Ryan Block » 2008 » January

New York: ex-lover, tomorrow’s destination

Ryan Block — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:10:59 +0000

Headed out to New York tomorrow for the Greener Gadgets Conference, which I expect should be really enlightening. As usual, not staying nearly long enough to fall back in love — but I’ll definitely be around more than long enough to remember how freezing cold it gets.

It’s fortuitous timing, though, because that during my last visit in November I was profiled by On The Inside, which just went live this month. It’s probably way more detail than anyone really wants about me and my relationship with The City (still, thanks Thomas!), but the idea is to get a window into one’s relationship with New York through the recommendation of some off the beaten track spots. Some of mine that made it in are: Barcade, Otafuku, the MoMA Design Store, and May Wah.

Woke up this morning $20m richer

Ryan Block — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:27:01 +0000

Ok, I totally missed this amidst CES, but apparently I made some random site’s Top 20 Internet Millionaires Under 30 list, which in turn made it on Digg. The only problem: not that I’d share my finances with some random site, but I’m definitely nowhere near a millionaire. Billionaire, yes. How dare they insult my mountains of money?

So what actually happened is this garbage make your internet riches while you’re young site (that I won’t link to / support) did a list of the top 20 sites run by under-30s, and one of the metrics they used to judge rank was “annual turnover”. Apparently Engadget “turns over” $20m per year (which is news to me, I think I only had $5-10 in fruit turnovers in 2007), which was interpreted by another even crappier site as the net worth of those listed — which landed me on spammy list after list of millionaires.

I’d just like to take this chance to clear the air and let everyone know I’m keeping it real with the rest of the non-millionaires (for now). Sorry ladies.

Belkin gifts OLPC in my name — thanks!

Ryan Block — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:33:25 +0000

Now that the biggest tech shows of the year are through, I’m finally getting a chance to put things back together at the Block-Belmont abode. In going through some unopened holiday mail, I came across this note, sent unsolicited, from Belkin:

In celebration of the holiday season Belkin has made a donation to One Laptop Per Child on your behalf. OLPC’s mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education.

I’m not sure how many press / analysts Belkin did this for, or whether this donation actually constitutes a small cash donation or actually sending a child an OLPC, but in the interest of full disclosure and gratitude: thanks, Belkin! We normally don’t accept gifts from companies, but I think I can skate by on this one.

The iPhone’s long-missing two-pane email client

Ryan Block — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:24:26 +0000

So I was looking over my Macworld 2007 keynote coverage the other day and noticed something just about everyone — myself included — glossed over as the months passed between its January introduction and June launch: the iPhone once had a two-pane email client. (You can even see the view mode selector up top! This later became the edit button.)

Anyone who knows me and my email-addicted ways knows how desperately I loathe the iPhone’s mail client, and, given its frequency of use, how much I wish they’d improve it. Apple: three simple steps to make email nerds like me happy.

Add delete for multiple / all messages.
Fix the annoying bug that just lets the iPhone idle while some HTML messages are not downloaded / parsed.
Give us (back) the two-pane view mode!

That’s not so hard, now is it? One more minor email client diff after the break.

Oh yeah, and they nixed the “x of y” messages indicator in the email selector.

CES and Macworld: done, finally

Ryan Block — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:27:00 +0000

Not that we’re out of the woods just quite yet, but there’s a certain sense of relief when everyone gets to go home, recover and tend to their wounds, and officially say we’ve made it over the CES / Macworld hump — by far the hardest two weeks of the year.

Of course, it wasn’t all grins of pride. Despite a stellar CES performance and an equally stellar Macworld run-up, we had some major hiccups on the site today. Post-mortem on that coming ASAP — don’t worry, it’ll be the detailed-as-I-can-give kind which I’ll try not to vet with our lawyers first. It’s still nice to know that even despite having major outages throughout the busiest two hours of the entire year, we could best our closest competition on the order of millions of pages. (Not that pages are really any metric to go by anymore, but you know.)

Thanks again to everyone who stuck by us during the insanity today, and for dealing with our overly-obsessive wall to wall coverage over the past couple of weeks in general. But more than anything, I again have to thank the team, who make and re-make Engadget every single day of the week, rain or shine, uptime or downtime, without fail. Everything good about Engadget I owe to them, as does every reader of the site.

P.S. -Just for further blog-record-keeping of this crap, keep an eye out for appearances on TWiT, CNN.com, Xbox Insider (on the 360 Dashboard), G4, and Irish Newstalk Radio. (Am I missing any?)

Back from CES, at Macworld tomorrow!

Ryan Block — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:44:34 +0000

What a crazy fun couple of weeks. Back from CES with the same illness I had before shipping out (isn’t that always the way?); the team was a sight to behold, absolutely a well-oiled machine. I really can’t thank this crew enough for making Engadget possible. Such amazing people, unbelievable.

Be sure to check us all in action tomorrow with our live coverage tomorrow from the Stevenote — not to be missed!

On AOTS again

Ryan Block — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:48:36 +0000

Was on tonight’s Attack of the Show. I hear Schlomo says I need to smile more. Don’t you people under stand? That IS my happy face. You should see me when I’m serious.

*Note, more smiling on TV.

Ten Macworld 2008 predictions

Ryan Block — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:14:24 +0000

I can always tell the holidays are closing in when it becomes such that a day doesn’t goes by I’m not asked at least a few times what inside dope I’ve got on what Apple’s introducing at Macworld. My stock response is (and always will be), “Everything I know is published on Engadget.” Now, I’m also not usually one to grasp at predictions (just not my thing), but what the hell. If you’re curious as to what I THINK — and not necessarily know — will go down at MW08, here’s the shortlist. In order of most likely to least likely:

iPhone SDK / firmware update - duh.
Ultraportable MacBook Pro - These kinds of rumors don’t stay alive for so many years when they’re untrue.
Movie rentals (with direct download / rental on Apple TV) - Pretty much already confirmed.
iPhone 2.0 / 3G - We know it’s coming, and Steve will want to stand on stage triumphantly one year later and introduce the next version.
16GB iPhone 1.0 - Has to happen eventually. The Osborne effect sure is a bitch, so the 8GB 1.0 will get even cheaper (maybe by $50 or $75).
Nothing much about 10.6 (that’ll be at WWDC), but there will be mention of the next updates to 10.5.
LED-backlit 17-inch MBP - Also an eventuality.
Mac mini gets left alone. Probably no mention at all. Same with the iMacs and MacBooks.
New monitors with webcams - These things need a refresh like crazy. If Apple’s smart, they’ll put DisplayPort in ‘em.
All laptops move from DVI to DisplayPort to match those new monitors. And why not? DisplayPort to DVI adapters should be easy enough for legacy gear.

Rolling resolutions

Ryan Block — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:53:59 +0000

I’m not really too into the whole new year’s thing, but there are a few rolling resolutions I’ve been after:

Up my number of total vacation days taken. Been getting better about this, but really looking forward to this year.
Travel less. Yes, less. Spend more time in the bay area.
Get that gamerscore up past 5k. Totally doable.
Get my data in order. Everything from contacts to media. Oh sure, it SOUNDS easy.
Resurrect the Engadget Index. Sorry Tony, I swear, it’s gonna friggin’ happen!
Buy our next place. Been after this one a while. I should probably consult my friend Alan, the real estate magnate.
Watch more films. Originally “watch more foreign films”, and then I remembered an increasingly short attention span combined with little free time means the ratio is actually pretty decent.
WQXGA. Totally.

Portal: game of the year. Blocks: protagonist of the century.

Ryan Block — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:15:01 +0000

As a Block, you’ve no idea the amount of joy it brings me to see the humble cube finally get its comeuppance. Not only does Portal make stars of the simple and six-sided, but now Joystiq has shown its proper appreciation by awarding it Game of the Year. It had some stiff competition from such Ryan-faves as COD4, Bioshock, and especially Rock Band, but is it any wonder Portal is my new favorite game?

-Ryan “Veronica’s Weighted Companion Cube” Block