iTunes 7 Screenshots, CoverFlow Integration

After I downloaded iTunes 7 I was shocked at the changes: the first of which is an incorporation of the sweet little jukeboxy-type app CoverFlow. Here are some screenshots:

CoverFlow view

iPod info pane

Philips DVP642 DVD Player Quick Review

The 2 main reasons why I love the DVP642 player are its low cost(about$50) and it plays every video format known to man. I've been burning .avi, mpeg, xvid and it plays EVERYTHING! To put it more simply, all you have to do is burn the disc with the data and this player will play it in its encoded format. Almost every other player requires you to encode files which adds an around 3-10x the amount of time it takes to just burn a data disc! This is very cool for someone that uses Bittorrent alot or has digital home movies that have been compressed. This is the category killer of DVD players as far as do-it-all computer friendly DVD players. Last I checked, there were over 600 reviews for it on Amazon with an average of 4 stars. Not bad. A couple downsides: the remote and load times are not great.

Google Earth 4.0 Beta: Nice Update

Mt Jefferson, formerly known as "lo res white blob".

I just upgraded Google Earth and where once was white blobs in the cascades are now beautiful, richly detailed mountains. Its nowhere near 100% complete but we're seeing the potential as more map data is integrated into the system. According to Google, 20% of the earth is now covered by hi res imagery and 33% of the worlds population can now see their home.

The UI is quite slick as well, not normally a Google strong point. Its intuative, transparent and immediately user friendly. Overall, this is a great addition...now if I could only watch climbers in real time on Mt Hood...