Source: frugaldad.com
The Dock is great for my bedside and I don’t have to hunt for 2 different plugs when I am staying in a hotel. Great Birthday gift from Sreema.
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Love the BambooBack from Groove.
Bluelounge - Milo: Micro-suction stand for your smartphone
Bluelounge is currently killing it! Great new product.
“If we don’t want our young people to tear apart our communities then don’t let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.”
— Russell Brand”
— via The Brooks Review
MiniDock, great idea by Bluelounge
Cult of Mac reports
We’ve gotten word from a previously reliable source that Apple is discontinuing the Magic Mouse in favor of the Magic Trackpad. Our retail source has informed us that Magic Mouse inventory is not being replenished for Apple stores, and that Apple is finally phasing out the Magic Mouse.
Its been a while since I have used my Magic Mouse, with Lion you end up needing the Magic Trackpad for all the new gestures. Too bad, Apple were the ones to make the mouse popular.
However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Apple Macintosh, which included an updated version of the original Lisa Mouse.
Time for everyone to get Magic Trackpads if you haven’t already!
UPDATE: Cult of Mac:
Our source in Apple inventory has followed up with us, and it appears that Apple has instead discontinued the Magic Mouse’s old part number in favor for a new one. This move may indicate an update to the Magic Mouse, with the most logical prediction being better integration with advanced gestures in OS X Lion.
Oh well!
Image from This is My Next
The early iPhone 5 mockups indicate that the home button is going to be huge!
I believe that if this new gesture region is in fact coming to the iPhone, it will be used for only one thing: switching between open apps. We can all agree that the current multitasking solution (double clicking the home button and then tapping the respective app) could stand to be improved. A left-to-right swipe would transition to the previously used app, while a right-to-left swipe would move the other way in the app history. This new gesture area would essentially mimic the function of the 4-fingered app switching gesture as seen in the iPad, which is cumbersome to perform on the iPad and nearly impossible to do on the iPhone.
I hope this is true, the 4 finger switching does not work well on the iPhone, the phone is begging to be multi-tasked with!
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My bag is always a mess, I found the perfect organizer.
Another great Kickstarter project, pledged!
Macworld reviews the HP TouchPad
So what I’m saying is, I’m glad that HP finally shipped the TouchPad. If it can get developers engaged in its platform and iron out all the bugs while also growing webOS as a smartphone operating system, it might really have something here. But that’s a story about the future, and about potential. For now, the TouchPad is just another iPad competitor that can’t measure up.
This is really disappointing, I had high hopes for the TouchPad to give some stiff competition to the iPad. All the reviews say the TouchPad is not ready yet.
Gmail blog
Over the years, adding countless features to Gmail has made it an increasingly powerful communication hub, but along the way the interface has also become more cluttered and complex. That’s one of the reasons we’re embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful. This is part of a Google-wide effort to bring you an experience that’s more focused, elastic, and effortless across all of our products.
I must say I love the new design, I am really happy Google is finally spending time and effort to make their products beautiful!
You can preview the themes today by going to Gmail Settings -> Themes, the themes are “Preview” and “Preview”(Dense).
update: Edited quote.
Loads of reactions to google+
Some positive
I thought I’d type up some notes after an evening of using Google’s new social network, Google Plus. This is a really big deal, a super ambitious effort involving scores of engineers over months of near total secrecy. (Though some helpful sources and I scooped the core Circles part of all this three months ago.) The service is really, really well done. Will it be good enough? I have no idea, but I have felt drawn to keep using it all night long.
Overall, I’m impressed by Google+ after day one. Of course, like many, I also had fairly low expectations of anything Google tried to do in the social sphere after Wave and Buzz. Still, I used Google+ for hours and kept coming back. And I have a desire to come back tomorrow. That’s never a bad thing.
and some more skeptical
Products like the one Google just announced are hatched at off-sites at resorts near Monterey or in the Sierra, and were designed to meet the needs of the corporation that created it. A huge scared angry corporation. What little is left of the spark that created it in the first place is now used to being Number One, and wants to feel that again. It’s being created to make that person feel better.
It’s not difficult for a company of Google’s size to make a social network. The challenge is getting enough people to use it, and quickly enough, that the early adopters will stick around after the first few days and start habitually using it. This is an extremely high barrier to entry, even for Google. As with most social phenomena, social-network success tends to happen more organically and unpredictably than anyone is able to artificially create by throwing money at it. Successful social services at this scale also need constant attention, rapid improvements, and nearly flawless product direction — skills that Google hasn’t been able to consistently deliver to many of their products.
Looking at the interactive tour and the introductory videos google+ feels very un-google like in a good way. It looks beautiful has great UI elements. The videos are simple to understand and very well done. I hope they finally create a social product that sticks.
Hope the buzz is still around by the time everyone gets invites!