Re : BlackBerry Bullet Shows Apple Who's Boss!
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I posted to youtube.com
Re : BlackBerry Bullet Shows Apple Who's Boss!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ7iGjAC03I
March 13 2009, 10:48am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
BlackBerry Bullet Shows Apple Who's Boss!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7e9vpxFWcI
The BlackBerry Bullet Takes a BIG BITE out of Apple! Visit GuavaNYC.com for the source.
February 26 2009, 6:29am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Review: Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/510502446/
I’ve never found a good compact headset. The default Apple ear buds that ship with the iPhone (and every iPod) just don’t stay in my (must be mutant) ears. Likewise every other earbud I’ve tried had fallen out in the matter of seconds. Even the ones with over-ear hooks flop to the sides with annoying consistency. And Apple’s original in-ear headset? Didn’t quite fit in my ears so I gave them to my sister.
So it was with great and possible anticipointment that I decided to brave this world again and hope beyond hope that not only would Apple’s new In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic work well and be convenient, but that it would work at all.
Did it? Find out after the break!
Not iPhone Compatible
No, that’s not a typo. Apple clearly lists the new In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic as not iPhone compatible. However, I am using it with the iPhone and it does work, except for the volume controls (which double as the skip forward/back). Hopefully this will be addressed in the next iPhone OS update, as it’s a pretty puzzling omission.
Hardware
In the box are two plastic capsules. The first is a rounded triangle that contains the ear pieces in the center and the cord wrapped around the edge. With no indentation between the clear top and white plastic bottom, getting this capsule apart is tricky. If you intend to store your headphones in this handy container, the lack of an even more handy finger recess or other easy-opening point could prove consistently annoying.
The second capsule contains smaller and larger silicone ear tips in case the default ones don’t fit you properly. While also seamless clear and white plastic, the cylindrical makes this container much easier to open — ironic since you will likely need to open it much less frequently, if ever again.
Lastly, kudos to Apple for providing 2 extra replacement mesh caps for the headphones. Hopefully you’ll never need them, but if you do, having them included is priceless (well, technically, worth the price of a new headset!)
The headphones themselves are quintessential Apple — white, plastic, with that special firmness that resists tangling.
New to this model is a small control module attached. The center of the module has a recessed play/pause button. The outer outer sides provide the volume up and down buttons (which are NOT supported by the iPhone) and, if you double-click, track forward and back.
Daily Use
Over the last week, I’ve found Apple’s new In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic to be quite good, and an excellent value for the price (something many joke is impossible for Apple). Sound quality is very good, mic quality acceptable given the type of device, and best of all — they mostly stayed in my ears.
Not having used in-ear headphones before (because they never fit right for me), I did find the experience a little distracting at first. The sound of the cord being tapped, of eating, of everything going on in my head took me out of the experience. However, I’ve come to notice this less and less as time goes on.
I did find that, when walking around, I would typically take one earpiece out so I could hear and keep track of my surroundings. For people using them for outside, safety alone would make this a must.
Bonus for MacBook Users
When Apple introduced these near earphones, they were quick to point out that they’re fully supported by the new (late 2008) MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. In tests, I found them to work well for making Skype calls and recording audio. They supposedly allow iTunes control as well, but I could not get this functionality working on my late 2008 MacBook Air, however the internet seems to show many people having better luck with it (maybe my set has a problem with the volume control?). If they work for you, anyone owning a recent Apple laptop may consider these killer just for the multi-tasking functionality.
Conclusion
I finally found a compact headphones that I can use! Granted, there may be others towards the higher end, but for their price, especially with the added MacBook compatibility, these will become my new standard headphones. Now if only Apple would fix the iPhone compatibility…
Note: I haven’t had a chance to try them with VoIP on an iPod touch, but I hope to in the near future.
Pros
Excellent sound quality for the price Elegant remote control features MacBook compatibility for some
Cons
Limited iPhone compatibility
TiPb Review Rating
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store. Review: Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic
January 12 2009, 9:00pm | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Which Phones Deliver The Real Web
http://gizmodo.com/5090988/mobile-browser-battlemodo-which-phones-deliver-the-real-web
Before 2007, using the internet on your phone would make you want to kill yourself, if you were dumb enough to believe the crap splattered across that tiny screen even was the "internet." But the combination of increased bandwidth and better mobile software means that more phones really are promising to deliver the real internet, in living color. We tested eight different browsers, and while some put smiles on our faces, others proved that rendering HTML correctly is a far cry from actually giving you an awesome web experience. And what about 3G vs. Wi-Fi? Everything the carriers have told you is a lie. This is the true state of mobile web. Before we give you the rundown of each of the most prevalent mobile browsers, here's how they all stacked up in a timed test of how fast (and how well) they could render websites, chosen for their diversity and particular challenges: CHART KEY: Number value is time for complete page load in seconds; page rendering is rated from "Fail" to "Excellent" for each; and the color (red, yellow, green) indicates overall performance taking into account both speed and rendering accuracy: Green = good overall, Red = fail overall. This second chart runs through the same procedure with all of the phones that had Wi-Fi options: It's a pretty daunting pile of numbers, so let's break it down into standard prose, rating each browser as we go: Android A fast, smart mobile browser based on WebKit. It tackles most sites with (almost) unrivaled grace and speed. Panning and zooming could be smoother and more responsive, but with a ton of options for getting around a page—various touch methods and the trackball—few sites will be challenging to zip around. The only thing we really miss is multitouch for zoom. Buttons just aren't a very elegant or precise solution, and while the whole-page magnifying glass technique is nice, we'd love something a bit more refined. Overall though, we're happy campers on Android's browser. Grade: B+ BlackBerry Bold Leaps and bounds ahead of the browser BlackBerry users have put up with for years, it renders most pages correctly, even if scripts give it a conniption fit (hence its long load times for Wikipedia and the WSJ). It uses the standard "click to zoom" metaphor, which works well enough, though getting around a page with the trackball can be kind of a work out for you thumb. The Column View, which squeezes a whole page into a single column, is fairly convenient and makes it easier to get around wider pages, even if it doesn't work equally as well on every site (nice on Wikipedia, ugly on Giz). Hopefully they fix the script performance in the Storm, which is using an updated version of the Bold's browser. We humbly suggest they ditch their home-baked browser for one based on WebKit, which would help out there. Grade: B-/C+ iPhone What can we say? It's still got the best mobile browser around. It crushes basically everything but Android's browser—which is also based on WebKit—in speed and outclasses its still classy brother-from-another-mother (and everyone else) with the ease and elegance of its multitouch zooming. Some pages still give it fits, and it's missing Flash support, but it really does deliver an unrivaled mobile web experience. We love it, but make no mistake we're eagerly waiting for something better. (Mobile Firefox? Is it you?) Grade: A- Nokia E71 Symbian S60 Hey look, another web browser with WebKit guts! It doesn't perform quite as well as Android's or iPhone's iteration where speed or render accuracy are concerned (can any Symbian nuts explain why?), but it does a serviceable job. The big thing it has going for it is Flash Lite 3 support, though performance there is kinda assy and memory intensive. Navigation is tougher with the E71's d-pad than with a trackball, but the whole page magnifying approach makes it easy enough to get around (too bad you have to dig through a menu or two to get to it). Not bad, but short of excellent. Grade: B- Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile Jesus Christ. This is a joke, right Microsoft? Hahaha. No really, this is the worst smartphone browser on the planet. It couldn't render its way out of an ASCII-art paper bag. It totally screwed up every single test page, except for Wikipedia, which it only mostly screwed up. Good luck navigating a page if you're granted the miraculous occurrence of it being rendered in a state that's usable. Grade: F- Opera Mobile on Windows Mobile Microsoft's own intentions notwithstanding, you can use the internet on a Windows Mobile phone. You just need Opera Mobile. It's kind of hobbled by Windows Mobile's assy performance, but it usually gets the job done. Not as quickly or always as accurately as its WebKit rivals, but it's definitely usable. Interestingly, it benefits more from the extra bandwidth offered by Wi-Fi than the WebKit browsers do. Menu-based zoom is annoying and imprecise. Touch-based panning worked okay, though a little laggy. We mostly navigated with the Samsung Epix's optical cursor, which worked pretty well, somewhere in between a d-pad and a trackball. Grade: C Sprint Instinct Holy CRAP. This is not the painfully lousy browser the Instinct shipped with not by a long shot. The original was slow and fairly feeble, even if it was the head of its (dumbphone) class. The new 1.1 browser really is a life-changing upgrade. It suffers in the chart because it's much slower than most other browsers, and zooming is still clumsy, but once the page loads, it's much smoother to pan and actually move around. I got a bit annoyed that it lied about pageload time, hanging at the last 2 percent of the status bar for half the load, but it usually gets things right. This is the best non-smartphone browser you can get. Grade: C+ LG Dare Like the Instinct, the Dare proves you can actually get a usable browsing experience on a feature phone. It's a little nimbler at loading pages than its Korean blood rival, but the reason it ultimately posts lower marks than the Instinct is that it buckles way more easily under a moderate to heavy pageload, turning it into an unresponsive picture of the website you were trying to look at. Still, it renders most pages fairly accurately, and we like the sliding zoom scroll bar, at least in theory, since it seems like an intuitive way to deal with the zoom issue. Unfortunately, it works more like a glorified pair of buttons. (Note: I don't think the speed was actually a piddly 300 Kbps—I think it just had a problem dealing with DSL Reports' mobile speedtest, even though it's text-based for the dumbest of phones.) Grade: C Methodology We tested every browser only using the full—not mobile—versions of selected sites, over 3G and, whenever possible, Wi-Fi. All scripts were turned on, and the cache was cleared before each round of testing. We took the average of a series of five sequential speedtests to give us an idea of the bandwidth we're dealing with, and timed how long it took to completely load a site according to each browser's progress bar. We assessed whether or not it rendered the page correctly, on a scale ranging from "excellent" to "good" (a couple things out of place) to "utter fail" (I've seen prettier train wrecks). A few additional issues to note: Internet Explorer would not work on Wi-Fi. Opera yes, our Skyfire install, yes, Internet Exploder, no. (Samsung suggested it might be because of Opera.) We didn't pursue the matter because of how IE did in the 3G tests: A page that looks like a pile of blended dog poo is going to look like that no matter how much faster it loads. Sprint's updated Instinct and Verizon's Dare, which we included as best-of-class examples of feature phones, don't have Wi-Fi capabilities. We left out Opera Mini and Skyfire, since they both leave most of the hard work to servers which essentially spit out a kind of image file—besides, we don't think this kind of internet-by-proxy browser will be around for much longer. The Big Gulp Remember our mantra it's code that counts? It's true for mobile internet too. An awesome browser can make up for a mediocre network, but a terrible browser delivers a crappy experience no matter how great the network is. It's all about the browser. As it stands, WebKit is clearly the best thing going, but even then, software implementation matters, or Nokia would deliver as good a performance as Android and iPhone. Proving the point, it's striking how little Wi-Fi actually boosted speed beyond 3G—hell, WebKit browsers on 3G slid past some of the others that were running on Wi-Fi. Another thing to note is that the zoom metaphor is a tricky thing to nail. Buttons are too brutish, the magnifying glass is imprecise. Multitouch seems to be the best way to handle zooming in and out in a way that's intuitive and precise. Hopefully we'll see other developers start to use multitouch interfaces in touchscreen phones (coughANDROID!cough). As much as this blow-by-blow battlemodo shows you all the problems we encountered, the big picture is that really, mobile web is pretty dandy right now, and getting dandier. It could be more reliable, faster, maybe a little more versatile, but for the most part, yes, you can access the internet on your phone. Compared to just two years ago, that's really saying something. We can't wait to see what it'll look like in two years. Maybe Internet Exploder will actually work. Nah, that's a little too sci-fi.
- Tags:
- microsoft
- android
- iphone
- apple
- iPhone 3G
- feature
- top
- battlemodo
- blackberry
- blackberry bold
- bold
- browsers
- cellphones
- com
- coms
- dare
- e71
- lg
- lg dare
- Mobile Browsers
- mobile safari
- nokia
- smartphones
- symbian
- symbian s60
- verizonbestmodo
- webkit
- windows mobile
- windows mobile 61
November 19 2008, 8:00am | Comments »
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I posted to vimeo.com
Hello World iPhone Tutorial
A screencast tutorial to help beginner iPhone programmers get started. This tutorial shows how to draw "Hello World!" text on the screen. Cast: Anthony Frizalone
November 18 2008, 7:49pm | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
CSS-VFX: CSS Visual Effects Tutorials and Components
We've talked a bit about Apple's extensions to HTML and CSS; <canvas> has of course gone on to much fame and fortune. Charles Ying pointed us to his CSS-VFX project which aims to be
a collection of components and code examples that illustrate the power of CSS Visual Effects. So far, only 1 gem that illustrates a popular RIA user interface demo, "Cover Flow" is currently available. If you'd like to see more, please don't hesitate to suggest something you'd like to see.
Charles has a blog entry with a video showing off a mobile Safari demo of using Apple's CSS Visual Effects to create a Cover Flow interface:
The demo makes use of a variety of these extensions:
* zflow starts by loading each image from the images array. When each image is loaded, we scale the image to fit in a square region, and apply 3D CSS transforms to scale it in place. * Reflections - zflow then takes the scaled image and creates a Canvas element that contains a gradient alpha mask of the image’s reflection (using a “reflect” function to do this) and positions the canvas element in place. * Touch Controller - zflow creates a TouchController object, who’s job is to field touch events from Mobile Safari and calculate an appropriate offset. * Clicking - zflow detects when no move events have been made, and zooms + rotates the focused image forward by setting a “CSS Transition”ed 3D transform on the focused image. Clicking again transitions the image back. * Inertia - zflow achieves inertia by setting the “transition timing function” of the “tray” to an “ease-out” function, which slows things down. On the touch end event, we calculate the projected velocity and set the tray’s target position to that location. CSS Transitions handles the decay in velocity as the transition timing function executes — slowing the tray down gradually.It makes you wonder how many folks are going to need to learn the SDK in the future...
- Tags:
- iphone
- apple
- Front Page
November 7 2008, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to iphoneqc.com
Ventes d’iPhones et d’applications
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Iphoneqc/~3/428680574/
Voici une comparaison intéressante en terme de volume de vente d’iPhones : - iPhone 3G : 6.9 millions - 2 mois - iPhone 1G : 6.0 millions - 12 mois
Les ventes records d’iPhones 3G peuvent s’expliquer par le fait qu’Apple s’est appuyé sur un lancement mondial le 11 juillet dernier suivi par l’entrée dans plusieurs autres pays.
Autre information intéressante, Apple a vendu sa 200000ème application aujourd’hui, alors que l’AppStore compte maintenant environ 5500 applications.
Il n’est donc pas étonnant que cela inspire les concurrents tels que Google (Androïd) ou encore RIM (Blackberry) à lancer leur propre plateforme de vente d’applications mobiles. Par exemple, RIM proposera en mars 2009 un “AppStore” qui offira la possibilité de payer ses achats avec son compte PayPal et de toucher 80% du prix de vente de ses applications (contrairement à Apple, qui ne remet que 70% aux développeurs).
October 22 2008, 8:56am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
How Many Google Phone Engineers Does It Take to Tell the Time?
http://gizmodo.com/5053734/how-many-google-phone-engineers-does-it-take-to-tell-the-time
So here I was, all excited about Android. Not because the G1's physical design is especially attractive. In fact, it's a gray design with no soul. Not because of the user interface, which at first glance reminded me of a mash-up between the Nintendo DS and a '90s Windows desktop manager. No, I was excited because this is the first post-iPhone smartphone that could be a serious challenger to Apple's mounting dominance. Then I looked closely at this image and realized the G1 will not pose a threat to Apple at all. The problem in this promotional mock-up image is obvious: The analog clock says it's 9:10 but the digital clock says it's 2:47. I know. It seems like a dumb problem. But it is an obvious one. This is one of their main promotional images—which incidentally shows a T-Mobile G1 with a screen that seems to be broken, something which is bad enough on its own—and they failed to get it right. The problem with the clocks would have never escaped Apple's ferocious attention to detail, but it is not the image itself that's so troubling. It is what it symbolizes, what is missing at Android's most fundamental level: Attention to detail. If you compare these images or look at the walkthrough video, you will see what I'm talking about: Each of them seem taken from a completely different device. Typefaces boldly change from place to place, giving a sense of randomness to the whole interface. The same thing happens with color schemes—going from color over white, to color over black, to browns combined with greens and blues, to green over white—and the way the graphic elements are treated—with solid colors or with gradients. Even the shape of the widgets and sizes look arbitrary. Finally, the icons themselves—which get different treatment from flat to fake 3D—add to the overall confusion. Perhaps the explanation for this apparent lack of overall coherence is Android's Design by Committee nature, something that seems to plague many of Google's applications and most open-source projects. Hence the question: How many Google engineers does it take to tell the time? Besides adding confusion, the UI problems make the whole experience ugly. A gray phone with an ugly interface with no attention to detail is not going to win over the consumers' eyes and hearts—no matter how cool Android Market or how open Android platform could be. Whether we like it or not, the cellphone is now such a personal part of our lives that the emotional connection between a piece of plastic and the owner plays a huge part in the purchase decision process. Enough to make people camp out for days in front of a store to get a product. The proof is that the iPhone still lacks several things that consumers want—in theory—but they can live without them because of how polished Apple's cellphone is, because the attention to all those details, from packaging to user interface. Would normal consumers buy into the lack of details and the apparently incoherent mess of Android's user interface? Or would they pass and continue to be dazzled by devices like the iPhone, which provide with most of the features they need in a tight, very attractive package? At the end, the fact is that this attention to detail is precisely what separates the awesome from the hhhhmmm-hookai products. I hope that the community of talented developers and designers makes some kick ass skins for this phone. But for me right now, Android is an absolute no-no.
- Tags:
- android
- iphone
- apple
- Android Interface mess
- design
- feature
- g1
- How Many Google Engineers Does it Take to Tell the Time
- t-mobile
- top
- user interface
September 23 2008, 5:00pm | Comments »
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I posted to delicious.com
Apple - Support - Downloads - iPhone Configuration Utility 1.0.1 for Mac OS X
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/iphoneconfigurationutility101formacosx.html
iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, and sign configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs..
- Tags:
- osx
- iphone
- apple
- configuration
September 23 2008, 6:57am | Comments »
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I posted to iphoneqc.com
Avis aux propriétaires d’iPhone 3G
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Iphoneqc/~3/399904086/
Apple rappelle les adaptateurs d’alimentation secteur/usb vendus au Canada, États-Unis, Japon et Mexique. Il est recommandé de ne plus les utiliser pour recharger votre iPhone sinon vous courrez le risque de recevoir un choc électrique car une des broches métalliques pourrait rester coincée dans la prise électrique.
Ce n’est qu’à partir du 10 octobre que vous pourrez l’échanger contre un nouveau (marqué d’une pastille verte) en allant dans un Apple Store ou en le demandant par voie postale. Dans les deux cas, le numéro de série de votre iPhone sera demandé.
- Tags:
- apple
- Accessoires
- iPhone 3G
September 22 2008, 8:47am | Comments »
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I posted to iphoneqc.com
Grosse nouvelle(s) dans 30 minutes
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Iphoneqc/~3/387806166/
Apple a convié les médias pour une rencontre aujourd’hui. D’ailleurs, plusieurs rumeurs circulent à cette effet : Itunes 8 Cette rumeur est presque confirmé, puisque dimanche, certains utilisateurs ont réussi à télécharger la version 8 qu’Apple avait diffusé par erreur. Nano Voici une photo de la “future” version du nano. Ce serait la 4ième génération. À noter, le look plus arrondi.
iTouch Les rumeurs prétendent que le iTouch aurait de légères modifications cosmétiques afin de s’approcher du look de l’iPhone 3G. Plutôt logique quand on y pense. iPhone firmware 2.1 Ah, la rumeur qui nous intéresses le plus. La seule fonctionnalité promise par Apple pour l’instant, est le “push notification”. Cependant, il y’a également des rumeurs de nouvelles fonctionnalités telle qu’une amélioration au niveau du GPS … à suivre dans 30 minutes !
September 9 2008, 9:33am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
Apple Soundtrack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKXTvyYSfc
A little song made from the sound effects in Mac OSX. All sounds are completely unmodified. Free free to download and play wih the GarageBand file from this link: http://www.thecleverest.com/videos/343
January 27 2008, 7:39pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Boozin', Surfin' & Strobin'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumrow/1267682594/
sumrow
Ugh! 60 shots later... Note to self... BUY A FRICKIN' remote! Get up... go to camera.. press button... 10...9...8... run to seat.. take off glasses... grab magnifying glass & beer... 2...1... FLASH! Take much needed swig of sweat delicious beer...Get up... go to camera.... Chimp.. chimp... Repeat...
Strobist Information: One vivitar 283 with a grid-spot on the front of the laptop. One Vivitar 285 with a diffuser dome on the keyboard.
- Tags:
- john
- apple
- beer
- gadget
- cactus
- selfportrait
- canon
- powerbook
- ginger
- laptop
- infinity
- redhead
- magnifyingglass
- apples
- vivitar
- fattire
- magnifingglass
- vivitar283
- vivitar285
- strobist
- sumrow
- strobistandalaptop
August 29 2007, 8:33am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Boozin', Surfin' & Strobin'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumrow/1267682594/
sumrow
Ugh! 60 shots later... Note to self... BUY A FRICKIN' remote! Get up... go to camera.. press button... 10...9...8... run to seat.. take off glasses... grab magnifying glass & beer... 2...1... FLASH! Take much needed swig of sweat delicious beer...Get up... go to camera.... Chimp.. chimp... Repeat...
Strobist Information: One vivitar 283 with a grid-spot on the front of the laptop. One Vivitar 285 with a diffuser dome on the keyboard.
- Tags:
- john
- apple
- beer
- gadget
- cactus
- selfportrait
- canon
- powerbook
- ginger
- laptop
- infinity
- redhead
- magnifyingglass
- apples
- vivitar
- fattire
- magnifingglass
- vivitar283
- vivitar285
- strobist
- sumrow
- strobistandalaptop
August 29 2007, 7:33am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
fun anyone?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scaramanga/39355706/
scaramanga
- Tags:
- girl
- apple
- Mac
- window
- woman
- femme
- wood
- ibook
- macintosh
- monitor
- floor
- wooden
- flokati
- rug
- topv111
- 1025fav
September 1 2005, 3:49pm | Comments »
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