Mac IT

Switching to TypePad

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 01:58:11 GMT

MacIT has moved:

http://www.macit.org/

Safari's spinning beachball of death

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 01:29:48 GMT

Safari has been painfully slow lately, giving me the spinning beachball of death on almost every page. Turns out, it was doing exactly what I told it to do - auto-filling web forms.

I un-checked all three auto-fill preferences, and it's working great.

TypePad

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 14:13:19 GMT

TypePad has just gone into public release. It's an evolution of MoveableType, which is one of the best weblog systems I've used (pMachine is the other).

I don't think I'll be renewing Radio when my year is up, as it doesn't seem to be in active development, and support is only provided by one very busy guy in a Yahoo group. Radio is too slow and quirky, and it's underlying Manila system is just weird - you never know what it's going to do, or when.

TypePad has the elegance and performance of MoveableType, but it's a hosted service and is therefore much easier to use. There are many compelling features, including domain mapping (disabled in the preview release), photo albums, moblogging (posting from mobile devices), customizable designs, pre/post dating, and more.

A 30-day trial is available - check it out!

ps - I have some 20% lifetime discount codes for the asking.

Calendar

Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:05:03 GMT

I haven't been using iCal much anymore, mostly because it's so slow and bloated, but still need to have a quick look at a calendar once in a while.

Calendar is a great little freeware app that sits on your desktop at whatever size and transparency level you like.

MacPulse

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:24:01 GMT

MacPulse.com - the mac web headline aggregator

Great site for an overall snapshot of the latest Macintosh info.

T-Mobile Sidekick

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 00:45:23 GMT

I upgraded my cel phone to a Sidekick over the weekend

I've tried the Motorola Talkabout, Blackberry 850 and a couple of "internet-enabled" cel phones; all of which were disappointing either because reception was lousy (Blackberry-also too expensive), couldn't keep below the included message limit (Talkabout), or couldn't deal with typing text on a numeric keypad (cel phones). I even had a Visorphone, but it was too bulky.

The Sidekick has a $19 unlimited GPRS data plan (need to have a voice plan on top of this) with speeds similar to a dialup connection. The cost is less than a voice plan with T-Moble Internet service, which you need if you want to use your phone as a laptop modem.

It's absolutely perfect for e-mail and instant messaging (genuine AIM client built-in). RF reception is pretty bad indoors, but I'm always near a phone or computer inside anyway. It will pull messages from 3 separate POP accounts every 15 minues, in addition to pushing your tmail.com Sidekick account messages almost instantly. I've found the reception issues are not a problem, because as the GSM signal fades in & out, my messages are blasted into the Sidekick before I even realize. There's enough speed and storage to quickly download and hold dozens of mailing list digests for me to read on the Metro.

The PIM applications are good (Contacts, To Do, Notes, Calendar), and can be accessed via a web interface. The forums reveal that many people are unhappy about the lack of sync features (other than the desktop web client), but I don't really care because I carry the thing with me all the time anyway - my data doesn't NEED to be on other devices.

The phone application is very good, but dialing is awkward as you need to swing the screen closed after dialing to hold it to your head. Using the supplied earbud solves this problem, but it's actually not bad holding up to your ear - much better than the Visorphone.

The keyboard is perfect, and overall ergonomics are excellent. The color screen is bright, the backlight turns on & off automatically depending on ambient light levels, and text is highly legible. At $300, it's no wonder T-Mobile's having trouble keeping them on the shelves. All that's required for the Sidekick to be "the ultimate Internet device" is 802.11 support. Wait a second... doesn't T-Mobile already have all those hot spots? ;)

Move Items contextual menus

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 15:24:35 GMT

I drag lots stuff to my desktop for later viewing, but usually put off moving them to the appropriate location on my hard disk because it's a real hassle to open a new finder window and navigate to the desired folder each time.

Narattaphol Charoenphandhu has developed Move Items, a terrific set of contextual menus which make this task incredibly simple. Control-clicking any item on the desktop (or anywhere else) gives you hierarchical menus, allowing you to move the selected item anywhere you like with one mouse click.

He has many other utilities, including Launch Items. I bought the Move Items + Launch Items bundle for $20.

http://www.naratt.com/

T-Mobile Internet Macintosh web browsing works!

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:00:53 GMT

I haven't been able to get web browsing working while using my T-Mobile Internet GPRS connection, but it just occurred to me to enter T-Mobile's web proxy server in my Network settings:

System Preferences > Network > Proxies tab

Check the boxes next to Web Proxy (HTTP) and Secure Web Proxy. In the fields next to these two items, enter getmorespeed.voicestream.net.

It doesn't work with Safari (yet), but works fine with Internet Explorer.