April 10th: We have some great reviews coming up like the "OSX Keyboard" from Matias and the iPod photo camera connector, Shuffle sportcase and hopefully a "first look" on Apple's next gen OS (Tiger).

There are many changes taking place behind the scenes of MPG which you will notice very soon. Thanks for visiting!

April 6th: non-mac related but our old owner Adam Jackson was featured in the last 2.5 minutes of a radio show called "Drunken Mornings" operated by our "this Old Mac" editor John Regan. Adam was the first donator of money to the show and thought it was his way of helping out. In return the show sang a "thank you" song to him at the end.

You can stream the clip live at http://radio.forgreatjustice.org/ or download the MP3 at http://www.forgreatjustice.org/radio/archive.html Episode 3 is the latest.

ENJOY!

April 2nd: We got over two dozen emails with some derrogatory words and pure anger from readers. Only one sponsor said a, "we regret to inform the removal of our sponsorship to MPG". I got a laugh out of it and thought HAHA! funny funny.

I did not tell any of our writers either so it is funny to find out how often they even read MPG since in order they replied to the post. Some as soon as it was posted and others toward the afternoon.

Either way there were some great mac - web stories posted that were obviously rumor. Thanks for the laughs! We now return to our regularly scheduled mac news / reviews.

Click "Full Story" for the April Fools entry

March 7th: After two days of downtime I finally called my host and they notified me of database server changes. I won't have a fit publicly but I wish there was a notification as it happened but somewhere within the host company they had communication problems and it was not one single person's fault so I will leave it at "miscommunication". Either way, I just had to change the database URL in my config.php file that lies on my server (a 10 second fix) and now we have everything back to normal again. Ads are working, backend is up and I am happy! I feel like sending an iTMS gift cert. to my tech lady, Cindy for being so cheerful during our call. She was friendly and a pleasure to work with. There are some changes coming to MPG I will discuss once I know what those changes will be.

February 25th: The first winner of the MPG book giveaway sponsored by O'Reilly and Sybex have been chosen.

Congratulations to Lauren Stockton from Montana. She has chosen Photoshop Elements 3 Solutions, from www.Sybex.com , by Mikkel Aaland.

For those that entered before, you have to reenter by sending an email to snow98board99 at aol.com or commenting on this entry with an Email. Beware, bots do frequent this website so public emails are susceptible to spam bots. Post emails at your own risk or use the workd "at" instead of @. Good luck!

February 18th: This may be a private thing, but I feel it is your duty to know how MPG is doing financially and frankly, we have had a solid 2005, so far. Last year we did very well and that money went towards the purchase of Pmachine Pro, graphics for MPG version 2.0 and we paid for hosting for 2005. I looked at our LinkShare, Google and independent advertiser earnings from January 1st - February 17th and things are looking great!

We received a check from Google, Inc. for a large sum of money, Independent advertisers are paid up through March and in a great note, iTunes and Apple Store referrals are pretty high. I was amazed to see people have purchased over 500 dollars in music and Apple Store products in the first two months. This is excluding an Apple Store session back in January where one person spent $900.00 through our referral link! Thanks for supporting MPG.

Advertisers: There is ad space available. Contact us if you are intersted.
"https://mypersonalgetaway.com/advertise.php"

February 6th: It saddens me to do this. I registered MPG one year and 5 days ago and now I am stepping down as owner. Although my name will not be under the WhoIs query of our server, day-to-day operations will continue to be managed by me. On Februrary 21st, I will start a new job with our favorite company (hint: their stock is climbing over $80) and under NDA (non disclosure agreement) having a journalistic site about a company I work for makes me at risk for releasing trade secrets, insider info and other knowledge. I won't know anything more than I do today about them but that is how it has to be to keep my job. As a precaution, it was needed to sign MPG over but I could continue with behind the scenes work and continue in an editorial complex.

The new Owner is Adam Barber. He has been my lead PHP and backend developer since March of 2004 and is the only person I know that will not muscle me out of the site's operations. He has show me great responsibility and displays knowledge and respect enough to handle this properly and I trust he will continue to take care of things on the technical side.

In an E-mail, I outlined some legal things to a friend and although it is written poorly, it gives everyone an idea of what I can and can't do:


I cannot discuss related products or subsidiaries of said company. I cannot work for someone or be affiliated with someone in an editorial complex "publicly" (meaning they know and their readers know that I work for this company) if the said publication / message board posts info about
this company and its trade secrets (I.e. rumors).
I can, however be involved in the business management area of my website or future ventures and draw an income from this as long as they only post simple news of the company's announcements and no reviews / opinion articles. However, my writers can post reveiews / opinions but not rumors as long as my name is not on the ownership listed of said venture. meaning I can run the business aspect, post reviews / articlews about third party things as llong as m name is not on MPG's owner's list . I can post info on Macintosh OS and related info.

I have taken action to end all ties with Macdirectory, macaddict and machome as of today. I will also be removing myself of different district, com themacmind.com and apple-x. I will keep ties with my site, Mypersonalgetaway.com and isinta.com.

finally, MPG and affiliates is being turned over to lead developer, Adam Barber. he has been with MPG since february of 2004 and continues to make improvemens to the backend and design of the site. He has exhibited trustworthinness and will remain out of day-to-day operations of my site except for his current job description. we are currentmly making a contract to handover ownership to himn as long as I can get the site back when ready and who knows how long that will be. Adam takes over in 2 weeks, just as I start my new job. you can contact him through me if you have any more questions.

That sums it up. Sorry I cannot say what job I am doing publicly.

January 25th: One of our readers and conference pass attendees, Lennie Budgell, made two collages using photos from our MWSF photo gallery. Both are available for download. Thanks Lennie for the submissions. They look great!

Collage 1 (5.6 megabytes)
Collage 2 (2 megabytes)

Option click to download and view.

After a week of coverage in San Francisco California, MPG and its partner, The Different District (DD) have completed our coverage and will be heading home. The week was full of exciting adventures, long days (and nights) and meeting our readers and advertisers. Macworld, espcially Macworld San Francisco, is my favorite week of the year and makes for memories you will never forget. I would personally like to send thanks to Macworld Expo, IDG World Expo, Waterfield Designs, Quizno's on Geary ST, Sony Metreon, The Redwood Room, The Adelaide Hotel, iSkin, Inside Mac Radio, Macteens, The Mac Mind, iPodlounge, Apple-x and most imporantly my family of writers whom have taken time out of their lives and from work and family to spend one - five days covering the most exciting week of the year in the Mac universe. Our site traffic rose 2000% this week and although I can't disclose the numbers, it was a successful week. For those that told people about the site and volunteered news and help in planning the trip via e-mail, we are most grateful.

Have a great weekend. We will return next week. The writers will be sleeping until Monday, at least.

We had some great times this week. Meeting people (new and old), making contacts, learning new skills and of course the nightlife was great as well *wink*. Here are some pictures (390 of them) from our week and they are divided in seperate galleries. Enjoy.

Apple Headquarters
Expo Hall
MPG and its Friends
San Francisco: The City
Expo: Last Day

Evil Chick has submitted some MWSF photos as well

Welcome to the MPG Macworld Keynote entry. This entry will be updated starting at 8AM Pacific time with details and again updated when keynote starts until it ends. We encourage you to our our XML (https://mypersonalgetaway.com/index.xml) and iChat (iChat type Command+G and type "MPG") to get the updates as well. It will save bandwidth. There will not be cell phone notification. We will be posting audio of the keynote and very rough pictures thirty minutes after keynote ends. A better audio and much better looking photos will be posted later.

The following people have made this possible:
Adam Jackson (Planning)
Ben Redmond (Updating our sources from home connected via Cell Phone, and iChat)
Matt Jackson (Photography/ Audio Recording)
Judy Westcott (Syndication 'Spymac.com')

Also, I am giving Mac and PC sites alike rights to reprint this in any form or media but you must credit Mypersonalgetaway.com for use and notiy me via e-mail if you used the transcript.


Click "Full Story" For the entire Keynote Transcript

Clarification on Sunday's MWSF events. I had some people confused of our plans and I wanted to reiterate. I may do this daily.

Myself and colleagues arrive Sunday around noon. We will all meet at 1:30-1:45PM in Union Square (downtown). Union Square is 2 blocks north of the Apple Store on Market. Or just find Macy's and it is the next block north from the large Macy's. Anyway, there is a large tower in the center of Union Square. We will meet there and decide on lunch and from there tour downtown including, Union, Market, Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, SOMA and dinner on Castro.

We will be getting back to hotels around 10PM. Have a great day and we will post pics later that evening.

January 2nd: Although there is a week left before Macworld I wanted to give all of you my schedule and our plans for next week. All of the plans invovle everyone whom is an MPG reader, writer or sponsor and is attending Macworld San Francisco...

Click "Full Story" for the details...

We are changing up our columns, not our website this week. I have a reformat in entries for those wanting to view certain items but unsure where to find them.

Keynote: News Section
Interviews and New Products: Reviews
MWSF Daily Blog: Opinion
Community announcements w/ Pics: Site Comments
Pictures from Expo: Site Comments

Please note these. From this day until January 16th, we are switching to MWSF 05 content. Any articles posted will be of relation to Macworld. Enjoy!

We will be giving away five $15 dollar gift certificates throughout now until the end of January. They will go to those that email with the subject line "iTunes Cards. The Prepaid cards are only available to those in the U.S.

This and previous promotions like our MPG Shirt and iPod giveaway is only the beginning of contests for our members. We will have many more of these after macworld so stay tuned.

December 24th: Thanks to all of our employees. We wiill be celebrating our one year anniversary soon and the continued support of readers has really meant a lot to myself and staff. With 2005 almost here, Macworld San Francisco plans are now full swing and our redesign looks great! We just have to work out design kinks and plug-in the code (easier said than done) and a new design should be very soon; although we will miss our deadline for Macworld release. Finally, the iPod giveaway is still open. Email to enter the contest.

I leave you with a wonderful holiday email from a dear friend in Marin County, California. I have known Ms. S for over three years and finally met in person last year at MWSF. She sent me the following:

Desiring to leave you with good tidings, but not wishing to offendanyone, I want to give you all my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all; Additionally, a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2005, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to the race, creed, color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishees.

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit. In other words, Happy Holidays!


Happy Holidays and have a merry Chrismakuh!
Sincerely,
Adam Jackson

A writer, George Stamatis, has sent us his holiday wishes. Click here for George's holiday wishes.

December 2nd: MPG's online clothing and accessories store has been updated to reflect the colder weather and themed for Macworld San Francisco for which we will be attending in January. The store has new T-shirt designs, better prices and we have removed low selling items and added more that you want to buy. Shirts range from $13 - $29 and just in time for Christmas.

Don't forget MWSF is almost here. If attending, send an email to so we can add you to our list of attendees. Be sure to include your email and, if possible, a phone number. We are planning some community events during expo you can't miss.

Visit store.mypersonalgetaway.com

Our proud owner, Adam Jackson has taken a 2-week electronic absence, he will not use his computer, iPod, or TV for the following two weeks. This means he wont be posting any articles, responding to emails or anything else apple related. I will be taking over all of his duties here on MPG for the next two weeks. So bear with us and look forward to a fun 2 weeks here at ............
Mypersonalgetaway.com >..<

October 21st: I have heard reports of users of the site recieving their iPod and some saying it was a scam. If you have not seen it before, FreeiPods.com is a website run by a marketing company that also runs sites giving away free flat panel TVs, and other home electronics. They state, if you complete a promotional offer through their site, sign up for BMG music, eBay, Blockbuster and refer five friends that also complete an offer, then you recieve a regular size iPod, iPod mini or $250 on the iTunes Music Store.
This is great, but it makes me wonder how they pay for this. There is no way you and five friends (6 total) signing up for a service will pay for an iPod. Perhaps, they rely on the fact that not all five friends will get five friends to sign up, so although you will get an iPod, they might not, but at least freeiPods got a kick-back. Either way, it seems like a great deal.
MPG has signed up and gotten five friends and completed the offer. Now we just wait, but the site has been featured in many online and print news mediums and is supposedly legitimate. We will see, but for now, you can always give it a shot. As soon as you get five friends, you can then complete the promotional sign up.

FreeiPods.com

October 18th: After a week, the changes have taken place and we are up and running. The only thing we are still having problems with is the Forum, but it will be up as soon as we can get it taken care of. It has been a rough week with many sleepless nights.

State of the Union for MPG: We are one third complete with the redesign and are investing money in new backend applications to make the user experience more exciting. We also have come contests and new advertisers lined up when we make the MPG 2.0 debut. With hundreds of members, thousands of visitors, and a great team of developers and writers, we will be ready to cover MacWorld San Francisco in January. I hope you all be patient as we slowly make the transition.

We have also added a domain to the MPG family. Many complained MyPersonalGetaway was too difficult to say or spell for that matter so we have added ResoluteOpinion.com to our domain list in hopes users will visit more often. Visit http://resoluteopinion.com and experience a quicker route to MPG.

A final note; I would like to thank the team at Spymac Network in Canada and Germany (Rob, Jaime, Jason, Kristie, Christian, and others.). Also, Adam Barber, and Joel Mueller who have helped me along the way of this transition.

http://spymac.com/hosting for great webhosting, excellent support and competitive prices.

September 8th: MPG has been hard at work on their Ad-system for weeks now and until we get our next release ready, we have brought you MPG 2.0's first pre-release feature. The new ad system's launch is with perfect timing too. We charge per click and per view. Rates are as low as five follars per one thousand views and 20 dollars per five hundred clicks. We are pricing these ads competitively in hopes to get personal and professional individuals to buy space to further develop MPG. The owner has been paying for MPG out of pocket for the past nine months and developement costs of the next version are getting high. We hope this addition will speed up our attempts to further your experience on our website. You can find out more info by emailing We accept paypal, check or money order.

September first: MPG will be attending Photoshop world on September the third and using our media badges to get some exclusive interviews from exhibitors such as Adobe, Quark, Apple, Scott Kelby Books, Wacom, and many other corporations and graphic technology companies. We will also snap pictures and give you the scoop on one of the largest Mac oriented shows of the year. Although Photoshop world is Mac and PC, it is a Mac dominated show and if it is any sign the exhibit hall is sold out for the expo. We will be going the last day in hopes for some smaller crowds since the show is in Orlando Florida as opposed to Miami. Orlando is only three hours drive from our home quarters.

Side-note: Hurricane Frances, a category 4 hurricane (as of this writing) with winds up to 145 miles per hour and a 300 mile radius (covering the entire state of Florida, if making land fall, will hit the tip of Florida’s south border on Friday morning and be at the northern most points of my state by Saturday. This means that the last day of Photoshop world may be cancelled. Of course we hope for the best because I can only get Friday off to cover the show floor. Please keep your fingers crossed in hopes that we can get the coverage we need to satisfy our readers.

Hi!! I am Nathan Bolek; you can call me Nate, Nathan or Alpha9; all is good. I am a 15 year old mac user and n00b to this part of the internet, so be gentle.

Click "Full Story" for my full introduction

August 24th: Although two days away, we will go ahead and announce his birthday and wish him a happy one. We won't disclose his age, although for those who know, you are welcome to post it in comments. He will be celebrating this weekend but will not have a party. You are welcome to send emails via or post wishes in our comments area of this entry. We wish him a safe birthday and let's look forward to this same post on August 26th of next year.

For Updated Text click "Full Story"

August 26th: So far we have...

Speck Products
Radtech
Marware
iSkin

As more 4th gen cases come out will try to line them up for a review appearing on our site between September 20th and October 15th. We want to review every case possible. If there are any companies that have released 4th generation cases that we are unaware of, please send us an email at or comment in here.

August 3rd: MPG has been added to the site directory of Mac Roundup. This website uses RSS technology to summarize news stories in the mac web. What a great use of RSS!

July 26th: Let's give you a list of the happenings here at MPG.

1. A complete website redesign is in progress. We are changing the websit and giving it one theme throughout which means similar CSS, and a standard NavBar on left and right side of the pages connecting you to the rest of the internet via RSS news technology and our XML outputs via our editing engine.

2. We're Hiring! We have filled most positions, like Reviewer, Forum Moderator, and Opinion/Editorial Writers, but we need more. During the past few weeks, school has gone back in session and a family crisis have arisen so due to these events we need the following writers.
a. UK News Editor
b. US News Editor(Computer Related)
c. US and World News Editor (Political, and World Events)
d. Graphic Designer w/ knowledge of PHPbb forum technologies. We need a new theme for the forums to match our new release.
e. Windows/ Mac OS Developer interested in writing articles for our "Developer's Journal"
f. Old School Mac user interested in writing articles for "This Old Mac", a help journal involving upgrades and mods to old Macintosh Computers (Pre-G3)
g. Female Opinion Writer. We encourage women to write for us but have not found one yet so we would love for a woman to fill any of our positions but just this position is very important.

3. The main editor, Adam Jackson, has started working another job, so now he is working 50 hours a week and the new job is at none other than Arby's. He is working up to manager and has already learned six of eight positions. Only two away before he begins the Manager Training Program. In other words, when Mac news breaks, he is usually at work (although he has tried to get Tuesday's off) since that is when Apple releases new products. When he gets home he is too tired to write for MPG. We are staying with it, and working on some new marketing campaigns, and some advertising but it is a slow process.

4. Finally, we are working on the underpinnings of MPG. Like I said, we are working on a new design but are also tweaking some of the things that makes the current MPG work. Also, working on a new AdServer, forum type, Publishing engine, and are going to laungh ad space soon. These things take time, and we just don't want to throw up a website overnight like the current incantation of MPG.

Bare with us as we work to make MPG a hell of a lot better.

July 19th: MPG was last week featured on Macminute.com and our photo gallery was placed on The mug Center.com yesterday. We have a new appearance which is on Macteens.com's Macworld video. The video is made my Macteen Staffers once a year and is of great quality with interviews and a feel for the expo. We have extracted our clip out and placed it on our servers. Enjoy!

"Save to Disk" or Option Click

July 16th: MPG's photo album is up on our website. We have made it look good for all of you and hope you enjoy it. The macworld photos are backon page three. We wanted to take plenty of pics of Boston as well. And they are taken backwards so the first page is our last day and the 4th page is our first.

CHECK EM OUT!

Also you can see pictures of me and my chief reviewer, Matt.

and we changed our apparel and other shop items to reflect our going to Macworld

July 16th: MPG has updated its line of apparel with new styles and added items. We will be bringing the store into our website soon but the same items are available through our affiliate, CafePress at http://cafeshops.com/mypg

Make sure to pick up some of these limited items and support MPG!

My Personal Getaway owner and writer, Adam Jackson, was quoted in MacMinute.com's recent article "Macworld by the Masses". The quote was from thier brief chat about the week's happenings and the ever-expanding Mac News industry. The quote read "One Mac user who was pleased was Adam Jackson from Florida. He said the show was exactly what he was hoping for: one small enough that he could interact with vendors and other Mac users. He wouldn't have attended if it had been in New York, Jackson said." It's only a small tidbit, but very cool none the less.

Macminute.

July 10th: The following is our 2 days spent at Macworld Conference & Expo in Boston, MA. We posted 7 entries in total and have taken them into one entry separated by bold-faced titles. Click “Read More” for the entire stories.

Well, here it is, Thrsday the last day of the 2004 Boston Macwolrd comvention, It is 10:22 and the doors open an 11:00. Personaly i cant wait, its that exiting last day where all the companies are trying to get rid of all their products and samples and we try to bring you out greatly appriciated readers the gread reviews you want and deserve. Adam is interviewing Beth Wickenheiser from, and the results of that will be posted later today by either myself or Adam. But this being my first macwold I have to admit it is not what i expeceted, it is alot smaller that what they had hoped, only about a fourth of the space hey rented was filed up. I heard great stories about the past Boston and San Francisco Macworlds and i guess i had a high expectations. Apple didnt even show up to this convention and they had to give Microsoft free space to get them over here. Many of the people who have gone to the past Boston Macworlds said that this time arround was emberassing and that the past Macworlds were easily 10 times in size. I was actually told that at some point in time in 1997 Apple ran out of room inside and had to set up circus tents outside in the parcing lot...

July 15th: Well, this is it Adam and me are on a plane back to Jacksonville. Overall I think that I am satisfied with the Boston MacWorld, there were a lot of really friendly vendors, and almost everything was provided for us. I realize that in my last review I raged on the convention a little bit and that is for the simple reason that we were on a tight schedule and ran out of time, I just didn’t get a chance to get to the good stuff. First of all the building was amazing, it was brand new and it totally rocked out loud. We got treated really well, getting our media badges was no hassle and every one was very professional. They had a free shuttle running to and from the Macworld convention center every fifteen minutes. The food was provided, and there was a media room set up with drinks and computers with Internet access just for the media and staff. And a big whoooot to Spymac for their booth best one there by far they had to give out flyers because people were afraid to come in, it just looked so good in comparison to the other booths, me and Adam Actually helped the Spymac folks out because two of their employees didn’t show up and they really are a good and legit group of people in spite of what is said about them often times.

June 9th: In a developer email today, we received an iCard from stevey himeslf. Of course other sites are reporting the same cards being sent to all developers but we have a JPEG image of the card available for non-developers to view. Of course Steve did not really send the card but it makes me feel like he really cares.