Want to really get your favorite Mac geek on the road to happiness this holiday? Aside from dropping two large on a new MacBook Pro, or latching them to a long-term AT&T contract by getting them an iPhone, one of the more unique ways to ensure they'll love you forever is to get them some rare Apple schwag. And a few choice sites have just the thing for their Apple itch - be it Apple t-shirts, Apple watches, Apple caps, posters, stickers, or jackets.

You'd think the best place to get Apple gear would be from Apple themselves, but aside from the retail store at their corporate headquarters in Cupertino, you're basically S.O.L. (That stands for ... uh... Store Offers Little)

Thanks to the scarcity of Apple-branded merchandise, it's unlikely you'll find major bargain basement pricing, but for years, Red Light Runner and The Missing Bite have done good business online selling to Mac afficionados like me. On top of all my Mac hardware, I've probably got 5 shirts, a cap, a pair of fleece jackets (for my wife and me) and several Apple watches. And despite this plethora of riches, I'm always looking for more. In fact, my latest purchases arrived today. (A new Tie Dye Shirt for me, T-shirt for my wife, and... another watch)


Images Courtesy of The Missing Bite
As many in the Mac world know, Steve Jobs famously shot down Apple's licensing program, not just for Mac clones, but for a line of "Think Different" watches, which feature the Apple logo, and run backwards - thinking different indeed. I bought a pair of these watches for $59 or so five years ago, and thanks to scarcity, have seen the offering prices only skyrocket to nearly $200 today. But trust me, I wouldn't sell mine even if you offered me $400 apiece. They're that good and unique. In fact, by this point, when I look at a so-called "normal" clock, I have to mentally reverse the hands to get the time right.

You've got just over two weeks until Christmas. And while I wouldn't mind it if you purchased me an iPod Touch off my Amazon.com wish list, I'm not expecting it. So make some other Apple geek happy and get them to show off their Apple love in style!

Last night, social network and update aggregation service FriendFeed upgraded their servers, taking the popular site down for about an hour and coming back with something unexpected, a small, but much-appreciated, upgrade.

The site, which posts all your updates from a variety of online services in one place, including those from Google Reader, Blogger, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Netflix and more, used to aggregate your updates in a single block, organized by service.

For example, if I added 3 items to my Google Reader shared link blog, it used to say:

"Louis Gray shared Why I said “mugnormous” the other day, SmugMug Automatically Scales Photos and Video, Supports High Definition Video, and one other item on Google Reader".

Now, instead, it splits these out in a more readable way, such as:

Louis Gray shared three items on Google Reader

Why I said “mugnormous” the other day
8 hours ago

SmugMug Automatically Scales Photos and Video, Supports High Definition Video
9 hours ago

one more >>

In the last month or so, FriendFeed has been spitting out small, but useful updates. The service added a utility whereby I can share items directly to its feed (much like del.icio.us, but without it), the option to make comments to others' posts, and to say whether you "Like" a specific item (much like Digg).

FriendFeed has become a must-visit destination for me multiple times a day, as I can get a very narrow picture into what others I've selected to follow are doing or finding interesting. Some of those I'm following include Bret Taylor, who announced the upgrade, MG Siegler, Mihai Parparita, Dave Winer and Scott Beale.

I strongly request you sign up as well.

One of the best things about having a Mac is being able to laugh when there are occasional surprises. That they're so few and far between helps us tolerate the occasional eyebrow-raising bug. Take a look at the above error message I received last week. I found it amusing enough to screenshot and share. Now just how is that helpful?

Whatever I was doing... I guess didn't work and I guess I won't be doing again. If only I knew what it was or why it didn't work!

Whether you have 15 RSS readers, 150 or 15,000, keeping track of who is reading your RSS feed, what they're clicking on, and whether you're getting more traction or less over time is an extremely popular past time. This evening, fellow B-List blogger Steven Hodson of WinExtra highlighted a new service aimed to make us addicts just a tad more obsessive.

The new service, titled BlogPerfume, analyzes your Feedburner statistics and shows your rate of growth, expected total subscribers over the next 12 months, and even lets you know what the best day is to attract new converts to your feed. (See their announcement here)


As you can see from my first run at the service, it looks like we've more than quintupled the number of RSS feed subscribers since the beginning of the year, adding just under 20 new per month, including a growth of 57% over the last three months. Of course, if I don't keep blogging or adding interesting content, this number will surely decrease.


BlogPerfume confirms much of what we already knew. Saturdays are pretty slow. They're slow for Google Reader posts, and they're slow on TechMeme, and they're slow for RSS converts. Mondays tend to in contrast be both the beginning of the work week and the beginning of a new feed's relationship.


The service also slurps Feedburner's raw hits, clicks and subscriber data, to show total accesses of your feed, and if stories were deemed interesting enough to gain a click-through. Unsurprisingly, the growth in total subscribers to my feed has resulted in a multiplier effect on the growth in total hits, thanks to multiple posts per day and frequent checking by subscribers.

While it doesn't offer a dramatic increase in information when contrasted to my Feedburner statistics, Blog Perfume makes the data available to anybody who wants to view the stats for a popular RSS feed, as well as pretty charts.

Aiming to see how your growth compares to others on your block? Just copy their Feedburner URL and get started. Here are some likely popular ones as examples:

* TechCrunch
* Guy Kawasaki
* Marshall Kirkpatrick