Technically Speaking

How much PC power can be put into the shell of a Mac Mini? Here is another example of someone tinkering with a perfectly good machine but this time there seems to be a valid reason behind it. Kevin Rose, of The Screen Savers fame, has taken it upon himself to do an extreme modification of the Mac Mini to see how much PC power per square inch can be put in its case. Of course, the first step would be to gut the Mac Mini and stuff it full of PC components. Using thee parts list below Kevin walks use through the process.

Parts needed:

Nano-ITX Motherboard
Laptop IDE HD 2.5” (any capacity)
40 to 44pin IDE converter
Motherboard risers
Sears Tap kit

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Now I said that this was done for the sake of technology, but Kevin has not given us the benchmarks that answer the initial question; “How much PC power can be put into the shell of a Mac Mini?” I’m confident that we will see the results shortly, we will just have to wait patiently.

Google has done it again. They are now indexing television shows by tapping the closed caption feed and capturing still video to go with it. Currently the system has been launched as a Beta with limited channel selection. Mainly San Fransico Bay Area stations are being indexed but hopefully in a short time many more stations (national network stations) will be added.

Our mission is to organize the world’s information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day. Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

Just type in your search term (for instance, ipod or Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show. Visit the “About this show” side panel to learn when this show will air next.

Right now we’re just testing this product, so you’ll find programs only from a limited number of channels, which we’ve been indexing since late December 2004. You can expect to see more and more content as we continue to add new channels.

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During the last few months, IE has steadily loss market share to Firefox. IE’s share has fallen from 95.5% to just under 90% in the last few months since Firefox released their “stable” version. The company, WebSideStory, that collected this data, samples more than 30 million daily Internet users from more than 200 countries to determine the browser-usage shares. Doing the quick math, the numbers suggest that 1.5 million of the daily websurfers have made a switch from IE to some other browser.

The percentage of users browsing with IE has steadily fallen since June, while Firefox and some other competing browser have shown gains. Over that time, IE use has dropped a total of about 5 percent from its perch at 95.5 percent.

Surveys from another Web analytics provider, OneStat.com, have reflected a similar pattern and even put IE’s worldwide share below 90 percent.

Firefox, which is Mozilla’s standalone browser, was released as a stable version in November.

WebSideStory tracks Mozilla’s other browser with a category that includes browsers from America Online Inc.’s Netscape unit. That category dropped slightly to 2.6 percent in mid-January from 2.8 percent a month earlier.

Remaining browsers, which largely are Opera Software ASA’s namesake browser and Apple Computer Inc.’s Safari browser, showed a gain of almost a full percentage point. They reached a 2.1 percent usage share, compared with 1.3 percent a month earlier, according to WebSideStory.

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It is good to see that people are starting the realize that there are other safer and better ways to visit the web. Firefox, being the catalyst of the movement, will build steam as their browser gains the word-of-mouth momentum. Microsoft will really have to examine what the people want in a browser if they are to keep their dominating piece of the pie.

The FBI’s controversial email wiretap system formerly known as Carnivore is reported to be no longer in use. Carnivore, also known as DCS-1000, was designed in 1998 to read online communications between suspected spies, criminals, and terrorists. The suspected price of the system was between US$6 million and $15 million, the actual cost have never been disclosed..

According to the reports, the FBI used commercially available software to conduct court-ordered Internet surveillance in criminal investigations 13 times during that time period.

An FBI spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The FBI is required by American law to provide detailed reports on how it uses Carnivore, the monitoring system now known as DCS 1000.

FBI agents, after receiving a court warrant, install the system on the suspect’s Internet service provider and filter out his email messages, Web browsing activities and other online communications.

It has come under fire from civil-liberties groups who say it is too invasive and ripe for abuse.

US law enforcers have argued they need Carnivore to keep up with criminals who use online communications to plan and carry out terrorism, spying, fraud, child pornography and other crimes.

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Are you the type of person that just plopped down $500 and some change on a Mac Mini and now you want to crack it open and start tinkering? Well, you’re not the only one! There is already a video circulating the web detailing the intricacies of dismantling the Mac Mini. Follow if you dare. (I am not responsible if you damage your goods. Reader beware!!!) Once you get the cover off you should be able to add additional RAM or upgrade the hard drive.

If you have heard about FreeiPods.com and the company that makes it all possible, Gratis Networks, then you will be happy to know that they are making it possible to get a free Mini Mac. FreeiPods.com has proved to be a legit operation so you can rest assured that the free mini mac offer is legit as well. From what I hear, it just takes a little bit of waiting to receive your goods, but they do come.

If you have forgotten what the Mini Mac has to offer, take a look at its stats below.

The Brand New Apple Mac mini (80GB)

* Fast G4 processor
* Comes with 80GB harddrive
* iLife ’05, Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther,” Quicken 2005 for Mac, Nanosaur 2, Marble Blast Gold
* Built-in Ethernet and modem
* Slot-loading Combo drive
* DVI connector, VGA adapter
* Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall
* Weighs only 2.9 lbs

If you are so inclined, help me get a free MacMini

Well once again my attention is drawn to a movie based on the star. When the star is Jennifer Garner how can you blame me? I didn’t see DareDevil, the movie that spawned this, but I’m sure it will be entertaining. From what I gather, the movie is on the level of Mortal Combat. So if you are into Martial Arts / Sci-Fi, this should prove to be interesting.

Following the events of Daredevil, Elektra Natchios (Garner), sai enthusiast and assassin for hire, is revived by the Order of the Hand, a group of assassins who helped train her. Assigned by the Hand’s current leader, Kirigi, to kill a man, Mark Miller (Visnjic), and his 13-year-old daughter, Abby, Elektra soon befriends them and decides to stand up to her ninja peers. Elektra is especially motivated to do so when she discovers that Miller’s grandfather was an ally of her former mentor, Stick (Stamp). Together, they must take on Kirigi’s lethal quartet (which includes Tengu and Typhoid).

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Check out the first five minutes of the movie…5 Minutes of Elektra

Space.com has put together a collection of the most popular space photo wallpapers of 2004. These photos range from SpacShipOne’s Ansari Xprize winning flight to Hubble’s peek into deep space. 21 images are listed in the collection but there are many more for you to download as well.

Best Space Photo Wallpapers Of 2004

Apple announces that their version of the rack mount Xserve with two 2.3GHz processors is now available to all that wants it. They were originally custom made for the System X supercomputer at Virginia Tech but Apple has decided to increase their product line by making both versions of Xserve.

“Now we have it available to our entire customer base,” said Alex Grossman, director of server and storage hardware for Apple’s product marketing group. Apple’s Xserve line had topped out with dual-2.0GHz processors.

Apple is keeping pricing for the Xserve line the same while also improving the optical drive from a CD burner to one that can both burn CDs and read DVD discs. While servers aren’t often used to play movies, Grossman said more companies are distributing software on DVDs. Customers will also now be able to pay extra for a SuperDrive that can burn DVDs.

“If they want to do any kind of archive or backup, they can now do that,” Grossman said.

The system with two 2.3GHz processors will sell for $3,999, while a machine with one 2.0GHz will sell for $2,999. Both include an unlimited client version of Mac OS X Server. Apple also offers a version of Xserve for clustered computers that includes the speedier processor and a 10-user Mac OS X license for $2,999. The 2.3GHz machines also include a faster 1.15GHz system bus.

In addition to the Xserve changes, Apple on Tuesday released version 1.0 of Xsan, a file system for storage gear, which had been in testing for much of last year. Apple had planned to release it by mid-December but last month said it would delay the launch until early this year. Apple declined both then and on Tuesday to state the reason for the delay.

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