OS X Utility to clean web pages: Tidy

macosxhints - Tidy up your HTML with ... tidy! describes a 10.4 utility that will fix up HTML. I may try it the next time Blogger scrambles a blog posting.

MacBook: Less useful than the old iBook?

The new MacBook is pretty enough, but in what way is it a real improvement on the G4 iBook?

The G4 came with AppleWorks (can open Excel spreadsheets!), ran classic apps, and was underpowered for Aperture. The MacBook doesn't include AppleWorks, can't run classic, and is not approved for Aperture or any of Apple's pro apps. The G4 worked with the chargers and power connectors that came with my G3, the MacBook has an expensive and proprietary charger that's only available from Apple (lockin!). The MacBook runs hotter than the G4 and has a shorter battery life.

Sure it's faster, but if faster doesn't get me the Pro apps is it really worth all that much?

There's only one real win with the MacBook. It boots XP. (Oh, and it does monitor spanning without a hack.)

The MacBook does less than the iBook, but what it does do it does faster. The only way in which it's a "win" is the ability to run XP.

That's sad.

Ipod Won't Sleep: fix

My iPod wouldn't sleep. Triggered by disconnecting it from iTunes without dismounting. Reset didn't fix it. Had to reconnect to iTunes, then mount, then dismount properly. Then reset. Now ok.

Backup application built around Amazon S3

JungleDisk is a Mac/Win backup app that uses Amazon's S3 storage. Cost for 15GB of images would be about $3 a month.

I'm not sure I'd put business plans online this way, but I'm going to give it a try for backup of photos.

SuperDuper: a backup backup

My primary backup is still Retrospect, but it's creaky and buggy with a grim future. While I'm waiting for something better I think I'm going to start using SuperDuper to mirror some of my systems. Kind of a redundant backup to my backup that I'll do every few weeks. I use USB enclosure drives for my backups (two enclosures, one offsite), with the new cheap 320GB drives it's not hard to keep a couple of images as well as the Retrospect data.

PS. I am a bit of a nut about backups. In 19 years they've saved me from catastrophic data loss at least five times.

Apple is serious about iPhoto: network effects

The value amplifier once known as 'network effects' and now called 'product ecosystem' has been a huge win with the Apple iPod. Apple is building an ecosystem for its iLife suite -- years after they promised it. Better late then never:

iWeb 1.1: Create a living, growing photo gallery:

Imagine a webpage that's a gallery of family photos. Click on any one of those photos -- say, little Justin making that face where he looks exactly like Uncle Roy -- and you're taken to a page containing a whole album of Justin's baby pictures...

Here's how it works. First, pick any iWeb template (just make sure it's not a photo page template). Next, open the iWeb media browser and select an iPhoto album. Then drag the album onto the template....

iWeb takes over from there, automatically creating a separate photo page containing all the images in the album. At the same time, on the page where you dragged the album, iWeb will display the album's first image (or you can choose any other image from the album). That image will then link to the newly created photo page when you publish. Repeat the process as often as you like, dragging other albums to different locations on the page, creating new links and new photo pages each time you do. And you can keep your photo gallery alive and growing. Just come back later at any time, drag in another album, and republish."

Wow. Enhanced value all around. I may even get a .Mac account since I think iWed supports sync with .Mac rather than mere upload. Between this and the MacBook's ambiguous support for Aperture I'm resigning myself to staying with iPhoto. Now if Apple would only add #$$!$%%@#$$ merge/import of Libraries to iPhoto ...

iWeb 1.1 - now multiple web sites

I recently blogged on iWebSites 1.1, a utility that hacks iWeb to handle multiple sites.

Today TUAW noted iWeb 1.1 has covertly added multi-site support, as well as some other features. I definitely have to play with iWeb.

Update 5/17/06: I did a quick test. iWeb does have decent support for creating links to existing pages and related files. It does not support anchors. You can't highlight text and make it a target for a link, then create a link to it.

This is a shame, but I guess links are "out of scope" for what's very much a novice-friendly product. Alas, it's no "FrontPage 98", but then nothing is any more. Dreamweaver et al are in a different product niche, FrontPage died after 98 and the residual zombie was recently (mercifully) terminated by Microsoft, and several open source FP replacements have failed my tests so far. I've looked at the various Mac web publishing alternatives to iWeb and they weren't much better than iWeb 1.1, so I'm not enthused about them. I think most of the interesting work will be in Ajax web page authoring systems; alas the vendors of those (ex. Google) have "lock-in" front and center in their business plans. No moving web sites around!