Sunday Sketch

The Apple iPad

Today Apple introduced the long-rumored iPad tablet. Powered by Apple's own 1GHz "Apple A4" chip (developed by P.A. Semiconductor, which Apple acquired in 2008), the hand-held device features a 9.7-inch LED display, an on-screen keyboard, Wi-Fi and 3G data connectivity, a 10-hour battery, and an iPad version of the iWork suite (including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote available for $9.99 a piece). The .5-inch thick, 1.5-lbs. iPad can run all existing iPhone/iPod touch apps natively. (See full specifications)

The iPad is no doubt encroaching into Amazon's Kindle territory with the announcement of iBooks and the iBookstore.  There is still no Adobe Flash available for the iPad (same as with the iPhone and iPod touch), which means no watching Hulu (which makes sense, since it could potentially cannibalize TV episode sales through iTunes).

There is a keyboard accessory for those who prefer not to use the on-screen keyboard, and the iPad will even work with existing standard Bluetooth keyboards. 3G data rates through AT&T are $14.99 for 250MB (which you could burn through pretty quickly), or $29.99 for unlimited 3G data.

Pricing information on Apple's web site shows the following:

	16 GB	32 GB	64 GB
Wi-Fi	$499	$599	$699
Wi-Fi + 3G	$629	$729	$829

There was so much hype and rumor mongering leading up to the announcement of the iPad, and now that it's here, how do you feel? I guess only time will tell whether the iPad becomes a wildly-popular device that finds application in many situations, or if it remains a niche product for a limited handful of users. Will you buy an iPad?

Reliability Update for Windows 7

This morning Windows Update found KB977074 for Windows 7 x64. The description in Windows Update states redundantly, "This is a reliability update. This update resolves some reliability issues in Windows 7. By applying this update, you can achieve better reliability in various scenarios." Hhmm...okay. I'd love to achieve better reliability in various scenarios. Who writes these descriptions, and are they trying to make them as vague as possible?

Ridiculously Awesome Video

Buzzwords of 2009

Mark Leibovich and Grant Barrett wrote an interesting piece summarizing some of the interesting and entertaining buzzwords of 2009. Some of my favorites: aporkalypse, Dracula sneeze, "drive like a Cullen," Government Motors, and heinie. (Source: NYT)

My 5-Year-Old Son's Search History

My 5-year-old son is, to put it mildly, very interested in Super Mario Bros. and everything Nintendo. This evening, my wife noticed that he was poking around trying to search for Nintendo and Paper Mario (he had his Paper Mario diorama we made last week to remind him). I logged in to the kids' account and peeked at the history and found the following heart-warming entries that he had typed: "soprmoreobruthrs," and "papermario." It made me so proud, but also raised the urgency of the need to make sure we properly teach our children safe and smart Internet usage.

Track Product Price History to Know When to Buy

It's often difficult to know when you should make an online purchase because prices fluctuate from day to day. Web site CamelCamelCamel.com provides a historical graph of product prices on Amazon.com so that you can strategically make product purchases.

For Newegg.com price history, there's CamelEgg.com, and for Best Buy there's CamelBuy.com. Or, get The Camelizer Firefox add-on to search Amazon, Newegg and Best Buy prices at once. These sites are great resources for the price-savvy consumer. (Via Tekzilla)

Google Public DNS

Google launched its own public DNS service today, called Google Public DNS, in an effort to make the Internet faster and safer. DNS, or Domain Name System, is the service that translates hostnames into IP addresses on the Internet. Similar to other public DNS services such as OpenDNS, Google Public DNS will allow Internet users to use these faster and more secure DNS servers instead of the ones provided by their ISP.

Google Public DNS will increase the speed of DNS lookups through caching and prefetching of DNS entries that are about to expire. Since DNS has recently become an attack vector for malicious hackers, Google Public DNS randomizes the case of query names and implements other data in the DNS messages that thwart attackers. Google acknowledges, however, that DNS won’t be completely bullet-proof until DNSSEC is implemented. As far as the privacy of Google Public DNS is concerned, the official policy states, "We built Google Public DNS to make the web faster and to retain as little information about usage as we could, while still being able to detect and fix problems. Google Public DNS does not permanently store personally identifiable information."

So far, there does not seem to be any mention of content filtering capability such as is possible with OpenDNS, but it isn’t inconceivable that these features could be added later. You can use Google Public DNS by setting your DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. See the Google Public DNS site for more specific instructions. (Sources: Google Public DNS, Google Code Blog, ReadWriteWeb)

Can't Delete a Folder in Windows 7 [u]

I've been using Windows 7 for almost a year now. There are certain problems in Windows 7 that seem so ridiculous that they're almost unbelievable (like being unable to login to Windows 7 with your profile on occasion because the profile service is not ready). But, here's a whopper! I'm simply trying to delete a folder from my backup drive in Windows 7, but Windows shows the error, "Destination Path Too Long:  The file name(s) would be too long for the destination folder.  You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path. " as shown here:

Then, after I "Skip" this item, I get another similar error, but this time it says, "Source Path Too Long:  The source file name(s) are larger than is supported by the file system.  Try moving to a location which has a shorter path name, or try renaming to shorter name(s) before attempting this operation. " as shown here:

So, I deleted all sub folders and files in an attempt to work around this problem.  There is one folder, that is actually completely empty, that refuses to be deleted.  I moved this folder to the root of my drive, I even tried renaming it, but it never gets deleted.

I just want to delete this folder.  I've tried third-party utilities, checked the disk for errors, tried deleting the folder from the command line, and nothing has been able to delete this folder.  It seems like a cutting-edge operating system should be able to handle a simple delete operation without so much trouble. I posted my issue on the Microsoft TechNet forums.  Anyone else figure out a way around this?

UPDATE (12/3/09): It turns out that for some reason, I had many many levels of nested folders that somehow got created during a backup. I finally deleted all of the folders by drilling down to the almost endless copies of Application Data and moving subsequent levels to the root of the D:\ and deleting piece by piece. I have no idea how those copies were made in the first place, and secondly, why Windows makes it so hard to delete such a nasty, unwieldy folder structure. The removal process took a couple of hours and made my eyes sting. Ugh!

Google Zeitgeist 2009

The Google Zeitgeist has been released for 2009. The fastest rising global search terms on Google in 2009 were: michael jackson, facebook, tuenti, twitter, sanalika, new moon, lady gaga, windows 7, dantri.com.vn, torpedo gratis.

Paper Mario Diorama

Yesterday my son and I spent a few hours putting together a Paper Mario diorama. You can download the original source here. It was way more work than I was expecting, but it was fun.

Play Old-School Atari Games on Atari.com

If you're jonesin' for some old-school video arcade action, head to Atari.com and play some of the old classics including: Adventure, Asteroids, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander, and Yars' Revenge.