I can’t wait to get an Apple TV to go with my free iPhone. In case you haven’t heard, Apple TV is the latest gadget from the company that is available now. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ has been reviewing one for about 10 days and loves it. Is he on Apple’s payroll or what? According to Mossberg, the Apple TV runs a variant of OSX, Apple’s operating system found on its desktop and notebook computers. If you’re like me and have music, photos, TV shows and movies from the iTunes music store trapped on your computer(s) then Apple TV is just the thing you need for your spanking new widescreen TV.

Erin and I have to jump hoops and squint at our notebooks when either of us wants to watch the latest episode of LOST or The Office. The Apple TV device would allow us to grab this content off our MacBook and iBook and watch it on the living room TV. Apple TV also allows you to browse photos, share music and even download movie trailers from the comfort of your couch. Up to 5 computers can be connected to the Apple TV wirelessly and, like the iPod, is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, or Mac. One accessory I would definitely buy for this is Apple’s new Airport Extreme wireless router. This baby allows an external hard drive to be connected to act as a wireless storage device for your digital life. When you have 5000 songs and 6000 pictures, the local hard drive tends to get a little cramped. Now I just need to get that widescreen TV, damn…

This is so cool! You probably read my post about Jessica Hagy’s Indexed blog, if not you must check it out. Well, if you’re a Mac user, you can now have her index cards on your Dashboard. How cool is that? One of her generous fans wrote a Dashboard Widget that displays her latest graphs and diagrams. So click here to download the widget automatically.

By the way, I love the new sentence diagram layout she’s been using lately!

Like last week, I gave another presentation for a different class today. The course is called Economics of Technological Change and covers diffusion (adoption) of technology in a given industry and time frame, among other things. My semester project for this class is to examine the diffusion of solar power in the United States. I am looking at the rate of adoption, the impact solar power has had on innovation and R&D in the industry, effects on economic growth, effects of subsidies, impact on the environment, as well as how solar power has fared with other sources of renewable energy in terms of adoption rate.

The presentation went well considering we were limited to just 5 minutes. There are 48 students in the class so we had to be brief. As I have mentioned earlier, it seems to be a trend in Ireland, or at least at NUI Galway, to present research while in progress, long before the paper is due. Last semester I was hesitant about this procedure, but I have grown to like it and have quickly realized the benefits. For example, the professor has a chance to guide your research and offer suggestions. Dimitri, my instructor, seemed impressed by my topic but cautioned that there is enough material on solar energy diffusion to complete a PhD program. He suggested ways of focusing the research by looking at data for just the past 10 years within the commercial sector, for example. It’s good to air thoughts in front of a group and bounce ideas off others to enhance the focus and I’m much more excited about my project now.

This week, I was able to use Apple Keynote properly on my own notebook and it worked out nicely making for a smooth presentation. I must admit, I felt a little like Nobel Prize nominee Al Gore during An Inconvenient Truth. [grin] I enjoyed speaking in front of the class, it felt very comfortable. I even received some compliments about the slide presentation, thanks to Apple Keynote. Everyone else had the same boring PowerPoint theme, except one student that distributed an outline.

So far, two projects started and another one starting next week with a group of three of us. The semester is really heating up, no pun intended, but I will keep chugging away on the blog posts as well. I welcome your comments and suggestions about my project below.

Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory Credit–Robb Williamson

How many times have you been out and about town, saw or heard something cool and wanted to tell everyone about it? I just started using twitter, it’s really cool. It’s a text message service where you can “follow” people and receive their texts as they send them to twitter. The service also posts your text messages to your profile page where you can even have them displayed on the public timeline. There could be loads of practical uses exploited here. For instance, I added topgold, of award-winning blog IrishEyes, as a friend and he just said this morning his washing machine can be setup on twitter to text him when the cycle is finished, how cool!

This is such a great way to blog on the run and speak your mind with a virtual diary. My twitter name is [jamesbritton] in case anyone wants to “listen” in on my thoughts. You can also use twitter with IM services and even Google Talk. This is really helpful if you don’t want to rack up the text msg charges. From Ireland twitter uses a UK number, so with Meteor I’m paying €0.12 per text and gotta be careful I don’t lose my shirt in topup charges. Watch out, it’s addictive! C U L8R…

Check it out, you can get almost any Threadless t-shirt for just 10 bucks until next Monday, March 12. I’ve been a huge fan of Threadless for over a year now and I’ve amassed quite a collection. Threadless, for those that don’t know, is a relatively new t-shirt company that has embraced the social web.

The way it works is anyone can submit a t-shirt design for voting within the Threadless community. Once the votes are tallied, Threadless prints a limited number of the shirts that way everyone and their brother doesn’t end up with the same cool shirt, making said shirt ultra-hip and limited edition. To top that, the designer is rewarded with fame and fortune in the amount of $2000 in cash and store credits. Threadless has taken outsourcing of design to a new level by democratizing artwork.

Here’s my favorite from the latest batch:

They’ve got some clever new ones and a cool new video montage on the main page so check it out and get a piece of wearable art for just 10 bucks!

I presented my research to the other Higher Diploma students yesterday and it was well received. To prepare for my presentation. I used Apple’s Keynote, part of the iWork ‘06 office package. I must say I was very impressed how easy it was to put together a professional presentation. It was a joy to use as compared to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. As with most Apple products, Keynote was very intuitive and has several built in templates to choose from based on your audience. You can make it look fun or professional, or somewhere in between. The slide transition effects Apple borrowed from OS X are very impressive, but my favorite effect is the reflective picture. If you use iTunes, you know what I’m talking about…how the album artwork appears to be resting on a glossy black table with its reflection in front. It is very easy to add a tables, graphs, pictures, music, videos and even websites.

The presentation view is pretty slick as well. It allows you to see a clock, your elapsed time and your notes on your MacBook, while your audience can only see the appropriate slide. The software is well worth it just for Keynote, but it also includes Pages, Apple’s meager attempt at a word processor. I anticipate the next iteration of iWork (perhaps ‘07?) should have more advanced spreadsheet functions and Apple users may be able to dump Microsoft once and for all. Until then, I still use Excel as well as OpenOffice.org for the word processor and spreadsheet functions.

The downside to my presentation was partly due to Apple’s decision to make a different display adapter for the MacBook than what was used on the iBook G4. When I got to the presentation room, I had my old iBook VGA adapter and to my shock and horror, when I plugged in the cord to my MacBook, it did not fit. Damn you, Apple. That’s like making a new iPod that doesn’t function with all of the old accessories and cables. Oh wait, they did that with the new Shuffle as well. Fortunately, Keynote has the ability to export to PowerPoint, so I just dumped that file on a USB key and used the instructor’s notebook for the presentation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the snazzy features of Keynote.

I digress. Despite these problems the presentation went on without any problems. I outlined my paper and proposed direction, got some great feedback from my fellow students and instructors. The idea of presenting a paper while you are working on it is very new to me as an American student. I did something similar last semester and I had my doubts about this practice, but once I presented my topic in front of my peers, I was sold on the idea. By presenting the research during the research, I am able to look at my topic in a whole new light and focus on areas that may not have been entirely obvious. For example, my instructor suggested that I not only look at the economic impact of gasoline taxes, but to also look at the political discourse. Furthermore, he suggested separating these into a few sections and examining opposing views. The class feedback was useful and I also learned a valuable lesson to not trust adapters!

I spend a good deal of time on flickr, but wow, someone has loads of time on their hands! Flickr user el frijole has taken the time to break down the iPhone ad shown during the Oscars Sunday night frame by frame in order to identify from which movies or TV shows each character hails. It’s fun to look through the slideshow and relive some great moments from the big and small screen. The Dude from The Big Lebowski is my favorite. Can I get a White Russian please?

If you haven’t watched the ad yet, it’s brilliant marketing that perpetuates the “must-have” brand of the iPod.

While Al Gore was busy preparing his acceptance speech, Apple aired this commercial last night during the Oscars. Watch the video and come back, please?.

Do I still have your attention or were you completely distracted like I was for a few moments? What a great teaser! I’m so in love with this phone. First unveiled this year at Macworld Expo in January, the iPhone has left me and about a million other gadget geeks salivating ever since. Apple’s marketing machine has done it again with a clever, memorable commercial that, like any good movie trailer, captures your attention, plays on your emotions and fills you with anticipation for the release date.

The iPhone, which is about the same dimensions as a full size iPod, features an innovative touch-sensitive screen that fills the entire surface. There is only one physical button on the device, all other input comes by way of touching the icons on the screen. This interface allows for endless possiblities such as a full-blown web browser, contacts, organizer, music, games and movies. Speaking of movies, the other killer feature is the ability to rotate the phone 90 degrees and watch movies or music videos in widescreen format, how cool is that? The phone contains a sensor that is smart enough to detect the orientation and automatically switch to widescreen or normal modes. In wide-mode, album art will appear as covers on a CD rack, just as in the latest version of iTunes. Two models of the phone will be released; a 4 GB capacity model for $499 USD and a 5 GB capacity model for $599 USD. These prices will also require a 2 year contract with AT&T Wireless (formerly Cingular). It remains to be seen what the prices and contract terms will be elsewhere.

The iPhone is due to be released this June in the US and 4th quarter 2007 for most of the rest of the world. Damn, I don’t think I can wait until the fall. Who do you think the provider will be in Ireland/UK: O2? 3? Vodafone? My guess is O2 since their stores already feature several Apple products.

Now that the other billion people watching the Oscars know about the iPhone, you had better hold off upgrading your mobile phone plan and get in the queue behind me for one.

On a related note, check out my favorite track on the soundtrack from the Oscar winning film, Little Miss Sunshine.

Chicago - Sufjan Stevens - Little Miss Sunshine

I apologize to those who were not able to access the blog this weekend. DreamHost, my provider, was down for a bit due to an unexpected emergency power repair required for one of their data centers. Fortunately this sort of thing does not happen often and they have a special site to keep customers updated on events and outages.

All this aside, I have been very pleased with the service DreamHost povides and you can’t beat their features for the money. They offer over 160 GB of storage for a Level 1 account, and an amazing 1.7 TB of monthly bandwidth. For you newbies, that’s 1700 GB of monthly transfers, i.e. a hell of a lot of traffic! WordPress is literally a one-click install with DreamHost and they are always increasing storage and bandwidth limits.

Thank you for your patience during this brief outage. You can support me and this blog by joining DreamHost today for as little as $7.95 per month and right now that includes a free domain name registration and unlimited domain name hosting. Or, feel free to donate if you already have a hosting plan!

Have a great week, and now for the flood of posts I have been meaning to post this weekend…

You may have heard the catchphrase “Web 2.0″ before, but what is it exactly? I don’t believe anyone knows for sure, but this 5 minute video from the Digital Ethnography group is about the best explanation I’ve seen.

Blogging has allowed me to express myself in a unique way to people all over the world in a relatively easy way. I am amazed to see some of the places my readers come from such as Mumbai, Sydney, or Juneau, Alaska. I am still pinpointing a focus for this blog, but on the other hand does it really need a specific focus? In the meantime here’s where I’m at…

My intent with this blog is to connect readers with similar interests to me such as Ireland, economics, environmental policy, to name a few, and create a community with an active dialog of sharing and learning while having a good time. With “Web 2.0″ design elements/features, the world is quickly shrinking place that is connecting people and ideas in amazing new ways. To me, this was the original spirit of the world wide web.

Watch the clip and tell me your thoughts in the comments section after the video…