Nerd News

• People who signed up for AT&T DSL service after March 31, 1994, may be eligible for a partial refund after the operator settled a class-action lawsuit charging it with delivering data rates slower than promised. AT&T doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement of a case filed last year in the Court of Common Pleas in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
• GoogleMail is becoming GMail in the UK, saving 60 million keystrokes per day.
• Apple sold 1M iPads by last Friday
• Google, Microsoft and Apple endorse HTML5 and H.264 for video (not Flash)
• HP buys Palm for $1.2B
• Check out the Stark Expo 2010 site for the new Iron Man 2 movie

Feature Story: Wired for Tech

• You have decided to undertake that big home remodel project. What considerations for tech should you consider?
• Wired vs Wireless. Is wireless good enough? for the TV? for Music? for Gaming?
• Lighting: LED, CF, control panels
• Speakers: wired v wireless, buying, monoprice, freestanding, in-wall (not by power)
• Hiding tech: wall, RF, cabinets and IR, closets (video cabling and conduits)

Nerd History

• May 6, 1937 – Hindenburg fire
• May 5, 1961 – Alan Shepard is first American in ‘outer space’
• May 3, 1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as “spam“) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States
• May 6, 1994 – Channel Tunnel opens
• May 3, 2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

My initial experience is that typing on this is a LOT better than on the iPhone (which isn’t saying much, to be perfectly honest). But if I was planning on typing anything much longer than this post, I would probably want to pair it with a bluetooth keyboard. Because typing on glass just isn’t the same as on real keys.

That’s all for now folks!

• element 117 is here.
• Itanium is like the Titanic: it’s sinking.
• 35% savings on Win7
• 10 billion tweets
• Chem4Word plug-in
• 300K on day 1

Feature Story: Apple iPad

• We’ve got an iPad in hand and offer our initial review.
• iPad inside

Nerd History

• April 4, 1973 – The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated. Picture of tallest buildings.
• April 3, 1965 – First weather satellite
• April 4, 1994 – Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications Corporation under the name “Mosaic Communications Corporation”.

Nerd News

• Verizon shelves plans FiOS expansion
• Netflix ships the Wii disc
• Is your updater at risk?
• Apple bigger than Walmart, 4th biggest public company

Feature Story: Switching to Mac

• What do we like and what don’t we like.
• likes:
  • ease of plug-n-play (ext hard drives, integration with Time Machine backups)
  • based on Unix; pleasurable developer experience
  • multimedia editing apps built-in
  • things seem to work easier
• dislikes:
  • Finder vs Explorer
  • Microsoft Office
  • cost of equipment

Nerd History

• March 30, 240 BC - 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet
• March 30, 1853 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter was born (d. 1890)
• March 30, 1945 – Eric Clapton, British guitarist
• March 31, 1909 – Construction begins on the RMS Titanic.

WFN turns 1 Year Old !!!

• Happy Birthday to us.

Apple iPad

• Is it really revolutionary? Is it magical??
• Is it a Kindle Killer?
• What is it exactly, and do you want one?

iTunes 9.0.3 fixes some annoying problems.

• iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting.
• Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
• Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
• Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.

DVD, Blu-ray, 3-D… all dead

• Hollywood losing lots of money. MGM $140M in Mar 2009, now just $30M

Space Story of the Week

• cool Full Moon Name for 2010. Jan 30 was Full Wolf, Feb 28 is Full Snow.
• available on a public iCal on Google.

1. Go to www.zunepodcasts.com
2. Hit the ‘Submit a Podcast’ in the lower left corner.
3. In the box that pops up, paste in the following –> http://feeds2.feedburner.com/wordsfromnerds

How are Windows 7 and Snow Leopard doing so far?

• Microsoft confirms the first Windows 7 zero-day bug
• Bad news for Hackintosh users as Apple removes Atom support in latest Snow Leopard patch.
• Microsoft bans 1 million XBOX Live accounts.

Social Media News

• YouTube now supports 1080p video. iTunes adds for purchase, too.
• Twitter is gradually rolling our the re-tweet feature to its web site. It’s about time!

Quick News

• Microsoft has released the Office 2010 beta.
• T-Mobile resumes sales of the Sidekick again.
• A dinosaur discovery provides insight into evolution of giants
• Since there’s a movie out now, here is a scientific reality check for 2012.

Birthdays and Anniversaries

• · Surfing the Ocean of Storms, dude.

• Maybe the iPhone won’t be coming to Verizon anytime soon, after all. A series of commercials have begun to target Apple’s dominance in the cell phone market. The first batch criticizes the AT&T 3G network by openly mocking a popular Apple slogan. The latest ads now signal the arrival of an Android phone coming soon to the Verizon network.

Apple Changes Rules for In-App Purchases

• Perhaps responding to some competition, Apple is now allowing in-app purchases for free apps. This is a good move. We’ll tell you why.

XBOX Live Update Will Go Social

• The next update for XBOX will bring Twitter and FaceBook to the popular gaming console. Is this a good thing?

Silver anniversary for the ICBM

• The Atlas D went on alert 50 years ago this month. On Halloween of all days.

Nerd of the Week

• The dude that forces us to type two slashes in every web URL is sorry about that.

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