Dear Friends,

I took my annual day trip to Lake George, NY to attend Americade. The Americade rally is very different than most motorcycle rallies because it is focused on motorcycle touring. There are seminars and rides and a very large touring exhibition with lots of vendors offering anything from parts to trailers to custom painting. I ended up buying some gloves a few other trinkets including a big auto magnet that is a dog paw that says “I sleep with dogs.”

On the way home, Grace, Tony and I decided to stop at Geoff’s camp in Chestertown. Geoff liked his camp so much when he was a child that he decided to buy it as an adult. Forest Lake Camp is one of the premier boys and girls camps in the Adirondacks and is simply a beautiful piece of property. (We are planning on renaming it “Uncle Geoff’s Holiday Camp” for Small Dog Electronics retreats!) We met the camp director, Sara Robertson-Ryan, and she gave us a tour and left us to explore. There is a beautiful lake and lots of great facilities. They were gearing up for the summer season and it was a great opportunity to get a little exercise during our motorcycle ride.

I will be heading out to the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Sunday and have meetings with the Apple Reseller Advisory board and the AppleCare folks down in Cupertino. It will be exciting to be in town for the new announcements and to meet up with other Apple Specialists and our friends at Apple’s headquarters.

Can I take a moment to remind you to back up your computer? Hard drives fail and they take your valuable data, pictures, movies and music with them. In the past month, two of my closest friends lost all of their photos and try as we might, we were unable to recover the data. There were tears, anger and I hope, a resolution to back up from now on. It took me three times to learn this lesson; I hope you never have to learn it the hard way. (I even paid DriveSavers over $1,500 once to recover essential data before I learned.)

It has never been easier, either! With Mac OS X Leopard, Time Machine and any backup drive you can easily automate this process. Hard drives have never been more reasonable in price, with prices falling and capacities increasing. We also have some of the newly discontinued Time Capsules that combine a 500GB hard drive with an AirPort Extreme base station to provide wireless backup solution, too. You have no excuse left not to back up your drive!

Emailing entire webpages (complete with graphics, formatting, links, etc.) is very easy in Safari. I often email entire webpages to myself to reference later—for example, recipe pages, confirmation forms, and directions. It can also be useful to email an entire webpage to a friend or client.

There are two ways to do this in Safari:

1. Navigate to File > Mail Contents Of This Page. A new email will open with the page embedded in it. Simply enter the recipients mails and click “Send”. Or,
2. Just press Command-I and a dialog will appear, asking for the email address of the person you want to send the page to.

The recipient will now be able to see that page right within his/her email application!

Instead of just reviewing our new red Lenntek Sonix Earbuds on their own, I thought it would be better to compare them to one of our most popular earphones, the Skullcandy INK’d Earbuds. To get the best idea of how they rate against each other, I tested them simultaneously using our Belkin headphone splitter.

I alternated ears, earbuds and tested a variety of genres of music to be sure I covered a solid range of variables. To give you an idea, here are some songs I used, along with notes on the type of elements each featured:

• Rosa Parks, Outkast: heavy bass and synthesized sound mixed with vocals, a capella, gradual lead-in, consistent beat
• In God’s Country, U2: acoustic and electric instruments, dynamic vocals, dramatic musical lead-in, beat changes
• Lazy Eye, Silversun Pickups: similar mix of electric instruments and dramatic lead-in, added distortion
• Kids, MGMT: background sounds (crowd noises), heavily overlayed synthesized instruments/vocals
• Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, Tragic IV, Chicago Symphony Orchestra: strings, brass, tempo and a variety of textures
• Surfin’, Ernest Ranglin: jazz/reggae elements with a solid bassline, instrumental
• Haircut Money, The Mammals: twangy, acoustic bluegrass sound, male and female vocals

Lenntek Sonix Earbuds
Pros:

• Extremely secure fit. Like most earbuds, these come with three silicone tips to fit over the in-ear piece, so I was able to pick a pair that worked well. (I can’t even fit the Apple Earphones in my ear at all, so I really value a pair of in-ear phones that fit well and are comfortable to wear.) They also stayed put—I tested these while running, lying down and just putzing around the apartment.
• Crisp sound. Vocals were really clear, and they do really well with multiple textures in a song (e.g. layer upon layer of instruments/vocals, etc.)
• Wide range of highs and lows. Everything I seemed to listen to in iTunes sounded pretty darn good, from Blues to Pop.
• Sleek hybrid cord. The top part (the separate strands coming from each bud) is the standard rubber casing that most earbuds have, but when the cord merges, it changes to a nylon-covered cord. I’ve found that rubberized cords tangle too easily and cords that are all fabric make too much noise when they rub against your clothes (if you’ve ever experienced that, it’s a really annoying sound that the earbud seems to amplify).

Cons:

• Heavily reliant on EQ settings. Though the sound was clean overall, some EQ settings really made my music sound flat or overly bass-heavy. Once I adjusted the EQ (specifically, I found that the “Piano” setting in iTunes worked really well), the songs were much more dynamic in range.
• Low quality audio is painfully apparent. I especially noticed poor sound quality on various YouTube music videos, and I imagine that poor quality audio files would stick out like a sore thumb as well.

Skullcandy INK’d Earbuds
Pros:

• A wide variety of audio sounded good—from high and low quality files in iTunes to YouTube videos and other system sounds. I was impressed that it was hard to make something sound really bad—I never heard any distortion at all with these.
• Snug fit. They also fit pretty well in my ears, and for the most part, stayed put as well when I moved around.

Cons:

• Slightly tinny when compared to the Sonix Earbuds.
• Range was a bit smaller. Multi-textured tracks lost some of their edge.

After all this, I found that I really would highly recommend both of these products—it just depends on your usage. I’d grab the Skullcandy INK’d Earbuds as a solid choice over the Apple Earphones, and for kids/teens, especially (they come in a bunch of colors as well). For users who have a more sophisticated ear, the Sonix Earbuds are a good choice without breaking the bank.

If I had to choose a winner between the two, though, I’d say that I like the Sonix Earbuds better overall. At $29.99, the Sonix Earbuds are a better value because it’s clear from their sound quality that they are a higher end product (list price is supposed to be $79.99). I was disappointed that they didn’t blow me away in all capacities (music/video, etc.), but I think my standards were probably too high!

Also, it’s important to keep in mind that earbuds can take some time to “break in.” I just grabbed the Sonix Earbuds yesterday, so I don’t think I’ve reached the point where they are fully optimized yet. I expect the sound to get much better over time.

Buy Lenntek Sonix Earbuds, $29.99. (limited time price!)
Buy Skullcandy INK’d Earbuds, $19.99.

I use Safari daily, and have found recently that some Flash video was reallllly dragging. I decided to reinstall the Safari plugin to see if that worked, and so far, so good. Here’s how:

• Download the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller for OS X
• Double click to run the Uninstaller
• Reinstall Adobe Flash Player for OS X

Hopefully, this will fix any slowdowns Safari has… until the next update, at least!

Don and Matt are headed out to WWDC next week, where we expect that we’ll hear some new and exciting news, as always. Here are our predictions for what we should all expect to see:

JJ

1. New iPhone model at a $99 price point
2. Touch screen notebook

Carl

1. Minor upgrades to the MacBook Aluminum
2. Minor upgrades to the iPhone and an announcement that AT&T will have variable cost data plans

Art

1. iPhone 3G software released
2. A new app from the App Store that allows people to drink liquor while blindfolded and not spill

Jon

1. iMacs in a completely new enclosure
2. iPhone line completely redone

Kali

1. iPhone 3G software release (hopefully with cheaper AT&T plans and maybe a matte black iPhone enclosure?) and Snow Leopard date announcement
2. Steve will appear in his 3 wolves, 1 moon t-shirt and cause a major spike in apparel sales at Amazon

Ed

1. Apple iPod Universal Dock Adapter 3-pack will have slightly updated packaging
2. Apple iPod nano 4G Armband now ships with slightly more velcro

Gary

1. 4GB and 32GB iPhones
2. Snow Leopard official release date

Geoff

1. Don falls asleep at the Apple Service meeting
2. Matt catches the Swine Flu and misses all the meetings

Dan

1. New iPhone with improved camera, video capture, digital compass and will be for sale within two weeks of announcement
2. Snow leopard release date in the August – September timeframe

Jim

1. 30” LED Apple Cinema Display
2. Due to huge public outcry the numeric keypad is back on standard issue iMac keyboards

Brian

1. New iPhone a 32GB with new colors, and 3.0 software update
2. New operating system, Snow Leopard

Emily

1. An Apple Netbook is announced
2. iPhone market opened up to dealers other than AT&T

Katie

1. NEW iPhone (hardware and software!)
2. 8” – 10” notebook

What are your thoughts? Respond on our blog here!

Macs and design go hand-in hand. In my mind, you can’t have good design without a good set of fonts. (Don calls me “Font Girl.” I like to think of it as my superhero name. But I digress…)

So this week, I’m going to give some love to MyFonts, one of my favorite font sites on the web. Not only can you download free fonts (for personal use) for your Mac, but they have this awesome feature called “WhatTheFont,” a tool designed to help you figure out what that cool font is called that you came across the other day. Just upload an image of the font in use (or enter a URL), and it will start sleuthing!

Even cooler still is that they have an app for the iPhone, so you can snap a picture from wherever you are and upload on the spot. The fact that I like WhatTheFont so much may also have something to do with the name—I actually almost named my blog that before I realized it was taken!

Visit MyFonts.com

Bonus: Mac|Life has partnered with Macware to offer a free commercial font bundle download for a limited time—get over $300 worth of fonts for free.

Click here to register for the free font download from Mac|Life and Macware.

Higher Ground and Small Dog Electronics are teaming up to bring you ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro to the HG Showcase Lounge on Sunday, June 21.

Read about Jake here.

So… here’s where you need to pay attention: one lucky person will win a pair of tickets to the show, a 1GB iPod shuffle, and a copy of Jake’s new live album. To enter, email intern@highergroundmusic.com.

The fine print: The deadline to enter is Wednesday, June 17. One entry per person. Prize package 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.

My First Mac Pack : MacBook 2.0GHz, AppleCare, Free QuickStart DVD, Sleeve, Printer (with rebate)!

$1199.99

We often have requests for a Mac bundle designed for first time Mac users with basic computer needs. That’s what we present this week: My First Mac Pack, which is a MacBook 2.0GHz, 3-year AppleCare plan, Free QuickStart DVD, Incase MacBook Sleeve, and a Canon MP190 printer/copier/scanner.

The bundle costs $1199.99, but an online rebate on the printer brings the total cost to $1130. Click here to see this.

Add iWork ’09 and qualify for an additional $30 rebate!

We are rushing to get the garden in before we leave for California. Grace is coming with me and then heading to Hawaii to see our dear friend, Yvette, but leaving me on my own to get into trouble for a couple weeks.

Summer is here in Vermont and there ain’t any place better! Can you tell I love Vermont?

Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
Don, Kali and Ed