I was never into adding any type of comment management system on my blog, and I researched a couple of them. It always seem to me that giving to someone else the control of my blog’s comments was not a good idea, I was afraid of spam, link baits and other problems that bloggers have. Since I trust Automattic with my WordPress software I was at peace with myself at letting intensedebate manage my blog’s comments.

The result is outstanding, I haven’t yet had any problems with my commenting system. The option to participate by commenting on an article or to reply to comments from other users makes me feel that intensedebate is the product to have if you are a blogger using WordPress.

I like this product so much that I started thinking about the fact that Automattic should integrate intensedebate as a default comment management system on WordPress. If Automattic integrates this plugin as a standard into WordPress without any hiccups, I think that we are going to see a good welcome from every blogger.

For now intensedebate works separately from Automattic’s Wordpress, to activate the plugin in your site, you have to download the plugin, create an account at intensedebate.com and you are good to go. Upon activation, the plugin will ask for your intensedebate credentials and you are ready to go.

Intensedebate is not the only commenting management software available for WordPress, if you want to compare services head over to Seesmic, or Disqus. Is important to note that in WordPress 2.7 the commenting system has been updated, now you can comment in a thread fashion, you may want to stick with the WordPress default option.

Before adventuring to any of the options that I mentioned before make sure you back up your WordPress install, I actually forward myself a daily backup of my WordPress install. I don’t want to be exaggerated but the truth is that I modify my WordPress pages too often to ignore a good daily back up.

For those that don’t know, the iPhone allows users to install third party applications, some of these applications are free and others have a price associated with it. Google is very good at making good application available for free and the iPhone is not exception. Google made available an application for search and I remember that back when they release it many people where questioning its use.

Google amaze me with the addition of the speech to search option and I think is the best way to search for anything using the iPhone. Let say you are driving, and suddenly you feel like to eat some Chinese food, in this example you are out of town on a not so familiar city. Grab your iPhone, launch the Google App, and just say Chinese food.

The Google application uses the iPhone’s location services to bring up the closest options for you to visit, you have the option to call the place or just call the map iPhone’s map application to get to where to need to be. This is a killer feature and I don’t really care if it’s new or not, this is the first time I have this functionality on a phone and I’m loving it.

I read a very interesting post via Daring Fireball on waxy.org, about the application, these guys are trying to reverse engineering how the application works and the conversation in the comments area of the post is awesome.

On my testing the application is working as advertise, disregarding how they do it, I think is genius. Of course that if you try to test its accuracy, I’m sure that you will be able to get it to be confused but if you are realistic about it, you can get a lot use from something that first of all its free and second of all is adding functionality to a product you already own.

I started over-analyzing the issue by locating the date, the date on the CNET site is located above the article giving you a clear view of when the article was published. The author’s update was at the bottom of the page, which if you are like me, I only skim over sites looking for what I think is important. I try to think like someone that is no too very tech savvy and the “today only” remark should have been accompanied by the current date of the post in this case.

Personally, I try not to make this mistake when writing articles for my blog, I always keep in mind that while I’m writing about an article today (November 17, 2008) that doesn’t mean that you, the reader, is reading this the day it was published. My website has the date in the header, that is the current date, and then I include (my WordPress theme by default) the date of the article in the article’s footer.

On top of these dates, I make sure that if I need to reference a specific time within the post, I include the date as I expect the reader to understand it. This gives me certain peace of mind, I’m just making sure that my space-and-time talk makes sense to the reader without actually worrying when my readers are actually reading one of my articles.

You can travel around the web and if you do it as often as I do, you start noticing how important dates are. If you are a blogger, how important are dates for you? Would you omit the date in your post for a specific purpose? And if yes, why? The same goes for my readers, how important is the date for your when reading stuff around the web?

Find me on twitter or Facebook, interact with me and tell me what is your opinion about this article. Also, you can write directly to me at lmenendez7@gmail.com, thanks for reading.

I find the place to be rather ugly, I can’t imagine why they choose green as their theme color, but hey, at least they have an authorized reseller over in town. Thinking about it, how can I make sure that these guys are really an authorized reseller and not just some guys reselling computers without Apple’s permission?

My niece is fairly informed of what Apple products are in the market, mainly because I’m always talking about it. She noticed that they didn’t have the latest Apple products in this Mac Store. I wonder, if you are an authorized reseller, wouldn’t you have to stay on top with whatever Apple puts out in the market.

My niece was in a hurry that day so she couldn’t stay long to interview an employee or anything like that. I guess that if I ever visit Panama, I already have a place that will be a must visit when I’m around town. Do you have any pictures of any international non-Apple Mac store or similar, share it with us. You can email it to me and I’ll include it on this post.

I been living here for two months already, and my availability for over-the-air TV is just about 4 channels. I decided to give DirecPath a call to get their service, while talking to the representative I got kind of upset because DirecPath only offer the two DIRECTV packages, and they start at about $52 dollars a month.

I told the service rep that I was going to think about it, I hung up and head to DirectTV.com where they where offering a $29.99 package. I sign up and set up the installation for today (Sunday, November 16, 2008), the service tech showed up and told me that he couldn’t drill anywhere in the property therefore I had to have cables hanging around my living room and one of the bedrooms to where the TVs were.

I declined the installation and called DirecPath, my apartment is pre-wired but only DirecPath people can access the pre-wiring. To have access thru them I would have to cancel my DIRECTV $29.99 package, pay an installation fee of $50 dollars, and get the $52 dollar package they offer.

This is where I have a problem, I can’t afford $52 plus tax, plus equipment lease, plus equipment insurance. I could deal with a $30-plus bill, so I’m not paying for stuff I can’t afford. Then I come to find out that there is no other provider in my area, no Comcast, no cable at all, not Dish without running cables over my living room, nothing.

I’m stuck whit my over-the-air signal and I guess I will try something like AppleTV or access Hulu thru Boxee or something like that. I’m so frustrated, why DirecPath can’t give me a $30 dollar package in my area, isn’t this illegal, they certainly offer a $30 package to everyone else.

Does anyone knows of a good over-the-air antenna to get better signal, I already have my digital converter box all I need is a better reception. If you know of anything I could do to force DirecPath to sell me the $30 DIRECTV service, please share your experience with me.

In the inside the changes are awesome, the first noticeable change is the sidebar. The sidebar is present at all times and it gives you a menu of all the items you had before across the top of the screen in the admin area. The dashboard is also customizable, letting you add and remove elements from the screen, in turn this can help you with loading times if you are on a slower connection.

This version of WordPress has an automatic updater, this is good because when updating multiple sites the process can be tedious. The turbo option to run using Google Gears was moved from the top of the screen to the Tools menu in the sidebar, I think that this is very convenient.

Among the changes there are a couple of things that I’m missing, one is the ability of to see the my WordPress stats directly in the dashboard, this may change in the final version. If you are following the development of the new version of WordPress, I can reassure you that this version is the best. I’m including some images from my admin pages so you can see some of the changes that I’m already enjoying.

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The iPhone is another platform of my interest, in fact I have layout plans for two iPhone applications already. All I need is to learn programming, I won’t be going to school for this, unfortunately I don’t have the money to pay for school all over again. I do have the motivation and desire to begin a change in my career and to do it right.

I started looking around and it seems that the beginning of all programming languages is C++, I may be wrong but all the books I try to read kicked me back to this programming language as the base of knowledge to understand other programming languages. I bought a book already, I’ve built my first “hello world” application, and I’m dedicating a good deal of time to learn whatever this book can teach me.

After finishing this book, I plan to pick up Java, Objective C, Cocoa, and HTML books. Each should help me become a better programmer. I want to have the knowledge to program, maintain programs, apply security policies to programs, design my own web site, maintain my own website and secure it. I wont totally change the focus of my blog to programming, I will still write about my everyday experience with technology.

I will gladly accept any help anyone can give me in terms of getting where I want to be, if you know of a good site to learn my way through programming, or if you have book recommendations or any other help you can think of, write to me. You can leave a comment on this post, participate on my forums, or contact me directly using my about page.

I hope to complete my first iPhone app by the end of this year, that is my goal. I won’t tell what the app will be about but it’s surely a simple one. It will go for free in the Apple App Store and we will all enjoy seeing it grow and become my baby step into programming, leading me to great new adventures in my geeky life.

Subscribe to my blog, or follow me on twitter, pownce, facebook, MySpace, wherever a social network site is, I can be found. Thanks for reading and until next time.

 I head up to OWC at www.macsales.com and looked up prices for Ram and a hard disk. I’m totally surprised at how low the prices of Ram have come. A set of 2, 1GB sticks of Ram for the Mac mini is just $32.99, this upgrades the stock 1GB to twice the memory.

Adding Ram to the mini is as hard as adding the hard drive, the Mac mini is not user serviceable. You have to use a putty knife and other tools to open it and upgrade its components, I’m linking to a video from OWC about changing your memory on your Mac mini for your entertainment.

I also read that the Mac mini supports up to 3GB of Ram but doing so will make you loose the DDR capabilities of the chipset. I don’t really think that I need 2GB of Ram as 1GB has been enough for some time now. If you don’t know what DDR is, I’m including a link to Wikipedia with details about DDR2 memory.

For the hard drive, I selected the 250GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3. I haven’t heard much about this hard drive, if you have information about its reliability leave a comment on this post. The specification for this drive convinced me that it might me a great option; first, this is a 7200RPM drive, second, it has a 16MB cache, third, it has a 5-year warranty.

This takes my current hard drive from 80GB to 250GB and the RPM from 5400 to 7200, nice improvement on the overall performance. I need to have enough space to put movies when I finally transition the mini to the living room. I do have some worries, I would like to have AppleTV functionality and front row is not that capable. I know that it will handle anything on the mini but what about the web.

I will need to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse, in addition to the DVI to HDMI cable. I think that the Mac mini will eventually merge with another product line, upgrade from it current state or disappear for good. Which one will be, is yet to be announced, maybe during Macworld we’ll hear form Apple about the Mac mini.

I would like to hear from those of you who use the Mac mini as a home theater device. What is your experience? Would you change it to any other configuration? Please leave your comments on this post. Connect with me in twitter or Facebook, subscribe to me feed to keep in touch with my blog and me.

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Before telling you how easy my method is, let me explain to you what I came across while playing with the sound options on my Mac mini. Whenever you plug external speakers the audio profile for a connected item acquires a different profile from the internal speaker. This means that while you can mute the internal speaker, this doesn’t affect the external speakers.

To achieve this effect you have to unplug your speakers to set the internal speaker to whatever you want, then plug the speaker to set them at the desired sound level. This is how you can get rid of the start-up chime. Just mute your internal speaker and plug an external speaker to get all other sounds you want to play on your Mac.

No tricks, not hacks, no weird software installs, unfortunately I only have a Mac mini to test this. If you have an iMac, Mac pro or any apple notebook can you try this and post the results in the comments are of this post. Also, my Mac mini is an Intel machine, can anyone with PowerPC machines test this and reply back to me on our comments. Of course this option will not be too useful for someone with a Mac notebook, but if you are a desktop user I think it will do fine.

If you have more sound tricks for managing the sound in your Mac also let us know, if I get enough of this comments I might update my forums page to include all the ideas the community offer in one forum page. Keep in touch with me by subscribing to my RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter or Pownce. Ciao.

I will release my research on the best “netbooks” on the market on a later date, the announcement of a MacBook event will have an effect on the article a bit. Even before this announcement, Apple related sites have been posting several rumors about the new design, price, and case elements of the rumored new notebooks that are very interesting for saying the least.

The rumor that got me excited the most is the price drops, if they become a reality that means that Apple will have a notebook for about $800 US dollars, making it the most affordable Apple notebook ever. I was willing to pay up to $500 for a “netbook” but if I can add $300 more for an Apple hardware, that changes everything.

The rumors about the case changes make me a bit nervous, we all know that the release of the current generation MacBooks didn’t go without hiccups. We had everything from cracked cases to discoloration problems, plus the heating issues made prominent that first generation Apple products are to be taken cautiously.

None of those initial headaches were permanent, Apple work hard to try to make everyone happy by replacing their product and upgrading the notebooks firmware to make it more “temperature friendly”. If I end up buying a next gen-new case MacBook, I will definitely get Apple Care with it.

More on the rumors is that the lineup will include a new product, some people are speculating that these could be either Apple “netbooks” or tablets. Hopefully is not a new supersized notebook, nor a strip down MacBook Air (then we would have to name it MacBook Nothing.)

One thing to keep an eye on is the current generation MacBooks, the refurbish section of the Apple Store have some priced at $849 (as of this afternoon, Oct 11, 2008). If the new, rumored, aggressive pricing really takes place, these current generation MacBooks could go as low as $799.

To conclude, I wouldn’t be buying an Apple notebook this weekend, I will write a small article in the afternoon of the 14th with the reaction of the many geeks that will be either happy or mad at the announcement, we always have both groups of people anyway, right? Until then, don’t forget you can follow me on twitter or add me as a friend on Facebook.