Davis Farris

I was surfing around on the internet as I occasionally do and I found this pretty cool site called Wordle.  I had to give it a try.  You can paste in any text you would like, enter the url to a blog that has an RSS feed and you can even type in someone's delicious account name and use their tags.  You can edit the color scheme and even the layout of the final result.  Here are a few examples.

The first one was created when I entered my blog's url.  

For this next one I typed in TUAW's url.

It sure is amazing what you can find on the internet. Check Wordle.net out here.

As many of my friends know, I want to make a keytar.  I am very inspired by music right now and would love to have a keytar.  The problem is, the AX-7 is going for $1,500 on eBay.  That is why I have to make one.  Here is a little sample of what I could do if I had this amazing piece of equipment.  If you could donate one, I would be very grateful.  Just comment back or contact me via the contact page and I would love to get in touch with you.

Most tech people have heard about the new AT&T wifi at Statbucks. I was very excited about this. I stopped going to Starbucks because if I wanted to use the Internet I would have to pay $10. Yea, not worth it.
The otherday I was in McDonald's drive-thru and I decided to get on my iPhone as they were taking a while. And what do you know, I left my battery eating wifi on. I was excited to see that McDonald's had the free AT&T wifi. Hopefully this means that more than just McDonald's and Starbucks have this service.

For you iphone users:
To log on you are directed to a special page that you enter your 10 digit phone number. You are then sent a text messages (no charges apply for that text) with a link to the Internet.

For all you non-iPhone users:
Good luck. I have not tried this with anything other than my iPhone. If you have please comment back on the process.

After moving into my dorm room at Murray State University I knew right away that I was going to be cramped for space. There was no possible way to fit all of my computer hardware on the tiny 28"x22" desk. I have a 17" monitor, my MacBook, my speakers, my 2 external hard drives, my mighty mouse and mouse pad and my keyboard (I decided to leave out the printer). If you can imagine the little 4 sq. ft I have filled up fast.

I was searching for a way to free up some space on my desk but couldn't find a price friendly option that I actually liked. Every time I went to Griffin's site their product, the Elevator, was backordered. I thought either the Elevator wasn't very good and they were going to discontinue it or the Elevator was great and they didn't have enough supply for demand. About 4 weeks ago I was on their site looking at some new products I heard about and guess what was in stock. You guessed it! The Elevator. I got it right away. I decided to review it on it's quality, it's value, and it's features.

Quality

The frame is made of brushed aluminum and plastic. Both the aluminum and the plastic look great together. The aluminum fits snugly into the plastic crossbar at the front meaning that the Elevator is very sturdy. Not only is the Elevator sturdy, it is also very resilient. I give this 5 out of 5 stars for quality.

Value

For $40 this is a fairly pricy piece of equipment. Because of its great construction and great features I can't hound to much on the cost. If this product was priced at $30 I would be sure to give it 5 stars but because of the price I am going to have to give it 4 out of 5 stars for value.

Features

At first I was a little worried placing my Mac on top of the Elevator. I wasn't sure if it would slide off or if it would even fit on top. The Elevator is equipped with rubber on the arms that hold your computer. This rubber holds on to the bottom of your computer almost as if it was duct tape. There are also rubber grips on the bottom of the Elevator so it won't slip around the surface of the desk. This is very important as well.

Another thing I was worried about was if I was going to have any room underneath my computer to put some of the clutter that sat on top of my desk. There was enough room for me to put my external hard drives, but barely. the Elevator raises my computer 5.5". If it had raised it 6" than I would be more than happy but the 1/2" that is missing would really come in handy. But because of the raise there is 360 degrees of air circulation around your computer. This keeps your computer cooler and allows it to run more proficiently.

According to Healthycomputing.com the Elevator is the perfect ergonomic solution. It keeps the computer monitor the recommended arms length away from your eyes and also raises up the monitor even with your eyes. How much better can it get?

The Elevator is a very handy tool to have around with many features. Because of the height issue I am going to give the Elevator 4.5 out of 5 stars for features.

Overview

The Elevator has superior construction to anything in its class. But you pay for that superior construction with the price. But who cares about the price when you have as many features as this thing does, right? I would say that this would be a much better solution that purchasing a new desk because you need more room. The average rating for this product is 4.5 out of 5 stars.

It has been reported by many sites such as The Unofficial Apple Weblog, The Apple Blog, Gizmodo and Engadget that a Flash player, created by Adobe, would be coming for the iPhone. What do you think?

At the beginning of the year in March there was much speculation that an iPhone suitable Flash player would be out on the market for download.  CNN Money was one of the first to announce Adobe's plans to begin work on a Flash player for the iPhone.  Why is it so hard to create a Flash player for the iPhone.  The drawback at the time for Adobe was the iPhone SDK.  Belgian iPhone coder Thomas Joos already created a Flash player for the iPhone.  You can see the video at the bottom of this post.  Yes, he created this Flash player but it was not approved by Apple and it was being run on a hacked iPhone.  Still, no real version of the Adobe Flash player for the iPhone.

Since the iPhone NDA was dropped Adobe will have a better chance of creating a Flash player.  It was just recently that many of the sites listed before are reporting that Adobe will try again.  Mike Downey on his Adobe blog said:

"Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone. However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe's millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device."

Because of Apple's strict policies it is up to Apple to follow through and allow the Flash player to work on the iPhone.  

We will see if Adobe will create a Flash player for the iPhone.  It won't be a disappointment if nothing happens, again.  All of us iPhone users can hope for a Flash player and all those non-iPhone users can hope as well so they don't have to hear us iPhone users complain for the player.