For the Torah-studying scholar on-the-go, 23-year-old entrepreneur Yehuda Shmidman has created the ShasPod, a 20GB iPod filled with the equivalent of 2,700 pages of the Talmud as read and commented by Rabbi Dovid Grossman of Los Angeles. The $399 price is one hundred bucks over the price of the iPod as shipped from Apple. And while the lectures by Rabbi Grossman are available for free at dafyomi.org, some Orthodox Jews will not use the web for non-work purposes. Timing is key here as well. As the New York Times reported (free registration required), Jews worldwide recently celebrated the completion of the seven-and-a-half-year cycle of Talmudic learning called the Siyum HaShas, where students learn one page per day. Here’s a sample file about the s’hma.
Apple will officially announce Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger’s release at an event in early April and will begin shipping the operating system within two or three weeks afterwards, Think Secret has learned. Apple has previously only stated that Tiger will ship during the first half of the 2005.
I’m hoping this new release helps out my Mom with the promising set of new disability features built-in.
Seattle NBC Affiliate KING-5 visited Delicious Monster HQ (the Zoka coffee shop) recently. Mike Matas posted the 90-second Quicktime — it’s a nice promo for the boys from DM. Now if I can only find some time to scan all my stuff. Trouble is, my Wi-Fi gets weak in the back room of my house where all my books are. So I’m gonna have to methodically cart them to the office at the front. A small price to pay to fill my library though. My earlier posts on Delicious Monster here and here.
As I mentioned earlier, Delicious Library ($39.95 for OSX from the minds at Delicious Monster) is a great application for you obsessive compulsive types out there with big media collections and an iSight camera. This app uses a very Mac-like interface to organize the books, games, CDs and DVDs you own onto virtual ‘bookshelves’. And by the way – it turns your iSight into a bar-code scanner, and looks up your stuff to fill your library. Anyway, a very good blog called 43 Folders has reviewed the app and started an interesting conversation about it. Several interesting tidbits therein, including someone mentioning that an iTunes to Delicious Library plugin is under development. A life saver! I bought it a few weeks ago, and I’m slowly scanning my collection. Nice way to remind yourself that it’s been a while since you’ve watched The Fifth Element, and to know that your deadbeat friend borrowed it in 2002 and still hasn’t returned it.
