I’m working on testing out the new version of Apple’s photo software, but first I need to crank out a 550 MB download on a reasonable, yet still slow Internet connection. The Larkspur must love every time I come here since I put their poor Internet connection through the paces. At least I’m not killing it with iTunes Plus upgrades like last year at the same time as pulling down an even large iWork 09 Beta. Guess I’m getting merciful in my years.

In case you forgot or missed it when I mentioned it earlier, yes I am going to Macworld next week and you can come vicariously with me.

I’m hoping to highlight the best the floor has to offer when the expo starts on Thursday with a possible close encounter with an iPad on Saturday. If I don’t get the latter, I may take the Stephen Colbert approach and get my own cable TV show, get an established audience for a few years and then demand Apple give me one. Not sure that plan will work, but there’s only one way to find out.

Also early on in the week I’ll be getting valuable training with Final Cut Pro which I may be able to share bits and pieces with you about.

Make sure to tune in next week as there will be plenty of updates starting Wednesday.

I have an e-mail posted on my desk that was sent to me back in October. Sgt. Marvin Oliver called me the immunity agent in the United States for the U.N. and the British government, which could have garnered me $10.1 million, half of which he explains would be donated toward motherless babies in the U.S.

Being the heartless bastard I am, I of course turned down his offer since it was a variation on a 419 scam in which he sought an advance payment and was likely not going to repay the favor.

However, in a very much appropriate headline, Ars Technica is reporting that suckers lost $9.3 billion to such scams in 2009. Granted as technology expands, more people will get their first visits from a Nigerian prince or a U.N. sergeant. It’s still troubling to see so much money get picked from people’s pockets.

It seems easy to blame greed for this since most of these have some promise of cash waiting for the suckers. However, like the scam I outlined, the money wasn’t all going to my wallet. There was $5 million earmarked for orphans. If I turned him down, why I could be shunning children who have no parents. Wouldn’t that make me a terrible person?

Again, I’m just enough of a heartless bastard when it comes to my e-mail that those “kids” are going to have to starve. Although after seeing how much 419 scams bring in, I doubt they’ll be doing that

While Apple and most reports are calling a fix make in iTunes 9.0.3 a minor podcasting issue, this has been a thorn in my side since iTunes updated to version 9.0.2.

Actually in all honesty this all started with iTunes 9, which completely jumbled podcast episodes with no rhyme or reason involved. A fix came later in 9.0.2, but that fix began a mess that added one extra step to my day.

The whole concept of a podcast is the episodes are supposed to download to your computer automatically and from there you can sync them to some kind of listening device, a la my iPhone.

Great idea, except this bug would unsync podcasts if there were no episodes on your computer. So say you listen to a show every day during your commute, delete it from your computer, sync again at work, then the next day try to sync that show to your phone. It wouldn’t be there.

So thank you Apple for finally getting this fix out. It makes up for not letting me play with the iPad anytime soon.

A few months ago AT&T introduced an app for the iPhone to mark trouble spots for data and send the information back to the telecom provider. The first question I had was how could you send data to mark where there is no data, where there is no data.

Where most people’s eyes would glaze like I just asked “What is the sound of one hand clapping,” AT&T was bold enough to say it had a magical setup that would send the problem when you got back into better reception.

Well apparently that didn’t work so well and now there’s an updated app for that. Under the instructions:

Mapping Function: Pending Problem Locations
The application is now storing problems that were not successfully submitted as pinned locations.

Double click on desktop folders and they open. Single click on Internet links and they open. Double click on the wrong button in stock trading software, your algorithm stifles Wall Street and your bank is out $150,000.

The Konami code is everywhere, even in the Palm Pre. No 30 lives though. You’re still stuck with the just the one you have.

I haven’t heard many stories about people whose lives get flipped around so quickly by literally being in the background of a project, but here’s one on the photographer who shot the background image for the iPad and didn’t know it.

There are many amazing things on the Internet to learn to do and to play with. Then there’s the dark side which I will simply describe by saying “Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.”

Random searches online can find all sorts of unsettling images that’ll poison your mind for years to come. No amount of drinking or therapy can undo them.

The rules of the Internet are easy enough to find. I won’t link to them because it’s strictly NSFW (Not Safe For Work), but one of them is in the title of this post.

Why the long preamble? To brace you for the impact of realizing not only is there Simpsons porn, but a second man in Australia was arrested for possession of it.

Apple has since fixed this, but last night when I was searching in the iTunes store for the iBooks application, I stumbled onto an interesting related search