Kibbles & Bytes Blog

It’s been a great week to have my granddaughters stay over while their mom is vacationing. I just don’t know how we managed to raise our kids–the girls have so much energy that by the end of the day, Grace and I are bushed. But so much fun!

I’m, also very, very pleased to announce that one of my co-authors of Kibbles & Bytes, Ed Shepard, has been promoted to VP of Marketing here at Small Dog. I know you will join me in wishing him congratulations for his new role.

Ed said in a message to our team, “Small Dog Electronics is a start up again. With new stores, updated website, new look and feel, new energy to pursue new markets, and most importantly, new ways of making our customers happy and coming back for more. ” We are gonna keep Ed very busy.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali & Ed_

This week we have a couple of Apple refurbished Macs in stock that are worth pointing out. Since they are Apple refurbs, they come with a full one-year Apple factory warranty, and are eligible for “AppleCare.”:http://www.smalldog.com/applecare

First, we have a “MacBook Air 1.86GHz 2GB/120GB”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/75515 for $11249.99 – $250 less than the everyday non-refurb price. We have it with AppleCare and a USB SuperDrive on sale for $1499.99 here”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag19902 ($50 less than buying everything separately).

Second, we have a refurbished MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.66GHz, with 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive and glossy display on sale for “$1949.99.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/75514/macbook-pro-17in-2-66ghz-4gb-320gb-superdrive-glossy-unibody That same MacBook Pro originally sold for $2499.99. We have it bundled with AppleCare and a free Incase sleeve for just “2449.99”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag19901/

*START SOAPBOX*

You all probably know that I am not a fan of nuclear energy as a path for energy independence, but even if I was put in charge of Vermont’s only nuclear plant, I could not have done a better job of undermining their chances for a license renewal than they did on their own.

First it was a failed cooling tower, then a barely competitive power purchase offer but the straw that really broke the camel’s back was the leaking tritium that had found its way into the ground water. After testing, it was revealed that despite their testimony that there were not underground pipes carrying radioactive water, there were many, and they were leaking.

The Vermont Senate, after several hours of debate, in a non-partisan vote, defeated the request for a 20-year license renewal by a vote of 26-4. While this was a vote about a specific antique leaking nuclear power plant, it reflects a sentiment in our state that we should rely upon sustainable renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and conservation for our energy needs in the future.

The Vermont legislature could be an example for our national legislature. Many initiatives are the result of republicans, democrats and progressives working together to fashion legislation for the good of the entire state. Having spent quite a bit of time up in Montpelier talking to these part-time legislators, I find them to all be committed to providing the best for our state. They work together using persuasion and compromise to achieve this goal.

Vermont’s annual exercise of basic democratic rights comes next week with Town Meeting day. All of the towns in Vermont–there are 255 of them–hold annual town meetings to elect local officials, from constable to selectman to cemetery commissioner, and to pass town and school budgets. In my town of Warren, with a population of about 1500, there is a potluck lunch in between the town and school meetings.

Vermont’s legislature reserved the right to approve any extension of the State’s only nuclear plant many years ago. Yesterday’s vote is the elected representatives of the people exercising their right to protect the people from a potentially dangerous license extension and a poor economic deal. Kudos to the Vermont Senate for their courage and foresight!

*END SOAPBOX*

We’re launching a live Ustream show based on our Tech Tails newsletter. Tech Tails is dedicated to real-world troubleshooting and fixing of Mac computers, along with Apple news and product reviews.

The 45 minute show is going to allow people to tweet, email and chat questions to Small Dog’s highly-awarded Apple-certified technicians. We will then post the video online to be viewed later.

The Tech Tails TV show will stream “here.”:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-tails-tv

We want to stream the live show on Tuesday or Wednesday between 3:00 PM EST and 5:00 PM EST. What time would be best for you to tune in? We’ve posted a poll on our blog where you can vote. “Please vote in the poll by clicking here!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/when-should-tech-tails-tv-screen-on-ustreamsurvey-software/

It’s easy to change the color of text in most Mac applications. But what if you want to use a custom color, or copy a color from a favorite web page or photo, and reuse this color in an email or other document? Here’s how.

First, you need to bring up the Mac OS X color chooser. This is usually found in an application’s menu bar under “Format.” For example, in TextEdit, just highlight a word, and click on Format > Font > Show Colors in the menu bar. In Mail, just highlight a word and choose Format > Show Colors.

When the Colors dialog appears, click on the color wheel in its upper left corner. Next, use the magnifying glass to hover over a color you’d like to copy. Click with your mouse to copy the color to the horizontal color bar at the top of the color chooser (next to the magnifying glass icon).

Next, click-and-hold in this horizontal color bar and start dragging slowly — a tiny square will appear under your cursor. Just drag-and-drop this square onto one of the white square boxes at the bottom of the Colors dialog.

This saves that color for future use, so when you want it, all you have to do is click once on that square (no more messing with the color wheel). Hope that makes sense!

bq. “With all due respect to alpha dog Don Mayer, I think he came away with an overly negative impression of Macworld Expo based on his brief visit. Yes, there were fewer exhibitors than last year, and yes, there were fewer attendees as well. But don’t take that to mean that Macworld was a ghost town, because nothing could be further from the truth.

On Thursday and Friday, the show floor was packed to the point of making it hard to walk the aisles, and all the exhibitors I spoke with were happy with the number of visitors they received. After all, even if there are more than 20,000 people attending in general, only some percentage of those people can physically walk past any given booth in a day. And while there were fewer people walking the floor on Saturday, IDG could have done a much better job of advertising in local media to alert San Franciscans who aren’t highly involved with the Apple world.

Most attendees I spoke with weren’t bothered by Apple being a no-show since, after all, they could just go to an Apple retail store or somewhere like Small Dog’s S. Burlington store to see all of Apple’s products. And exhibitors were downright happy that Apple wasn’t there, since it meant more attention for them, something that was especially important for iPhone developers who compete in the vast ocean of the App Store and get few chances to communicate with their users.

The lack of larger exhibitors like Adobe, FileMaker, and Canon, and medium-sized companies like SmileOnMyMac, Peachpit Press, O’Reilly Media, and Smith Micro was more keenly felt, but at least some of those companies will likely be back next year, having seen that Macworld Expo is far from being a deceased parrot.”

–Adam Engst, TidBITS publisher

“See more of Adam and TidBits here.”:http://www.tidbits.com

_Dear Friends,_

We finally got some snow up here in the Green Mountains. Naturally, it was on a day that I had an early morning appointment in Montpelier at the State House. I made it in time, but the driving was tricky. We got over three feet up on Prickly Mountain.

I looked out the window last night and saw the huge snow pile on the top of the hot tub and managed to convince my granddaughters to shovel it all off so we could get in the tub. They worked really hard and soon we were able to relax in the snowstorm. Next, I convinced them to join me in diving into the snow bank before scrambling back to the hot tub. That kept them entertained for a while!

We are gearing up for the upcoming sales tax holiday here in Vermont on Saturday March 6th. I was testifying at the legislature before the Senate Economic Development committee on a new form of corporation–the “for-benefit” corporation that makes it possible to embed a commitment to people and planet as well as profit into a corporate charter. The senators were interested in that testimony but were also very interested in our preparations for the tax-free day.

We have some great offers for this special holiday and have even managed to bring in some of the short-supply 27-inch i7 iMacs. We also have a limited number of Apple factory-refurbished MacBook Air, 17-inch MacBook Pro and 2TB Time Capsules coming in next week. Remember, __every__ day is a sales tax holiday if you do not live in Vermont!

I guess my comments about my short visit to Macworld struck a nerve. I got a few emails, chats and phone calls from people that felt I was being too negative. I have asked my friend and publisher of Tidbits, Adam Engst, to write a short response below. I should make it clear that my comments were based upon my perspective as an Apple reseller. Macworlds have traditionally been the place where we had meetings with Apple well into the night, along with huge parties put on by bit vendors with lots of opportunities to meet overall. I’ve been to just about every Macworld so I do have some perspective here. In a former company, we used to exhibit and sell at Macworld, too, so I’m no newbie.

I do not think that Macworld will serve this function–an industry gathering–without Apple’s participation, and that is what my comments were meant to portray. Perhaps it can survive as a consumer-oriented exhibition with the speakers and seminars that are associated with it. I hope that this is the case, but I still believe that those who are looking to make deals and meet with vendors for reselling opportunities will be looking at other venues (such as CES). The vendors that I talked to who were disappointed were primarily looking for reseller partners, not necessarily those who were looking to showcase their products to the public.