–Steve Jobs

Compared to conventional designs, it's much easier to bring the camera into shooting position. This means that you're able to acquire your subject, compose and shoot in the time it may take to remove a standard strap from your shoulder - important if you don't want to "miss the shot." Also, the fact that the camera rests with the lens pointing backwards makes it less likely to be damaged by impacts as you walk around.

Unlike a standard strap, the R-Strap can also store a cell phone, memory cards and other accessories in compartments built into shoulder area. These compartments use magnetic closures, which in addition to being almost silent, are easy to operate without looking. The build quality and overall attention to detail is very impressive.

The only thing that I would cite as a negative is the fact that if any part of the strap fails your gear is probably toast. While this is also true with traditional designs, the single point anchoring mechanism on the R-Strap seems a little more precarious. It is more than able to securely hold my Nikon D300 and 70-200 VRII but it's certainly on your mind the first couple of times you use it. That said, I haven’t experienced or heard of any problems with the current design.

BlackRapid offers the R-Strap in a number of different configurations that are mainly distinguished by storage capacity. There is a model specifically for women, as well as accessories that allow you to combine R-Straps to carry multiple camera bodies.

The R-Strap is comfortable, secure and offers offers quick access to your camera. Highly recommended. 

Mockups is an Adobe Air based application that allows you to quickly build navigable wireframe versions of websites or desktop applications using a drag and drop interface. Thanks to a good number of built in controls, and an active community site that allows users to share templates, almost anything can be created within the program. After dropping and positioning the various elements onto the canvas, the user can easily link them together and click through the site in order to get a better understanding of how it might work. It's even possible to export a HTML version of the page, using a secondary program called Napkee.

Applications such as Mockups are extremely powerful because they let you visually communicate your idea without having to actually build a functioning website or program. They're also very useful for evaluating different interaction models and page layouts. 

Mockups works very well overall, but there are a few areas that could use improvement.

Some users may not like the visual style of the program. The mockups themselves have a very rough, hand drawn appearance, and the much derided Comic Sans typeface is used throughout the application. In my experience, this was not a major issue since Mockups is more about the function of the idea rather than its appearance, but there are those that would probably appreciate a more professional design language. 

Editing linked designs is another area that could use improvement. This may be different for other versions of the program that use some sort of backend, but the desktop version requires that the user manually link every element, even when those elements are the same across multiple pages. You can work around this by cloning pages that you've already created, but a more elegant solution would be nice.

In my opinion, the only major drawback to Mockups is that it's built on Adobe Air. While this allows the program to run on a variety of platforms, it sacrifices speed as well as native look and feel. The good news is that new releases of Air dramatically improve performance, and the developer of Mockups is constantly working towards making the program behave more like a native app. It still has quite a way to go, but new releases occur frequently and the company seems to have a genuine interest in making sure its customers are happy.

If you're looking for a rapid prototyping tool for application design, I would strongly recommend Balsamiq Mockups.

Tweetie's interface is very simple. Icons for switching between the timeline, @ replies, DMs, and search are all arranged along the left side of the window. The program smoothly animates the transitions between each section and provides breadcrumbs at the top of the window so that the user can navigate backwards. The interface is well executed and very responsive.

The program also includes a number of features that are missing in other apps. Tweetie has robust support for multiple accounts which are presented as icons in the bar on the left of the window. You can also follow and unfollow directly from within the application, access complete user profile information, and view direct messages as a conversation thread in a similar manner to iChat. For a 1.0 release, the program is extremely well polished and stable.

Tweetie probably isn't for everyone. Those that prefer the column style layout of TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop will most likely stay with those apps until such features are available in Tweetie. Also, users that work on both Windows and Mac platforms may appreciate the consistency of the same application in both environments.

Tweetie is available in both free (ad supported) and paid versions.

Tesla seems to have come up with exactly the type of vehicle that the industry needs to move beyond its niche status. While there has been plenty of hype surrounding the idea of plugin electric cars, so far they have not been a commercial success, mainly because they were hideously ugly or impractical. On both fronts, the company seems to have gotten it right with the Model S.

It remains to be seen how well this vehicle will compete with sports sedans from Germany and Japan in terms of build quality and reliability, but Tesla has established a fairly good track record with their two door electric Roadster.

If I was in the market for this type of car, the Model S would definitely be on the short list.

The Big Three should be taking notes.

The controls are very simple and intuitive and the graphic style and music are top notch.

There is tremendous potential for expansion with this tittle as well. Additional airports and aircraft immediately come to mind, but different weather and emergency scenarios could also be interesting. Also, control over the speed and altitude of the aircraft would be something to consider, but would add another layer of complexity and would alter the feel of the game.

I've been playing this game almost non-stop for the last couple of days. It's a bargain at $.99.

Chumby is a small device with a LCD screen and speakers that connects, wirelessly, to your home network. It can be used as a clock radio or a small information terminal anywhere in the house and allows the user to download programs in order to customize the device. There are apps that display weather and stock information, radio apps, and those that stream photos from the internet. The only problem with the Chumby is that it's terribly ugly and has mediocre sound quality.

The reason I bring this up is that I recently had to try and figure out a way of rigging up my iPhone so that I could use it to listen to radio stations through my clock radio. The solution I finally arrived at does work, but it isn't very elegant.

For me, the perfect product would utilize a speaker system similar to the HiFi and include an iPod touch size screen for display and interaction. The system would appear in a similar fashion to an Apple TV in iTunes to allow the user to sync their media and applications over the network and could even pull email and schedule information from the internet.

This type of device would be very easy to build considering the investments that have already been made into the development of existing products and would provide another source of revenue for application developers.

Here's hoping Apple revisits this market with a product worthy of the brand.

Probable:

1. iPhone 3G 32GB -  For me, an iPhone update is a no brainer. Since it's a little too early for a completely new device, I expect that we'll see a 32GB version of the iPhone 3G and perhaps a 64GB iPod touch as well.

2. iPhone 2.5 Update - Along with a higher capacity version of the iPhone 3G, I wouldn't be surprised to see a firmware update for the device. New features such as cut & paste, push notifications, and tighter integration with iLife / iWork are the most likely candidates for inclusion. Since the firmware would need to be widely tested before release, it will probably be available a few weeks after the keynote.

3. iLife / iWork 09 - Another no brainer. iLife was last updated in Fall 2007 along with the introduction of the current generation iMacs. Look for iLife and iWork '09 to be demoed at MacWorld.

4. Updated iMac - The iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro are the only systems that have not seen an update in the last couple of months. Of the three, I think the iMac is the most likely to be updated in the near future, due to its popularity. I would expect that quad core processors and a LED backlit display will be the headline features but a BluRay drive is also a possibility.

5. Snow Leopard Preview - With the next version of OS X, 10.6, due in the first half of next year, a demo of the new operating system is almost a sure thing.

Possible:

1. Netbook - I don't think it's likely that Apple will release a budget priced NetBook simply because they aren't in the sub $500 computer business. The current state of the economy is the only thing that pushes this one from 'Improbable' to 'Possible'.

2. iTunes Media Server - There have been some rumours making the rounds in the last couple of days regarding a media server type product from Apple. With the explosion of the amount of digital media in our homes, a device like this makes a lot of sense. I'm almost sure this product exists but I'm not sure that it will be unveiled at MacWorld.

3. iPhone nano - A number of references to an iPhone nano have started appearing on the websites of various iPhone accessory manufacturers lately. While I think a less expensive, smaller version, of the iPhone makes sense, I don't think it's likely we'll see such a device in the near future.

Improbable:

1. Tablet Mac - While this is a very persistent topic of discussion, the idea of a tablet Mac seems to be based on fantasy more than common sense. Unless they plan on providing all of the functionality, both in hardware and software, Apple would likely announce such a product to the development community before launch. Since MacWorld isn't a developer event, I wouldn't expect a Mac tablet in the first half of 2009.

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application, currently in beta, that allows you easily keep track of a lot of different people by dividing them into columns. You can have one column for everyone you're following, one for your favorites, one that automatically gathers all tweets that contain a certain phrase, @replies, etc... You can create filters within any column and put them into whatever order you like. TweetDeck also provides shortcuts for replying, sending direct messages, and re-tweeting. 

Being a .2 product, there are a few issues related to performance and usability, but there is real potential for this to be a great app.

TweetDeck is available for Windows / OS X / Linux.

Like Desktop Tower Defense, Fieldrunners does an excellent job of pacing. At first, the enemies are slow and relatively weak. Although they dramatically increase in number and toughness as the game progresses, they do so in a way that makes sense. For example, you will usually see a single type of unit, and have the ability to gauge how your defenses hold up, before being faced with a number of them.

Graphically, Fieldrunners is beautiful. The characters are very well rendered and animated and the art style is visually interesting. The framerate is solid as well, regardless of how many enemies are on the screen. My only complaint - and this is very minor - is that, it's sometimes hard to tell to which level the turrets have been upgraded at a glance. Also, some of the upgraded towers can obscure others built close by and make them hard to select.

Fieldrunners makes excellent use of the iPhone / touch hardware. The player is able to zoom in or out on the battlefield using the pinch gesture and controls very responsive and intuitive. Even though the action on screen can be intense you never feel as if the interface is preventing you from doing what you want to.

While playing Fieldrunners, I was very impressed by how polished it felt. I never experienced a crash and the program handled the intrusion of the system notifications very gracefully. 

If you're a fan of strategy games, I would highly recommend Fieldrunners.