When I heard all the rumors about the new Apple products launching this week the first thing I thought of was if I missed the keynote. If you are not familiar Apple normally holds large keynotes to introduce new or refresh products. None of that this time and when the Apple store went down earlier this week we knew what was coming.
Yesterday Barnes and Noble announced their new eBook the Nook. The Nook is a portable ebook reader with an eink display for reading and a color touch screen for navigation. The color screen is powered by a version of Android the Google phone OS. I have to say that the few videos I have seen make the color screen look a little sluggish. The Apple cover flow style of scrolling through your books looked a little choppy. However lets not worry about those sort of things and talk about how this product compares to the other major ebook reader.
Last week did not see much happen on the charts. The same artists just in different positions. Kings of Leon holding on to the chart for 36 weeks while Jay Sean takes the top spot on the songs list. The album list is a whole different story with eight of the ten entries new to the chart. Several new things to check out there.
In my world I have been listening to The Sounds.
Their current album is called Crossing the Rubicon and a quick search on iTunes shows that they have two others out as well, Dying to Say This to You and Living in America. You might know The Sounds from their hit single No One Sleeps When I’m Awake. I really enjoy the whole album, an easy listen from start to finish.
I recently was doing some upgrades on a site that was built by a previous company. The site in question was not built with standards in mind and displays in quirks mode. The site looks fine in most browsers and although not the best idea, I have been making updates to work in quirks mode. As you might have guessed I wanted to incorporate the Jquery library, Thickbox for image viewing. The only problem is that when you view an image while scrolled down on a page the Thickbox image shows at the top of the page. You have to scroll up in order to see the image. This only happens in IE and only when viewing a page in quirks mode.
The plan is to expand the type of media that I talk about here on the site. I had always wanted to make this site all about media and how people interact with it. I spend most of my time talking about the web and technology. In an act to broaden my scope I am starting weekend posting of the top music charts. I hope at some point to integrate the Billboard api and allow for more interaction. See the charts after the break.
Just yesterday Palm has started to add paid application to their WebOS app store. Prices of the apps all very from 99 cents to $9.95. Although nothing ground breaking has been released it is still good to see developers getting their stuff through the application process. As the competition for apps increases I am sure we will see lower prices.
This all comes after Palms release of the 1.2 Pre update which brought a new app store application. You can now pin a credit card to your Palm account which is how transactions will take place. Also the look and thumbnail viewing has changed slightly. The whole app store feels much improved in performance while you can still sort and search through the store.
And iTunes sync is fixed with the small 1.2.1 update
Nintendo is following up Sony and Microsoft’s price cuts with some of their own. On September 27th the Wii will drop from $249 to $199. Nintendo hopes that the cut will attract customers who are on the cusp of becoming gamers. However I have a feeling that Nintendo did not plan this price cut so early but needed to do something enlight of the cuts for PS3 and Xbox 360. With all the major game console players cutting prices what can we expect for black friday and the holiday rush.
It seems like the sweet spot for console prices had dropped as this generation of players ages. Xbox has $199 and $299 SKUs while PS3 has a $299 SKU. The more you look at it this really seems to make the Wii a very attractive and more reasonable price. It is the only console still in standard definition and the lowest quality of hardware. What doesn’t make sense is why it took so long. How many more could they sell, it seems like everyone I know has a Wii? And it prints money.
The cycling event, the Tour of Missouri is happening all this week. The athletes will travel across the Missouri over seven stages. They start is St. Louis and the final stage is in Kansas City. I was lucky enough to be in Jefferson City for the stage 4 finish. It was overcast and also later in the day so the light was lacking. I took a few photos and they are posted below. If you are interested in watching the rest of the stage live head over to tourofmissouritracker.com or if you want more information about the event try tourofmissouri.com.
Years past after the break.
Sept 9th has made it, that means Apple will be announcing new products and giving the press a look at their progress. So far it looks like the event will be mainly about iPods and there are several indicators to new a iPod Touch and Nano. Will the most rumored tablet make an appearance? Check back and I will update this post with the goods. The event starts at 10:00 AM pacific / 12:00 PM central.
Updates:
Several new iPods were announced at the Apple event today. Also new iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9. Check out the full details after the break.
I really enjoy taking photographs and when I get a chance to go out to California I try and get a few good panoramas. We also when whale watching and saw one blue whale and lots of dolphins. Those pictures might be up later as well.
A few more after the break.
