Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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everythingiCafe: the show “Happy Happy Joy Joy”

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Chris Meinck and I recorded our last podcast episode of 2011 earlier this week and it’s now available through iTunes.

We talked about Apple’s rumored purchase of Anobit, a flash memory company, the latest iPhone 4S commercial featuring Santa Claus, more rumors about the Apple Television and the iPad 3 and more.

Chris’s Teh Suck of the week was the Hipstamatic Disposable app and its sleazy in-app purchase tactics, which he talks about in this article.

My Teh Awesome of the week was my new 27″ iMac that I got (after saving up for a while) to replace an aging Mac mini. I purchased it directly from Apple and it’s one of their refurbished models. It’s the base model of the current generation (with Thunderbolt) and it’s super fast. Working on it is a pure joy, full of much less yelling and frustration compared to my Mac mini.

Also, I apologize for my audio quality in this episode. I failed to ensure my shiny new iMac was using the external microphone to record instead of the built-in one. 🙁 I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again in future episodes.

Christmas is just a couple of days away and I’d like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season! We’ll be spending Christmas at home with friends and family and hope your holidays are filled with warmth, happiness, and good food and company.

How soon we forget (a fangirl confession)

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A few days ago,  I noticed that a teammate in my volleyball league had a shiny new Windows Phone (I think it was an HTC Radar). I asked her how she liked it and she frowned, complaining that she couldn’t set custom text message tones for individual contacts.

I laughed in response and said, “What? Really? That’s silly. ”

“Yeah,” she replied, “I was finally just able to set custom ringtones after the last software update but still can’t change text tones. This phone is the suck.”

I’m a little ashamed of my reaction here since the ability to set custom text tones just became possible in iOS 5. Which means that as an iPhone user for more than four years now, I have only been able to set a custom default text tone or specific tones for individual contacts for a little over 2 months (since the gold master release of iOS 5 in October), a small change which has thrilled me to no end.

Why was I so quick to ridicule her Windows Phone for a limitation I experienced with the iPhone myself (jailbreaking aside) for more than 4 years?

Oh, well. At least I’m earning my iPhone fangirl stripes. Is there a Game Center achievement for that? XP points? Anything?

everythingiCafe: the show “Stupid Front Row”

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Episode 45 of the everythingicafe.com podcast is now available in iTunes. In this episode, Chris Meinck and I talked about the latest iOS 5 beta, the Mac App Store’s latest milestone, rumors about the iPad 3, and more.

Chris’s Teh Awesome this week was Apple’s Cards app to send a thank-you card to a family member. Cards let him personalize it with a picture and text easily, and even notified him when the card had been mailed.

My Teh Awesome was the retro cassette tape case for the iPhone 4/4S that I mentioned earlier this week. It’s superbly cute and nostalgia-provoking (for those of you like me with fond memories of cassette tapes)and is well worth the $3 or so it costs.

[frame]I still have some free codes to get Smule’s MadPad music creation app to thank you for writing a review of our podcast in iTunes. Just write your review (or update an existing review you wrote before) and let me know which one is yours and I’ll send you a code. These codes work for U.S. iTunes store accounts only.[/frame]

We’ve got one more podcast on the calendar for 2011 before we take a break for Christmas and pick up again in January. You can join us as we record live at everythingicafe.com/live next Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

A little retro iPhone case fun

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I found this case on Amazon and thought I’d try it out. Though I don’t like to admit it, I’m old enough to remember cassette tapes very well. I remember recording straight from my favorite radio stations using a small, cheap Panasonic boombox I had gotten for Christmas one year. I’d replay my favorite songs over and over, dancing to them in the basement. I’d make mix tapes and exchange them with my friends. I still have some of them in a box in the attic, though I don’t think I even have a tape player anymore to listen to them.

This case, which is made by Cbus Wireless, cost me just under $3 shipped from Amazon (it’s currently priced at $3.37 as I write this post). You can find it on Amazon here. It’s not the most well-made case – the cut-outs are sloppy, the mold seams are visible and the surface has multiple imperfections but I didn’t expect much for just $3. Regardless, it’s cute and nostalgic, particularly in contrast to the technological magnificence of the iPhone 4S itself.

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