| |
 |
Monday, April 15, 2002 |
Not your average ant farm...
Although not Mac related, the story tonight on CNN about the 3,600-mile long ant super colony in Italy and Spain is amazing!
11:27:00 PM 
|
|
TidBITS marks 12 years of publishing
Be sure to check out tonight's issue of TidBITS, which marks the 12th consecutive year of publication with this issue. Highlights this time around include An even dozen TidBITS, New book documents iPhoto features and quirks, and details about last week's software updates to Retrospect and Now Up-to-Date & Contact.
8:19:40 PM
|
|
Speaking of the iPod
MacCentral points to the Time magazine article that covers iPod hacking, noting a few of the software kludges that have enabled the iPod to do more than play music and serve as a portable hard drive...
6:44:56 PM
|
|
iPod kludges: Are they stupid or useful?
Wesley Felter asks a question I have thought about recently as well:
Am I the only one who thinks all the iPod kludges are stupid? [Hack the Planet]
Nope, you are not the only one. From what I can see, the iPod is a pretty cool music playing and data storage device, but until a user can actually interact with the contact information stored on their iPod, the kludges border more on the stupid side than the useful.
Give me an iPod with voice control or the option to attach a small, foldable keyboard, like the one I have for my Palm Vx, and then the iPod add-ons would be useful because I could not only view information on the machine's tiny screen but also manipulate and change the data.
Here is what could easily happen with the iPod of today: I have contact information for a friend on the machine that I can view through one of the third-party add-ons, but when I meet with my friend I find out his cell phone number has changed. With my Palm, I just update the information while I am there and it is taken care of, but with the current iPod I have to write down the new info on a piece of paper, go home and remember to update that info in my contact management software and then remember to sync the information back onto the iPod so that I can use it. That prospect is far from convenient.
6:15:32 PM
|
|
LowEndMac readers talk about Living Microsoft Free
Readers of Charles Moore's columns on the Low End Mac site talk back about his recent series of articles about living without Microsoft products on the Mac in today's piece: Still More on Living Microsoft Free
12:45:35 PM
|
|
Psst...Microsoft and IBM are not likely to take over the Net
On ZDNet, David Coursey quotes Microsoft's Charles Fitzgerald on Microsoft patents on web services. [Scripting News]
12:38:57 PM
|
|
Pondering a life
Today my grandmother is in the hospital, unconscious. At age 78 she is dying, struggling with one fallen kidney and another that was just operated on and trying to overcome infection from a hole found in her stomach that spilled bile throughout her body over the last few days. The MRI is underway right now. If there is no brain activity, the plug will likely be pulled.
It is sad that a life of growing, loving and being in this world comes down to heartbreaking decisions that have to be made by others...
10:41:18 AM
|
|
Taking a look at Tex-Edit Plus
Tex-Edit Plus v4.2 for OS X. - Tex-Edit Plus is a scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gap between Apple's bare-bones SimpleText and a full-featured word processor. Among the changes in this version, Tex-Edit Plus has been thoroughly re-written to take advantage of OS X (Carbon Events, nib files, etc.) and it offers Scripts Menu with new Quick Script shortcut item. [MacScripter.net] [AppleScript Info]
10:38:25 AM
|
|
X10 camera as a window into users' world, open for anyone to see
X10 wireless cameras leave a window into your home wide open: the New York Times reports on a new kind of war driving (joy riding?), in which equipped with an X10 wireless camera receiver souped up with a slightly more powerful antenna, you peep into people's homes and places of work that are using the widely advertised device. The X10 camera doesn't have even a minimal layer of security, and broadcasts widely. (A colleague, Paul Boutin, was talking about the potential of this a year ago when I was researching an article on data interception for him when he edited the Infoporn section at Wired magazine.) [80211b News]
9:38:03 AM
|
|
Stay aware: Your boss may be watching your instant messages
Keeping Watch Over Instant Messages. Many people who use instant messaging may consider their conversations as private and fleeting as a phone call. But employees at a software and consulting company in Waterford, Conn., know otherwise. By Lisa Guernsey. [New York Times: Technology]
9:25:05 AM
|
|
The convenience of portable data
Paolo put Radio on his iPod. Funny, this morning I came to same conclusion. I want all of my most useful data on a portable drive. That includes my Radio files, my media files, my documents, etc. Nice. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
I find this idea interesting too, which is why I post it here. Not that I can swing an iPod to hold that data right now, but the idea of carrying it with me is intriguing. Of course, I work with portable data now - outlines that live on my PowerBook as well as on my Palm Vx, text files sitting on the Palm as well as on my disk storage space on iTools. I do this for two reasons - simple backup of selected files and accessibility...
9:22:13 AM
|
|
Bare Bones updated MailSmith e-mail client
MacNN has a very brief article about the new "smart" columns feature added to MailSmith 1.5.1.
9:00:56 AM
|
|
Thanks to a new Mac Net Journal subscriber
Before I run off to bed for the night (or morning...you take your pick), I want to offer thanks to Jay Towslee for being the second reader to donate and help support the publication of Mac Net Journal! I definitely appreciate the donation.
12:38:45 AM
|
|
Get your money ready. Photoshop 7 for OS X is in the house
PS 7 ships for Mac OS X. Adobe Photoshop 7, a highly-anticipated graphics editing suite for Mac OS X, began shipping nation-wide Saturday, April 13 to Macintosh customers. Photoshop v7.0 is the first public release of Adobe's premium image editing application. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
12:33:47 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
|
|
|
|
|
