PAX Registration and Hotel - Alright Dudes Let's Make Some Decisions

Some as was previously mentioned, PAX early-bird registration has opened to the public. The PAX site has finally opened and the news and forums posts have begun a-flowing. You've got until March 31st to reserve your pass for only $40 so let's go on it.

But, who's going? Let's get a running total going, or at least 5 confirmed dudes so we can get a room reserved before they're gone. Last year it was a matter of weeks before the first hotel was booked solid. Looks like the average PAX rate for the three hotels is $169 a night, which is $340 if we stay Friday and Saturday night. Divide that by five dudes per room and that's $68 per dude. That's a pretty good deal!

I'm also interested in taking the train up to Seattle this year instead of giving my first of kin to simply park. If anyone else is interested in utilizing public transit, let me know. We can work something out.

Here's some the hotel info:

Sheraton
($169 for singles or doubles)
1400 6th Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101
Phone: (206) 621-9000

* Pay wireless Internet ($10/day)
* In-room safe
* Coffee Maker
* Mini fridge
* Rollaway beds available for $25

Book online now!

The Grand Hyatt
($169 for singles or doubles, $179 for corner suites)
721 Pine St
Seattle, Washington 98101
Phone: 1.800.233.1234

Online Instructions:

1. Go to www.grandseattle.hyatt.com
2. Enter discount code "G-PENN" into the group/corporate # field.

The Roosevelt Hotel
($165 for singles or doubles)
1531 Seventh Avenue (Pine)
Seattle, Washington 98101
Phone: (800)716-6199 (ask for group number "ROS-GF151")

* Pay wireless Internet ($10/day)
* Rollaway beds available for $10/night

Online Instructions:

1. Go to https://www.coasthotels.com/rates?selectHotel=ROS
2. Use discount code ROS-GF151 in "group" box.

MacWorld 2008 Begins - Keynote to Insight Hemmoraging amongst Apple Fans

So I'm excited, are you excited?! I'M SO EXCITED!!! Soon, Steve Jobs will don his black turtle neck and begin speaking to his loyal worshipers of the Apple. What shall the Mac Gods bestow upon us today? Insanely skinny multi-touch tablets? 80GB iPod Touch? The iHouse? iChips directly connected to my iBrain?! We shall find out soon. Stay tuned, I'll update this post with all the juicy details as they're released.

UPDATE: Steve announces Time Machine compliment: Time Capsule. Basically Time Machine is great for desktop machines, but horrible for laptops. Time Capsule is essentially the same thing, but done wirelessly. Neat.

It's actually a wireless hard drive. It looks like an Airport Extreme but with more ports in the back. Two models: 500GB and 1TB. (GEEZ!) $299, $499.

UPDATE: New iPhone features:
Maps with locations, webclips, customizable home screens, SMS multiple people at once, chapters, subtitles, and language support in video, and lyrics support in audio.

iPhone SDK to be released in February. HOLY CRAP!

Tons of other features for the iPhones, cool stuff. Rearranging icons. Maps demo now -- page curls up, search and directions buttons now -- if you've seen the 1.1.3 demo vids, this is exactly it. "Schoom. And there we are." as it locates Steve in the Moscone. "I can flip right into directions, and it uses my current location to start..." calculating the route back.

Really super accurate GPS. Customizable Home Screen.

UPDATE: iTunes. Movie Rentals, including HD. $2.99 for old movies, $3.99 for new movies. Also, Apple TV getting a bit of an update. Rent directly from AppleTV only a dollar more. No computer needed anymore. Pretty cool.

Movies stream directly to you so the movies you rent you can watch IMMEDIATELY.

HD Podcasts. Also HD Music Videos. Steve's very excited about the amount of HD stuff they've got.

AppleTV reduced to $229. Effective today.

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. THE MACBOOK AIR. It's tiny. REALLY tiny. It's the thinnest, lightest laptop in the world. Seriously, HOLY CRAP. This thing is TINY. At it's widest point it's .76 inches thick. At it's thinnest point... .16 INCHES!! It's so thin you can fit it inside a vanilla envelope. He puts it in it!



BRAIN SPLODE!!! It’s an LED backlit display that’s instant-on. It also has a built-in iSight camera, and a full-sized keyboard. Backlit too, with a trackpad and multi-touch gesture support on the trackpad.

Intel Core 2 Duo Inside, 1.6 GHz standard, with a 1.8GHz upgrade available. Apple asked Intel to shrink their Core 2 Duo processors down to a package 60% smaller in order to fit it inside the MacBook Air. And here’s Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini to talk about it.



While browsing the web, the battery has about a 5 hour life. It has a solid state hard drive. No optical drive whatsoever. But it has the Time Capsule, Movie Rentals and even has a special new feature called Remote Drive. It can literally borrow the optical drive of another computer on the same wireless network and install things that requite an optical drive, remotely. Impressive.

$1799. Ships in two weeks, you can pre-order it now.