MacBreak

Check back throughout the week for MacBreak’s ongoing coverage of Macworld 2007 in San Francisco.

• MacBreak Macworld 2007: Keynote Rundown - In this first segment, Leo, Alex, and I review the major announcements of the keynote, including, of course, the iPhone and Apple TV

Upcoming.org: MacBreak Weekly Live @ 21st Amendment at 21st Amendment (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)

Directions to 21A, from Moscone Center

Just a reminder that tonight’s live taping of MacBreak Weekly takes place at 21st Amendment starting at 6pm. If you’re planning to come to the taping, my advice is to get there early, because we’re anticipating a capacity audience (that’s a big reason everyone agreed it was better not to do this event at the Apple Store on Steve Day).

Leo, Alex, Scott, and I will be discussing today’s announcements and may even have some guests.

A propos of nothing, I will also take this opportunity to remind Mr. Bourne of his (often repeated) promise to buy everyone on MBW an iPhone on the day that they come out. Just saying.

If you come out tonight or see me on the Macworld show floor with MacBreak today, please say hi and introduce yourself.

MacBreak Weekly 12: Smokin’

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, and Scott Bourne

Apple updates the MacBook Pro, and Scott buys one. No wonder they’ve got such a great bottom line. And our application picks including Disco and Tangerine.

Running time: 1:03:36  read more »

If it wasn’t apparent from my pathetic cry for help the other day, even I — one of your more theoretically productive persons in North America — struggle with what to call things.

Tags, files, and — dear Lord — the innumerable assets associated with making web sites, graphics, audio, and video projects; it’s all a hopeless jumble unless you have some kind of mature system in place for what you call your stuff and its various iterations. Of course, if you’re like me — and I hope that you are not — you still have lots of things on your desktop with names like “thing-2 finalFinal! v3 (with new changes) 05b.psd”.

For prior art, I still treasure this Jurassic thread on What Do I Know where people share their thoughts on this age-old problem, but, frankly I haven’t seen many good resources out there on best practices for naming.

Anyhow, during a recent MacBreak shoot, I noticed that Alex and his team seem to have a pretty fly system for naming the video files that eventually get turned into their big-time IPTV shows. Thus, I turned to Pixel Corps’ Research Division Lead, Ben Durbin (co-star of Phone Guy #5) for insight and sane help. And, brother, did he ever give it to me (see below the cut for Ben’s detailed awesomeness).

But, just so I don’t lose you, do give me your best tips in comments: What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff?  read more »

MacBreak Weekly 10: Look What They Done To My Boy

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, and Scott Bourne

New Mac ads, why does Adobe hate Intel, and iTunes TV store woes…

Running time: 54:15

Links to some of the stuff I mentioned in the podcast:  read more »

In which Alex is still on about the notional iPhone (and its current-day antecedents), Leo loves his lumber-swinging MacPro, Scott is completely full of beans, and everyone rags me mercilessly about my fondness for new age nap software.  read more »