Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

Imagine you have a burning question that you need answered, and you’re not near:
a) a computer (we all know Google and Wikipedia know everything)
b) an encyclopedia
c) a person smarter than you.

If you have a cell phone with texting capability, you can use a free service called Cha Cha. To do it, just text 242242 (which spells “ChaCha”) or call 1-800-2Chacha and type your question. Someone will then research it, and get back to you with the answer!

From Cha Cha’s website:
ChaCha is like having a smart friend you can call or text for answers on your cell phone anytime for free! ChaCha works with virtually every provider and allows people with any mobile phone device – from basic flip phones to advanced smart phones – to ask any question in conversational English and receive an accurate answer as a text message in just a few minutes.

Sample questions:
From the direct…
“What’s the capital of Minnesota?” (Answer: Saint Paul.)
“How old is John McCain?” (Answer: 72. Bonus: they also answered who John McCain is as well))
“What is the definition of ambiguous?” (Answer: Ambigous means to be open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations; equivocal: an ambiguous answer.)
To the ridiculous…
“Can you tell me a joke?” (Answer: A 3-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and says: I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.)
“What should I be for Halloween?” ( Answer: An iPod commercial – Dress in ALL black, and use black make-up to cover exposed skin. Carry around an iPod and dance wildly. ChaCha!)

Read more about how it works.

I can verify that this is a pretty cool service—just last night, Cha Cha answered a question we had about Craps rules! Thanks, Jake!

Lately, many of our customers have been asking about the precise differences between the MacBooks with the new aluminum case design, and the $999 MacBook that has the older white, polycarbonate case design. Below I cover the most significant differences, then give a summary of what it all means.

Aluminum specs in bold on the left, vs white plastic specs on the right:

- Unibody aluminum enclosure vs plastic white polycarbonate enclosure

- 2.0 or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processors vs 2.1 Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processor

- Both have 3MB level of “on chip” 2 cache

- 1066 MHz frontside bus vs 800 MHz frontside bus

- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics with 256MB of shared RAM, vs Intel GMA X3100 with 144MB graphics

- 2GB of RAM (as two 1GB chips) standard vs 1GB of RAM (as two 512MB chips) standard

- Faster PC8500 SO DIMM RAM vs slower (but considerably less expensive) PS5300 SO DIMM RAM

- Max of 6GB of RAM (with one 2GB chip and one 6GB chip) vs max of 4GB RAM

- DisplayPort connector vs mini-DVI connector

- Glass trackpad with new and advanced multitouch input vs trackpad limited to two-finger input

- Glossy glass display vs glossy plastic display

- Instant-on LED backlighting vs LCD backlighting

- No FireWire 400 port vs one FireWire 400 port

Both MacBook models have very similar processor speeds (indeed, the white model has a very-slightly faster processor). However, the newer MacBooks have a significantly faster bus speed (which is important, as the internal bus dictates how quickly the other components on the motherboard can communicate with the processor, and each other.) The newer MacBooks also use faster RAM.

More significantly, the aluminum MacBooks use the Nvidia 9400M chipset and boast graphics performance up to 6.2x faster over the white MacBook which uses the integrated 144MB Intel graphics chipset. Video gamers and image / video editors will see the improved graphics performance. Also, speed and responsiveness of core graphics in OS X are also improved with the Nvidia chipset, though most people will not notice the difference.

Even with these improvements, real-world testing shows that the aluminum MacBooks are only modestly faster than the white plastic MacBooks. Benchmarks show about a 9% speed difference. MacWorld magazine ran Speedmark version 5 tests on the aluminum MacBooks and the 2.1GHz white MacBook and reports that “Comparing the top of line 2.4 GHz MacBook to its less expensive, lower-powered 2 GHz sibling, we find the high-end model nearly 9 percent faster in overall Speedmark performance, with narrower performance gaps in graphics tests and wider gaps in processor tests, like Cinema 4D.”

It’s also interesting to note that Macworld magazine showed that the current white MacBook is about 4x faster that the final, top of the line PowerPC-based PowerBook – for half the price.

Ultimately, many people are going to choose the newer, aluminum MacBooks simply for their innovative design. Others will want to save a little money, don’t mind (or enjoy) the older white design, or need a compact notebook with a FireWire 400 port to support older video cameras.

I’m a fan of the Post-It note, so I love the fact that it comes on my Mac (plus, it’s better for the environment that way). I’m not a fan, however, of the clutter that occurs when I have several windows open.

I thought I’d explore some preferences to see if I could make the application work better for me, and I found an option I now use all the time: making the note translucent, with the keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-T. So now when I have several notes open, I can still see the other items I’m working on underneath.

There are many more tips to make Stickies a much better app, and Macostips.co.uk has outlined a top 10 which is worth a read (they like the translucency, too!). Check it out!

It’s confirmed: President-elect Obama is a Mac guy. Unlike previous presidents who did not show much techinal savvy, Obama’s campaign showed that he was a little more current.** Now we know the extent of it:

Read more here on Boing Boing.

Read 50 Facts You May Not Know About Obama on the Telegraph.co.uk.

View and download Obama Apple wallpaper here.

**Former President Bill Clinton sent a total of two emails while in the White House, which was reportedly two more than George W. Bush. Both were PC users.

Read more here.