This is the Top News Stories section from My Yahoo start page. The first 4 stories seem quite appropriate for this section. These are important news stories that have real life altering impact to many people. The 5th story is just absurd. Honestly people, it's just a damn phone. People are dying in the world and the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster zone. Those are important stories. Whether a phone loses cellular signal just doesn't really seem that important in the grand scheme of things. Granted, Apple brings a lot of this upon themselves with the way they handle PR but I would hope that the powers that be that shape and deliver our news would have elected to push a story like this to Page 2. But in the ever growing chase for eyeballs, news outlets want to push what brings in the most readers. Who cares that only 3 million iPhone 4's have been sold versus the hundreds of millions of other phones on the market. There's only one thing that people love more than fawning over winners and that's to watch them fall.

For the record, I own an iPhone 4. Haven't had any issues with it - antenna related or otherwise. The damn thing does slip out of my hand more often than the previous model so I'm happy to cash in on my free case courtesy of Steve Jobs. If the outcome of all the hoopla is that I get free stuff, so be it. I just think we all need to gain a little perspective of what's truly newsworthy.

A friend of mine recently was shopping for a media storage system to manage his library of movies, music, pictures, etc.  I directed him to a previous post I did re: my home media server.  Seeing as how it's almost a year old, I decided to do an update with new equipment and specs.

The first component I updated was with the media player itself, the recently released Mac Mini.  Great elegantly designed device.  Easier to upgrade the RAM on though I went from 4GB down to 2GB on this new model and haven't seen any drop off in performance.  When RAM prices are a little more affordable, I'll probably spring for the 4GB.  I'm running MakeMKV to do the video conversion/ripping and Plex to manage my media.  MakeMKV is one of the simplest bluray/dvd ripping software I've used to date and Plex handles all video files like a champ.  Boxee is a good alternative to Plex but I just don't like the interface.  I still use the same external USB bluray drive I've had before.  Saw no reason to upgrade it but may do so when faster drives become a little cheaper.

The other major component is the Drobo storage system.  Since the Mac Mini currently has a 320GB drive, you won't be able to store much there.  I have the original Drobo 4-Bay system but they've since released a very nice upgrade in the Drobo FS.  The new FS has 5 bays and integrated gigabit ethernet.  This is perfect for if you want to stash your Drobo somewhere hidden and then just pipe the media to multiple locations via a gigabit router.

Other components are the Logitech diNovo Mini (essential if you don't want to deal with a big keyboard and mouse) and the Apple Remote.  Not super essential but extremely useful for an uncluttered coffee table.

It's definitely not a plug and play type of solution but with a little bit of do-it-yourself elbow grease, you'll have a home media manager that will grow with you for the foreseeable future.  If you have any questions, please feel free to hit me up for advice.

I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits (hot coffee in the lap) because they generally take time away from lawsuits with real merit (asbestos, guns, cigarettes, etc). Most recently lawsuits have been lodged against Apple for the iPhone - One for the antenna issue and the other for the AT&T iPhone exclusivity. The first one is clearly an idiotic attempt at a money grab. Sure it's proven that holding the phone a certain way causes you to lose bars (I can't seem to reproduce this issue but others I know have) but so what? If you don't like the way your phone behaves, return the phone for a full refund. You haven't been damaged in any way that would require redress via a lawsuit. That would be like me buying a pepperoni pizza that didn't have enough pepperonis on it. I'd either suck it up or return it for another one that had enough pepperonis. If the pizza place couldn't deliver me a pizza with enough pepperonis on it because of a design flaw in their pizza making process, I'd just go but a pepperoni pizza from another place that could deliver me a pizza with the required number of pepperonis.

The second lawsuit is one that definitely will be beneficial should it prevail. Having the iPhone on multiple carriers will create more competition in the wireless marketplace forcing AT&T (and others) to compete more on price, service, etc. If nothing else, it'll mean that iPhone users will be dispersed across multiple networks so that the strain won't be on one network. To keep with the pizza analogy, this would be like if you could only order a pepperoni pizza from one place. Not to say that the quality of the pizza or the pizza place was bad but it's easy to see that if more places could offer that pepperoni pizza to their customers, this would benefit everyone in terms of more options, faster service, etc.

Dang... I'm hungry now.