I really love it.

Years ago, I used to carry around a Handspring Visor. This PDA used run the Palm OS and had a black & white screen. No color, no wifi… not really much fun either. It was good for taking notes, but not much else. It still sits somewhere in a closet in my house. When the iPod Touch came out, I knew this would be a great PDA for me, but oh the games!

Being a Mac gamer, I’ve never really had a wealth of games to choose from, so with the iPod Touch, I feel like a kid in a candy store… so much to choose from, where do I begin? Well, since most games aren’t even 10 dollars, it’s not too difficult or expensive to just pick one up. Football, racing, card games… You pick it, they’ve got it.

I decided that today would be a great time to give you a list of my top 10 Favorite iPod Touch games. If there’s one that you love that’s not on this list, be sure to let us know so that we can try it out! So with that, let’s go!

10. Tap Defense : This is a classic game of tower defense. Very customizable games and great replay value. I wasted many days with this one. I think this might have been one of the first games I got for the iPod.

9. Skee-Ball : There is nothing all that great about this game, except I find it quite addicting. I used to play Skee-ball at the arcade as a boy and this one really brings back the memories. You even accumulate tickets that you can turn in for virtual prizes.

8. Pocket God : Ever want to have complete control of life or death over a island full of primitive villagers? Well, neither did I, but I sure find it fun. Although not a game in the purest sense, it really doesn’t fit into any other categories, so here it lands at number 8 in our list.

7. Harbor Master : A fun little game that can help you waste away some time while sitting on a bus or passenger seat in the car. You find yourself as a harbor master trying to get the boats into their slips without hitting other boats. A good time.

6. Dark Nebula : This is the latest game I’ve just added to my iPod and I am enjoying it. You’re guiding a puck around some futuristic maps. Not much plot, but a lot of fun.

5. Sailboat : This game is easy to learn, but really tough to master. Take the helm in a sailboat in an America’s Cup style competition. You need to learn how to steer your boat with and against the wind. If you are up for a challenge, give this a try!

4. Tiger Woods Golf : Definitely not a driving game (snicker). This game has stayed faithful to console versions of the game on a little 3 inch screen. There are multiple courses available to play as well. You will find many hours of enjoyment with this game!

3. Flick Bowling : One of my first purchase on the iPod, Flick Bowling is one of my all-time favorite games. The touch controls for flicking the ball down the lanes are great and the animations of the characters all combine to make this one of the best bowling games I’ve ever played… on iPod or console!

2. Flight Control : THIS is addiction. After you start playing Flight Control, you will suddenly notice that it’s 3 hours later than when you started the game. You’re playing an air traffic controller that is trying to guide airplanes on approach to appropriate runways without crashing them into one another. Planes and helicopters are all traveling at different speeds, increasing the difficulty. Enjoy!

1. Madden Football : The all-time standard in football games for consoles and PC’s is on the iPod touch. I didn’t think that there would be any way that EA could bring a good experience to the touch, but they did. You can read our full-review of Madden here. It is number one on my list of games for the iPod Touch.

Wakoopa is a social networking site that can help you find the best software, web apps and games out there. So, what does it do? Well, to get in on the action to it’s fullest, you need to install the Wakoopa tracker. This application tracks what applications you use on your computer and for how long, uploads that data to their servers and from that can come up with recommendations of programs that you might be interested in. You get “points” allocated to you based on your usage, whether you review a program and some other milestones along the way. Gather enough points and you’ll be known by different titles such as Genius or Fanatic.

Some of Wakoopa's charts

So, what do I really think of Wakoopa? Well, I always was curious how much time I spend on my computer on a daily basis and now with the Wakoopa tracker, I can tell you just how much! Their graphs break down your usage into different categories such as design, games, office, internet, development and audio/video. I like to know if I’m working hard enough!

The software recommendation service seems pretty good and I’ve discovered a couple of programs that I really didn’t know about that I’ve found to be pretty good. Since program discovery is one of the reasons Wakoopa is out there, I’m glad this works pretty well. I imagine that the more that you use it, the better the recommendations will get.

You can also explore other people on the service and see what they are using and for how long. It feels a little voyeuristic, but it’s kinda cool.

Wakoopa is an interesting service that will help you to discover new software and services that may help increase your productivity. I recommend that you give it a try and see if it can help you.

3 out of 5 stars

The entry screen for 1Password

way that applications run on the iPhone, I did not think that there was a chance that this program could run as smoothly as their desktop application, and to some extent this is true. What is also true, it the very creative ways that they overcame some of the deificiencies of the iPhone OS.

When you launch 1Password on the iPhone (after it’s rather simple setup), you must enter a 4 digit unlock code every time you open it. This is a reasonable first layer of security, especially considering the data you’ve probably got stored in this. From there, you are taken to your list of Logins that are shown alphabetically. Tapping on one will bring you to the login information for that site… unless you’ve setup high security for that site which will then ask you to enter a separate Master Password to gain access to it. This extra layer of security is great when you are dealing with passwords for banking sites and the like. Now comes the good part! On this page, you now see the website address, the username and password. From here, you can click on the password to copy it and bring it back into Safari or (and this is my favorite part) you can tap on the website address and it will launch a browser in the 1Password application which will then autofill the username and password into the appropriate fields. Click the enter button on whatever site you’re in and you are off to the races. It’s just that simple! No more fumbling around for crazy passwords in the notepad or anything, and they are all secure.

There is a section on the iPhone app called wallet, which can contain credit card information if you like (secured by an additional master password). There are a whole lot of other options such as software licenses and goverment documents you can record in here as well. All these options make the iPhone app for 1Password as full-featured as the desktop application. Which brings me to…

Here is where you enter the master password for sensitive data

Syncing! Yes, 1Password for the iPhone includes the ability to synchronize with the desktop version of 1Password on your Mac over wifi. It takes only a second or two to pair the two together. Once they are, when you launch both the desktop application and the one on the iPhone, they will automatically synchronize their passwords, notes and anything else you’ve stored in seconds. This ability really makes it worth the purchase price of this app (which I got for a measley $7.99 on the iTunes app store). I can’t recommend this program enough and it’s abilities, combined with the desktop app, have helped add an extra layer of security into all my internet access that has really brought me some additional peace of mind.

5 out of 5 stars

That's a spiffy tablet!

So, when I heard that Wacom had created tablets that included multi-touch, I was very intrigued. I had been using a 4×6 Intuous 2 for many years. When I purchased that back in 2004, it had cost me a cool $250. The new Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch with it’s huge surface space retails for $199 (you can possibly find it on Amazon.com for cheaper than that). Smaller ones can be had for under $100, but I wanted the big daddy!

When I opened the box from Amazon, I was impressed right off with the packaging. A lot of thought went into this and it made me feel as if someone from Apple had been kidnapped and made to create this packaging for Wacom. From this, I knew I would be in for a special treat.

Setup and installation was a snap. Just plug it in and install the drivers and you are off. I would recommend, first download the latest drivers from Wacom’s site. I had a little problem with the tablet recognizing touch input and the updated drivers solved this issue. Second, watch the tutorial video. It goes through the explanations of how to use the multi-touch functions of the tablet and how to set up the buttons on the left side of the tablet. I fumbled for a little bit with the tablet until I realized that I should watch the video. Once I did, I was zooming around.

If you’ve ever used one of the newer Apple laptops that have multi-touch touchpads on them, then you will feel right at home with the Bamboo. Two-finger drags for scrolling, pinch and zoom, rotate… they are all in here. Using these functions is revolutionizing the way that I’m interacting with my Mac daily. If I’m in another office that has one of the older pen tablets, I keep finding myself reaching to do touch input on it constantly out of habit.

There are 4 programmable function keys that run down the side of the tablet. These are programmed from the preference pane in the system preferences. I keep one of the keys set as a switch to turn off the touch functions of the tablet. This is very handy when you are using the pen input and don’t want to accidently touch the tablet with the palm of your hand and have an errant movement of the cursor.

The Wacom preference pane

There are some out there that will say the Bamboo series of tablets is for consumers and not for “real” designers. To those people, I say “Bull”. The Wacom Intuous 2 that I’ve been using for years has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity built in. While the older versions of the Bamboo only 512 levels, the newest version has 1024… just like the pros like.

After using the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch for a month now, it’s easy to see that Wacom put a lot of thought into the design and function of this great new entry into the world of pen tablets. If you are looking for an affordable, well-designed and easy-to-use tablet for drawing or just regular everyday navigation, I recommend that you give the Bamboo Fun Pen &Touch a try. I think you’ll like it!

1Password, at it’s most basic, is a password management tool. I had always prided myself on using complex passwords that I had memorized. The main problem was that I would find myself using the same complex password over and over again. That’s a security issue, right there! In 1Password, you can have randomly generated passwords created for you, anywhere from 1 character up to 50. 1Password will remember the password then will fill it into the website for you. When you start with 1Password, you will create a Master Password that you will need to unlock your various passwords… but you only need ONE password (hence, the name). The password management tools are the bread and butter of this application, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the other features packed in here.

There is an accounts section, which will allow you to record various bits of account information that you may to need recall, such as email accounts, ftp accounts and so on.

The identities section is a great way to auto fill forms when you reach a website. You can create multiple identities, which is great for someone like myself who sometimes fills out information of a personal nature or needs to fill out a form in a business sense. You will find it much more flexible than the Auto-Fill features in Safari or Firefox. Addresses, phone numbers, email addresses… it keeps them all in here.

1Password also includes a secure notes section as well.

One section that I was surprised to find, but happy to see was the software section. I’ve been using Macs for many years and over time, software delivery has changed from getting programs on physical media to more digital delivery. One thing that has happened with that is the rise of License Keys for software. I am always afraid of losing them, but now with 1Password, I have a great way to keep track of all my software licenses. I love it!

The last section I want to mention, that is bound to get me in trouble some day, is the wallet section. Here, you can store all the information you need to use your credit cards online. One click of a button, and it fills in the information needed on a web form to make a purchase. Great stuff.

1Password has great integration with your browsers so anytime you access a website you need to login, you can get quick access to your password. It will also store new passwords automatically when you create a new account with a website as well. I find that the toolbar 1Password had created in Firefox to a little more intuitive than the Safari interface, but that may also come from using Firefox much more than Safari. There is also a companion iPhone/iPod Touch application to go with this which I have used, but I will talk more about that in an upcoming review.

At $39.95 ($69.95 for a 5-user family license), 1Password might seem priced a little steep. When I factor in the seemless integration into Mac OS X and the multiple browsers, I find that the price is well-worth it. I give 1Password my highest recommendation.

5 out of 5 stars

Madden 10's Main Menu

Games are fun! Well, they’re supposed to be, anyways… I’ve tried a lot of garbage games on my iPod Touch. Most of them are freebie games that I would download, play for a good 5 minutes and that would be it. Bye bye. Games that you have to pay for become a little bit dicey. I mean, throw down $10 on a game and find out it’s a dog? Great. So when EA released Madden 10 for the iPhone/iPod touch I was a little skeptical. I mean, how good could a game that has been shrunk down to fit a 3 inch screen that doesn’t have any real controls be? Well, pretty good it seems.

I started playing Madden and was really upset at first. I was having an awful time controlling the players, and it had just seemed… not fully baked to me. So, I set the game aside for a couple of days and had written it off as bad. Well, I’m glad I picked it back up because after spending a few minutes getting used to the control scheme, it has really taken off and become quite a good game.

Obviously the graphics are not going to be the same as on a console system, but for a 3 inch screen, how detailed do they need to be? The game relies on touch-screen controls, which at first are strange to use. You move the selected player around using the thumb control for your left hand and the right hand thumb is for your other controls (such as slo-mo, dive, juke, etc.). Making sure that you don’t cover the screen with your hands while you play is a primary concern when starting out, but you will get the hang of it after about 10 minutes of play.

Game screen looks pretty good.

I liked that all the actual NFL teams, their rosters and even their stadiums are in this game. It’s fun to have Tom Brady throwing the long ball to Randy Moss to crush the Dolphins… just like in real life. Also, like in real life, I get to hear Chris Collinsworth, AL Michaels and John Madden repeat the same cliche’s over and over again. Fortunately, that can be turned off, sadly, the same can’t be said for the Buccaneers. Games are automatically paused when you hit the home button to return to the iPod’s main menu. When you launch Madden, it asks if you want to continue your game from where you left off. You can also play in full-season mode as well, with this year’s schedule for the teams.

All in all, I think Madden 10 is a great buy for your iPhone/iPod touch. The game is a large download at 102mb and it costs $9.99. However, you love football games and want an enjoyable alternative for while on to go, I can recommend this game. We’ll give it 4 out of 5 stars!

The Kodak Zx1 Camera

I love taking video of my son. There’s no denying it. I could take hours and hours of video and now I do. For the longest time, I was either using my point-and-shoot Canon camera or a nice Canon video camera which burned video directly to DVD. While both of these would get me the video, they were not getting me the video in the quality and format I desired. I have an AppleTV and a nice HD plasma TV, so I want video that going to look good on this setup.

Enter my Kodak Zx1. This little camera, which I think is only around 5 inches tall, is a good entry into the HD camera market. For starters, the camera will shoot video in 720p format and saves video onto a removable SDHC card (not included). With the 4gb I have in it, I can record about 46 minutes of HD video. With card sizes getting larger and prices falling, a larger card should not be an issue. The camera also comes with a USB cable to connect to your Mac or PC and an HDMI cable to connect it directly to your HDTV.

Strangely enough, one of my favorite features is the fact it can use standard AA batteries. Anyone who has used another type of video camera, will realize how great this is when you are out on vacation and your rechargeable batteries are dying an you need power in a hurry. The camera does come with 2 rechargeable AA batteries and a charger to get you started.

The video quality is good, not outstanding. When taking video in low-light situations, the quality suffers. Also, when using the camera, if you do not keep a steady hand, you will notice a lot of shaking. There is no image stabilization feature in this model (however, the higher end version of the Kodak line does include this).

[See post to watch Flash video]

Transferring the video onto your Mac couldn’t be easier. Just plug the camera into your Mac using the supplied USB cable. The camera will mount on the desktop as an attached drive, where you can drag the video out and to a folder on your hard drive, or easier, just use iPhoto to download the videos off the camera and into your iPhoto library.

My only real complaint with the camera really isn’t the camera’s fault. The camera outputs video in Quicktime movie format, which is great for everything, except the AppleTV. It seems bewildering to me that Apple’s own product won’t natively support this format, so I have to go through the extra step of converting each video I want to watch on the AppleTV. A time consuming step, especially when using a lower-end Mac.

Overall, the Kodak Zx1 is a good entry-level HD camera for someone wanting to catch videos of the family and watch them quickly on their PC or Mac. The retail price is $149, but if you look around at Amazon.com or other retailers, it can be had for around $30 less.

The installation of Windows 7 went without a hitch. I had no troubles at all getting it up and running. Once in Windows, I was quite pleased with how responsive it seemed. Windows would open and close really quickly, applications seemed to launch and run really fast. I was having a grand old time… then I decided to start installing games.

I started out with my favorite addiction, World of Warcraft. I Installed the main WoW application and then did the install for the Burning Crusade. Now, if you are familiar with this game, you know that it does take quite a while to get it installed. It’s quite a few gigabytes of data to get on there, so I’m guessing that the install took around an hour and a half. After that was done, I launched the game, knowing that we were about to enter endless cycles of installing patches to the game for the next few hours. Well, to my surprise, World of Warcraft informed me that due to some change in the OS, it needed to move the game to a different section of the drive so as not to cause problems with updates. Well… okay… except, it decided it was going to move everything by re-downloading it all from the internet!? I gave it about 15-20 minutes and said “enough”. I’ll play it on my Mac partition. Let’s try something different.

NASCAR SimRacing… that’s another of my favs. Let’s install. No problems doing the install at all. I’m getting excited to try this out, then… crash. Windows 7 said something about changing the application space to compatibility mode, so I did, re-launched the game and… crash. Sigh. 2 for 2. Do I want to try this again? Not really.

I like to game. I love my Mac. I compromise by running Windows on my Mac to get a great selection of games and better game performance. On my Mac Mini, Windows will take advantage of twice the video memory that Mac OS will, giving a much richer gaming environment… especially in World of Warcraft. I can probably troubleshoot all this junk and figure out what’s wrong and why nothing is working right, but my Windows 7 will expire eventually, need to be replaced with a fully-liscensed version and everything will probably need to be re-installed as well.

Windows 7 seems like a very nice and polished Operating System, one that I would love to consider as my second OS for gaming, if only it worked for that. Right now, it doesn’t seem like it’s the one for me. Yet.

So, back in March, I wrote a little article about how the announcement that most excited me from the last MacWorld Expo was the new Airport Extreme base station. At the time, I was using a Belkin 54G wifi router and a Linksys wifi router that came with my T-Mobile @ home package. I knew that I wanted this little gem, but things were working well, so there really wasn’t a need to upgrade. Then I wanted a VPN.

I purchased an application for the Mac called iVPN (which is a great program) that for about $25, will run a full fledged VPN server on any Mac using Mac OS 10.5. Fabulous! So, get it installed, try to connect from the road… nothing. Okay, the Linksys router claims VPN passthrough when you check the correct box. I did. Nothing. Talk about frustrating.

This, I reasoned, was the time to take the plunge, but $175 for a router? Well, considering the number of routers I’ve owned over the years and chucked for one reason or another, maybe paying this rather large sum would be worth it. So, keeping my fingers crossed, I headed to my local Best Buy and picked it up.

Installation and setup was a breeze. I now have two separate wifi networks in my house: one that is specifically for my AppleTV and the other, for all my other wifi devices. Not only does it seem to work flawlessly, it even makes my network seem like it’s running faster (not a scientific study, mind you!).

My favorite feature, though, is the USB port on this bad boy. I have a Airport Express in our house that has a USB port, but it is only for connecting a printer so you can have a wireless print server in your home/office. With the Airport Extreme, you can actually connect a router to the USB port and connect MULTIPLE devices to it. In my home office, I have a USB printer and 2 hard drives connected to it. One drive for general storage, the other as a Time Machine backup. Since the Airport Extreme has gigabit ethernet, my Desktop Mac, which is wired to the router, accesses the drives as fast as if they were locally connected. My only complaint, which isn’t the Airport Extreme’s fault, is that Time Machine is a bit slower on a network drive than a local one.

Need to access the drive from across the internet? Not a problem, as long as you know the IP address of your home network. In the preferences in your Airport Utility, select to share your drive over the WAN and it’s that simple (I recommend using a VERY secure password when doing this).

I have recommended the Airport Extreme base station to quite a few of my clients already. I think Apple has a real winner with this product and wish they would advertise it at least a little bit. The setup in Windows is easy as well! I say if you need a new router, pick one of these up today… you’ll be glad you did!

(Oh, and my VPN works great now!)

The day for that monitor has arrived! Enter the EVGA UV-16 USB video card. This little box, which measures only 2 inches by 2 inches uses a USB 2.0 port on your computer and adds a DVI out port so if you only have 1 built in port, you can add this and connect a second monitor!

I installed this device on my MacMini. I had seen some others talk about it on the internet and it really didn’t get glowing reviews by other users, so I was a little apprehensive, but the prospect of setting that second monitor up (which had cost me $175) shoved those apprehensions aside. This little box came with a little wind-up USB 2.0 cable (which seemed a little flimsy) and a DVI to VGA adapter for connecting older monitors. The physical connection took all of 2 minutes to complete. After that, I had to download updated drivers for the Macintosh from the internet (which are not included in the package, only Windows XP and Vista drivers come on the CD). They quickly installed and then a few minutes later, I had full use of both monitors.

Now, the second monitor works great, but not flawlessly. You cannot play full-screen video on the second monitor on the Mac (I did manage to get this working in WindowsXP after a little bit of tweaking). Also, if you move open windows around on the second monitor, you may notice it get a little laggy. And finally, sometimes, the desktop picture seems to change itself when I log in to the Mac. Those, these are mostly minor annoyances that I overlook as I am mainly using the second display for things such as email.

Overall, I would say that the EVGA UV-16 is a great value for the price (I picked it up for $69 at CompUSA). EVGA claims that you can use up to 6 of these devices on a single computer! I think I’ll stick with my one external monitor for now.