Archive for the ‘Featured’ category

The New MacBook and MacBook Pro Review

October 18th, 2008

About a week ago, Steve Jobs hosted a special event to announce the new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops to the market, and offering them as their best notebooks.

After viewing Apple’s keynote on Tuesday, October 14, and interacting with them at the Apple Store at the Mall of Georgia location, I’ve come to terms with the new models and the features they offer in the industry.

Sporting Intel’s latest chips and NVIDIA’s latest graphics, the new MacBook, Apple’s entry level machine, is well rounded out a powerful machine. » Read more: The New MacBook and MacBook Pro Review

Browser Wars: Google Strikes Back

October 14th, 2008

Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Over the past few years, these browsers have become common names for web browsers on both Mac and Windows systems, with Apple’s Safari arriving to the Windows platform in June 2007.

Both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox have been big players in the recent browser wars. While Internet Explorer has been losing ground to Firefox over the past few years, the browser wars have appeared once again; this time it’s a battle between FireFox and the other guys: Apple Safari, Opera, and now, Google Chrome. Google Chrome Logo

Google Chrome hit the web browsing market on September 2, 2008 for Windows XP and Vista, and was welcomed as an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 browser. The open-sourced WebKit HTML-engine and a Google-built JavaScript engine, dubbed “V8 JavaScript”, help power the Chrome browser. » Read more: Browser Wars: Google Strikes Back

Volkswagen Releases Photos of MkVI Golf

August 4th, 2008

Yesterday, offical photos of Volkswagen’s up-coming 6th generation Golf/Jetta platform (also known as the MkVI) and body were leaked to the Internet.

The photos (shown below) reveal Volkswagen’s next design move towards a more agressive design style.

The agressive front-end design takes cues from the production-level model of the 2009 Scirocco sports coupé (currently avaliable in Europe only). While the slender headlights and dominating lower grille work in favor for the Scirocco’s exotic design nature, it’s not meant to be stamped out on to every Volkswagen model. The new design looses touch with Volkswagen’s current “water fall” design currently found on the 5th generation models: Golf/Rabbit, Jetta, GTI, Eos, and Tiguan.

The rear end design of the hatchback models continue taking design cues from other models. The Golf, GTI, and (eventual) R32 hatchbacks, recieve an updated tail light design from the companys’ mid-sized SUV, the Touareg. While the tail lights appear to be an improvement over the 5th generation design, some may not like the “Mini-Touareg” appearance the car reflects.

The interior is also largely revised and updated for the upcoming 2010 model year, and once again takes styling cues from another model, the Tiguan. However, unlike the questionable front and rear designs, the updated Tiguan-insipred door panels are a welcomed change for the platform. The dashboard and control placement remain largely unchanged, aside from some minor tweaks here-and-there which enhance the refreshed interior.

The overall body remains largely the same, which gives the car more of a mid-model design change rather than an “all-new” design.

Pictures below:

Volkswagen Releases Photos of MkVI Golf

Volkswagen Releases Photos of MkVI Golf

Volkswagen Releases Photos of MkVI Golf

Volkswagen Releases Photos of MkVI Golf

3G iPhone Rumors

April 30th, 2008

Alright, it’s been about 9 months since the original Apple iPhone hit the market. And with it’s 1 year anniversary just 4 months away, with out any hardware updates (As great as the 16GB model is, it’s no hardware update) the device has aged quickly in technical specifications and features.

The first generation iPhone is still an amazing device despite its dated hardware, and with the 2.0 software on the way and the iPhone SDK released earlier this year, the first generation has a lot of (software) potential ahead of it. But with a lot of the fan-fare-frenzy gone from the 1st Generation iPhone, attention has turned to software updates, hacks, jailbreaks, and unlocking the iPhone. Which gives hackers and developers alike a wonderful platform to develop applications that enhance the iPhone as a mobile Internet device. While news of these stories float the Internet and are informative, they’ve also lost their sparkle of interest in my opinion.
» Read more: 3G iPhone Rumors

The 26th Annual AJC Auto Show – Review

April 21st, 2008

So, yesterday, I went to the 26th Annual AJC Auto Show, held at the Georgia World Congress Center. Over all the event was done half-way decent, coordination and intelligence was scattered around unnecessarily and stupidity.

In years past, the auto show was held within one large showroom floor in Building A, however this year, the show was split up into 2 showrooms. I don’t know if the split was because of scheduling conflicts, or if it was because Building A was undergoing repairs from the tornado that went through the Atlanta-area a few months ago, but either way it was still decently organized.

This year, unlike last year, we decided to go on opening day, I was expecting there to be large crowds and plenty of energy, but the hussle and bussle just wasn’t there. To me, it felt like that the majority of people there weren’t there to check out the new concepts, the upcoming production models, or the exotic sports cars. The lack of energy just kinda made the event kinda bland, informative and entertaining, but still kinda bland.

» Read more: The 26th Annual AJC Auto Show – Review

Volkswagen Introduces the New Scirocco

April 18th, 2008

I was surfing around some of my favorite Volkswagen news websites during another unproductive day at home, when pulled up the VWVortex website. There on their front page was news of the all-new 2009 Volkswagen Scirocco. Volkswagen’s attempt (again) to capture the sports-coupe segment.

The VWVortex article mainly consisted of Volkswagen’s Press Release from the Geneva Auto Show.

Volkswagen’s Chief Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn was quoted in the VWVortex article saying:

“In the Scirocco we will be bringing the kind of sports car into the showroom that people dream of. Yet it is a dream that an exceptionally large number of car drivers will be able to afford – despite all of the high-end technologies we have implemented.”

I’m not too sure about the “kind of sports car[...] that people dream of.” part of Dr. Winterkorn’s statement. While the front end design is defiantly unique and shocking in comparison to the Volkswagen Jetta and GTI, which are currently offered at dealerships, the all-new Scirocco isn’t as appealing of a ’sports coupé’ I was expecting from Volkswagen designers and engineers. » Read more: Volkswagen Introduces the New Scirocco

Apple Time Capsule Review

April 9th, 2008

Apple introduced their idea of a solution for backing up notebooks with Time Machine back in January at Macworld 2008, called “Time Capsule.” It’s an interesting contraption.

At first I was a bit skeptical and put-off with the device and with Apple. I was upset with Apple with this device, which makes Apple appear that they’re becoming more like Microsoft. The device is supposed to relieve the issue that notebook users with Mac OS X Leopard, Apple’s newest operating system, can use Time Machine to automatically back up the notebooks files.

The Time Capsule is pretty much the same thing an Airport Extreme Base Station, aside from the fact that the Time Capsule has a built in hard drive. But, once again, Apple has released a product that I’ve found flaws with its options, offerings, and has, well, come up short in my expectations of an amazing Apple product. » Read more: Apple Time Capsule Review

Apple TV Take 2

January 20th, 2008

Apple has announced a major update to its Apple TV device, its ‘Take 2′ software update.

Take 2 is a major revision of Apple TV’s software adding new features to the set-top box, including HD movie rentals and trailers, iTunes music store, access to Flickr photo galleries, in addition to accessing YouTube videos, and Podcasts.

» Read more: Apple TV Take 2