(Updated: The bill has been voted down in the house. More info at the bottom.)

Media reports have been all over the map, with sources suggesting anywhere from 5 million to 20 million US households are unprepared for the transition.  There have also been reports of as many as 2.5 million on the FCC’s waiting list for their converter box coupon program.  13.5 million coupons have been passed out, but it’s estimated that roughly half have not been used.  The coupons carry a 90 day expiration, and as the unused coupons expire those on the waiting list will get a shot at one.

President Obama has called for an additional $850 million as part of his stimulus package to provide additional funding to the FCC coupon program.

The FCC has of course already auctioned off and collected it’s nearly $20 billion dollars to re-license the wireless spectrum that would have been freed in just 3 weeks.  (Why again, does the FCC need another $850 million of taxpayer’s dollars to cover the coupon shortfall? Anyway…)

Major players AT&T and Verizon will have to wait until June to begin using their newly acquired slice of the airwaves, though this morning’s bill includes a 116 day extension to the end of their original licenses as compensation.

(Shameless plug warning: who needs OTA anyway, when you’ve got Artvoice TV?)

Update, Wednesday Jan 28: Despite the unanimous vote and the support from President Obama, it turns out this bill was not a shoo-in after all. Because the bill had been fast-tracked in the House, it required 2/3rds votet here before reaching the President’s desk; however, this morning it was shot down by a 256 to 168 vote. So it’s not over yet folks. The House may vote next week for a second time on the issue. In the mean time, we can say the great digital delay… has been delayed.

The original 1984 Macintosh 128K

It was 25 years ago to the day: January 24th, 1984, that the very first Macintosh personal computer first went on sale, changing the computer industry -- and perhaps history as a whole -- forever.  While we might fondly look back with a chuckle at its meager 8MHz CPU, 128kB of RAM and 9″ black and white screen, there’s no arguing the importance and success of the Mac.  This original Macintosh introduced the world at large to the graphical user interface: a means of operating a computer with a pointing device, aka the mouse, where by its user could access the machine’s functions and interact with it’s software by simply pointing and clicking on menus and icons on it’s display -- rather than typing cryptic commands into a terminal, which was the norm of the era. The GUI was thought to be but a mere gimmick by hobbyists, geeks, and experts alike at the time. Some went as far as to consider the machine a toy that would never be useful for serious computing tasks.

While it is true the GUI existed before the Mactintosh, the Macintosh made it a success.

It’s price point of $2,495 made the technology available to the average middle class American family. While it received several overhauls to it’s innards, this original form factor, 9″ black and white screen and all, had enough staying power to remain on the market until 1993, having sold 10 million units over that time period.

It was actually two days earlier, on January 22, that the now famous “1984″ ad aired during Super Bowl XVIII.  The ad itself is considered by some almost as important a milestone in the arena of marketing -- something that Apple still does as well as anybody.

The iconic “1984″ television ad

A rare 20th Anniversary edition Mac

Fast forward to 2009 on this 25th anniversary of the Mac, and most of us can’t imagine using a computer any other way than via the graphical user interface the machine pioneered. While Microsoft Windows now holds the dominant share as far as graphical user interfaces in the computing world, it likely would have never existed without the ground having been broke by Macintosh first. Though Apple struggled through some dark years in its history between 1984 and today, that original formula from a quarter century ago of producing powerful, easy to use, all-in-one computers for average people has been the cornerstone of it’s success and has played a major role in the company’s re-emergence as a dominant player in the computer market.  Apple continues to innovate on the user interface front today with gadgets like the iPhone and iPod with their touch-screen and gesture based input technologies, which just might shape the way we interact with our machines for the next 25 years.

A little surprisingly, Apple has been mostly mum on this anniversary.  Perhaps they’re still a little bit stung by the failure of the Macintosh almost nobody remembers: The 20th Anniversary Mac.  This machine, though a forward looking nod to today’s iMac, is one clear example that not quite everything Apple has touched has turned to gold over the years. Though there’s no outward celebration from Cupertino to mark the occasion, there’s plenty of well-wishing and fond reminiscing on the blogosphere at least.

25 years on, the current 20" iMac

Despite the poor health of CEO Steve Jobs, and despite the economic downturn, the company remains in a strong position today. The company that the Mac built has grown tremendously, and just about anyone who doesn’t reside beneath a rock are familiar with it’s full lineup: including a wildly popular line of laptops, the iPod and iTunes Store as de-facto standards as portable music players and as an Internet music marketplace, and now even its successful foray into the mobile phone market with the iPhone. Many of Apple’s customers have developed a cult-like affinity for the always attractive aesthetics and frequently innovative computers and gadgets “designed in California”.  Its 230 world-wide retail outlets are viewed almost as a destination in a technological pilgrimage for the Apple faithful. Its brand has transcended the computer business and reached the level of cultural icon.

So whether you love or hate the Mac, it’s mark on history and on the entire trajectory of computing progress is something we benefit from, and rely upon, on a daily basis.

Join me in wishing the original a happy 25th Birthday -- and here’s to another 25 years of “thinking different.”

Buffalo Sabres Schedule

Buffalo Bills Schedule

Enjoy!  Now  that you’ve got the schedules added to your calendar, you can sync it up with your iPod or iPhone and you’ve got Bills & Sabres schedules to go.  Pretty cool, right?

If you found this useful and weren’t already aware of this functionality, you’ll want to go visit Apple’s Calendar Downlods or iCal Share for hundreds more “live” calendars, including holidays, band tour dates, important stock market dates, moon phases, new on DVD releases, other sports schedules… whatever you’re interested in.

(Sorry Windows users – I don’t know if there’s an equivalent for you guys.  If somebody out there has a suggestion, leave us a comment and share.  Thanks!)

First, we’ve got two great bits of news on the e-book frontier:

In the left corner: It looks like photos of the second revision of Amazon’s Kindle electronic book device have hit the web.  Of course, as with any “Internet leak” you have to take it with a grain of salt.  Amazon tried (with mixed results) to buzz up the original Kindle,  but if you’re not familiar with the original device, I can’t really blame you – but you can check it out here.  Could this leak be another attempt at generating some buzz?

The Boy Genius Report has a photo gallery with photos of the purported second version of the device.  It seems to be merely an incremental update: some cosmetic changes, new controls and keyboard layout, and USB charging instead of relying on an AC adapter.  Of course, there’s only so much one can infer from looking at photos, so we’ll have to wait for more official word to hear what other features may be built in.  No word on when this might be available; Amazon has previously claimed there wouldn’t be a new Kindle this year.

The new kindle is rumored to still use EVDO wireless as the first edition did.  This wireless functionality is pretty cool: it works with Sprint’s cellular EVDO network, so you can pick up a signal in nearly any populated area and find and download content to read on the go.  Amazon foots the bill for this; so there’s no need to be a Sprint customer or to pay any monthly access charges.  (Content however, often comes with a cost.)

In the right corner: Sony has announced their new e-book reader, the PRS700, at a press event this past Thursday.  It’s a follow up model to their acclaimed PRS505 reader, and it adds some really cool features.  It’s got a sleek look, a touch screen that lets you flip through pages with the swipe of a finger, more memory, more processing power, and a front light to allow you to read in low light situations.  It has five different font sizes and a new zoom feature to make reading easier on the eyes.  The biggest news out of the press event however isn’t even the device itself, but rather Sony’s new commitment to the e-book market.  They will be carrying the device at 3,000 locations U.S. wide (up from 700 currently), have hired a sales force of 1,000 to give in-store demos, and plan to have 100,000 titles available for download in their digital book store by year’s end.  The device is slated to be available in November, so with Sony’s new marketing position, you can expect to see this around when you’re out shopping this holiday season.

Both of these devices are of course based on electronic ink display technology.  Electronic ink is a ground breaking technology using actual ink particles to display text and graphics on amazingly thin (and even flexible) screens, and the ink particles are controlled by means of the electronics in the device.  It makes for outstanding battery life – the only time power is needed is when you change the page.  You can keep text on the page indefinitely however, without sucking up any more juice.  That means these devices have battery life on the order of days or weeks, rather than hours.  This does means you still need to read under comfortable lighting.  While there have been add-on accessories akin to book lights, the new Sony device brings a built in light to the game (expect battery life to decrease while you’re lighting up your screen.)  Electronic ink displays are black and white only at this time, though the readers out there are getting pretty good at displaying images in grayscale with many shades of gray.

They’re still a niche product – probably because of price – with the current Amazon Kindle clocking in at $349 (no word on pricing of the new version yet), and the Sony device expected to be $399.  This will hopefully change as years pass and electronic ink advances.  Industry experts have been predicting that electronic ink will take over old fashioned paper and ink for years now, but with each new device it seems we’re taking a step closer.  The time is near when Universities will likely mandate or provide these for students, and they’ll be able to carry an entire college career’s worth of textbooks in a single device, with the ability to note-take and annotate as well.  Just think of all the trees we’ll save…

While we’re on the topic of electronic books, I thought I’d give a shoutout to two new software applications I’ve been trying out recently that I’ve found particularly useful.  (Note, my “daily driver” is a MacBook, so these are Mac OS X applications – sorry Windows users!)  More after the jump…

The first is Yep!:

Yep! bills itself as the “iPhoto for PDF.”  I think it’s more like an iTunes for documents… but either way, you get the idea.  Yep! will scour your computer for PDF files, and gather them all in one place, regardless where they are on your hard drive.  It has powerful tagging functionality that allows you to not only find your documents quickly, but can automatically show you which documents are related or similar to the one you’re looking at.  It has search capabilities similar to the already built in OS X Spotlight, and includes a number of ways to organize, categorize, and preview your documents.  My favorite feature (simple but important): it remembers what page you were on, so if you’re reading a document and stop only to come back later, it will open up right to where you’ve left off.  You can try Yep! for free, but the full version will run you $34.

Combine Yep! with a document scanner, and imagine the possibilities.  Take all the paperwork and clutter in your life and turn it digital, allowing you to find anything at the touch of a button.  Imagine being able to check your home theater manual, find an invoice or recipe, check out last year’s water bill, etc, in seconds.  (Remember to back up though!)  There’s dozens of document scanners on the market with some pretty affordable price points these days, so this combination could be a godsend for some folks.  We use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M here at the office which will eat a thick stack of papers alive, front and back simultaneously, churning out an indexed and searchable PDF file in a matter of minutes.

Second, we have Audiobook Builder:

This is a super simple to use app that will turn any type of existing audio file, or audio CDs, into “m4b” files.  An m4b file is like a regular AAC audio file, with some extra features thanks to meta-data that can be stored in the file.  An m4b lets you combine multiple files/tracks into one single file that includes markings to delineate chapters.  When played on a supported device, like an iPod, you can then skip around between chapters in a book, view the cover and illustrations in the book, and save your place to pick up listening where you’ve left off.  iTunes and iPods treat these as separate types of media, so you won’t have to worry about transitioning from an upbeat dance tune to chapter 7 of a philosophy book when you’ve got your device on shuffle.  The killer app for me: iPod’s speed feature.  An iPod allows you to speed up playback of m4b audio files by 25%.  Listen to 75 minutes of an audiobook in 60 minutes time.  Don’t worry about the reader sounding like a chipmunk; this is pulled off without changing the pitch of their voice.  (You can also slow down the speed if you’re really trying to absorb the material, but the speech unfortunately sounds a little weird when you do this.)

The speedup feature is pretty little known, and that’s probably because it only works with m4b files.  m4b files are little known, probably because the typical means of acquiring them is to buy commercial audio books through a store like iTunes’.  Audiobook builder bridges that gap and lets you turn anything into an m4b.  Now you can turn any MP3 podcast for example, recorded lectures, radio show recordings, et cetera into an m4b file, and fill your head with 25% more information.

Another plus?  Registering your copy of Audiobook Builder will only set you back $9.95.

The new iPod Nano

I’m sure you can go anywhere on the web for the nitty-gritty details and discussion about every last word said at Apple’s media event held today in San Francisco, (and in fact, you might not be able to avoid it.)  So rather than go there, let’s try something new: a quick and easy summary, free of fanboy-dom and man-crushes on Steve Jobs… the event wrapped up moments ago, so here’s what it boiled down to:

- iTunes 8: better accessibility features, smart playlist algorithm “Genius” finds related songs

- iTunes Store: Shows will be available in HD for $2.99, NBC came crawling back

-iPod Nano: adds cover flow display, voice recording feature, 8GB for $149, 16GB for $199

-New Apple brand in ear headphones, sold separately, $79.  Includes remote control for iPods, microphone for voice recording.

-New iPod classic.  Only available from now on in thin form factor.  120GB for $249.

-Revised iPod touch: thinner, small-built in speaker for “casual listening,” also has Genius playlists, more eco-friendly manufacturing, 8GB for $229, 16GB for $299, and 32GB for $399

- Software updates (available Friday) for iPhone & iPod touch.  Better battery life, fewer dropped calls, bug fixes, faster & more reliable iTunes synching

In usual form, you can already pick up all the new products on the Apple store (though the headphones appear to be pre-order, they say “coming soon”).  The store was off-line during the talk, but just came back up.  No sign of iTunes 8 on software update just yet.

It’s common for news agencies to prepare obituaries ahead of time for prominent public figures, so that all the biographical background work is done – just slap a date and cause of death on there and they’re good to go. It’s NOT common however, to publish them before the person actually dies!  Ooops!

Bloomberg retracted the obituary rather quickly, but if you’re curious about what the press will have to say about Jobs when he does actually die, you can take a peek at a saved copy here.