Information Overload

WonderCon 2009

Went to WonderCon with Gerry (who is not @gpan because Heroes is no longer "awesomeness.") Beamed in just in time for the Star Trek panel attended by the new Kirk, Spock, and Uhura. Director J.J. Abrams was also there to unveil an unreleased trailer for what looks to be the triumphant return of Trek to the silver screen.

Frodo appeared in the flesh to plug 9, the feature length version of the animated short. Not to be outdone, Pixar promoted Up, their tenth major animated picture. It's directed by Pete Doctor, one of the brainchildren behind WALL•E. Hopefully, the Academy won't shaft him out of an Oscar due to winner fatigue because Pixar seems to have one-upped themselves again (pun somewhat intended.)

Finally, gotta admire the energy of director McG who was extremely stoked to show off Terminator Salvation. Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common, and Anton Yelchin were also in the house to lend support for what should be a second successful franchise reboot for Christian Bale to put under his belt. Good luck to McG on holding the line against studio pressure to dumb it down to a PG-13 movie.

New $99 iPhone 3G

Best Buy Reward Zone members can buy a brand new iPhone 3G for as low as $99 with a new 2-year activation with AT&T. The offer is good through the end of February (tomorrow), and is a pretty sweet deal considering that Reward Zone membership is free.

2009 Apple Shareholder Meeting

The crazy ones were emboldened in the absence of Steve at this year's Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Apple, Inc. CNET News has one of the better recaps of the event. Someone should ask Andrea Jung if Avon shareholder meetings attract so many misfit investors. Having finally elected a woman to Apple's board of directors, a shareholder berated the company this year for not having an ethnically diverse enough management team. Dood! Apple's execs aren't exactly an embodiment of the master race.

After Al Gore, a group birthday song sung to Steve (weird!), and fun with "socialism," the Parents Television Council managed to get in the last request during the entertaining open mic session. PTC is unhappy that Apple advertises during prime-time TV shows that contain content objectionable to them. (Phil Schiller's facial expression: Priceless.) Tim Cook inadvertently put an end to the rumor that he does not watch TV—he watches ESPN—and hinted that Apple builds parental controls into their products. It was amusing to imagine how Steve would have responded to the PTC rep.

President Obama Addresses Congress

Still acclimating to a President who is articulate...

Happy 54th Steve!

Get well soon!

It'll be cool to see you at WWDC later this year.

P.S. Congrats on the WALL•E win!

WALL•E Wins!

WALL•E won Best Animated Feature Film during last night's 81st Annual Academy Awards! Congrats to Pixar, and Director Andrew Stanton who speaks to the "Thank You Cam" below:

The International

The International is saved by international locations, and an art museum shootout. (One hopes that the real-life police have a faster response time.) Naomi Watts' acting is surprisingly so-so while Clive Owen is Clive Owen again. The supporting cast are far more interesting. Armin Mueller-Stahl adds to the intentional atmosphere, and Jack McGee is classic Americana. There's also a cameo by Mac OS X pretending to run on a Sony laptop. This movie might have been a bigger success if it were more MI6, and less INTERPOL. The good guys are supposed to be badass—or at least win—in escapist action flicks. In reality, impotent justice can be seen for free.

1,000 Blog Posts!

Ah, ah, ah, ah...

This is the 1,000th post to this blog—give or take a few drafts that were never published—since April 1st, 2006. Too bad TypePad doesn't have a better way to peruse the archives. Oh well, there's always Lijit search.

Was going to post something more substantial to commemorate the occasion, but Comcast Internet is being Comcastic for the second day in a row. Peet's free Wi-Fi, FTW!

ScreenFlow

Rejoice! ScreenFlow 1.5.1 is out, and it finally fixes the major instability of prior versions. It's an awesome tool for creating screencasts on Mac OS X. It even recognizes the mouse arrow and clicks in a Windows VM.

Official Gmail Offline Mode For iPhone

From the GSMA iPhone Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2009, it's HTML5 FTW!