Some days I feel sorry for Apple employees. As their market share has grown, their base has changed. I've been in the Apple store four times this week (three times more than I wanted to be there) and the feeling in there has definitely changed in the past year. It must be hard for the store employees to hear the signal over the noise.

Yesterday was a beautiful and sunny interlude in the Bay area's morass of soggy weather. Towards sunset, I grabbed Julian (my 10 year old) and we headed for Indian Rock. Julian climbed up, over, around, and through the rocks while I set up my tripod and long lens. The sun was a giant round ball, and I had hopes of...

Seems like a lot of people can't find the iPod touch January Upgrade. Here's where to find it.

Here's my weekly summary of freeware, Open Source, and free web services for the Mac: TextWrangler 2.3, Pownce out of private beta, Kaltura video collaboration service, and FixMyMovie web service.

I installed Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac over the weekend and ran into a couple of issues. Even though I was aware of the ID 502 installation issue, I was still surprised by what I saw (though I shouldn't have been). I'm still debating whether to sync my Windows Mobile smartphone with Entourage 2008. Mark/Space provided some interesting information about Missing Sync for Windows Mobile.

If you value your data, you must have a reliable backup strategy in place, because, sooner or later, you will lose data. It's "when," not "if." With Time Machine, Apple has included backup software with Mac OS X 10.5 that is both easy to use and reliable, so there is no more excuse for not backing up your data. How 'bout sharing some best practices for personal backups, then.

Clicking an MP3 link is annoyingly unpredictable. Will the file blank out the page? Will it start to download? Will it throw an error? You never know. So, inspired by Del.icio.us Play Tagger, I whipped up this one-click Web audio player.

Is the iPod touch destined to be the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, as Apple management is starting to chat up? Or just the Newton revisited? This article ponders the possibilities.

Last week I attended the Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days in Santa Clara. I'd gone because I produce their community podcasts (http://mobileandmebedded.org). I like the people but was unprepared for how interesting the content was.

Since I last wrote about my paperless home office, there are a few tips and changes that I want to call to your attention.