I just got shut out of buying tickets for the Pearl Jam concerts in Atlantic City today, despite having a live operator on the phone at 10:01 a.m. – literally the minute tickets went on sale. It’s a long story but suffice it to say that the operator could not successfully place my order in time, despite having “found tickets.” Anyway, this isn’t the first time that I have received abysmal service from the ticket monopolist and I’m calling for a boycott of TicketMaster and an investigation into their monopolistic business practices. Following is part of the letter that I sent to TicketMaster today….

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I love the Treo 650 from PalmOne. I have been getting ~70-135 kbps downloads and I use it all the time – downloading apps, streaming wireless radio, uploading photos etc. True wireless for video/multimedia is going to be fantastic when the price comes down. Read More…

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Jim Nichols sends us some pictures of the Grand Rapids, MI Apple Store grand opening. “There was a huge turnout – as there usually are at Apple store openings. I estimate that they had to be close to 1000 or more in line by 10:00a.m.”
In related news: It looks like the Apple Store Midtown NYC is staffing up.

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An article by Rob Pegoraro for The Washington Post, Buyer be wise when looking for a laptop, discusses the practice of some Windows notebook vendors shipping a “starter” battery with their laptops and the tactic of low-balling laptop weights.

The biggest area of compromise is the battery. It’s bad enough that many laptop vendors act as if battery life is either a state secret or a mystery; there is no EPA estimate or Energy Star certification for this sort of thing.
But several of these companies seem to have also adopted one of the worst habits of the digital-camera business.
Just as some digicam manufacturers bundle “starter” memory cards that accommodate only a handful of photos, some laptop makers ? including Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard ? ship computers with batteries that will expire before you can finish watching a movie.
If you want a longer run time, you’ll have to upgrade to a heavier, sometimes larger replacement battery. If you don’t think to do this as you order the machine online, you wind up paying for two batteries, one of which will be doomed to collect dust in a closet.

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I have always partitioned my PowerBook’s hard drive, usually with 80 percent dedicated to my production environment and around 20 percent reserved for software testing and general dorking around. The benefit to partitioning your HDD is that you can safely install beta software on the “spare” partition without compromising the integrity of your main (“production”) partition. The down side is that if you ever need to re-partition you drive, you’ve got to back everything up, then “nuke and pave” the drive (to borrow an old friend’s saying). This re-format and re-install exercise can take the better part of a day. Read More…

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Card Blues Suite 1.3 enables the 3Com Bluetooth PC Card (version 3.0) to be used with Apple’s Bluetooth software. With the 3Com PC Card your PowerBook G3 or PowerBook Titanium gets Bluetooth and nothing hangs out of the computer. It is like adding internal Bluetooth to these machines. The driver itself is in the public domain (free).
Click through to read about the card’s drawbacks…

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People that know me know that I prefer backpacks for extended jaunts with my PowerBook. The simple reason is because backpacks are more comfortable for extended journeys with a heavy load – period. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely got a thing for cool-looking messenger bags but they’re best for short trips in the summer. Brenthaven is a high quality bag manufacturer that has just updated their Pro 15/17 backpack for its namesake PowerBook. Read more…

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POPTUNE for shuffle is a clean removing wearable wrapper for Apple’s iPod shuffle series digital music players. POPTUNE for shuffle comes in a pack of 12 stylish patterns such as sizzling “Fire”, pretty “Sakura”, tropical “Aloha” and more. With these kinds of choices we are sure that you will find a POPTUNE suitable to your individual tastes. It also adds scratch protection to your iPod shuffle. 12 patterns are now shipping for US$19.95 from TuneWear.

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We’ve been flying under the radar a little bit lately because of the Independence Day holiday (Happy Fourth!) and the Live8 concert that was in Philadelphia this weekend. The PowerPage posse was in attendance at a sweet little spot under the trees where we could see the stage (ok, on our tippey toes). Highlights included Black Eyed Peas (grab their new CD “Monkey Business” today), Will Smith, Jay-Z, Kayne West and, of course, Stevie Wonder who dedicated his set to the late Luther Vandross. A high quality show for a high quality town. Philadelphia mayor John Street and organizer Bob Geldoff deserve a lot of credit. One of the most amazing things about Live8 (besides the lack of beer sales) was the fact that they weren’t asking for any money. Support the Live8 cause and sign the list.

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Superdrive.crc.id.au has launched a petition for Apple to address a performance issue with Apple’s DVD-R SuperDrive. The Matshita UJ-835e drive found in the following Macs appears to only burn at 2x. Read More…

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