Hooray! I have received my “free Nintendo DS”:http://www.ds4free.com/default.aspx?r=91871. After OfferCentric worked out some supply issues, it was promptly shipped via USPS Priority Mail and was waiting for me at my work address on Monday. I didn’t get a tracking number, but the USPS doesn’t really give tracking numbers for priority mail packages anyway, more of a delivery confirmation number for the shipper.

Anyway, opened it up and it’s a brand new DS just as if I’d bought it from the store! Hooray for free sites! And thanks to the people that signed up under me. High-fives to all of you.

Click on to see some pics of the machine in all it’s dual-screened glory.
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A lot of sites have a “Get Firefox” banner on their site these days, but Dan Ostermeyer has a way to target IE users specifically by using IE’s own technology against itself. Apparently there is some sort of proprietary comment code built-in to IE, and since only IE recognizes it, you can put your promotion wording in there and only IE users will see it. Of course there are dozens of other ways to do this like CSS, server side code, javascript, etc. But this isn’t a bad method either. One major problem is that it doesn’t allow your site to validate, so if you are really into seeing that little “Congratulations” message when you validate your site, you may want to use one of the other methods.

A lot of hacking techniques are really simple, like guessing a commonly used password or using “social engineering” to get a password and other sensitive info out of a user. Another simple way to “hack” is to use Google to find misconfigured servers and scripts that are run by ignorant or lazy system administrators, and use the information from those pages to your own advantage or entertainment.

“This”:http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/index.php?module=prodreviews&func=showcontent&id=179 site happens to have a running database of these hacks. There are hundreds of queries to use to find any number of vulnerabilities. Most won’t actually give you access to anything sensitive or confidential, but they are interesting and some are even useful for non-hacking reasons.

Apple has been on a roll lately, but every company has its failures and bad ideas, and this site lists a few of Apple’s.

Like…

The Apple Pippin, a game console / multimedia center; their opendoc file format; the Mac TV (Yes, Apple was the first to put a TV tuner card in a PC, imagine that); and the Puck mouse, which was a perfectly round mouse that made it impossible to tell where it was “pointing” which led to all kinds of frustration.

Strangely absent from the list is the Newton, though maybe they just figured it was “ahead of its time” so it wasn’t really a failure.

Apple has announced new Powerbooks, though they are only a slight speed bump and a RAM upgrade, not the new form factor G5’s that everyone had hoped for.

You can now get 8x Superdrives in them, as well as Bluetooth 2.0, faster hard drives, more RAM standard, etc.

Prices now range from $1,499 to $2,699, which is about what they used to charge for a refurbished model.

Now is the time to buy a Powerbook in my opinion, for sure. This is the cheapest, most stable they will be, since this is likely the last revision of the current form factor. I wouldn’t think they would make another speed boost of the G4, the next one will probably be a G5, with higher prices, and more possible problems. So buy one now!

Lots of people, including our own Scrivs, are concerned about the 4,200rpm hard drive that ships with the Mac mini. A lot of people have wondered if the performance would be increased with a faster drive, or if it’s limited by the controller on the motherboard.

The answer is, the faster the drive, the faster the mini. For $150 – $250 you can upgrade the hard drive in the mini to a 5,400rpm and even 7,200rpm drive, in sizes up to 100gb. There is a graph on “this”:http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Benchmarks/12705/minihd.html page showing the performance improvements, as well as links to buy the drives themselves.

They don’t tell you how to actually perform the upgrade, but I’m sure there are other guides on the ‘net for that already.

The Register has pointed out that a stat tracking graphic placed on the main powerbook page is labeled:

http://switch.atdmt.com/action/apple_g5_powerbook

It’s a 1×1 gif used for tracking purposes. All of the graphics on all of the other product pages are unique, and are all named appropriately, with the correct processor.

So… Is it just a typo or a coincidence, or are they gearing up for that page to change soon, and perhaps generate some new interest that they’d like to compare to the “before” version?

Only time will tell.

Everyone has been trying to figure out how to force the Mac mini to be a media center ever since it was announced. It’s small, and it’s cheap, so it does make sense.

Engadget has put together a preliminary guide to getting your mini set up as your entertainment hub. Though it is just a very basic overview, at least it hints at what is to come.

As of right now, I really don’t see any value in using a setup like this other than pure geek factor. I mean if you look at the list of stuff they are using to make that work, you have the Mac mini for $500, the “spare computer” to use as a file server, all the extra hard drives, the adapters, the EyeTV, the EyeHome, the TV, the Stereo… phew. After you do all that you’re looking at $1,000 – $1,500 easy for a simple setup like that. You could buy a Windows Media Center PC for that much, which would eliminate all those wires and crazy add-ons. Don’t get me wrong, I hate Windows as much as the next guy, but that just seems silly. Or you could buy a TiVo with a lifetime subscription to the guide for less than the price of the Mac Mini alone.

There is also no easy way to control the Mac mini from the couch, unless you are already either in EyeTV or EyeHome. Sure, VNC is nice, but why would I want to get off the couch, go to my office, pick a movie to watch or something, go back to the couch, etc. And if I had a “spare laptop” laying around, I would probably just use that to play movies through the TV instead of using an army of miscellaneous devices strung throughout my living room.

Of course a computer can do things the TiVo can’t, like play DVD’s or ripped movies, listen to music, play games, emulators, surf the web, etc.

But really, since they are using the EyeTV and the EyeHome anyway, you could just plug those into your regular desktop Mac and have basically exactly the same setup as this guide will tell you to do.

Not to put down the idea of the Mac mini as a media center though. I think it will definitely happen, and once someone comes up with a nice front-end interface to loading all of your media that works with one of the remote controls, I think it will be a sweet setup.

Beyond the Obvious has a couple of nice torrent files that have a collection of 165 Apple TV commercials in .mov format.

Here is what’s included:

49 – Classics
32 – Switch
13 – iMac
12 – Cost Less, Do More
12 – What’s on Your PowerBook
8 – The Future
7 – Misc.
6 – Newton
5 – //gs Commercials
5 – iBook
4 – Think Different (best)
4 – G3
4 – G4
4 – Performa

Now that the Mac has turned 21 years old, it’s about time the home video of its birth is finally released on the internet.

“Kottke”:http://www.kottke.org/05/01/jobs-macintosh-video has the best list of mirrors, including some torrents. I got 300k/sec off of the torrents, so I recommend using those if you can. Also you won’t suck up some site’s bandwidth that way.

The video is great quality considering its age, and it’s a ton of fun to watch this thing be unveiled. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s really cool to see the whole auditorium on their feet cheering for a simple little computer on the stage. I also enjoy the young Steve, looking like he just introduced pictures of his new baby.

“Bare Feats”:http://www.barefeats.com/mini01.html has posted some benchmarks of the new Mac Mini. The scores are taken from xBench results online, and were not taken by Bare Feats themselves, because they don’t have one yet. But based on the xBench scores, it looks like the achilles heel of the Mac Mini by far will be its hard drive speed. In the thread and memory tests, the 1.4ghz Mini actually performed _better_ than the 1.6ghz iMac G5, but was less than half as fast when it came to random writes to the hard disk. This will be the largest bottleneck in the system, especially if you don’t upgrade the RAM to 1gb. With only 256mb of RAM, the computer will be writing stuff to virtual memory constantly, and with that slow hard drive, it will make the whole system sluggish if you are running a few different programs at once.

So, if you are planning on getting a Mac Mini, include a RAM upgrade in your budget. But don’t get the RAM upgraded at the factory from Apple. They charge well over twice as much as other companies. Here is some from a Mac reseller for “$189.00″:http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=6559&Item=OWC2700DDR1024.

And of course if you get your Mac Mini for “free”:http://forevergeek.com/apple/freeminimacscom_get_a_free_mac_mini.php that $189.00 will be an even more attractive investment.

Details on the Mac Mini have surfaced through the notes of a reporter for Macintouch.

According to the notes, the Hard Drive is definitely a 2.5 inch 5,400rpm laptop hard drive, which is the main reason for the relatively small 80gb maximum. There aren’t many laptop drives larger than that, and the ones that are are much too expensive to meet the $500 price point. The notes also say the drive is buried pretty deep in the internals of the system, so upgrading it in the future will be no small task. I recommend just using a external Firewire drive, or even a string of them.

The RAM is the larger desktop memory, which will keep costs low. There is only one memory slot so if you upgrade the RAM, you will be left with a 256mb chip to sell on eBay or put in another system. Upgrading the RAM yourself does *not* void the warranty, unless you damage something in doing so. Apple does not recommend that users try to do this themselves, but do not prohibit you from doing so. So if you are going to buy a Mac Mini, do _not_ buy the memory from Apple! They are generally twice as expensive as everyone else. I’m sure there will be guides all over the ‘net as soon as the Mac Mini is out, detailing how to take it apart and upgrade it.

The Mac mini supports an Airport card for wireless internet, but if you don’t add it in when you initially order the system, your only option will be a $129 upgrade kit that includes the Airport card as well as a Bluetooth card. You will have to take it to a dealer to be installed, as it involves installing the cards as well as antennas. Until someone hacks it and shows how to do it on the internet anyway.

So, that answers many of the questions surrounding the Mac Mini so far.

Not only has “Macnews.de”:http://www.macnews.de/ already received a Mac Mini, they’ve already ripped it to pieces and “posted”:http://www.macnews.de/gallery/displayimage.php?album=16&pos=18 the gory pictures on the internet for all to see.

Of note, the hard drive inside is in fact a small laptop hard drive, not a full sized one like in most desktop computers, so figure that difference into your upgrade pricing… They are quite a bit more expensive than the full size ones.

The “Mac Mini”:http://www.apple.com/macmini/ is going to be the hottest selling thing to come out of Apple since the iPod, and is already a bargain at $499, but why not get it for “free”:http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14910715?

Like the original “FreeDesktopPC.com”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freedesktoppccom.php, this one requires 10 referrals to get the free Mac Mini.

The offers are the same as the “FreeiPodShuffle.com”:http://forevergeek.com/apple/freeipodshufflecom_only_3_referrals_needed.php site. The free ones right now are eFax and PeoplePC, which are both free trials that you can cancel. Blockbuster is there too, and if you pay $9.95 for a 1 month membership, you get instant credit for the offer. Blockbuster is well worth signing up for. In 1-month you can easily rent 14 movies with the service, so it’s a really good deal! I use Netflix personally, but Blockbuster is very comparable in service and selection.

And of course this is legit… Check “out”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freeipodscom.php “all”:http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/free_ipods_on_wired.php “the”:http://forevergeek.com/fg_commentary/another_freeipodscom_success.php “stuff”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freeflatscreenscom.php “we’ve”:http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/freeflatscreenscom_sony_wega_television_received.php already received.

_No Referral links in the comments area. There are plenty of conga lines that you can find all over the internet for that very purpose._

Impressive, only 1 day after the iPod Shuffle’s were announced, Gratis has setup “FreeiPodShuffle.com”:http://www.FreeiPodShuffle.com/?r=13886889.

It’s the same setup as all of the other free sites, but with this one you only need *3 referrals*! Everyone knows 3 people… This should be very easy to get.

The current free offers that I saw were for eFax, a thirty day trial, and PeoplePC trial. Blockbuster is on there, but it looks like you’re supposed to pay for a $9.95 1 month subscription, and then you get credit for the offer instantly, rather than the previous 30 day trial period offer which took forever to complete.

And of course this is legit… Check “out”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freeipodscom.php “all”:http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/free_ipods_on_wired.php “the”:http://forevergeek.com/fg_commentary/another_freeipodscom_success.php “stuff”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freeflatscreenscom.php “we’ve”:http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/freeflatscreenscom_sony_wega_television_received.php already received.

_No Referral links in the comments area. There are plenty of conga lines that you can find all over the internet for that very purpose._

The delayed stream of today’s Apple keynote has been “posted”:http://stream.apple.akadns.net/ and is ready for viewing. Start your stream quick before it gets slammed like the Apple store. :)