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The eagle has landed – and is not called iSlate. I always did not like the rumored name for the new apple device and I was happy to see that it is now called ‘iPad’.

It’s – as already blogged by many others – something between the iPhone and the MacBook(s) (Pro). It’s nice, it’s shiny and of course it’s NOT new.

Many competitors already tried to give an tablet a chance – but they wasn’t very successful up to now. What they made wrong? Well – as always during the last years Apple made it (or will make it) by a perfect setup of two things: design & usability.

Usability within this content means for me not only the haptic of the device and / or the OS which is driving it. It’s more the content which makes it some kind of usable.

This device seems to be a ‘Super-Kindle’ – it’s not monochrome, it’s not only showing up with eBooks: Apps (the iPhone / iPod Touch ones AND a new cat. of Apps just for the iPad), Business-Framework (iWorks), Fun (Movies, Photos, Games…) and a intelligent setup of accessories (Cover, Doc, Keyboard, Camera Connector…) right from the beginning AND a pricing where it’s worth to think about buying one 🙂 – amazing, again.

The Kindle is a great device – yes. But it’s usage is restricted to ‘reading’… this won’t be enough I think.

So what about? Simple: I WANT ONE – NOW! And I’m happy with the Wifi only only one… don’t need 3G!
update: did I mention that it’s shiny? Well this is one really big advantage of the amazon Kindle – it’s not shiny… and therefor you can read your ebooks at the beach for example – would be hard with the glossy iPad I think…

Come one, come all!!! Roll up, roll up, roll up!

 Come and see the new Bloody Bold Brilliant Basics

 Boldly go where no others have been before as you enter the new world of storage consolidation. This Brilliant storage and backup option will save your unit $$$[1]. Its Basically a steal[2]. 

Don’t be the last to get yours!

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[1] To be defined by a P*Q matrix which will be available only months after your purchase (subject to changes reflecting margin requirements).

[2] Customer Quote: “Its stealing!”

Reference: Darren R. Halford aka “The big Australian”

I loved Pandora until they stopped their service outside USA. The same for Hulu – no service outside USA:

Hmm… really? No – not at all. There’s a solution out there in the endless universe of the Internet. You don’t have to give Google now a try – here is the solution you need (Mac & Windows):

This little application sets up a VPN tunnel between your computer and the Internet gateway of AnchorFree.

One of the big advantages is that the performance is really great – it just works as you are expecting it should work. Videos at Hulu are streamed greatly, pandora’s radio streaming works like a glance.

So that’s what you are waiting for 🙂

Use this link to download Hotspot Shield.

Setting up is as easy as the download itself – on the Mac click on the little Icon right beside the Spotlight icon and click then on the menu entry ‘Connect’ – that’s it:

This keyboard is really nice. You just connect your iPhone via Bluetooth with the iTech Virtual Keyboard and here we go:

There is now a solution available to use this keyboard in reality. You have to use a jailbroken iPhone – but that’s not a real problem 😉

At ENGADGET you’ll find a video of this setup – iPhone, Virtual Keyboard AND the new Magic Mouse…

So this would be a solution for that ones writing really much on their iPhones and / or those of us which are not that happy with that little virtual keyboard Apple is providing.

The price is hot: $ 169.99 with the english keyboard layout. You need different keyboard layout? Well, there’s no german one – but you can purchase a russian one…

On Jan. 1st my TimeMachine Sparsebundle which is hosted on my DROBO 2TB via a Apple Airport Extreme AirDisk crashed. The directory of the SB showed several issues when I checked it with ‘Disk Utility’. I then tried to repair the image several times – under different conditions. So I tried it connected via AirDisk, accessed locally via FireWire connected DROBO, via USB connection… I also copied the image to an additional USB drive other than the DROBO… but it didn’t work.

I googled a little bit and found that ‘Disk Utility’ is not the right choice to repair images which are showing such issues. Mostly users refer then to ‘DiskWarrior’ – this piece of SW should be able to correct the errors. But is it really worth $ 99.95? There’s no trial version so I couldn’t test it – and by the way: the things stored on the TM-image are only things I’ve already wiped out of my MBP. And the other things are perfectly stored securely on my DROBO. So I just loose some convenience on deleting the corrupt image if I’m not able to repair it – but nothing which is worth $99.95 to spend 😉

So it was clear for me what to do: delete the sparsebundle TM-image and check what I can to to prevent further issues.

I checked the DROBO-Support pages – and hoped that since my last visit there they realized that there is a problem by using the DROBO in such a constellation like I do.

And yes – they have checked their user-discussion-board and come up with solutions now:

1. There is now a document showing how to setup the DROBO correctly
   (yes, I know – there was one in the past too… but this one now is different)
2. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is now supported
3. a new DROBO Dashboard version 1.6.6 (release notes) is available (firmware is uptodate:  1.3.5)

The new point is that you have to partition the DROBO into two segments. One – the FIRST one – for TimeMachine use, the second for all your other data. In the past this was not supported and recommended.

How to proceed here is really simple – just follow the documentation. What’s not really clear on this document: keep in mind that the FIRST partition is the one you will use for TimeMachine and it’s new Sparsebundle image. This partition will keep it’s fixed size (e.g. 200GB out of 930 GB with a 2TB setup of DROBO).

So – if you expand your DROBO (e. g. with one additional disk, cap. 1TB) later on with new drives the FIRST partition will not change – only the SECOND partition is expanding then:

Partition A (for TM use): 200GB
Partition B (for data): 1.6TB

Following this guide I realized one thing: DROBO Dashboard again is only recognizing ONE single partition. But that’s not the problem at all 🙂

I also found now several documents at their knowledge base showing how to handle the DROBO in case of disk-problems… and – yes, you can believe it – now you are not only allowed to maintain you DROBO with third party tools (DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, TechTool Deluxe / Pro) – it’s now recommended!