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The DS Life: A room to play in
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at dsfanboy dot com.Every gaming or technology forum has them, discussion threads devoted to posters sharing photos of their entertainment centers and gaming setups, dozens of pages bloated with uncropped photos and e-wang exchanges of congratulations or criticisms.After a while, you begin to notice recurring themes -- overpriced flat-screen televisions, dual-monitor systems, mismatched Ikea furniture, shelves packed with games and DVDs, and desks cluttered with gadgets and gewgaws. For a laugh, someone might have a framed photo of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata visible, but that's as creative as these arrangements usually get.Thankfully, with the Nintendo DS and other handhelds, you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the "perfect gaming setup." Other than a fun game and a free afternoon, you don't need much. Of course, it helps if you have a cuddlesome puppy, a good friend, or an ocean view ...
SanDisk releases a 32GB Sansa View, 4GB Sansa Clip
We can't say we're exactly surprised to see the 32GB Sansa View at this point, but SanDisk's also bumped the Clip up to 4GB as well -- which is pretty sweet, considering it's staying at the same $79 pricetag. Unlike the rest of the line, the new Clip only comes in silver, but it's polished to a mirror finish, so you can get your floss on tiny-style. The 32GB View won't be surfacing until February, at which point it'll command $349 of your attention -- and not much else, since it looks exactly the same as the previous versions. If you're still curious, it lurks for you after the break.
MiniMail: iTunes' mini window makes it to Mail
A while ago, Derek Powazek proposed an idea for a mini Mail window based on the functionality of iTunes' mini option; hit the best fit button - the green one - in iTunes to get an idea, or simply check out Derek's post for an actual screenshot mockup of the concept. Fortunately, John Gruber just caught that OliveToast software literally ran with the concept, releasing - to my absolute delight - a MiniMail plug-in for Apple Mail.As you can see, MiniMail allows users to simply hit Mail's best fit button (or choosing Window > Zoom) to condense it to a 'just what you need' view, offering a customizable preview area and three menu buttons for performing a healthy set of operations. Fortunately, keyboard shortcuts still work fine as well, so ???-n will create a new message. Even using the arrow keys works for moving back and forth in the message list, and thankfully, the list of mailboxes is customizable for this view as well so you can see just what you need.After a few minutes of tinkering with the demo while writing this post, I'm happy to say that the receipt for my $9 license just arrived. MiniMail rocks, and I'm so glad someone brought Powazek's concept to life, as this is the perfect compromise that I've been looking for between constantly hiding and showing Mail while still making it easy to do basic things in it on the fly. Thanks, OliveToast software.
SanDisk Sansa View
SanDisk is announcing their new Sansa View at this year's CES, their first official entrant into the portable media player space, and a doozy at that. No surprise, it's a flash-based device with 8GB of storage for watching movies on its capacious 4-inch screen. In addition to that 8GB, though, it's also got a full SDHC slot for popping in another 8, 16, 32GB and beyond in a drive-free (read: battery efficient) form factor. In addition to an integrated speaker, Li-polymer battery, PlaysForSure support, pre-loaded content, and AV-out up to 1080i, users can expect 10 hours of music and 4 hours of video in its 3 x 4.8 x 0.66-inch (78.5 x 123 x 16.9mm) body. We don't yet know what other codecs this device will support (we expect it'll do all the regulars), and it'll run you $300 in Q1 of this year.
TUAW Tip: View all items in iTunes 7
One of the things that has been bugging me since updating to iTunes 7 is the inability to see all my content at once; podcasts, video, audio and PDFs-all of it. While I normally don't need to see all my content in a single view, certain tasks, such as when I'm trying to get a feel for how much media I have on my machine, can't be completed without this ability. Luckily for me, macosxhints has posted a stupidly-easy workaround for this conundrum by way of a custom smart playlist. All you have to do is create a smart playlist with the condition set to show all media greater than 0 megabytes, and sha-zam! You've got that olde-timey functionality alive and kickin'.
Give Mail.app a three-pane view
For those of you longing for the often-requested three-pane view in Mail.app, Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings has dug up yet another stellar find: an actual working version.This Ars Technica forum thread begins with the typical "gee, it'd be great if..." post which oh-so-often yields productive results such as the screenshot you see in this post: a hacked version of Mail.app with a three pane view. Fortunately, this hacked version of Mail.app has a different name (MailWidescreen) so you don't have to bite your nails over whether to overwrite your original Mail.app. Still, it would be good practice to back it up anyway for good measure.Personally, I think the three pane view in email apps is one of those needless 'change for the sake of change' developments that seems to have oozed out of an admittedly old email UI industry. Email subjects can be pretty useful and revealing, while most emails are never long enough to warrant all the space a three pane view gives to the message, and this view seems to enhance both of these complications: subjects are cut short, while white space is wasted on typically short emails. Just note Exhibit A - this post's screenshot.With my $0.02 out of the way, however, check out the forum thread for details on this hack's development, or simply use the direct link to the .ZIP file right here.
TUAW Tip: quickly adjust viewable hours in iCal
Today's tip is a quick one about iCal, and it hails from the ever-useful archives of MacOSXHints. iCal's preferences allow you to choose how many hours you see in a day or week, but you can easily and quickly change this setting with a simple shortcut key. If you have a scrollwheel mouse or a two finger scrolling trackpad, simply hold the option key and scroll up and down in iCal to increase and decrease the amount of hours you can view.
