My husband has been giving me grief lately, because he feels like he married the next John Grogan. The only thing I seem to post about on this blog are my dogs.

Well, let’s face it, I’ve had a rough couple of years in terms of my life with dogs. First, I lose my best friend and our first family dog. Then we bring home Mugen and he starts sewing us up and then we adopt Lucy and feel like the family is complete only to have her taken from us by cancer less than two years later. Along the way, we adopted Jazzmin because she needed someplace to go and when Lucy was gone, I was so horribly lonely without her that my husband decided we needed a third again and we adopted Jet. That’s a lot of doing with dogs in three years, so I have a lot to talk about when it comes to my crew.… [Read More]

So this is Christmas…

This is the blog post I’ve been avoiding writing.

As a die hard Apple fangirl, I love everything about Apple. However, even I am willing to admit when Apple has gotten something completely wrong. Let’s face it, Apple’s attempt at a social network, Ping, blows chunks. I don’t use it. I want to use it, I think the idea of sharing the music that I love with other people via Ping is awesome, but it doesn’t connect to Facebook and to be brutally honest, it needs that piece of functionality. Ping is tailor made for the Facebook crowd and that’s where it should live, as an app for Facebook, not integrated into iTunes.

I would love to say that Ping has a brilliant user interface that is straight forward and easy to use. I would love to say that Ping has this cool feature or that cool feature that I can’t live without.… [Read More]

Let’s Talk About Google+

I made my first friend on the Internet when I was 14 years old. It was over a service called Quantum Link, which later grew into a little company, that I know you’ve heard of, called AOL. Chris lived on the other side of town from me, and it was odd to actually meet someone from your local area in a chat room. We exchanged phone numbers one night and called each other once a week or so and talked on the phone. We met at the mall downtown a couple of times, mind you this was in the late 80s and early 90s. I don’t think my parents thought there was a chance I would meet a pedophile over q-link. So Chris and I met. He wasn’t a creep. He was everything he said he was and I was nerdier than I said I was, which he already knew and was okay with.… [Read More]

The Internet

I have been desperately trying to put this blog post together for a week or so now. The reality is, there’s just too much about iOS5 that I love. Suffice it to say that we have iOS5 running on my old 3GS so that my husband can figure out how it works, and maybe, someday, finish that iPhone app that I keep telling him he needs to build. In the mean time, I’ve been carrying the thing around and using it where I would normally be using my iPhone 4.

I could tell you all sorts of cool things about iOS5 that Apple did not talk about at WWDC. But that’s not what has me excited as an end user of iOS5. What has me excited, is iTunes in the Cloud. Being able to sync my books, videos and music over the air is just a God send. This all started because of my mother, of course.… [Read More]

iTunes in the Cloud: What More Do You Need?

Every year, I watch WWDC with interest. I watch it from a consumer standpoint, and not a developer standpoint. I fully expected Apple to release a hardware product at WWDC this year, but last year, the developers were quite upset that Apple had forgotten about them in all the iPhone 4 hype. Certainly Gizmodo’s checkbook journalism and the sensation that this caused in the media, so huge actually that the story reached CNN, was a show stealer.

This year, was entirely unlike last year. This year, the WWDC keynote delivered by Apple focused on developer tools and developer features in Apple’s upcoming offerings for their devices. Of course, I’m talking about OSX Lion, iCloud and iOS 5.

There is a great article on iCloud by Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times that tells you everything you need to know about iCloud in a way that only Mr. Ihnatko can. You can read the article for yourself, but this quote sums it up nicely, “Apple forcefully made the point that iCloud is meant to do no less than replace the PC in its current role as the hub of the digital experience, and relegate it to the status of Just Another Device that syncs data between itself and everything else”.… [Read More]

WWDC 2011: Back to the Dev

This could get long, I’m coming off of a very long November.

I am relatively new to Macs. I got my very first Mac in December 2008 and I am still thrilled to tell everyone who will listen, that I am typing on that very same Mac right now. I am impressed and amazed that I have had a computer this long and have never had to call tech support and have not had a hard drive blow up, or the back light in a screen go out for no apparent reason other than it just felt like dying that day. When I went to the genius bar to get my iPhone fixed, the Genius told me I could expect to have my Mac for another three years. I grinned like a kid on Christmas when he told me that.

I love being a Mac owner.

I have been searching for word processing software since I bought my Mac.… [Read More]

Scrivener and Me

Apple released its iPad on Saturday. Already CNET.com is declaring that HP’s slate will be an ‘iPad Killer’. I find this funny because iPad hasn’t had time to establish itself, let alone sort out what market it is being sold to and yet, CNET is certain of the powerhouse that iPad will become. So much so, that they feel the need to start bestowing titles upon competing devices as though iPad is already dominating a market that barely even exists.

Admittedly, in the mobile device world, 300,000 units sold on opening day is nothing to spit at, but it hardly compares to the avalanche of iPhones that Apple has sold. You may not know someone that has an iPad. But odds are very good that if you don’t own an iPhone, you know at least one person who does.

Think about that for a minute.

No, I mean it. Really think about the implications of that.… [Read More]

So Easy.

Welp… I don’t have much to say about the iPad.

Hubby picked ours up yesterday and I have played with it for approximately oh… 15 minutes. Long enough to tell you that I really dig the IDEA of Netflix App on the iPad… and I really dig the idea of Kindle App on the iPad… iBooks looks really swanky and… the AP Mobile News App on iPad… just… owns.

Otherwise… hubby has not taken his hands off our iPad except for while he was sleeping last night and the 20 minutes that he was in the shower this morning… and the 15 minutes during which he was making breakfast.

So… I have no idea what I can tell you about the iPad and its features… because I have no freaking clue what they are yet.

That’s it.

Happy Easter!… [Read More]

Random Gemini’s iPad Review.

I have long known that Mac users and PC users speak a different language.

There’s a fundamental difference between how PC users use their machines and how Mac users do it. The biggest one being that backups and restores are absolutely no problem over here. I still have no idea how one accomplishes this under Windows without copying over massive groups of files, by hand. In fact… now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way to do it under Windows without spending any money on third party software and if that’s the case, that makes me really, really sad.

Apple, may I say again, that Time Machine… simply rocks.

Over a year later and I have had absolutely no problems with my Macbook. I have never had to restore anything from Time Machine, except that one time when I accidentally deleted a file. It was super easy to get it back.… [Read More]

Cheap Shoes

This morning, I realized a little late that the State of the Union Address was today. For those of you that follow me on twitter, you might have noticed my tweet somewhere around 9 am this morning that read as follows: “LOL! comment on engadget: “I’m more excited about Job’s state of the union address than Obama’s… What does that say about us?” This was promptly picked up by the Obama twitter bot. The reality is that I realized that the state of the union address was today when I read that comment on Engadget.

In reality, I could care less about the State of the Union Address. Today, my attention was fully focused on Steve Jobs.

It was the only thing that I cared about.

When Jobs walked out on that stage and started talking about all the company updates this morning, I was disappointed. I wanted him to just get on with the show.… [Read More]

Apple Releases iPad!