Flying is always a bit of a conflicted experience for me. On the one hand, I’m off on an adventure; on the other, I have to deal with unpredictable flight schedules, labyrinthine terminals and $9 burritos. But FlightTrack Pro — with its attractive, clean-looking pages offering an abundance of detailed information — makes everything better (except the burrito prices).

Back in early December as Verizon began to roll out its next generation LTE mobile broadband network in the United States, they offered customers their first taste of 4G not in a handset but with a USB modem, the LG VL600.

The only problem? It didn’t work on the Mac. That earned our ire at the time, since Verizon had suggested that 4G was what was going to “earn” them the iPhone.

Obviously, 4G wasn’t what brought the iPhone 4 to Verizon — it’s 3G only, just like the AT&T model — but it’s still nice to hear that Verizon intends on fixing the LG VL600 to work with Mac through new drivers, just in time for the sudden onslaught of Apple faithful who will be rushing to the network at the beginning of next month.

Despite Steve Jobs’ promise that it would get better, AirPrint is currently only “all that and a bag of chips” for people who happen to be lucky enough to own a few specialized printers.

Google’s not waiting for Apple to get AirPrint together, though. They’ve just announced Google Cloud Print, a new service that allows you to register your network-connected printers with Google’s cloud services and connect them to your Gmail account. Once you’ve done so, you can print email and any attachment that Gmail can read (including HTML, DOC, PDF and more) directly from the Mobile Safari Gmail interface.

The ability to wirelessly print from Gmail using an iOS device is a pretty swank offering, but unfortunately, it’s not really Mac friendly right now. Enabling the feature allows of downloading the latest Chrome beta from the Cloud Print Website on the computer connected to the printer you want to use… but it’s Windows only, and because Chrome for Mac betas tend to lag behind the Windows beats in features, OS X users will have to wait for Google Cloud Print support to come to the platform… a timescale the search giant itself will only commit to as “coming soon.”

Mike Daisey isn’t afraid to rant. The mercurial storyteller first made a name for himself on stage by decrying the state of American theater. Tech is a natural target for him – he’s survived a stint at Amazon.com and takes apart computers to relax – so he really makes his point forcefully with a two-hour monologue called “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” onstage now through Feb. 27 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. (See our review of the show here.)

During our 40-minute conversation, I get the uncomfortable feeling he’s ranting directly at me. In fact, the show takes tech journalists to task for being subservient to the industry as well as missing the whole story of where all the shiny gadgets we report about so breathlessly come from. Ahem.

Cult of Mac talked to Daisey about why both Apple fans and PC people will enjoy his show, as well as his own gadget gear and why donning Steve Jobs’ signature black turtleneck on stage would’ve been “fucking stupid.”

Boom boom, pow — the Black Eyed Peas, already one of the most cutting-edge bands to rock an iPod, may just have made music videos so two-thousand-and-late. That’s because they released an app today that includes a stunning, immersive 360-degree, augmented-reality enabled music video that sticks you in the middle of the action with the ability to pan around and become part of the action. And guess what — it’s only available on the iPhone, with no plans announced yet to make it available for any other platform.

When you have to fork over a couple of hundred bills to get your Mac repaired, it can sometimes seem like Apple’s pretty desktops and laptops are too fragile for their own good, blowing apart in the path of a sneeze… but actually, Cupertino’s taken great pains to make them some of the toughest laptops around.

Case in point: during a recent wave of arson in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, the business of one Mac owner was savagely burned down. All of the items inside were destroyed by the fire, save two: a pair of 20-inch 2007 aluminum iMacs.

Even more amazing? Not only did the iMacs survive the fire, they also continued to operate even after being repeatedly sprayed by the hoses of the local fire constabulary.

It occurs to me this story would be great evidence to pull out next time you’re denied warranty coverage for your Mac at the local Genius Bar. In my experience, Geniuses like to deny coverage for both smoking around your Apple products and getting them wet… both of which at least these two iMacs seemed to be immune to.

[via TUAW]

The advent of the iPad and the ZAGGmate keyboard are a godsend for people like myself  — people who are compulsive note takers, and who are constantly on the move.

The iPad isn’t just creating revenue for Apple and iOS developers, in many retail establishments it’s now tracking revenue as well. Everyone’s favorite iDevice has been increasingly seen helping out at the checkout counter and point-of-sale operations in restaurants and coffee shops worldwide.

Several vendors are now offering iPad software and integrated terminal hardware supporting order management, payment processing, reporting and remote management capability. What an ideal Geek Trend: iPads, Coffee, Cupcakes and Commerce!

The Home folder in a new account will probably look like the one above.

These are the default folders automatically created inside the Home folder of a new account.

You can create more folders here if you wish – after all, this is your Home folder, for you to play with as you see fit – but I’d suggest that beginners stick to the hierarchy that’s set up for you by the system. In this post, we’re going to go through those folders one by one.