I have to start by saying I would not recommend doing this for various reasons, but this is really cool. It seems someone fed up with the lack of connections with his MacBook Air and a knack for soldering figured out how to imbed a USB Verizon wirless card in the Air. First of all, a $5 USB extension cable would allow for connectivity or second, you could create a personal hotspot with the cradlepoint router which will be less stressful and you wont ruin your expensive computer by accident. I should also warn you that these USB hi-speed EV-DO modems don’t seem to last long if you use it much. If your card burns out, you have to do this all over again!

With that said, I admire this persons creativity and think it is worth mentioning on my blog. It seems that even though there is only one USB port on the MacBook Air, there are connectors for more USB ports inside the computer. The modder simply broke down the USB modem to be as small as it could, get some other parts he needed, found a small bit of room in the computer, and you have a MacBook Air with build in EVDO. Check out the steps with this link: http://www.getlistedlocally.com/Business_Resources.html

Yes that is right, that thing your kids buy music on is now 5 years old. Introduced today back in 2003, iTunes and iPods have developed and shaped people, Apple as a company, and much more. iTunes has taken the world by storm so much, you will often see references to iTunes in TV shows or animated comedys. With sales rising to the top as the number 1 online music seller, I must say well done Apple. Happy birthday iTunes.

Sometimes you have your hands on the keyboard and it takes extra time to grab the mouse and move to the address bar to type a web site while using Internet explorer. If you are looking for a way to speed up the process, try typing Alt+d. This means hold down the alt key and then press the d key. This will move you to the address bar and you are free to type hopefully making your browsing experience quicker and better.

Windows Tip:

If the title did not explain it, if you need to save a document and have having to stop what you are doing, grab the mouse, save, and then find your place on the keyboard to continue typing. Try hitting Ctrl+S that means hit the "Ctrl" and the "S" key at the same time. You may find you will save some time with keyboard shortcuts. This is especially useful if you type and are in a good habit of saving frequently.

Given where I live in Southern California, I have decided to learn Spanish. I was horrible at learning the typical way when in high school so I decided to take a different approach. I decided to try Rosetta Stone the, "Fastest Learning Course, Guaranteed. Used by NASA, FBI, 10,000 Schools."

I’ll tell you one thing about learning a language. Unless you are a super brainiac, you will not fully learn any language until you fully immerse yourself in it. You also risk forgetting it if you don’t use it. The traditional way of reading a schoolbook where you read the word and read that it means xyz in English just did not cut it. One of my bilingual friends told me that in order to be successful, you have to know what is being talked about in the foreign language without doing a mental translation of what is spoken in your native language in your head. Rosetta Stone aims to solve this by showing you an image and telling you what it is, building on it, and adding more and more. Overall, I have been really satisfied with Rosetta Stone, I am not fluent in Spanish but I really feel that is because I have not used the program enough. I have only spent a few hours using Rosetta Stone while owning it a few months. Had I used the software every day for the past few months over and over, my dumb head might be speaking Spanish. If you have had trouble learning a language, I strongly suggest trying out Rosetta Stone. The newest version of Rosetta Stone works with Windows or Mac platforms.

Have you ever been poking around your Windows Vista computer, found the Windows Experience Index score and wonder what the heck it is? One thing that might confuse people is that your overall score is the lowest of all the ratings and not an average. For example, you may have a 5.1 for the processor speed, a 4 for ram and a 2 for graphics which is the lowest but your overall score is 2.

The answer is pretty simple. The idea behind rating is to help you out when you install software on your computer and ensure you will know what to expect when you buy and install a video game or utility. In the past, when people bought games, the needed to make sure their video card was good enough, processor was fast enough and so forth. The number system solves this. If you buy a Vista video game rated at a minimum 5, every category in your system should be a 5 or greater otherwise you will possibly have issues. Whether it may be ram, processor, or video, you game will lag because the rating is lower than what is expected. If you buy a game and it’s rating is a 3 and your overall average score is 5, you be able to play the game with no issues.

Hope this helps you understand why this rating system is in your computer. If anything, it is a way to brag to friends when your number is bigger than theirs.

I just want to warn people who are using Windows on their MacBooks with OSX and BootCamp. Don’t use the sleep feature! I have not tried this with XP and please confirm if you have but I have tried this with Vista. Make sure you shut down your computer…

Normally I hit shut down but I recently hit the sleep button, you know the one that looks like the power button in my MacBook Pro and my Vista MacBook went to sleep. Well everything did what it was supposed to do.. Everything went off and the computer turned on to Vista when I  hit the power button.

The only problem was, I could have fried an egg on it! This makes sense to me now since the boot configuration in BootCamp needs to run. So the computer does not really shut off but the fans apparently do.

If anyone has had similar circumstances, please let me know. If I am doing something wrong, please let me know.

If you need at a minimum, weekly dose of tech news and commentary, please tune in to KFI am 640 talk radio on the weekends from 11 am to 2 pm for Leo Laporte The Tech Guy. If you cant tune in your radio, you get the stream from KFI at KFI640.com, or twit.tv/live which will soon be twitlive.tv.

Leo is amazing at helping people learn and solve everyday technical problems an average user might have. The show may sometimes get geeky, but is made for an audience that may or may not know anything about tech. Leo has been a source of inspiration for me and I hope for you too.

Leo also creates too many to count, podcasts that release just about every day. Check out twit.tv for getting any of his shows delivered to you via RSS or iTunes.

I recently purchased the Lite-On Blu-Ray player/ DVD burner, model number DH-4OIS for $150 and have been very happy with it. I purchased this drive to watch Blu-Ray movies in my computer. Having a Netflix account, I am able to watch as many Blu-Ray movies as I want and have had a few that caused a slight inconvenience.

I have a super Rig, Core 2 Duo 7750, Vista x64 Ultimate, 6 GB of Ram etc and was surprised to hear what might be the drive buffering on some Blu-Ray discs. Blu-Ray discs have super encrypted copy protection that does require a lot of horse power in a computer but I am just not sure what the issue is. I doubt it is my computer but it may be… But it also may be the drive itself. Possibly the buffer in the Blu-Ray drive is not big enough!

Rest assured, this only happened in 2 of 10 Blu-Ray discs and I was able to hit pause, then wait, and then press play to resume my movies but I don’t want to have to do this when I am watching a movie. If anyone has had similar issues, please let everyone know your experience. If you are thinking of buying this drive, do some research before you buy.

MacRumors.com reported, then engadget.com followed… And now I! Yes you read it correct, it seems Apple accidentally let some future plans slip out the door. 06/10/08 is the day for iTunes 8 (which was pretty obvious), an aluminum MacBook (which I cant wait for), updates to the MacBook Pro, and a 32GB iPhone (which was only a matter of time). I really hope for the the 3G in an iPhone when the next update comes around but no mention of that. I really want higher speeds for when exchange comes out with iPhone version 2.0.

Of coarse you cannot really trust any of this but I would like to see all of this happen and Apple usually delivers what their customers want.

As far as I know, the original blog to report on this was MacRumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2008/04/16/aluminum-multitouch-macbook-new-macbook-pro-and-more/ 

I take no credit for any of the info here… I am just repeating what I read.