MacBooks seem to taking over the office rapidly. As Buck mentioned last Thursday, there was a tax-free weekend in Georgia this past weekend. Travis and I took advantage of these savings as well as education discounts, to pick up new MacBooks. Adam already had one so the numbers are climbing. Colin may get Travis' "old" mini and after that the only hold out (ie: still running Windows) will be The President.

Today I received a little good natured ribbing from some co-workers about the fact that I use a start page. What gives? Man, that' something I don't get at all. I use Google's start page but Yahoo! has a nice one too.

What's not to like about a start page that has a bunch of nice, scannable links from your favorite sites? Plus info like the weather, movie showtimes, calendar events and even more timely things like World Cup match results.

What do these co-workers suggest as an alternative? A blank page. Could you be more inefficient?

Call me old-fashioned I guess :/

The folks at Apple are at it again. Check out this preview of Leopard, the next evolution of the OS X operating system.

Don't miss Time Machine.

UPDATE: Check out the WWDC keynote. Also, this funny intro video is worth a watch too.

I was impressed recently with the Rails knowledge that Colin (on the job since May with a basic knowledge of XHTML/CSS) has picked up in the short amount of time that he's been here. A few weeks ago I noticed he was digging into the Ruby API all on his own and manipulating data himself without having to consult the elders. Would this have been possible in .NET, JSP or even PHP? I doubt it. It's Rails' simple, intuitive structure with it's conventions and automation that make that type of rapid learning possible.

Way to go Rails. Way to go Colin.

Of course, there are many other benefits to web development with Rails but I'll leave that to Shawn or Adam to expand on.

If you're like me and got sucked into World Cup Soccer but now find yourself missing the presence of the beautiful game in your life, you can tune into ESPN tomorrow to watch our very own MLS All-Stars take on two-time English Premier League Champion Chelsea FC.

The game starts at 6:30pm and should be a good measure of how the U.S. stacks up in World Soccer.

Unfortunately, U.S. stars Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey & Pablo Maestroni won't be able to play due to injury and/or scheduling issues.

Also, two other world class teams will be playing games against MLS squads in the U.S this summer. Real Madrid and FC Barcelona will take a pre-season tour of the U.S. playing a select few MLS teams. You can check these games out on the FOX Soccer Channel.

UPDATE: The MLS All-Stars defeated Chelsea FC on Saturday. While Chelsea clearly wasn't it mid-season form it was a great win to build on for MLS.