Phone sync and USB charge cables - great selection (boxwave)

BoxWave - miniSync - Retractable Cable - Sync and Charge USB Cable!

This is the ever popular retractable cable with specific phone adapters. Much cheaper than phone travel chargers and syncs as well.

Caveats:

1. USB 2 may provide more power than USB 1, some device may not charge on USB 1 properly.
2. Some phones don't charge via USB at all, even when the cable works.
3. It takes a long time to charge via USB, most people do it overnight.

Setting CPU Processing speed on a mac

macosxhints - A script to set CPU processing speed

Several different techniques. I'll try this! Might help with battery life, fan noise, etc.

Fix for Acrobat 7 bug: cannot display PDF in Safari

Macintouch report - Acrobat 7

I've run into this bug. On my 10.3.8 G3 iBook installing Acrobat 7 results in blank pages instead of a PDF display when I open a PDF file in Safari. Here's a fix I'll try:

"For Safari, Acrobat 7 attempts to 'take over' the chore of displaying PDF's from the default Preview.app program. For some reason, this does not work, and Safari is left unable to display PDF's at all.

I would bet good money that Tom will find the following file on his system: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin

If he deletes that file, Safari should then be able to display PDF's again (via Preview.app).

Darik's Boot and Nuke: wipe a drive completely

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Darik's Boot and Nuke ('DBAN') is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

It's a pain to safely discard a hard drive, or a laptop for that matter. It's quite hard to get rid of the data. This open source utility, available for Mac or PC, will do the work. I prefer not to think of what constitutes a need for "emergency" data destruction.

Facial recognition biometrics: static by cell phone and dynamic by desktop video

Slashdot | Face Recognition Comes to Cameraphones

Japanese company has developed face recognition software for camera phones that it says can authenticate users within one second of clicking the shutter.

This is very neat if true. It could be an inexpensive way to add biometrics to a lot of devices.

A still camera on a fixed workstation is of limited utility however. What would be very cool would be dynamic facial biometrics; an algorithm that worked based on how a face moves when speaking a passphrase. (The passphrase would be public, indeed it would be posted on the workstation.) I have a hunch that that biometric would work quite well.

But why do this instead of the still image? Because a video device on a fixed workstation has other uses -- especially when integrated with the very new standards for streaming audio and video. In a year or so we ought to have the ability to deliver quite decent videoconferencing at low costs to workstations. Combining biometrics with conferencing is a good business solution.

Another free business idea! Remember, you can't patent or copyright it now.

DigiBarn: Re-visiting and revising the famous Bushy Tree diagram of the lineage of visual computing systems

DigiBarn: Re-visiting and revising the famous Bushy Tree diagram of the lineage of visual computing systems

Cocktail: maintaining an OS X system

Cocktail - a perfect mixture for Mac OS X

ONYX (free) and Panther Cache Cleaner (shareware) are two alternatives. Cocktail is shareware (not free), but has reputation for being trouble free and has been around a while. Panther Cache Cleaner used to have an odd installation configuration.