Mac Net Journal

Remotely streaming your iTunes library - I'm at a tea house in Seattle right now listening to music from my home iTunes collection. Setting this up was fairly simple. Performance is impressive. Thanks MacOSXHints: The At Home instructions below are correct: * Turn on 'Remote Login'... [IDEAlog.us]

Is Apple losing it with the latest iTunes?
Sunday, October 31, 2004, 6:01 PM

This note represents Welcome To The Dark Side
- It seems Apple's DRM restriction is getting dumber everyday. A reader from MacInTouch reports that the latest iTunes will not get the track name for you, if you didn't rip the song in iTunes yourself. The fine line between being the good guy (it's all RIAA's fault!) and the bad guy (I'm in bed with RIAA folks) is now somewhere underneath Apple's feet.

[myapplemenu]

iCalToRSS - bringing your organizer to RSS
Saturday, October 30, 2004, 10:54 PM

iCalToRSS script for NetNewsWire - Toxic Software: "iCalToRSS is a set of Python scripts I wrote for retrieving iCal events and TODO items and displaying them as RSS newsfeeds inside NetNewsWire 2." [ranchero.com]

How to sharpen an image while reducing pixels
Friday, October 29, 2004, 4:46 PM

PS: Sharpen your image while reducing pixels - Reducing the pixel size of an image usually means a lack of sharpness in the image. Photoshop CS introduced a new method to help you fix the problem, though it doesn't work perfectly.

When you're in the Image/Image Size dialog box, click on Resample Image and select Bicubic Sharper from the drop menu. This *should* help keep your masterpiece looking good. [CreativeBits]

Wired News: You broke it, you fix it
Friday, October 29, 2004, 4:43 PM

You Broke It, You Fix It - The new iMac is perhaps the most user-serviceable machine on the market. But Apple is not alone in outsourcing repairs to customers. By Leander Kahney, Wired News[myapplemenu]

Interesting audio from the Mac OS X Conference
Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 9:50 PM

Audio of the Mac OS X Session Available - "How to Run Your Own Software Business", a panel at the Mac OS X Conference with Oliver Breidenbach, Steve Dekorte, Steve Gehrman, Will Shipley, Brent Simmons, and myself. [Karelia Software]

iPod Photo - it's about time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004, 12:24 PM

Apple's new iPod Photo line integrates the musical goodness of the iPod that has been the rage for quite a while with the ability to store up to 25,000 photos on an iPod. Excellent!

If you don't already have an iPod, will this new option in 40GB and 60GB versions be enough to make you buy? I haven't made the leap yet myself. Still thinking... |

An odd Mt. St. Helens piece - the white river
Monday, October 25, 2004, 9:06 PM

The river tells all - Can the color of a running river predict when a volcano will erupt? Residents near the Kalama River in southwest Washington, near Mount St. Helens, maintain the answer is yes: A good week before seismograph needles in labs across the... [seattlepi.com Buzzworthy]

A dose of reality in the hype - it's not a virus
Monday, October 25, 2004, 8:40 PM

As usual, TidBITS offers a measured reaction to all of the hype around Opener:

It's not a virus, and frankly, it's not even that big of a concern.

Amen. Please, people, this is much ado about nothing. Use a good administrator password, install software updates, use your brain before running scripts called Opener. Duh.

Macs behind the scenes of Star Wars DVD release
Sunday, October 24, 2004, 9:46 AM

Macs Do Star Wars Dirty Work - Behind the scenes, painstaking effort and computing power has gone into cleaning up George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy for its DVD release. By Spencer Kelly, BBC News [myapplemenu]

Adium 0.7
Thursday, October 21, 2004, 8:03 PM

Adium 0.7 is an update to the free multi-protocol chat client that supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, ICQ and more. Maybe I should give it a try, even though I remain perfectly happy with Fire...

Mac malware and browser issues
Thursday, October 21, 2004, 7:59 PM

MacInTouch has a pair of notes today about malware that reportedly collects passwords from Macs and the current batch of security issues with Web browsers.

Filemaker Pro 7 update
Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 11:18 AM

Filemaker Pro 7, Developer 7 updated to v3 - Apple Computer Inc. subsidiary FileMaker Inc. on Wednesday released an update for its flagship database software for the Mac and PC, FileMaker Pro 7, as well as FileMaker Developer 7. The new v3 update is available for download from FileMaker's Web site. A server update is expected before the end of the month. [MacCentral]

Software that will run anywhere
Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 11:05 PM

Paul Boutin writes in Slate about his hope to eventually be able to run killer software on any machine, regardless of platform:

Nowhere To Run: Why Mac Programs Don't Work On Your PC, And Why They Will Soon - I can't imagine that a generation from now, people will still tolerate incompatible breeds of digital devices, any more than we'd accept a Sprint phone that couldn't take calls from an AT&T phone... My hope is that, in another decade, when I find a cool new piece of software, I'll be able to run it anywhere I want. [myapplemenu]

Podcasting and NetNewsWire
Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 10:21 PM

Podcasts with NetNewsWire - Martin Pittenauer: "I thought: There should be an easy way to download RSS enclosures automatically using NetNewsWire. So I grabbed a bit of code from Brent's page on enclosures and hacked a small perl script I can run via cron, that looks at a group in NetNewsWire, downloads the according enclosures and adds them to an iTunes playlist..." [ranchero.com]

Apple upgrades iBooks, adds single processor Power Mac
Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 8:26 AM

MacCentral: Apple upgrades its iBook line, as was widely rumored...

MacCentral also notes that Apple unveiled a single-processor Power Mac G5 running at 1.8GHz.

Metacorder turns a PowerBook into an audio recorder
Monday, October 18, 2004, 11:23 PM

Metacorder turns 'Book into field audio recorder - Audio production software developer Gallery UK said on Monday that its latest application, Metacorder 1.0, is now available. Metacorder allows users to connect existing Core Audio hardware and connect it to a PowerBook or iBook to create a fully functional audio recorder for deployment in the field. The software features a 1- to 30-second pre-record buffer, the ability to write a recording to two drives simultaneously, the option to automatically copy files onto optical media as soon as the recording stops and more. [MacCentral]

An RSS roundtable, staring many
Monday, October 18, 2004, 9:59 PM

Brent Simmons, the creator of NetNewsWire, writes:

RSS roundtable
DrunkenBatman did a roundtable interview with several OS X aggregator developers. It turned out pretty cool, I think. It was a pleasure to be a part of it. [inessential.com]

Sensors and digital photography
Monday, October 18, 2004, 9:54 PM

If you want to make some sense of the the real meaning behind those megapixel terms on digital cameras, check Charles Maurer's Sense & Sensors in Digital Photography in today's issue of TidBITS.

An argument for Macs as the best Unix workstations
Sunday, October 17, 2004, 10:19 PM

Mac Takes Honors as Best Unix Desktop - Somewhere along the line, we over in the Linux/Unix/AIX/Solaris world seem to have forgotten that Macs are now Unix workstations. Under every bright, shiny Mac desktop beats a Unix heart named Darwin. Darwin, in turn, is built on top of Mach 3.0 operating-system services, which run on top of the 4.4 BSD Unix operating system. KDE and GNOME have both gotten much better, but let's get real. They're not even i