As many of you know, we here at BackBeat Media represent and broker all of Think Secret’s advertising, and have for many years. As such, the confidentiality inherent in our site relationships keeps us from participating in any public speculation on the settlement they recently reached with Apple. But that hasn’t stopped you all from […]

Those of you who know me no doubt have heard me say that I believe every business is the customer service business. Don’t service your customers, and you soon will have no business left. One of my favorite practices is that of employing the Scotty Principle, or for you non Trekkies: under-promise and over-deliver. I […]

Ever since I installed Mac OS X 10.5/Leopard, I’ve been unable to get iChat logs to appear in my Spotlight results. I used to rely on this quite heavily and it’s been frustrating without it. This morning, I spent a few minutes in Spotlight preferences and realized what happened: Previously, iChat logs were classified as […]

Just wanted to let you all know that I’ll be doing the “live” Typical Mac User Podcast with Victor Cajiao tonight at 8pm EST. Because it’s live, you can text/call-in with questions, and details are available at their site. Should be quite fun, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m also a drummer in addition to my various business interests. Having played the instrument for nearly 25 years, I’m always on the lookout for sources of new inspiration. I was just reading an interview in Modern Drummer with Jeff Ballard. He’s the “new” guy (he’s over 50) […]

I hate to complain here, but I wanted to get something correct online in hopes that it sticks. Recently the RIAA has sent threatening letters to between 30 and 50 University of New Hampshire students here in Durham, accusing them of illegally sharing songs over the Internet using Limewire or Gnutella. Unfortunately, every article that […]

Sunday the kids and I started the day building and flying all sorts of paper airplanes, then went to a community Halloween-ish event in the afternoon. After that, we came home to watch both the Patriots and the Red Sox confirm our New England pride.

Due to my travels and schedule this week, John and I decided to take a brief hiatus and skip this week’s Mac Geek Gab. We’ll be back next week, recording Monday night as usual.

As some of you may have seen, this week we rolled updates to two of our sites.The Mac Observer sees a layout refresh, changing the location of the columns, moving the content up and to the left, and allowing room for some more modern ad types…. Sunday I get to hang out and relax with Paul, his family, and some friends, then Monday a meeting in Cupertino before getting on the redeye home.

The fact that the ADM held its first “in person” meetings here was simultaneously no surprise as well as icing on the cake.We at The Mac Observer and iPodObserver have been media sponsors of the Podcast/Portable/New Media show since its inception, and (unofficially) I’m very much looking forward to doing that again…. That means I won’t have to spend another gorgeous fall weekend in Ontario, California, and I also think Las Vegas brings many benefits, the biggest of them being that it’s easier to get to and also adds the credibility of having this show in a “real” trade show town.Kudos to Tim Bourquin and his entire team for a job well done.