Andrew Machado

Well you are probably not alone. ATT has officially announced that they have begn reducing coverage for Edge/2G customers and increasing the reach of 3G. ATT’s reasoning is obvious they want people to upgrade to a newer phone so they can also pay the extra $10 a month in data fees.

I was wondering how much this will effect people so I asked my friend Dan Twombly about how his reception has been. He replied “That explains why my phone has been sucking lately
I’ve been losing signal all over the place and the net has slowed even further it’s almost unusable.”

ATT I thought you were supposed to be more bars…everywhere.

Intel yesterday announced a new cheaper quad core processor for laptops. This chip along with a more expensive version round out a their quad core offerings for notebooks. Oddly the rumor mill is starting to hint that the MacBook Pro is going to adopt a quad core processor. Personally I think this is wrong…even with Snow Leopard coming soon.

Currently Quad Core Processors for laptops are topping out at 2.53 ghz, which is really hard to communicate to a professional that hey we took away MHZ, but we are giving you two extra processors that probably wont be used unless you have your laptop plugged into a wall.

The power drain is also greater on the Quad Core by quite a hefty margin. I believe its nearly 100% more of a power drain than the 35 mw power burn of the current chips in the MacBook Pro. The Quad cores that are currently available will most likely be used in the iMac because it can afford to use a higher wattage chip since it does not run on a battery or is enclosed in such a small space.

There has been lot of dicussion today about the possibility of Apple building its own media server software and hardware. I think people need to slow down a little bit with thoughts that this is close to launching. First off at this point Apple has the software pieces in place with Front Row coming on every mac and Time Machine allowing users to back up their valuable music, media and other files. However in terms of allowing users to remotely access this content they are not there except when it comes to media streaming and right now that is limited to you being on the same network.

Some initial technical issues I see. The XML file on my iTunes library currently is over 15 megabytes in size. This file keeps track of all my songs and movies, their preferences and meta data information. How in the heck is Apple going to make that file small enough to be able to be transferred over wireless devices like a 3G iPhone?

My prediction here is that Front Row will continue to expand into more of a media hub adding the ability to be controlled from your iPhone, supporting more formats, etc. Apple likes to be able to control what goes on the iPhone and by having it link only to iTunes they are doing that. Opening up wireless streaming of files to the iPhone puts a real hit on the 3G network as well as presents a whole wealth of new problems.

Joel Comm maker of the iPhone App iFart has been blogging about the progress of his application hitting #1 on iTunes.
Detailed below are the sales figures he’s seeing and the position on the store’s best selling apps section. There really is some money to be made on applications built for the iPhone…just ask Joel.

12/19 - 3117 units - #9 overall, #2 entertainment
12/20 - 5497 units, - #4 overall, #2 entertainment
12/21 - 9760 units - #2 overall, #1 entertainment
12/22 - 13274 units - #1 overall

In the last four days alone Joel has seen his application iFart generate $33,331.52 in revenue. Subtracting Apple’s cut of 30% still leaves Joel with $21,932.06 in his pocket. Congrats Joel…now pull my finger.

I recently discovered the site Life Line Screenings.  For as little as $139 you can get yourself checked for the following:

1. Stroke / Carotid artery
2. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm
3. Peripheral Arterial Disease
4. Osteoporosis
5. Complete Lipid Panel blood test*
6. Glucose blood test*

Facebook Connect has really started to take off. You can see it integrated on TechCrunch, City Search and Yelp. My question is does offering something like Open ID or Facebook Connect up use of your site enough that it offsets potentially not getting that user to create a dedicated account?

I get it for blogs and for sharing information directly to your Facebook profile, but for websites that want to grow their user base with unique accounts this seems like suicide. Now it is not all bad, the idea of my website receiving a ton of traffic from Facebook users seems promising, but are those users who you would want visiting your site. Seems like most of them would come in and leave quickly after digesting the comment or shared story.

My two cents is Facebook Connect is the idea is great. The opportunities for traffic are there for small publishers and bigger websites, but does the consumer really want their newsfeed on Facebook dominated by the fact I posted on Tech Crunch?

The latest rumor on the internet is Little Big Planet is getting 4 downloadable costumes themed around Street Fighter I,II, III and IV.

The Downloadable Costumes will be Chung-Li, Guile, Zangief and RYU. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to pay $1.99 to have a RYU downloadable costume for Little Big Planet.

As I mentioned previously

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is now shipping to retailers just in time for Black Friday. Go down to your local store and pick up this 22 megapixel monster that takes 1080p video.

Just warn your wife that she is going to show up in HD….

Sony launches their new holiday campaign this weekend.  Here is an early sneak peak at the commercial.