Hi there. My name is Chip, hence the play on words in the name of this blog – The Tech Chip.
My hope is to bring you all the interesting, exciting, or at least intriguing aspects of the tech world. Things are changing daily, so there should be a lot to talk about. I am hoping to cover the gamut of stuff, from household gadgets to the newest supercomputers, to the coolest toys your kids (and even YOU) will want. All this while also providing my feelings on the gadgets usefulness and practicality.
Some background on me, I am 34 years old and I have worked at Channel 3 for 15 years as a video editor. Its my job to take the video and sound from around the world, and around Connecticut, and condense it down to what you see on the evening news each day. Beyond working with all the fun toys that Channel 3 lets me play with, I have been extremely interested in computers since the early Commodore 64 days. I remember vividly going to my friend’s house to use his computer to program games, it took forever for the programs to run because the computer had to search the cassette tape to find the right spots to pull the information from.
Fast forward to my first computer, an IBM PCjr. Not a great computer (no hard drive, just a 5 1/4 inch floppy and 2 cartridge slots) but it was mine! I spent hours programming in basic, making spreadsheets, and playing games. Eventually I was able to buy my first laptop (a 486 Pentium ThinkPad with a screaming 128k phone modem!) and have progressed to the point of having 5 computers (3 homebuilt) running in my house on a home network. Add in a love for gadgets and pretty much all cutting edge technology, and you get me: a self proclaimed techno-geek.
This brings me to today’s big tech news. If you follow tech at all, you know that today was the start of MacWorld 2008. Kicking off with Steve Jobs keynote address delivered around 12:15 our time. I am not a Mac Fan boy, as you can tell by my computer history, but I do love my ipod! So I spent my lunchtime glued to the web tracking what is new from Cupertino. Here are the bullet points:
- Time capsule: this is basically an apple airport combined with a hard drive, and running time machine. If you have Macs in your house this seems like a nice way to backup all your computers automatically and wirelessly. Not really useful if your running pc’s though.
- A minor software upgrade to the I-phone. And the ipod-touch gets a lot of the same abilities as the I-phone without the phone: catch is you have to pay an additional $20 and connect via wi-fi.
- Movie Rentals. You will now be able to rent a movie instead of only buy a movie from the itunes store. Rentals will cost $2.99 for older, $3.99 for new releases. You will have 30 days to start your movie, and 24hrs to view it in once started. During the 24hrs you can watch it as many times as you please.
- Apple TV: take 2. This appears to be the same old Apple TV hardware with newer software and they knocked the price down to $229.
- And finally the showstopper: the Mac book Air. It’s basically a really tiny, light Mac book. Besides the super lightweight, and super small form factor. Nice features of the Mac book Air are, multi touch-gesture support just like the iphone and I-touch. Choice of 80gb hard drive or 64gb solid-state drive (think thumb drive). All that with a 5hr battery life is pretty impressive. One question I have, with such a small form factor: how rugged will it be?
Anyways, that brings you up to speed with me, and the big goings on of the day in the tech world. Talk to you soon!
Chip
Contact me via email anytime: TheTechChip@gmail.com
