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If you run Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp, check out Winclone and Boot Runner. Winclone is an easy and reliable way to make an image of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore, migrate, and mass deploy Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides a powerful way for both users and administrators to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs.

When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, reinstalling Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete clone of the Boot Camp partition, and restore it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions over the network, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive and making it bootable, and much more. It also works great for mass deployment so deploying Boot Camp is as easy as deploying a package to a group of Macs.

If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. People can decide which OS to use by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. Network administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can even remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner also includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows during your maintenance window. Check out the intro video to learn more.

Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and have full phone, email and forum support options.

This is written with the US postal system in mind, but I suspect most of the techniques will work just about anywhere. Likely, I’ll still buy my stamps from the post office, same as always. But I did enjoy the read.

The Slingshot Channel:

Slingshots have been the signatory weapons of naughty boys for a very long time.

In this video, you’ll see a larger German man having more fun than you can imagine with a slingshot and snowballs. Canadians could learn a thing or two from this guy.

Samson’s BT30 30-Pin Bluetooth Adapter transforms Apple 30-pin dock audio players, including select Samson Expedition Series Portable PAs, into Bluetooth-enabled receivers capable of streaming music wirelessly from smart phones, tablets and laptops. Ultra-convenient and easy-to-use, the BT30 lets you enjoy the latest in audio playback technology without sacrificing the useful accessories you’ve grown accustomed to for playing music, such as older iHomes, PA systems and more.

Not a bad idea. I have a few of these older speaker docking stations myself.

I saw this yesterday and it’s really nice. So small, yet a great design.

iFixit:

Join us as we live the time-traveler’s dream—the deep, lucid, Orwellian vision of hope, fear, and nostalgia that is 1984. Just in time for its 30th anniversary, we laid hands on an ’84 original: the Macintosh 128K. And, you guessed it—we’re tearing it down like it’s the Berlin Wall.

I guarantee iFixit will bitch about the fact it’s not upgradeable.

The idea that Google’s Android mobile software is both “free” and open-source is so often repeated that it is virtually an article of faith online. There’s only one problem: neither is strictly true.

Google doing what Google does.

Great site put together by Jonathan Zufi, the man behind the Iconic book.

This sleek 2×6 Thunderbolt audio interface for Mac combines the same high-quality 24/192 kHz audio conversion of Universal Audio’s acclaimed Apollo series with onboard Realtime UAD SOLO or DUO Processing. With its ergonomic desktop design, rugged aluminum construction, and front panel headphone and instrument connections, Apollo Twin allows Mac users to record in real time (at near-zero latency) through the full range of UAD Powered Plug-Ins.

I had some time to play with this today and it’s gorgeous. It’s like a mini version of the Apollo that delivers the same high-quality audio that we’ve come to expect from UA. It’s rugged too, so it will travel well.

I need one of these guitars. NEED.

Korg releases Gadget for iPad, a mobile synthesizer studio that offers the ultimate mobile synth collection for iPad. It was designed for anyone looking to explore software synthesis, musicians looking for a diverse palate of synths in one integrated app, or those looking to take their iPad music production to the next level.

Avid today introduced Eleven Rack Editor, providing owners of the Eleven Rack guitar system with a faster, more open workflow for creating and editing high-quality, inspiring guitar tones. The no-cost application makes Eleven Rack software control available for Pro Tools 11 and third-party digital audio workstation solutions.

This is huge news for Eleven Rack owners, like me. As a standalone app, I can now use Eleven Rack with any of my software applications.

Wired:

It takes a special kind of magic to make an electric one-wheeled motorcycle not terrifying to ride, and Ryno Motors has pulled it off. The microcycle, which has a single 25-inch motorcycle tire and reaches speeds up to 10 mph, uses a combination of gyroscope sensors and accelerometers to balance itself.

I saw this when I lived in Portland OR and it looked very interesting – if just as dorky as a Segway. If they were legal in your town, would you buy one?

Ars Technica:

To get “online” was to sit down at your computer, open up an application called a “terminal program” (or just “term program” for short), pull up your carefully hoarded list of BBS phone numbers, and start dialing. Inevitably, most would be busy and you’d have to wait, but eventually you’d be treated to the sweet sound of ringing through your modem’s speaker, followed by the electronic beeping and scratching of a modem handshake.

I remember all of this. In related news, I’m old.

Test Your Vocabulary:

English has the most words of any language on Earth.

TestYourVocab.com is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.

According to the test, I know over 36,000 words. I bet a lot of them are just different words for beer.

CNET:

If you’ve ever wanted to take a spin around the “Top Gear” test track in the UK, but don’t qualify as a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, now’s your chance.

As a fan of the UK TV show Top Gear, I really enjoyed “chasing” The Stig around their track.

Is this creepy? A form of stalking? Not sure, but it certainly is clever and a great little read.

While at NAMM, Jim joins Dan and special guest Merlin Mann to talk about their favorite Macs new and old, the future of the computer in the home, the power of portable and wearable devices, amps, guitars, Yamaha’s purchase of Line 6, new gear, why Jim isn’t getting a new Mac Pro, and more.

Sponsored by OmniGraffle (use code for % off), Harvest (use code 5BY5 for 50% off), Hover (use code BEARD for 10% off your first purchase), and Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME114 for 25% off).

I love the idea of this. Watch the movie on the site to see it in action.

Calendars 5 is complete re-imagining of what the best mobile calendar experience should be.

Calendars 5 is smart, excels in both tasks and events and runs on any iOS device you might have.

This looks really nice.

I just don’t know what to say about this.

This is great. A family kept a mysterious note from their grandmother for 20 years. The note was a series of letters, clearly some sort of code. Try as they might, they could not decipher this last message from grandma. So they posted it online. 15 minutes later, they had their answer.

Bill Murray is a national treasure. And now he answers all your questions in this Reddit “Ask Me Anything”.

Gizmodo:

Can you spot the fakes? Hundreds of amazing images wash over our greedy eyeballs each and every day, clogging our Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds. Many of them are fakes, lies, or both. Like these!

I’m seeing more and more of these being passed around Twitter. Even worse, being passed around by people who should know better.

I just spent the last three days in New York. Walking in mid-town, I encountered something that was just plain eerie. I saw an actual, real-life Toynbee Tile.

From the Toynbee Tile Wikipedia page:

The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American capitals.[1][2] Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate (roughly 30 cm by 15 cm), but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:

This infographic traces the road less traveled, threading together the hidden internet, the TOR browser, and BitCoin.

Matt Gemmell:

So I’m going to try this. Maybe it’s foolish, and from a commercial point of view it certainly looks that way, but I must try. As of this moment, I’m no longer developing software, either for myself or for others. I’m writing full-time.

Matt is one of the few writers on the Internet that I truly enjoy reading. I’m really looking forward to reading more.

I don’t get why Feedly needs to do this.

Come on people, seriously.