Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

Earlier today Net tweeted that he bought a new MacBook and looking for recommended applications. My first reaction was to reply using twitter. However, 140 chars are not enough to list all the apps I have on my MacBook Pro and that I recommend.

So, here is the list, created in the easiest way I know, a screenshot: My Mac Apps

BTW, I did that using  my favorite, the must have app, Jing.

I just experienced the new video in print format and was blown away. As you flip through the magazine pages and get to the video ad page, the CBS video starts playing. You can then choose other videos by clicking on the “menu buttons” that appear below. Video and sound quality are very good and there won’t be a single user that won’t stop and listen/interact with this new tech.

I am not sure how popular this new advertising format will become since there are only a handful of advertisers that can spend a 7 figure on this type of campaign (CBS & Pepsi for example and probably a few other Super Bowl ad buyer), but the technology, innovation and implementation are very impressive.

Get yourself a copy of the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly to experience the magic.

If you don’t read Engadget or other gadget reviews websites you might find this helpful.

Here is how you could save a few hundred dollars per year on your home phone bill. It is called MagicJack, a VOIP service that requires a computer (PC or Mac) and an internet connection to provide extremely cheap local and long distance phone calls using a very small device that looks like a disk on key.

To get started you need to sign up for the free trail on the company’s website (or you could buy it at RadioShack). Once you have the device, simply plug it into the PC/Mac USB port and connect a regular phone to the jack on the other side (as in the photo below). Once plugged, your computer will automatically start running the dialer software and take you through a simple sign-up process, where you will be asked to select a phone number (currently they don’t support number portability). That’s it.

The service costs only $20 per year (no taxes, tolls and other hidden fees). The device itself costs $20 so your first payment (after the 30 days free trial is over) will actually be $40, but any subsequent year will be $20. And if you really want a great deal and lock the price for the next few years, you can prepay $60 for 5 years. That’s a pretty sweet alternative to AT&T’s $45/month + tolls and taxes, or Vonage’s $25/month.

Couple of side benefits some people might not be aware of:

1. MagicJack makes your home home phone portable while you are traveling  (assuming you travel with a laptop).
2. MagicJack gives you other features for free including call forwarding, voice mail and voicemail to email as attachment notifications
3. If you have relatives/friends who live abroad (like I do) and you & them spend a decent amount of money every month on international calls, you might want to buy a MagicJack for them. This way they will have a US number and all calls done between them and you will be completely free.

I have been using it for a few weeks now and very happy with the overall experience. The call quality is excellent. Rarely I had any echos problem and disconnects. And when those happen, I simply unplug the device from the USB port, reconnect and restart the dialer program. This “hassle” is worth $550/year in savings.

I have recently migrated my feedburner account to use a Google account. As a result the RSS feed url has changed to:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/jaymeydad

If you are a subscriber please make sure to update your RSS reader with this new address, and if you are not, you might want to give it a try and subscribe to it. For an unlimited time, it is free.

I was extremely disappointed to hear that Hulu was forced by their content partners to turn off Boxee support. Here’s a situation which turned from a win-win-win-win case to a loose-loose-loose-loose one:

• The networks (NBC, CBS, FOX and others) lost empathy & credibility. If they think this move will drive people back to the TV they are wrong. This is exactly the type of shortsightedness that got those content providers into the downslide they’re facing today. They have to realize that there is a big generation out there that is not going to accept to a walled garden approach, loves services such as internet TV and boxee for them was the access point to those services.

• Hulu is trying to come out good from this situation, but at the end of the day, they have cooperated and agreed to the networks’ mandate.

• Boxee users, a growing passionate community of early adopters with lots of influence, loose because they won’t have access to great shows that are available on Hulu. However, these folks are going to participate in the battle actively and use every social media tool to protest and try to get the situation back to where it was.

• And Boxee, well unfortunately, they are going to loose active users. They are probably not going to loose the users love and support, but since the biggest content provider users had consumed is no longer supported, there will be less reasons for people to login into and use Boxee daily.

But if anyone think this is going to last forever, he is wrong. I predict it is just a matter of time and plenty of discussions between the executives of these three companies (with some help from investors as well) until we will be able to enjoy Hulu on Boxee again.

Because nothing beats the users.

Aptera Motors is an Idealab company that makes the Aptera 2e, a three-wheeled two-seater electric car, that is highly efficient.

This afternoon, after a few months of hard work on refinements and improvements, the Aptera team drove the latest model of the car to the Idealab offices.

The updated model looks really cool and is pretty comfortable once you get inside. I have noticed couple of cosmetics improvements since the last model was in our offices:

• Side mirrors were added (despite their impact on drag)
• The camera was moved to the roof. It projects its image on a small LCD display that is on the driver’s main mirror.  Image below.
• The solar panels on the roof, that are used to power the A/C fans, were redesigned and look beautiful
• Logo was added (it would be cool if it illuminates at night). Image below.
• the seats were cloth rather than leather (of maybe they have not brought the Limited edition)

I did not get a chance to drive it but did sit in the driver seat and took a close look & felt at the interior, but those who will attend the TED conference next week could drive it as two cars will be there.

Here are some photos of this very cool car.

[View with PicLens]

Screen capture is a utility that I use daily. Ever since I switched from a PC to a Mac I was looking for one that has the same features as SnagIt, which is the best screen capture utility for a PC.

I tried many screen capture utilities for Mac OS. None of them support all four requirements which I consider to be a must:

• Capture multiple region types: selection (most important), full screen & window while providing a clear preview of the captured area
• Save in different file formats including PNG
• Capture video
• Fast and easy to use image editor, built into the screen capturing utility (no need to copy image to another application), that allows me to add basic elements like arrows, boxes and text to the captured image. I use this often to do quick and dirty mockups, report bugs and just take visual memos of stuff I see on the web

What I have found is that most utilities for the Mac support the first 2 requirements, a few also support the 3rd (Video) but very few support the last one (image editor) which is what I find to be the killer feature of a good capturing utility.

Until I discovered Jing, a freeware that has it all and more (like a one click upload of the captured image to Flickr).

BTW, it was created by TechSmith, the same company behind SnagIt — these folks clearly understand screen capturing.

You can download it for free here.

P.S.

PC users – You are not forgotten. Jing has a Windows version as well.

What began over 20 years ago with my first PC running different MS-DOS versions, and then continued with various desktops and laptops I owned that ran different versions of Windows (3.0, 3.1, 3.5, 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP — I have not tried Vista and probably won’t) has now come to a complete end.

I am happy to say that our house is now fully Apple friendly & running on Mac OS. I started this migration process a few month ago by equipping our living room with a Mac Mini that serves as a media center (running boxee). Shortly after that, I switched my work laptop from an IBM Notebook to a MacBook Pro and improved my productivity so much. And a few days ago, after the house’s PC was about to completely die and required to much administration, I decided to replace it with a Mac.

So, here it is, a new Mac Mini connected to a Logitech cordless Wave keyboard mouse combo and a ViewSonic 19″ LCD. What a great way to start 2009.

Do you know these house organizer services you hire to come to your house and organize stuff? Well, one of the best things that often happen when they organize your house & closets are the forgotten photos and other items they are able to find.  Things that you know are somewhere in the house but you have no clue where exactly.

Well, Xoopit is the same but for your Gmail (as long as you use Firefox). It is a great inbox search utility that makes it easy to find attachments (photos, videos) and browse through them inside Gmail.

You should give it a try.

I am big fan of Babylon and have been using this utility extensively. It is much more than a translation tool for me. It is the ultimate reference utility. I use various topical glossaries (technology, finance, sports), dictionaries, thesauruses and it is among the top 5 software I use most every day (only email, browser & IM/Skype are ahead of it).

But since switching to a Mac I had to find all kinds of workarounds that allowed me to keep using Babylon. Such as copy and paste terms from Mac applications into Babylon for Windows (I have a Virtual Machine on my Mac). But the experience was not the same.

Earlier today, and just by coincidence, I discovered that Babylon has finally released its version for the Mac. The Mac version costs exactly like the Window version ($89) so there is no "Apple Tax" in this case.

BTW, I wonder how this piece of news was not published on Mac/Apple related blogs and sites.

You can buy Babylon for Mac here.