For the past few weeks I knew that I needed to reformat my drive and reinstall XP – explorer.exe had a memory leak, I had 8 minute boot up times, and more. I definitely needed to reformat.

Then, the Microsoft keynote came along and Steve Ballmer said the Windows 7 beta was coming, and I knew that I was going to use that instead of my XP install. I learned that only 2.5 million keys were going to be released, starting at around 12:00 PM EST. I was immediately disappointed, knowing I will be in school when it all comes out. I came home and found out the Microsoft website has been down all day, and that they keys were not sent out.

I smiled.

I learn about the direct links, and the ways to get keys – and I am off to the races. I was up until 2:00 AM trying to get a key, while I was fighting with the download to work. I had to go to bed.

I woke up this morning, and by luck, got a few keys. Then, the ISO download started working. Things were coming together!

So, after a whole day of working on it, I finally got it downloading and working.

After this BETA is over with (August 1, 2009,) or maybe earlier, I will be posting my review on it.

My first impressions are great – It’s fast, it’s new, I love the toolbar; but then again I am moving from a messed up, slow version of Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2.

We’ll see.

All of you know what Phil Schiller announced at the keynote, so I won’t go too much into it.

- New 17″ Macbook Pro
- iLife 2009
- iWork 2009
- iTunes DRM Free

More after the jump.

This was a very unique keynote in that it was the first one without any appearance at all by Steve Jobs. Earlier this week, he released a letter explaining his absence.

 

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

So, rightfully so, Steve stayed home. The whole world was breathlessly awaiting the Philnote, and greeted him extremely warm when he walked on stage. As spectacted, nothing interesting was released.

17″ MacBook Pro
Simply stated, who would buy this at this price? Someone who loves way overpriced machines with larger screens. This was not exciting at all.

iWork and iLife ‘09
Did anyone not think they would release this? I mean, some features of it are cool, but, whatever.

iTunes went DRM-free
This is probably the only intersting thing out of this keynote, in my opinion. It was fully unexpected, and fully needed. There has been some problems, though, with the price of upgrading all of your music to “iTunes Plus,” the DRM-Free versions of the songs.

 ————————————————————————————————————————————————–
This is very suprising that I am not excited about what came out of this keynote. Usually, everytime Apple sneezes, I get fanboy giggles; but not this time. It really underwhelmed me, and I was left wanting something new and inventive. Phill Schiller did a very good job, and I expect to see more of him over time.

In other news, Apple releases a keyboardless notebook.

Yes, yes, yes, I know I said that I would be doing video app reviews. I have recorded a ton of review videos, and I will work on getting them edited and posted.

Stay tuned.

2008 has been a momentous year for me.
Friends were made, friends were lost. I’ve been learning about who I am, who I want to be, and what I love. I turned 16. I got a new President. I started getting deeper into photography.

I. grew. up.

Thank you all for everything, and let’s make 2009 an even better year than 2008.

Love, Justin

So, I was looking at Loic Le Meur’s blog, and he posted a video of a Japanese TV Show that featured Seesmic users. I was one of those users – without me knowing.. haha!

Go to 1:39 about..

100,000 people calling for change showed up for the rally today in Missouri. Rally attendance doesn’t necessarily mean voter turnout, but this shows that people are dedicated and are obsessed with the idea of change. I can see John McCain in his corner, crying with his soul-mate Sarah Palin right now – with their 100 people turnout at their rallies; John – you can blame Dubya on the hate people feel for you, because even if you aren’t physically GWB, you are in every other way.

More after the jump.

The iPhone is the perfect music discovery portal. And this app is one of those that make it happen. When you turn it on, it brings you to a long list of genres, from Alternative to World/International. You pick a genre, then you pick a station. Then, the fun comes in.

Music
In the “Now Playing” part of this application is where you listen to the music. They give you the title of the song, band name, album name AND nice, reflective, album art. This works like real radio in that you can stop whatever is playing, but you can not pause, rewind, go forward, or skip a song. In this display, you can favorite the channel to be put into the “Favorites” tab. If you click the magnifying glass, it gives you the options to “Find on iTunes” to buy, “Find on AOL Music” to get more information about it, and “Remember This Song.” I’m not sure what the latter does.

Favorites
In this tab, it displays all self-marked favorite stations for easy access. This comes in handy because there are hundreds of stations that you could have to look through in this app to find the one that you like.

Recents
This tab is straight forward, it remembers the recent stations you have listened to.

Locals
In this tab, the application used the location services to find out if there are any local stations that are available through this application. They are usually, if not always, stations owned by CBS, a partner with AOL in this application. If they cannot find you, or if you just want to, they give you a long list of potential cities.

Positives
This application is perfect in almost every way. It implements everything perfectly, and this is one of the apps that make me excited for what is to come.

Negatives
The negatives are few and far apart. I wish that you could pause songs or skip them, but it is perfectly understandable, given it is radio.

Summary
This app is one of my favorites, and one that I downloaded before 2.0 was released. This application is the first to receive 10 stars out of 10 on my ratings. I am constantly using this app when I am tired of my own music, or when I want to listen to the news. And, it’s free.

10/10

Price: Free!
Category: Music

This may be my last written review, may not be. I am thinking about moving all over to video.

More after the jump.

Usability
Air Sharing is very easy to use. After you have placed a file onto your device, all you have to do is click on it for it to pop up in the file viewer. The file viewer opens the file how it is supposed to look; files created in “Pages” look like “Pages.” Source code looks awesome. You can save maps as maps. Spreadsheets are easy to read as well.

Positives
This applications works very well, connects fast, and has an amazing file viewer. This does what it is made for, and does it well. You can also password protect your iPhone, so no one can place unwanted files onto it.

Negatives
I’m hard pressed to find any negatives for this app. The only negative I can think of is you cannot edit documents, and to be honest, this does not integrate with my life. I, at this age, have no reason to carry around documents with me.

Summary
This application is excellent. Everything works exactly like how I thought it would, you can password protect things, it shows exactly how much space you have left on your iPhone, so you don’t run out of space. This application is flawless in what is is made for.

9.5/10

Price: $6.99
Category: Productivity

More after the jump.

Buddy List
The buddy list is well organized, listing our buddies alphabetically. It displays their buddy icon, their screen name in bold, and their status message, as well as if they are Available, Away, Idle, or on their Mobile. When we click them, it pops up with a message area, where we can converse. The buddy list also displays groups, including Online, Recent Buddies, Offline, and any other group we may make.

Conversation Area
The chat area is very well done. It is VERY simple, with no text formatting available. It displays our messages in one color, and our friends’ in a different; just like how the iPhone does text messaging. It also shows time stamps, which may come in handy, since the AIM iPhone Application stores all of your past conversations, unless you decide to clear them. I don’t like, however, that links are unclickable in this space; but that is a downfall of a lot of iPhone communication applications.

Favorites
In this tab, we have the simple option to have all of our “favorite friends” available in one glance, to see if they are online. I do not use this tab, and don’t see much functionality for my small buddy list, but if you had an extraordinarily large buddy list, this would be a life saver.

My Info
In here, we can edit our status (Choose between Available, Away, or Invisible), and our Status Message. Very simple and easy to use.

IM’s
In this tab, we can see all previously opened conversations, organized by name. You can delete them, or start a new one with someone on OR off your buddy list. It also invites you to send a message to a cell phone, which, when tested, sends a text message with your screen name to the mobile phone with your message.

Positives
This application does what it needs to do and no more. Everything works perfectly. It is a very satisfying expierence.

Negatives
You cannot click links inside of messages, and when you get out of the app, you sign off in a way. There are no notifications like Apple promised, though it is a problem with Apple, not AOL. A little lacking in features.

Summary
This app does what is needs to do, and I respect it for that, though I wish for some innovation for some new features. I love the simplicity, though. I am waiting for the push notifications to come, for this to be a perfect application for using the AIM service.

9/10

Price: Free
Category: Social Networking

1password, the premier password manager on Mac OS X, has a port for the iPhone as well. It is multi featured, and has a built-in browser. I think the iPhone needs a built in password manager, like Firefox does; but it also may be a security threat in a case where your phone is lost or stolen. That is where 1password comes in. When you launch the app, you get an unlock screen, where you enter your 4 character PIN code. “Code Accepted.” It brings you to a list of your websites that you have entered information on; it can be organized by “title” or by “domain.” On the bottom, there are 4 options: Logins, Notes, Sync, and Settings. The “Logins” tab is your list of logins, like I explained before. There are a couple of options in this screen. When you click the name of one of the domains, it brings up the settings for that particular domain. This is where the downfall is. I do not own a Mac (sadly..), and therefore I do not know how the desktop version of 1pasword works, but this part doesn’t make sense to me. I wish that you could just enter your username and password, but you can’t. You have to enter a “Value” – and that is where it loses me. IF you can figure this out, you can go right to the in-app browser right from there. Click the domain, and it goes right to the page, with the username and password already filled in (how convenient!) You can protect all of your entries with the “Master Password” that you enter at the beginning.

More after the jump.

Notes
The notes tab gives you a place to enter notes in secrecy, like combinations, secrets, and more. You can master password protect these as well.

Sync
I cannot review this section because I do not have 1password on my desktop. I would guess, though, that it syncs your entries from the desktop version to the iPhone/touch version, wirelessly.

Settings
In the settings menu, you can change the Unlock Code, and when it Auto-Locks; change the Master Password, and when <i>it</i> Auto-Locks. You can also modify if you show the passwords or not, and you can clear your Web Cookies.

Positives
The iPhone really doesn’t have a password manager, and this does the job. It is very easy to navigate, and useful.

Negatives
Though easy to navigate, it is NOT easy to figure out from the stance of a first time user, how to enter passwords and usernames; which, after all is the point of this application.

Summary
A good password manager, but not well implicated. I do not understand how to enter passwords and usernames. It could be an AMAZING application if it was easier to enter passwords and usernames.

7.5/10
- Taken down for the lack of ease in entering information.

Price: Free
Category:Productivity