WWDC Dates Announced

So many big things seem to be converging at the end of the month… iPad with 3G pre-orders are shipping, and now CS5 is ready to go.

On April 12, I watched “Adobe’s CS5 webinar,”:http://cs5launch.adobe.com/?sdid=FDSEN which outlined some of the top new features of Creative Suite 5. Nothing was available for download yet, but Adobe announced that it was coming by April 30.

Well, it’s here, and I’m currently taking a first look. We’ll report back on the newest features in a future issue. Don, Ed and I will be in DC next week at ASMC 7.0, an Apple Specialist conference, so we’ll be reporting from the road!

In the meantime, “download the CS5 Trial here.”:http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26294&vid=11376487&mode=info

P.S. Check out the Content-Aware feature… absolutely amazing!

This week we selected three winners of our Facebook, Twitter, and Kibbles drawing.

From Facebook we randomly selected Laura P. from Charlottesville, VA, and from Twitter we chose Leah K. of Brooklyn, NY. We’re still awaiting confirmation from our newsletter winner, so we’ll be back to you next week… who knows, we may need to pick another!

“Small Dog Electronics on Facebook.”:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Small-Dog-Electronics/18904017006

“Small Dog Electronics on Twitter.”:http://twitter.com/hellosmalldog

We’ll have another drawing in May. Good luck in the next round!

I’ve been using Apple’s MobileMe service for years–even way back when it was called .Mac.* I remember when it was free a free service; it’s now a $99 annual subscription (though we often have coupons, rebates, and other offers for up to $30 off MobileMe).

I continue to pay for MobileMe because, for the money, it’s a very useful service. It offers synchronization of email, contacts, Safari bookmarks, and calendars between Macs, PCs, iPods, and iPhone. It also offers a very attractive online photo gallery, 20GB of online data storage, and my favorite feature, *Find My iPhone*.

The Find My iPhone feature helps you locate your iPhone (or iPod touch or iPad) if has been lost or misplaced. It also allows you to display a message on your iPhone to help someone return it to you.The Remote Passcode Lock feature lets you remotely lock your iPhone and create a new or replacement 4-digit passcode. Finally, the Find My iPhone features *Remote Wipe*, which lets you erase all your information on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch in case you don’t recover it.

Apple famously used Remote Wipe to “brick” the prototype iPhone that was “found” in a bar in California a couple of weeks ago. Just today I watched Don use MobileMe to remotely reset his iPad in advance of selling it to upgrade to iPad 3G. All he had to do was log in to his MobileMe account, click the “Find My iPhone” button, enter his password, select his iPad from the list of his registered devices, and select “Remote Wipe.” Within a minute, his iPad had automatically erased all data and reset to the factory settings.

To enable this feature, you have to turn on Find My iPhone in your MobileMe account settings. iPhone OS 3.0 or later is required to use Find My iPhone and the Remote Wipe feature; iPhone OS 3.1 is required for the Remote Passcode Lock feature.

You can learn more about Remote Wipe “by clicking here.”:http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/find-my-iphone.html See “MobileMe on Smalldog.com by clicking here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/74171/apple-mobileme-individual-retail-package-1yr-subscription-renewal

Here’s Apple Support article to help you troubleshoot Remote Wipe: “MobileMe Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe”:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2734

__*Editor’s Note: Actually, I think both of us have been users since it was called iTools in 2002!__

_Dear Friends,_

This was a week of weather swings here in the Green Mountains. I was motorcycle riding on Sunday in warm sunny weather with Tony and Grace and we went over to Conway, NH to the Lobster Pound, our favorite destination over the White Mountains. Tuesday, I received a foot of snow at my house and was slipping and sliding on the way to work since I had removed my winter tires on the weekend. Today it is warm and sunny again with the forecast for the weekend in the 70s and 80s. Truly proves the cliche “if you don’t like the weather, wait a moment.”

The iPad with 3G and Wi-Fi is being released tonight at 5PM and I will be upgrading to the 3G model for those inevitable times that Wi-Fi is not available. I have found the iPad to be the ideal meeting computer. I can access all the word processing and spreadsheet documents, my email and have Safari to quickly look things up. It is less obtrusive than having a laptop in front of you, and as companies and organizations adopt this technology, we will save some trees, too.

Despite the snow, it is the official Green Up Day in Vermont and hundreds of volunteers will be scouring the roadsides and picking up a winter’s trash to make the Green Mountains truly green. One of the things I really enjoy about Vermont is that billboards are illegal here, so our roads just look cleaner even without greening up!

Mark and I took an afternoon off this week and got the Norton wiring almost complete. All the lights work and we have spark at the plugs, so all I need to do now is button things up, put some oil in it and mount the gas tank and then get Artie or Hapy to come over to kick start it while I mess with the timing and carbs. I’m getting excited about getting this antique on the road. I’ll post pictures soon.

I’ll be attending the “Health Care is a Human Right” rally tomorrow in Montpelier. We are supposed to have great weather and I’m sure a motorcycle ride is in my future this weekend, too!

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali & Ed_

On Saturday, May 8, progressive guitar phenoms Rodrigo y Gabriela will performing at the “Flynn Theatre”:http://www.flynncenter.org in Burlington, Vermont. Small Dog Electronics is teaming up with our friends at “Higher Ground”:http://www.highergroundmusic.com/calendar/show/3438 with a fun contest to help promote these amazing musicians, and what promises to be an excellent show.

Learn about the show and musicians “by clicking here.”:http://www.highergroundmusic.com/calendar/show/3438/

One grand prize winner will receive a pair of tickets to the show, an “iPod nano”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/74504/ipod-nano-8gb-black-5g, and a set of “Chill Pill mobile speakers!”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/71679/chill-pill-mobile-speakers-black

To enter, please send an email to “intern@highergroundmusic.com”:mailto:intern@highergroundmusic.com with a correct response to the following trivia question: *What is the title of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s most recent album?*

In case you haven’t heard of them, Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero have been playing guitar together for more than fifteen years. Here’s their blurb:

bq. From their first steps as teenage thrash metallurgists in their native Mexico City, through the innocents abroad street players of Dublin’s Grafton Street at the turn of the Millennium, to the universally acclaimed globe straddling tour machine of 2009, theirs is a musical union where mutual understanding goes beyond intuitive and into the realms of Zen–rhythmic Yin to melodic Yang.

__The fine print:
The deadline to enter is Thursday, May 6 at noon. One entry per person. Winner will be notified on Friday, May 7. Prize must be claimed in person by the winning contestant the night of the show. Contest will be conducted at the discretion of HG and SD. Good luck!__