Sunday, November 28, 2004
Macintosh hardware monitor software
MacInTouch Home Page: "Marcel Bresink's Hardware Monitor 1.3 reads all available hardware sensors in Macintosh computers and displays the measured values in a variety of ways. This release adds support for all iMac G5 sensors, support for nVidia GeForce 6800 sensors, support for many more hard disk temperature sensors, an option to attach the display window to the Desktop background, auto-save intervals for history data, and other changes. Hardware Monitor is 7 Euro for Mac OS X 10.2.5 and up."
Virtual tours of Montreal, and of other worlds
MadeinMTL
Another virtual tour, this one of Montreal. I grew up there, so it's of particular personal interest. There's been an eruption of these virtual tours lately, using Flash and Quicktime panoramas. With Google's purchase of keyhole it seems likely these virtual tours will explode over the next few years. It will be fascinating to combine satellite images, panoramas and even virtual reality environments into a pseudo-coherent world. At the other end of the metaverse, bar codes and other identifiers in the physical world are being used to attach data to real world objects. Aim one's camera at the bar code on the outdoor restaurant menu and read the reviews (also find out one's physical location -- for when the GPS is down ...)
Another virtual tour, this one of Montreal. I grew up there, so it's of particular personal interest. There's been an eruption of these virtual tours lately, using Flash and Quicktime panoramas. With Google's purchase of keyhole it seems likely these virtual tours will explode over the next few years. It will be fascinating to combine satellite images, panoramas and even virtual reality environments into a pseudo-coherent world. At the other end of the metaverse, bar codes and other identifiers in the physical world are being used to attach data to real world objects. Aim one's camera at the bar code on the outdoor restaurant menu and read the reviews (also find out one's physical location -- for when the GPS is down ...)
Saturday, November 27, 2004
OmniWeb -- my new better OS X browser
OmniWeb
I'm trying out OmniWeb these days. It has one amazing feature and several excellent features.
The amazing feature is workspaces. I loved tabbed browsing -- at first. Now I can't live without it, but it annoys me. On both Firefox and Mozilla I end up with a slew of windows, each with its own tabs. If I lose track of a tab, I wander through windows looking for it. In OmniWeb the Workspace gives me a hierarchical view of windows and tabs and lets me even rearrange the tabs between windows. I can display a mini-view of a tab to get more information than the tab title.
In the "just excellent" department I'd include their pop-up text editor for forms. Instead of making do with Blogger's textedit box, I have my own little editor. Slick and easy. It looks like OmniWeb has more than a few of these niceties.
Overall OmniWeb's rendering resembles Safari's -- they use the same web toolkit. Not quite as nice as Firefox and not recognized as Firefox by Blogger. On the other hand, OmniWeb doesn't suffer from the keystroke lag I get with Firefox on the Mac -- AND Mac services work with OW, they don't work with Firefox. Not to mention Firefox fonts and font spacing look pretty bad on my Mac.
Overall OW feels like a much better version of Safari. Worth paying for!
I'm trying out OmniWeb these days. It has one amazing feature and several excellent features.
The amazing feature is workspaces. I loved tabbed browsing -- at first. Now I can't live without it, but it annoys me. On both Firefox and Mozilla I end up with a slew of windows, each with its own tabs. If I lose track of a tab, I wander through windows looking for it. In OmniWeb the Workspace gives me a hierarchical view of windows and tabs and lets me even rearrange the tabs between windows. I can display a mini-view of a tab to get more information than the tab title.
In the "just excellent" department I'd include their pop-up text editor for forms. Instead of making do with Blogger's textedit box, I have my own little editor. Slick and easy. It looks like OmniWeb has more than a few of these niceties.
Overall OmniWeb's rendering resembles Safari's -- they use the same web toolkit. Not quite as nice as Firefox and not recognized as Firefox by Blogger. On the other hand, OmniWeb doesn't suffer from the keystroke lag I get with Firefox on the Mac -- AND Mac services work with OW, they don't work with Firefox. Not to mention Firefox fonts and font spacing look pretty bad on my Mac.
Overall OW feels like a much better version of Safari. Worth paying for!
Friday, November 26, 2004
Slovenia - Quicktime VR panoramas
QTVR - CELOZASLONSKE PROSTORSKE SLIKE - FULL SCREEN VIRTUAL REALITY PANORAMAS
Visit virtual Slovenia -- at warp speed.
Visit virtual Slovenia -- at warp speed.
USB Geek -- the power of a platform
USBGEEK.COM
One of my favorite themes is the power of platforms. Provide a standard one can build on, and one can move worlds.
One of the most accidental standards anywhere has been the USB power connector. Not the data channel, the power. A standard plug, 5V, a few amps. Given that standard one can do a large number of interesting things. Too bad the Firewire equivalent didn't catch on; 12V would have been nice.
This store is dedicated to showing what can be done with that platform.
One of my favorite themes is the power of platforms. Provide a standard one can build on, and one can move worlds.
One of the most accidental standards anywhere has been the USB power connector. Not the data channel, the power. A standard plug, 5V, a few amps. Given that standard one can do a large number of interesting things. Too bad the Firewire equivalent didn't catch on; 12V would have been nice.
This store is dedicated to showing what can be done with that platform.
Recording music to a Mac
Macintosh Audio Recording
This is the 4th in a great series of Macintouch reader reports. Others have featured voice recording, this one tackles series music recording. I don't know the domain, but I'd bet this rates as a pretty authoritative review.
Macintouch has a unique approach to authoring content. I'm surprised others have not tried to copy it.
This is the 4th in a great series of Macintouch reader reports. Others have featured voice recording, this one tackles series music recording. I don't know the domain, but I'd bet this rates as a pretty authoritative review.
Macintouch has a unique approach to authoring content. I'm surprised others have not tried to copy it.
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