12 Feb 2010, MacWorld Expo, San Francisco
Just an hour always proves to be valuable at this USERS conference. This time I was focussed on my home entertainment system, which is a Mac Mini connected to my stereo.

1) Radioshift
This allows me to stream many radio stations from out of town. I can now listen to KPIG from Santa Cruz and KCRW from Santa Monica. I had to pay $25, which was a show special price.

2) Airfoil
This allows me to send the audio output from my Mac to any of the airport-enabled speakers in my house. Itunes will let me choose which airport-enabled speakers to send my audio output to; but without Airfoil, I can’t send my browser’s audio (e.g. pandora.com) or other apps (e.g. Radioshift) to other airport-enabled speakers in my house.

3) Apple TV vs. Mac Mini
I happened upon a demo of these two computer solutions to the problem of watching tv without having an extra box in the house. It turns out that Apple TV ($200) can’t really stream anything except videos you buy from Itunes. MacMini ($600) is much better but more expensive. My old Mac Mini is too old to stream Netflix or the Olympics, since they both use SilverLight. A new Mac Mini would be perfect, but not worth $600!