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Want to watch the WWDC 2010 Keynote speech for yourself?

Click here to view from Apple’s website.

What were your thoughts on the keynote speech for WWDC 2010? What you expected? Lackluster? Long winded?

iPhone4, no big surprise. I think most people saw that one coming. Renaming the iPhone OS to iOS4. Makes sense to me. That OS is not just used on the iPhone, so why would you continue to call it that. Apple had to pay some money to Cisco to be able to use that name. IOS has long been used by Cisco to describe the OS on their routers and switches. The biggest thing for me is that the upgrade to iOS4 will be free for existing 3G and 3Gs phones. Three days before the release of the iPhone4. Just enough time to make you want the features that are not enabled on the older phones. Interesting marketing strategy.

What about the video phone capability between iPhone users now? iBooks? iAds?

Fire off your comments about your WWDC keynote announcements. Were they good ones? Or was this an off year for Apple?

The WWDC kicks off at 10AM Pacific today. What will be the big thing they announce this year?

Will it be the 4G iPhone or some new upgrade to Snow Leopard? What about Safari5, a $99 AppleTV, or some other device they have thought up that they must convince us we all have to have?

Personally I am hoping to see some new Macs or at least some improvements on the existing ones. Seems like with all that Apple has going on these days, the Mac itself has fallen out of the forefront of the product line and become the device you plug all the other cool Apple products into.

Whatever it will be. It will be the talk of town for at least a while. Good or bad, everyone will have to give their opinions of it.

Are you a web developer troubled by the number of people still using IE6 and holding back your creative juices? Tired of writing special code just so your page looks right in IE6?

Here is you fix: http://www.ie6nomore.com/

Simply place the code in the code of your site and code for standards with out worry as users who still use IE6 will be directed to upgrade their browsers.

Microsoft is making claims that their soon to be released Windows Live Essentials will be a better and direct competitor with Apple’s iLife suite. Before I tell you my opinion of what I have read about Live Essentials, I will first tell you about what the new product is slated to have.

First the public beta of the Windows Live Essentials 4 is likely to go public beta at the end of June. The expected name is probably going to be Windows Live Essentials 2011. The latest suite includes both software and services components designed to complement Windows (and especially Windows 7).

The latest Windows Live Essentials suite includes the following components:

Windows Live Mail – MS mail application versus the Apple Mail app. I am not sure if this is anything to get too excited about. I mean it is e-mail. People who really like to have complete and total control over their email are probably going to use something like Thunderbird or maybe Outlook.

Windows Live Messenger – MS answer to Apple iChat. Who cares? Most of use still using instant messaging are using an app that allows for multiple account types to be managed at once. Not locked into one type of messenger protocol. Sure it will include some fancy features and allow web cam conferences, but how many times have you really used that. Again, those that are serious about it are probably more likely to use the new version of Skype.

Windows Live Photo Gallery – This might be fine for the average home user needing to catalog their photos. iPhoto from Apple works fine for basic photo cataloging too, but again those that are really serious are more likely to use Adobe’s Lightroom. And unless MS does some real overhaul on the photo gallery, it is just about worthless.

Windows Live Movie Maker – Designed to go head to head with Apple’s iMovie, this had better be 100% better than it has been in previous versions. This is one app that I have never liked from MS and feel they could do much better with.

Windows Live Sync – No comment.

Windows Live Writer – Intended to compete with Apple’s iWeb. Basically it is Frontpage reinvented. After MS dropped the Frontpage product a few years back it hasn’t had an answer for it until now. For the person who has no idea about how to create a website or what it takes to update one, this might be the product they use. I am sure that you will be able to easily identify the sites created with this just like you could the Frontpage sites. You will probably be able to get a better looking website using a free service like Wordpress or Blogger than you could with either the Apple or the MS stuff.

Windows Live Family Safety – Parental controls and internet safety for the internet. Given the track record for Internet Explorer security, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith and trust in this.

Bing Bar – Really? Again, who cares? I don’t need another annoying tool bar or search bar app thrown at me.

So what’s the big deal about MS Windows Essentials? MS claims it will appeal to customers more because it is free. Apple iLife cost $79. Apple iLife come on all new macs for free. You only have to pay the $79 if you don’t already have it or decide to upgrade to the new versions when they are released. You also have to pay an annual fee for the MobileMe sync services with Apple, but there are rumors that Apple may be making that a free service sometime soon.

Which is better? Unless MS has made some real improvements and user enhancements to their listed products, I would still prefer to use the iLife apps over MS any day. I iLife apps are very easy to work with and make the difficult tasks easy to manage. Plus MS does not have an answer at this time to Apple’s GarageBand.

Not long ago I wrote a short post about how I was going to wait to install the Twitter for iPhone app. Twitter acuired the Tweetie app from Atebits and made it free. I had gone on in my original post about how I was going to wait because others were complaining about now having to put up with ads and the interface was poor, etc… I took that at face value from the reviews in the iTunes store.

After reading another review of the app, I gave it another go. I recant everything I said. The new app is just what I would have expected from Atebits. I am now wondering if maybe the reviews on the iTunes store were left over from the original Twitter app they abandoned.

I would recommend the new Twitter for iPhone app to anyone that would like a serious full featured Twitter app to use on the iPhone.

With all the hype about the Android product last week, this seems to have slipped through the cracks:

Google has launched a new cloud storage service competing directly with Amazon’s S3. Google Storage for Developers offers scalable, high-bandwidth storage, with an easy-to-use RESTful API.

Google Storage will cost 17¢ per gigabyte per month, with uploads costing 10¢ per gigabyte and 15-30¢ per gigabyte for downloads. Initially, Google Storage will only be available to a limited number of US-based developers, with 100GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth per month for no charge.

This announcement comes just a day after Amazon offered a cut-price version of S3, offering weaker reliability guarantees for a lower price. Amazon’s Reduced Reliability storage offers 99.99 percent reliability for 10¢ per gigabyte, compared to S3’s normal price of 15¢ per gigabyte. Amazon’s pricing structure also offers discounts for heavy users.

More… and more here…

Gizmodo is reporting on a new development by Google. Google TV, not WebTV like what Microsoft had out 10 years ago, but something that at least from the pictures Gizmodo has up looks much more useful than the old WebTV and better thought out.

Of course the internet is not the same as it was ten years ago either. The majority of customers are not on a dial up connection anymore. Seems there is some form of a high speed connection to the net just about everywhere now. Be it DSL, Cable, Satellite, or wireless, faster connection speeds are becoming easier to get. That might work for Google given all the stuff they are saying GoogleTV will do. They promise to bring the web to the TV. Guess we will see how it goes.

When I began seeing tweets pop up that Tweetie was now Twitter for iPhone and that is was free, I got excited. I paid $2.99 for the Tweetie app and I was happy to pay it because the app is so good. Hearing that I could now get the new version for free was really good news on day that hadn’t been going all that great.

I headed on over the App Store and found the client for download. Yep, the Twitter for iPhone app looked the same as Tweeite. Then I began to read the reviews of those who had already installed it. Not good. Disappointment seemed to be the general consensus. Why? Some were saying that you now have to put up with ads. Others were complaining about API problems. There were a few other complaints, but those two were the biggest it seemed.

What does that means for me? I will be sticking with the client I paid $2.99 for months back. It doesn’t mean that I have given up hope about this product though. I will be watching the reviews and looking for any updates. If I begin to hear about things turning around for the new free version, I may give installing it a try.