Welcome To Newton: The Original 1993 Welcome Video...

Obama Does Brando from The Godfather...

The President & The Godfather

President Obama's Plan For Detroit...

President Obama's Plan to Expand Broadband...

Top 25 Mullets of all Time...

This is funny!!! Click here to read the "25 Top Mullets of all Time."

New Star Trek Trailers

I am not a Trekky, but when I was a kid, I loved watching Start Trek with Willaim Shatner as Captian Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. I was not crazy about any of the Star Trek movies, but this next one looks like it might be amazing.

It takes place before on the time-scale, prior to the original TV series, so we get to learn about how the original characters were formed. It is really a prequel. To watch the amazing trailers click here. I recommend watching the 720p or 1080p if you computer can handle it. 

That Girl Could Sing...

Tower Records is Gone in San Francisco at Bay & Columbus

Tower Records closed about a year ago and now its SFGreenClean. In the late 1950s it was a Nash Dealerhip.

A Cat Riding a Roomba Vacuum Robot...Funny...

Canon 5D SLR 1080P Video is Just Amazing...

It is shocking how great the 1080p video is from the new Canon 5D SLR camera. This is essentially the best still camera ever made, and it can shoot amazing video like this:

Tokyo Reality (Canon 5D Mark II) Final
by lejapon

To watch the video in true HD click the title underneath named Tokyo Reality

President Obama's Speech.Yes we can.

I must say that I have never seen so many people smile so much.

I am in absolute awe and could not be prouder of our President elect, Barack Obama.

This is another one of the best speeches I have ever heard in my life.

Enjoy.

Jesse Jackson Crying...

This just says it all...

New Windows 7 Taskbar Innovation...

Even though I prefer Macs, I must admit the new Windows Taskbar design for Windows 7 is truly innovative:

Man and Machine: Controlling A Computer with Your Brain on 60 Minutes...

60 Minutes has always been my favorite TV Show and this episode on new technology that allows people to control a computer with their brain is amazing: 

President Obama on the future of Technology...

President Obama's Speech at the Democratic National Convention–8 Is Enough...

America, it is time to turn the page...

In my mind Senator Barack Oboma is like JFK and MLK mixed into one man. He has JFK's charisma, brains, big smile and is trim like JFK. He has Martin Luther Kings oration skills and brilliance.

Jay Leno Checks Out the 2009 Austin Martin DBS...

Where The Wild Things Are...

Senator John McCain looks like he is having a "Where The Wild Things Are" moment after completing the third presidential debate against Senator Barack Obama.

Where The Wild Things Are

103 inch Drop Down Plasma on Spinning, Hiding Elevator...

This is really cool but it does not seem to be a 103 plasma to me because it appears as if it is a 4x3 aspect ratio. Most plasma TVs have a 16x9 aspect ratio. Still very, very cool and innovative design...

Steve Jobs Speech at Stanford University...

Mac Mini Review

I originally wrote this review on the Mac Mini in April of 2006 on my old blog. I put it up again here because so many of my friends have mentioned recently that they want to buy a Mac Mini. You can save $30 off and get free shipping by purchasing it from the Amazon Affiliate link below:

The Apple Mac Mini is the coolest desktop computer ever made. The Mac Mini is definitely the shape of things to come. Basically Apple took a laptop, removed the screen and then took the bottom part and made it half as wide and deep, and twice as tall.

Before I go into detail about features, let's take a look at its tremendous size benefits over a standard PC tower. Keep in mind, that even thought the Mac Mini comes standard with the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system, it can also run Microsoft Windows XP at full speed.

In the image above you see the Mac Mini in juxtaposition to a CD. Essentially the Mac Mini is only as tall as 5 CD Jewel cases stacked on top of each other!!! It measures 6.5 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep by 2 inches tall.

I have to ask why anybody in their right mind would want to have a tower computer as pictured above when they could have a Mac Mini. I don't understand why anybody makes tower computers anymore? The mini is so small—it is amazing. It is also very, very quiet.

Just to make it clear, despite its diminutive size, the Mac Mini is a full-fledged, full-powered computer. The Mini comes in two versions but I would not recommend buying the more expensive one because you are paying two hundred more dollars for a slightly faster processor and slightly larger hard drive. In my opinion the more expensive model is a complete waste of money.

The Mac Mini has everything you could want built in, as you can see in the image above. It comes standard with Bluetooth and Wifi. It also comes standard with a remote control and a really cool Apple program named Front Row.

The Mac Mini as a Media Center

Front Row is a really cool user interface that is driven by remote control. Typically people sit in front of their computer with their eyes between 2 and 3 feet from the screen. The challenge is if you want to sit on the other side of the room, say 8 to 15 feet away from the screen, you can't see the screen. This is where Front Row comes in. Front Row has a user interface that is controlled with the remote and makes text super large, and thus really easy to read from across the room.

This opens up a whole new world of options for hooking up a Mac Mini to a TV, large LCD or plasma TV. With Front Row you can play slide shows from iPhoto, listen to music from iTunes, watch DVDs, and watch video that you took with your camcorder and stored on your computer or video that you download from the internet or iTunes music store.

The image above shows the Mac Mini hooked up to a Sony Bravia 40inch LCD TV. This ability really makes the Mac Mini a convergent product because the Mac Mini has a built in high quality progressive scan DVD player, which supports Dolby 5.1 output. Just hook up the Mac Mini to your home stereo system and you have a world class home theater—and don't forget the included remote controls the DVD player as well.

Also if you hook up the Mac Mini to a high definition LCD or Plasma you can watch slide shows in HD, which really looks stunning. If you can afford it, the ideal setup is to attach the Mac Mini to a 1080p LCD TV. Doing so gives you close to the equivalent of a 23 or 24 inch computer monitor–but much larger.

The Mac Mini also does Windows

But the fun does not stop there. The Newest Mac Mini with Intel processors can now run the Microsoft Windows XP operating system using Apple BootCamp. As a matter of fact, the Mac Mini seems to run XP better than most PCs.

If you want to run both Apple OS X and Windows XP at the same time you can do that as well with a $49 program named Parallels or a program named VMware Fusion. I would recommend that if you are serious about running both OSs in tanden you upgrade the RAM on the Mac Mini.

When you buy a Mac Mini it does not come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse, which in my mind is pretty cool. This way if you currently have an old Mac or PC, you simply swap out the old computer with a Mac Mini. No need to have to pay extra for a new keyboard, mouse and monitor.

You can have the Apple Mac Mini delivered to your home or office by just clicking the Amazon affiliate link below:

Jimmy Kimmel Explains what Miss Teen South Carolina said...

Around the world...

Remember when you were a kid on a swing and you wondered if you could get enough momentum if you could loop around!?!

If I were Steve Jobs...

I love Apple but there are some things I would really like to see improved so I thought I would create a list:

iPhone

I believe the following are all GLARING OMMISIONS from the iphone and I find their absence to be highly unacceptable. C'mon Apple!!!:

• Stereo Bluetooth headphones for the iPhone. I can't believe Apple has kept this feature turned off. I think they do this because they want everybody to look like fashion victims wandering around with their trademark white apple headphones dangling. When I work out the white cable is always in the way.

• Cut and Paste.

• Syncing your to-do and notes.

• Adobe Flash support.

• Setup the external speaker sound on the iPhone to play in stereo. I would achieve this by utilizing the phone receiver speaker located a the top of the iPhone as the left Stereo speaker. This way, the left channel sound would come out the top speaker and the right channel sound would come out the bottom speaker. This would make the iPhone sound great when using the external speakers for music or video playback. Adding this feature would also make it twice as loud.

• Replace the super lame 2 MegaPixel camera!!! C'mon Steve, why do you make me carry around a point and shoot just to get decent shots. The unimproved camera in the iPhone takes lousy shots. It needs to be at least 3.2 Mega Pixels, needs much better low light performance and should also shoot video. Also, what is up with the super-slow shutter lag??? Samsung currently offers an 8 Mega Pixel camera on their phone, so we know it is possible. (By the way, I would be happy to pay an extra $100 for a better camera.)

• Voice Recorder: I would also add a voice recorder application to the iPhone.

• Add Volume Stops: The external volume switch on the left side of the iPhone does not have enough volume stops when adjusting the volume when playing music. In other words, when I am using my iPhone as an iPod, often times a song is too low and if I hit the volume up button just one time, it is too loud. If there are 10 stops right now there should be 20.

• Spotlight Search: I would add a universal Spotlight search to the iphone. The Palm Treo has had this feature forever!!! 

• Address Book Search: I would also add a feature to the find feature in the contacts application on the iPhone so that when you type your search query it does a live search exactly the way it works in the Apple Address Book application on the desktop. I would also add this feature to the Mobile Me version of the address book.

Let me be specific. In the Apple Address Book application for the desktop, if I put the word "bagel" in the notes field for your contact and then I type in "bagel" in the search field in the upper right hand corner of the application, it will isolate your contact. If I do this on an iPhone or on Mobile Me it won't find it. Laaaaame!!!!!!!

• Book Reader. This is a killer missing application. I think Apple should purchase the Stanza book and PDF reader or build there own.

• Safari search. You should be able to search in Safari the same way you do on the Mac.

• Dictionary

How apple can make such an amazing phone and leave out these basic features is beyond me!!!

New Macs

• 30 inch iMac, just like the 20 and 24 inch iMacs but with the 2560 x 1600 native resolution.

• Create a 40 inch LCD with the same pixels per inch as the 30 inch.

• Apple LCD TV sets. In other words, I would make a 42, 50, and 65 inch Apple LCD TV with OS 10.5 Leopard built into it. I would make the native resolution at least 1920 x 1080 on all of these.

• Get rid of the white keys on the desktop keyboard and replace them with black keys. White is the worse color keys could be and they always look dirty–just like a white cat.

The future of TV & Computers: The video wall...

The 150 inch Panasonic Plasma TV

I am a designer and I have always been a futurist. When I worked for SAP, my title was Imagineer because my job was to design the future. Anybody close to me has heard me talking about how in the future we will have video walls in our homes.

Today, Panasonic has taken us one step further to that vision with the 150 inch Panasonic Plasma. You can learn all about this amazing new technology by visiting my favorite web site, Gizmodo.com and reading the story by clicking here.

The Way We Were...

Chris Rock–Funny and True...

U.S. Navy "Batman Boat"

The U.S. Navy has created this stealth "Batman Boat" which they also use for chasing drug dealers. Amazing design!!!

Seinfeld To Save Microsoft!?!

Everybody seems confused about the new Microsoft commercials featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The commercials are funny and seem pointless, but there is a brilliant repositioning strategy behind them.
Microsoft is countering Apples "I am Mac" and "I am a PC" adds that depict Bill Gates as an overweight, super-pale nerd who is always wearing a disheveled suit, with aviator prescription clear lenses and is always  confused and deceptive. The Mac guy is depicted as a smart-ass who always knows better.
In Microsoft's adds, it appears Bill Gates lost a bunch of weight and it positions him as an ultra-successful business man, who is likable and funny and counters the character in the Apple adds who is really pale and always wears a suit.  Instead, the Real Bill Gates never wears a suit and is not pale. His wardrobe is kind of hip and cool, and his glasses are small and cool. Bill Gates is depicted as a much more laid back fun-loving character. Jerry Seinfeld who is the Mac, seems to genuinely like Bill Gates and seems to be very similar to him, as apposed to the Apple ads that are full of contrast.
The Apple adds make you laugh, and by hiring Jerry Seinfeld, who is one of the most brilliant comedians that ever lived, the Microsoft adds make you laugh even more. A little late, but very effective.
Of course, the supreme irony in this is that on Seinfeld's TV show he only and always had Apple Macs.

Funny...

Jake's Quote of the Day...

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.  —William Feather

Eddy Murphy Mobile...

Yes this is real. No, you are not hallucinating...

Corvette Centennial Design Concept From Upcoming Transformer 2 Movie...

Definitely interesting design concept...

Jake's Quote of the Day

Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function. —John Pfeiffer

Lexus LS 460 All Wheel Drive Introduced...

The best car ever designed and manufactured just got much better with the introduction of all wheel drive for the upcoming 2009 model year.

Twenty years ago, in 1989, Lexus significantly raised the bar of automotive quality when they introduced the Lexus LS 400. Lexus has held true to their slogan of "The Passionate Pursuit of Perfection" and this is personified with the introduction of the all new 2009 Lexus LS 460 AWD.

Lexus is #1 for 14th Consecutive Year in Vehicle Dependability Study...

For the 14th consecutive year in row, J.D. Power and Associates rated the Lexus Automotive brand #1 in vehicle dependability. Click on image below for detail:

Funny and True...

Dance...Cool Video...

Apple's Upcoming Mac Operating System 10.6 Known as Snow Leopard.

Eleven years ago, after Steve Jobs came back to run Apple, he proclaimed it was time to completely dismantle Apple's then System 9 Operating System and rebuild and redesign from scratch. Apple successfully did so and Apple's Operating System 10 was released and strategically rebranded as OS X. "X" being the Roman numeral for 10.

Upon introducing OS X, Apple decided they would try to come out with a new and improved version every year and a half or so, and to make things even cooler they would name each version after a big cool cat, and thus they decided to name their first version 10.0 as Cheetah. Next was 10.1 as Puma; 10.2 as Jaguar; 10.3 as Panther; 10.4 as Tiger and 10.5 as Leopard, which is the name of the current Apple Macintosh Operating System.

At the Apple World Wide Developers conference in June of 2008, Steve Jobs said Apple's next operating system, 10.6 would be named Snow Leopard. Nice name, but what shocked all the Apple developers, including myself, was he said they would be adding no new features and instead they would essentially be taking OS X apart and putting it back together again.

In my opinion as a developer and designer, this is the most amazingly radical, and intelligent thing Apple could do–but what exactly does this mean?

When Apple originally built OS X, it only ran on the Motorola Power PC platform, which was fairly limited. A few years ago, Apple announced that for the first time in their history, they were switching their entire architecture to run on Intel chips.

Doing so was very challenging, and because Apple did not want to upset customers, they devised a strategy, whereby any new Apple software written would run successfully on both microprocessors, but this came at a cost–a rather high cost. In making the software so it could run on both systems, know as a "Universal Binary" Apple had to make compromises. Apple created a technology they dubbed "Rosetta" that allowed Motorola code to run in emulation mode, and this tended to slow things down.

As Apple moved forward with Intel something came along to skew  Moore's Law. Moore's Law argued microchips would double their speed every year or so and the challenge Intel was running into was the chips were running way too hot and cost too much to produce, but they came up with a brilliant idea, and that was to create what is known as dual and quad core microprocessors.

The formal name of Intel's new chips that parallel process are, Intel Core 2 Duo and they have very quickly become ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive.

Essentially you double or quadruple the speed by adding more microprocessors which is called parallel processing. The challenge with parallel processing is that OS X was originally architected around a single core architecture. All Apple computers sold today have at least 2 cores, and the Mac Pro comes standard with 8 cores.

The greatest challenge is the current operating system can't take very good advantage of the multiple cores, so Apple has decided once again to go back the drawing board, and completely dismantle OSX, and put it back together from scratch. Before I go into detail, I want to commend Apple for taking this ultra-profound and incredibly intelligent approach.

In rebuilding OSX, another technology came along beside multi-core Central Processing Units (CPU) which is known as multiple GPU, which stands for Graphics Processing Unit, which is as revolutionary as multiple core technology. 

In the old days, the microprocessor would complete the computations for the video, then computers started getting cards dedicated just to graphics known as graphics cards.

Today graphics cards, are incorporating multiple processor GPUs which are also starting to take advantage of multiple processor technology.

This new architecture that optimizes GPU computing and parallel processing is know as Open CL, which provides significant tools for developers to write and optimize code that can take complete advantage of the next generation multi-core graphics cards as well as multiple core processors, on the main microprocessor.

Essentially, Apple is optimizing their architecture to take complete advantage of parallel processing, and the net results of this will be absolutely astounding!!!

We will see a radical increase in speed and stability while seeing a decrease in heat output and energy consumption. As a matter of fact, Apple will be shrinking the footprint of their Operating System by 2/3. That is not a typo. They will be decreasing the size by close to 70% and one of the ways to do this is to throw out all the legacy code for Power PC Architecture, meaning that Snow Leopard 10.6 will likely not run on older legacy Power PC machines.

At WWDC, Apples annual World Wide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs announced there would be no more features added to 10.6, but as the OS is trimmed by up to 70%, so will all of the Apple applications, including Mail, Address book, Safari browser, iPhoto, Finder–virtually no application or process will be untouched by this overhaul.

By making everything so efficient, this will significantly increase battery life on portables, while significantly decreasing power usage on desktop machines. Also, laptops should run much, much cooler.

Another huge benefactor are the new state of the art solid-state hard drives that are starting to slowly creep into laptops. Solid state hard drives show so much potential because there are no moving parts, but they are very expensive and small. 

Apple realizes that prices will creep down, and size will grow, but they figure it is smart to optimize in both directions, which in my estimation is brilliant engineering. Future desktops will also likely benefit from solid state drives. It is likely at some point in the not so distant future all hard drives will be replaced with solid-state drives.

Microsoft strangely has only ever done the exact opposite of Apple, which is called writing "Bloat code."  

Bill Gates once reasoned that since the processors double in computing power every year to year and a half, that Microsoft did not have to worry about optimizing their code. Gates reasoned the extra computing power would just eat through the code faster, thus Microsoft ended up with the worlds largest piece of Swiss Cheese.

This ultra-lazy and inelegant solution put forth by Gates has resulted in a nightmare for Microsoft. As a matter of fact, Microsoft's number one strategic partner, Intel recently announced they would not upgrade ANY of their own computers to Microsoft's over a year old and latest operating system known as Vista.

No wonder Bill Gates recently retired. Essentially Bill Gates parachuted out with a Ton of cash. Microsoft has not been innovating for a long, long time and has been resting on their laurels for an equally long time. 

Microsoft is a giant and has been quietly imploding in slow motion. So slow in fact that most people don't notice the implosion–but I always have.

The future is looking very bright for Apple and I take my hat off to them. Apple is continuing to take the road less traveled, while Microsoft continues to take the path of least resistatnce, which gets you just that–the least.

Apples shrewd and adroit long-term strategy is paying off in spades!!! Snow Leopards are beautiful creatures and it looks like Apple's Snow Leopard will be as well.

Update: Snow Leopard will be 64Bit. To read a fascinating article that shares all the details click here.

Jake's Quote of the Day: Take the time do it right...

It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

iPhone 3G Will It Blend...

My old pal, Tom Dickson of "Will It Blend" fame just blended his new 3G iPhone.  I came up with the name for Blendtec and completed the Strategic Brand Architecture for the Blendtec brand 10 years ago.

Jake's Quote of the Day: The Power Of Maintaining An Open Mind...

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions. —James Russell Lowell

William Shatner & Leonard Nimoy...

Some things in life are so bad they are good, and I remember when I was a kid watching William Shatner's rendition of Rocketman. For some reason watching these videos are interesting, but more than anything they make me laugh.

Jake's Quote of the Day: New Beginnings...

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed. —Murial Rukeyser, Poet (1913-1980)

Jake's Quote of the Day: Hal Rebenstein on standing out...

Anyone can stand out by looking like an idiot. —Hal Rebenstein

First Official Photos of The Upcoming 2009 BMW 7 Series...

In my mind the three Kings of the Sedan are the Lexus LS, Mercedes S Class and BMW 7 Series. It is rare that any of the three Kings launch an all-new Sedan, and BMW just did.

The new BMW 750i sports a 4.4 liter, 400 horsepower, twin-turbo V8 that does 0-60 in six seconds, which seem a little slow to me. I think it should be doing it in under 5.5 seconds.

BMW will also offer a 12 cylinder version 760i. All models have a new 8 speed transmission that offers smoother shifting and better gas milage.

There is a four-wheel steering option on the 2009 model and in the future there will be an all-wheel drive option.

I think the four-wheel steering option is amazing and I don't understand why nobody offered this in the past. Cars equipped with four-wheel steering handle much better and benefit from a significantly smaller turning radius.

I think the design of the upcoming 2009 7-Series is looking great!!!