Tuesday, November 15, 2005

OX apps for blogging

Cool OSX Apps lists some OS X apps for blogging. I was quite surprised to find I use none of these! They sound very interesting and I'll have to try each one. Highly recommended! I'm particularly interested in the SubEthaEdit and Cyberduck combo for working on my non-blog server based HTML files.

Changing key assignments to empower OS X Tiger's dictionary

I love these Macworld hints. Maybe I should subscribe to the print magazine! I've never thought about the dictionary built into OS X, but clearly I should: Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Make Tiger's Dictionary roar

Black thumbnails in iPhoto: one cause and solution

An iPhoto power user hacks the system color profiles to fix a notorious iPhoto color profile bug. At some point, his thumbnails go black, it takes a lot of work to connect this back to his color profile hack. It appears to have had something to do with permissions on files within iPhoto.

An obscure chain of events, but it does suggest some interventions for others afflicted by the course of the black thumbnails -- perhaps by other causes.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Adobe is a doomed company

Why is Adobe doomed? Any company that can't get automatic software updates working is hopelessly messed up. I almost never get Adobe's reader software to update correctly; I think the installer assumes you never change the default install path. The uodater just makes a mess of things; eventually I have to download a full copy of Adobe and install it.

They've had years to get this right. By now it's evident they can't fix it. Someone needs to aquire them.

How to Clean a Laptop Screen With Household Products

Distilled water and 50% isopropyl alcohol: How to Clean a Laptop Screen With Household Products - WikiHow. Probablyl simpler to just buy something pre-made up, but if you have distilled water at hand ...

Microsoft declares SONY is a malware vendor

SONY's covert software installation hacks Microsoft XP and creates a big security hole. I wondered how long it would take Microsoft to declare war:
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft to remove Sony CD code

...Microsoft's decision to label the XCP system spyware was revealed on the corporate blog maintained by the software maker's anti-malware team.

... Writing in the blog, Jason Garms, one of the senior managers in the anti-malware team, said the XCP software qualified as spyware under the "objective criteria" Microsoft uses to assess potentially malicious programs.
I ran SONY, I'd fire the head of SONY music. Then I'd publicly engage the Electronic Frontier Foundation to rewrite the EULA and SONY's DRM policies.

Firefox 1.5 RC2 - very nice on OS X

I read recently that there are about 83 browser variants on OS X. Of these the ones I've used are Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb, Camino and Opera.

Each has strengths. OmniWeb is the only browser to seriously think about the problems with the page/tab UI -- but they went wrong putting the tab/page icons on the left side (one of my machines is an iBook -- horizontal space is at a premium). Camino has an elegant UI and the Mozilla engine, but no Google toolbar. Safari is the prettiest and does the best job with printing and fonts. (Open source products tend to be weak at printing, probably because true geeks never print.) Safari has also always felt pretty fast.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 RC-2 (Development Information) is a very impressive contender. I use it more and more. It's very fast, faster than Safari on my G3 iBook. The Firefox Google toolbar doesn't work with it yet, but I'm sure it will once 1.5 is officially released. It works with Blogger (Blogger support for Safari is infuriating and abysmal) and at most every site I use (not, however, the AMEX credit card site -- Firefox 1.0 did work there -- I've submitted that as a problem).

Firefox 1.0 was good on OS X, but 1.5 is truly remarkable. It's not as pretty as Camino or Safari, but increasingly it's my preferred browser. Safari is getting relegated to printing tasks.