My latest post at The Apple Blog:

For about 8 months now I’ve been a proud owner of a Mac Mini thats sole purpose in life is to reside underneath my TV. Of course it functions as a media server, but it is a full blown mac after all so can do pretty much anything you want. Here’s the rundown of what mine gets used for:

• iTunes Library Sharing
• Serving downloaded and personal video via airport
• PVR (for Freeview Digital TV here in the UK) via EyeTV for DTT, recording both TV and Radio
• Spam Filter for 2 email accounts (using Spamsieve)
• Downloading torrents using Transmission
• Watching/Downloading Video podcasts with Democracy
• Front Row/Media Central playback via the TV (of course)
• Quick, accessible backup server for important files from other computers in the household or at work via FTP

I guess what I’m trying to point out that having a machine that is reliable and always on, doing things in the background for you so you don’t have to is just plain cool. On any given day you can expect Mail, Spamsieve, EyeTV, iTunes, Transmission and Democracy to be open, all doing their thing in the background.

So how are Apple going to sell me one?

Read on for more…

The ‘upgrade’ is coming along smoothly. I have moved all written content that’s worth keeping across from the old site, which you can now find under http://newformula.org/words/

The downloads section is the next to be tackled. As all of the icons that I have made aren’t quite complete yet, I am weighing up whether to either do the icons page in stages or keep nothing on it and release it all in one hit. As Sony Ericsson and Motorola Icons are pretty much complete I might get them online first and then add to them later. We’ll see.

I also wrote up a new overview of a great little program in beta called teleport, which is perfect for those who have multiple macs and want to control them from just one keyboard and mouse.

Teleport, which is still in beta and from abyss software, is a genius little app. It’s aimed at mac users who have more than one machine and want to use one without switching to the other machines keyboard or mouse, i.e. those with a desktop and laptop side by side at work.

You specify one side of the screen on the machine which a keyboard and mouse or trackpad is connected, and when you move your mouse across that boundary, it ‘teleports’ the cursor control across to the other mac, and makes keyboard functionality transfer too.

Read on…