April 2005 Archives

Here it comes, folks! Apple has announced the release date for Mac OSX 10.4 - known as Tiger. 
On April 29th, we'll have access to a seemingly powerful operating system. I guess we'll find out for sure when it's installed on our machines.  Along with it comes over 200 new features, the most highly-anticipated being Safari's built-in RSS aggregation, Dashboard (little scripted widgets that float on your screen and do small, discrete tasks.  Think UNIX command-line tools but for Mac) and Automator.

Tiger will also have new image handling, with advanced graphics capabilities built-in to the operating system and offloaded to the graphics card. I expect this will further enhance the perceived responsiveness of older hardware, but that remains to be seen.

I'll post  further review information once I get my copy- Tiger is on pre-order at Amazon for $35 off!  Two copies would therefore be less than the Family Pack at $200, for those of us who have a desktop and a laptop only, this is a better deal than $200 for 5 licenses, 3 of which we won't be using.

After seeing these links all over the place, I finally decided to jump in. Gratis Internet is becoming famous as the company that really does give stuff away. Free iPods, free Playstation Portables, and even Mac Mini computers! Well, I could stand an upgrade, and I was curious about exactly how their promotion system works (being a web marketer myself) so I signed up.  It was insanely simple- complete an offer and refer some friends.

Normally, the "complete an offer" bit turns me off immediately, but one of the offers was for Blockbuster Online and I had wanted to join either Blocikbuster or Netflix.  So basically, there's no loss involved here.  I completed my offer, and have checked back after a while with FreeMiniMacs.com and they had acknowledged my completion!  Their tracking of these offers really does seem to work and appears to be cookie-based at least in part.

I've been watching movies relentlessly, the most recent being "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle", which was very funny... also viewed were some gems like "A Day Without A Mexican" and "I Heart Huckabees".

As far as I'm concerned, Blockbuster was pretty much worth it alone- it would be extra nice if a few people would sign up. Basically my approach here will be semi-passive. People have been asking me about Blockbuster Online vs. Netflix, so in the process of talking up Blockbuster I can mention how I signed up and ask if they can help a brother out. So, will you?