one brush and its variants to complete a painting. I used the soft oil pastel in a monochromatic study. Am fortunate to work on a G5 with lots of RAM and a Wacom Intuous 3 tablet which give the Corel Painter IX digital art experience as close to natural media as possible.

To see more of Dorothy’s work visit her web site

Listen to today’s show here!
MC20050404.mp3 [14.0mb (30:42) 64kbps]

A podcast about Macs done by a Mac geek for Mac geeks. Show 45. Mac Mini’s at Best Buy, Time magazine looks at iPod alternatives, Adobe announce InDesign CS2 and InCopy CS2. Was Tiger Apple’s April Fool? 6 million Americans listen to Podcasts and a rumor of two new Apple hardware projects. Listener review of iPod Mini and feedback on educational discounts. New MacCast forums, http://forum.maccast.com and new music, Lies In Stereo by The Pickpockets. Your ears will love you for it. Shownotes in HTML or OPML

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Ok. I have set up a MacCast Forum at http://forum.maccast.com. I have not customized the look and feel yet, but it is a start. To post and reply you will need to create an account. If you just want to read then no account is needed. You also need a vaild email address to register. Right now it is self activation via email, but if I start having issue with spammers I may need to go to admin approved accounts. Let’s see how it goes. Please try to keep your posts clean. The MacCast is a family show. Enjoy.

Adam

Listen to today’s show here!
MC20050401.mp3 [17.1mb (37:26) 64kbps]

A podcast about Macs done by a Mac geek for Mac geeks. Show 44. Apple is 29. Tiger is GOLD. A laptop love song, Mic/Line in show corrections, PlayPod issues resolved with update, Podium Cool Pad review, why switch top 10 contest, response to Apple K-12 student dicounts, Simon Toon’s SlamIdol Podcast promo, MacCast: creating switchers one by one, OutPod review and keeping a PowerBook awake. New music, Might As Well by Thinking of Pinky. You should hear this. Shownotes in HTML or OPML

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Sorry gang. The day got away from me and it is already early Saturday morning. I will post the show tonight (04/02). Since it is now the second, this is not a joke. ;)

Well at least one MacCast listener has added a Mac Mini to his living room. Here are Peter’s comments and pics. Check out this setup.

The following is a set up I use for my Mini Mac downstairs next to the warm stove! It is connected to the router upstairs with airport. I have a Samsung 17 inch LCD connected to a magazine rack with a Ergotron arm. I use a bluetooth mouse and a TouchStrokes software keyboard. The power brick is on a bookshelf behind me and the Mini is on a shelf on the back side of the magazine rack. See pictures attached. I will also take the Mini, mouse and power supply with me and hook it into a monitor at work or elsewhere. Monitor runs around $200.00, Arm around $99.00.

I forgot to add that I am using airport express and thus print to my
printer in my computer room where I also have a 20 inch iMac.

I wanted to give you quick user review of a product that’s been around for a while, called the Podium Coolpad by Road Tools. It’s a notebook riser that does several things. Most importantly, it elevates the laptop to improve passive cooling, it spins around and lifts the screen up to an adjustable height to optimize your viewing angle, and it provides a stable surface when you’re working in less-than-ideal settings, like on your lap, on an airplane tray, or in bed. One edge of the laptop sits on top of 4 rubber-capped posts that you assemble from stackable lego-like pieces to lift the screen to the desired height. It’s relatively cheap (retailing for $30), really durable, and very portable. You can get a better idea of their design on their website, www.roadtools.com.

So, my wife and I own 2 Coolpads and have been using them for over 3 years without a hitch. The first time I gave it a second thought was the other day when I noticed that I had lost a screw, so I emailed Jim at Road Tools. I asked him for the specs on the screw so that I could pick up a replacement at the hardware store. To make a long story short, he not only offered to send me a replacement screw, he also included some newly developed attachments for the original Coolpad – more on these updates in a moment. I then asked him if it would be OK for me to share my story because I wasn’t sure that he wanted to be inundated with emails from people asking for replacement screws that they’d lost. Here is an excerpt from his reply dated March 27:

“Sometime soon I intend to send a press release … to let CoolPad users know that we would like to fix any CoolPad problems or replace any parts. We are gearing up to handle as many fixes as requested.

We’ve sold a lot of these over the past few years (over 500,000) so we expect to handle quite a few requests but that’s OK because we really like to keep all of those Coolpads in good working order.

These things are made by very dedicated disabled workers in the Nashua NH area. They take pride in their work and are as eager to support the CoolPads as I am.”

SO. Jim and his crew are INVITING everyone who owns a CoolPad to let them know about any problems. This is potentially as many as half-a-million emails with some type of request that probably yields little or no monetary benefit for them at the end of the day. I don’t remember the last time I heard of a company that cares this much about customer satisfaction and the work they do. Just wanted to spread the word on a little company with a lot of heart.

By the way, the samples of the product upgrades they sent me are awesome! First, there’s an extension bar for wider laptops: it replaces the 4 rubber-tipped caps with a single long bar that extends beyond the width of the coolpad to give you an extra-wide support. It was designed for the 17 inch powerbook, but I’ve been using it with my 15 inch model and it really does a great job. Or, if you want to use the original styled 4-post system, Jim sent me some new rubber caps that have improved gripping action for the bottom of your laptop. These upgrades are simple, but elegant and really well executed to improve the value of the product. I have not seen any mention of the extension bar or the new caps on the Road Tools website, but in his latest email, Jim said that he thinks the extension bar is now included with the CoolPads being sold through Apple Store and at Staples.

Reviewed by MacCast listener Daniel

Here is all the Apple April Fool’s gags I have come across today:

Apple Hires DVD Jon (Techtree.com)
Apple sells iPod Socks (Damn, this one is not a joke)
iPod Treo (cNet Reviews)
Apple iHome Media Center (The AppleBlog)
Tiger Woods signs deal as Apple Spokesman (Mac Daily News)
iPoc Apple PDA (Pocket PC Thoughts) – Thanks Russ!
EU Bans Sale of Macs (Digit UK)
Jobs Joins IKEA (The Register UK)
Apple Japan Announces and the Pulls the iPotty (iPodLounge)
Apple in Talks to Buy Palm One (TreoCentral)
Apple Announces Product and Marketing Plans (TidBits)
Apple Announces iPad, Partners with DELL to Sell (NoteBook Reviews)
The iCopulate (ThinkGeek.com)
The PodShave and PodShave Lady (PlayList Magazine)
iJuice and MiniMovie (eQuinux)
2 Good 1.0 (App4Mac)
ScreenCleaner Pro (Ambrosia Software)
Youe Mac Life Goes Off Air (Your Mac Life)
First Look At iTunes Phone (Mobile Music Blog)
Monkeys Prefer Windows Over Mac (Silicon.com)
Apple Adopts Windows Media for iTunes (Mac Observer) – Thanks Buck!

Just received confirmation from listener Terry that the PlayPod update will fix any feed issues with the MacCast. Please read the response, especially the warning about backing up your subscription URLs since you will need to resubscribe to all your feeds. UPDATE: Please read comments below from the developer on backing up your feed list and reporting bugs.

By downloading the latest version of Playpod I now get your Maccast feed up to the most recent podcast. So, all playpod users will have to upgrade to the latest version of the software.

One word of caution. When you install the latest verison it wipes out all of your old feeds. So, users may want to record all of their feeds so they can resubscribe in the latest version of playpod.