Category: Gear
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A longtime Mac user’s first impressions of the Thinkpad X1 Carbon
Well, as I’d been threatening for a while, I ended my decade plus using a Mac as my main computer this month and jumped to the Windows side, lured by the all-black, super-lightweight Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I’ve had the laptop for about three weeks and here are some of my first impressions. Feel free…
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Instapaper isn’t Instaworth it anymore – switching to Pocket
I think I was one of the earliest fans of Marco Arment’s ingenious Instapaper service. I even wrote up a rave review back in March, 2009. This is the original thing that let you save long web articles to read later in your browser or on your phone or ereader. The amazing feature that first…
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Finally, serious Lightroom photo syncing on the iPad – no iPhoto required
Old workflow for getting cool pictures I’ve taken from my camera to my iPad: Import photos into Adobe Lightroom. Throw out junk, make fixes, sort and rate. Choose photos I want on my iPad and export to a folder on my hard drive. Drag said folder into iPhoto. Make newly imported photos into a new…
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One of these things is not like the other: Apple store, Microsoft store
I was an hour early for dinner with fabulous wife Whitney Connaughton and friends last Friday so I thought I’d tool around the local Apple store for a bit. The Back Bay Apple store in Boston is a thing of beauty — and it only took two years to get Boston’s historical commission to approve…
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History will show journalists missed the big Amazon story today: ebook discounting is back
There were a gazillion Amazon headlines today across virtually every news site, tech blog and twitter feed I follow but almost none had the truly important news development about Amazon today. While everyone was gorging on the announcement of upgraded “Kindle Fire” tablet computers, U.S. federal judge Denise Cote in New York approved a controversial…
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A Mac user’s travels in Ultrabook land
I spent the long weekend with my family tooling around Cape Cod, which ended up offering two unexpected opportunities to sample the latest and greatest light weight laptops, or ultrabooks as they’re known, in Windows land. My 13″ MacBook Pro is getting near replacement age and I’m keeping an open mind so far about which…
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Why critical reviews matter
I’m grateful to John Gruber, a great tech writer and proprietor of the popular blog DaringFireball, for linking here the other day and sending lots of traffic to my post criticizing him. I’m also super grateful to the Quick Cache plug-in for WordPress which helped my blog handle all the added traffic without being, as…
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How to get Internet access in Rome – and how not to
I had an awesome vacation in Italy this summer with my awesome wife, Whitney Connaughton. Highly recommended. But ugly American that I must be, I made too many assumptions about getting online, thereby frustrating my ability to…get online. It all started so well. Just off the high tech marvel that is Italy’s high speed train…