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	<title>The Technocrat</title>
	<link>http://www.technocrat.ca</link>
	<description>Musings and Ramblings on Life, The Universe, and Technology</description>
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		<title>Attention to Detail</title>
		<description><![CDATA[iBooks is a great example of a beautifully-designed iPad application. The attention to detail and rendering in the page-turning animations is incredible. Notice how the text appears through the back of the page as you turn it over. The actual touchscreen UI is equally impressive&#8212;you can turn pages slowly by pulling from either corner and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=100</link>
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		<title>iLounge releases massive iPad Buyers’ Guide + iPod/iPhone Book 5 &#124; iLounge News</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The fifth edition of iLounge’s famous iPod/iPhone Book has just arrived, now with a brand-new iPad Buyers’ Guide packed in! Download the free Book today! With more than two million iPads already sold, the need for an honest, independent look at the complete world of iPad hardware, accessories, and software has never been greater. iLounge’s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=99</link>
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		<title>Time to see how the other side lives&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So I ordered a Nexus One last night.To be clear, this doesn&#39;t in any way mean that I have plans to abandon my i-Device ecosystem. However, the buzz surrounding Android, particularly with the impending release of Android 2.2 has piqued my interest.  Plus, I want to get my hands on an official, original, Google-branded (and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=92</link>
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		<title>Ah, the Nostalgia</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So I was getting caught up on my reading at Daring Fireball this afternoon, and came across John Gruber&#8217;s piece from a couple of weeks ago, The Kids Are All Right. Leaving aside the fact that Gruber is ever-so-slightly dating himself in that piece, I have to admit to an eerily similar experience growing up. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=76</link>
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		<title>The Real Problem with MobileMe Security (or lack thereof)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the past couple of days, a debate has been raging over the security (or lack thereof) on MobileMe's web services.  While it's obvious to anybody who is paying attention that the MobileMe web services do not use an SSL connection to secure any data beyond your password, <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/15/inside_mobileme_web_3_and_web_client_server_apps.html&#38;page=2" target="_blank">a recent article by "Prince McLean" at AppleInsider</a> implies that this is actually of no concern as the JSON data exchanges between the client and server apps are themselves secure...]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=67</link>
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		<title>Bluetooth Proximity Detection on OS X</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One thing that I've been playing with off and on for some time is a small efficient little solution for handling basic Bluetooth proximity detection, specifically for being able to perform certain actions when a cell phone or other Bluetooth device is in range of my Powerbook.

As an IT Consultant, I am frequently working in various locations at different clients' sites, and it's nice to have my Powerbook secure itself when I'm away from the machine.   In addition, my other objectives are to keep the OS X Address Book application connected and to iSync my phone whenever it moves back within proximity of my machine.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=44</link>
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		<title>The Many Misconceptions of Dot Mac</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The press on Appleâ€™s Dot Mac service has been mediocre at a best lately, and one doesnâ€™t have to look very far to find commentary berating it for any number of reasons such as the price tag, the lack of features compared to many of the other offerings out there, or just the performance of it in general.Even the recent improvements to the web mail and address book interface were met with mixed reviews, with the general feeling being that it was about time Apple caught up with the other technology out there.However, I think that many people are really missing the point of what .Mac is and what itâ€™s intended to be....  For one relatively low annual fee, one gets all of the possible online services that the average user would need, rolled up into one nice neat package that â€œjust worksâ€ for the most part with the technology that is already built in to Mac OS X..Macâ€™s detractors often quote how much more cheaply they can get e-mail services or web hosting from other providers....  Appleâ€™s motives are clear, as is the likelihood that they will continue providing this service as long as enough people are paying for it.Certainly, there are other good inexpensive commercial solutions for e-mail, web hosting, and online storage, but these ultimately end up being standalone services, and one has to shop around a bit to find out what is going to work best, and play the game of trying to integrate these services both into the Mac OS experience, and with each other.Itâ€™s not that these arenâ€™t good services -- they are, but to compare them to what .Mac offers is actually somewhat unfair....  This is one area in which .Mac most definitely does NOT â€œjust workâ€.The bottom line, however, is that while .Mac needs to grow and expand somewhat to improve the user experience, the service itself does a very good job of providing what itâ€™s designed to -- a simple one-stop-shop for all the basic online services that the average Mac user is likely to need, wrapped up into a simple package that is tightly integrated with the Mac OS.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=45</link>
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		<title>My Mac Life</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A topic Iâ€™ve been meaning to espouse on for some time is exactly how Iâ€™ve managed to go from being such a die hard geek to being somebody who enjoys using Appleâ€™s technology (not that the two are mutually exclusive).

A close friend of mine has taken great joy in telling people how my views on technology took a dramatic shift shortly after I got an iPod, and of course while that may sound overly simplistic, itâ€™s essentially true.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=48</link>
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		<title>The Battle of the Bitrates</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Or, to put it another way, how much is too much?As I had discussed in a previous entry (see â€œWhat the Market Will Bearâ€), I firmly believe that there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to audio equipment, and there are many self-proclaimed audiophiles out there who simply buy expensive equipment just to somehow prove their â€œaudiophileness.â€Well, the same can also be said for digitally encoded music....  There have been some arguments that lower bit-rates are practical with certain more advanced formats such as Windows Media Audio (WMA) or Advanced Audio Codec MPEG-4 files (commonly used by iTunes), but as a rule the industry seems to accept that 128kbps provides the best trade-off between storage and quality.However, there are many that prefer to encode their music at higher bit-rates, as they donâ€™t want to sacrifice audio quality....  Reducing that to a 128kbps MP3 file isnâ€™t likely going to result in any quality loss, since there was nothing there to begin with (10% of nothing is still nothing).Older CDs, even the so-called â€œdigitally remasteredâ€ ones may not actually be using such high quality recording or digital transfer methods in the first place that a lossy compression to 128kbps is going to make much of a difference (admittedly, this could also be part of the situation in my testing above......  Ripping to a higher bit-rate just because sound reproduction technology might increase in five years is still a waste of storage space, and chances are that the compression technology will have changed by then anyway, and youâ€™d want to re-rip your files from CD regardless.The bottom line, though is that one shouldnâ€™t just jump on a higher bit-rate bandwagon though because others say itâ€™s better.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=49</link>
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		<title>Video Content:  Simple or Free?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Most iPod users are â€œjoe consumerâ€ who bought an iPod to listen to their music, and simply want to get their music onto their iPod in the simplest way possible.Now, the average consumer usually still buys CDs, and iTunes (the software, not the store) makes this import process very easy and painless....  After all, importing a CD into iTunes is so easy why would anybody bother to buy their music from the iTunes Music Store?However, the article goes even further in assuming that the majority of iPod users actually have the capability in terms of hardware and knowledge to record video content from their TVs and then convert it into iPod format, and that therefore every owner of an iPod video who wants to watch a TV show on their iPod would rather do this than shell out $1.99.If this were true, then sales of DVD box sets of TV shows should have never taken off either, since all of this content is freely available on TV, right?Frankly, this is an unrealistic assumption even for a technical user.  Iâ€™m a very experienced computer user myself, and I couldnâ€™t even begin to be bothered with this process just to get content onto my iPod, and being in Canada, I canâ€™t even get the iTMS video content yet, since itâ€™s only available in the U.S. So in my case, Iâ€™d rather not even have that content on my iPod than go through the trouble of recording it and transferring it manually.So if this is the response of somebody who actually has the knowledge and ability to do this, how much more likely is the average iPod owner to bother?Again, the iPod won itâ€™s market share for its simplicity and ease of use.  iTMS will continue to survive for the same reasonâ€¦ I can either invest $35 for a season of a show I want to watch and have it on my iPod within minutes, or invest far more than $35 in time, effort, and hardware to record every episode of a season from my cable/satellite feed and encode it for my iPod, and wait several months to get a whole season.To me, the choice is obvious.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=50</link>
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