Mac Windows integration: avoid special characters

The advice from this specific kb article is probably applicable to any mixed Windows/Mac environment. Anything that's "named" should stick to the old "non-special" ascii character set, including usernames and passwords ...

Mac OS X 10.4: Can't print to a printer shared by Microsoft Windows

...

* The printer's shared name contains a space or special character (see below).
* The name of the computer sharing the printer contains a space or special character.
* The Windows user's name or user's password contains a space or special character.

What's a 'special character?' It's a typed character other than A-Z, 0-9, !, $, *, (, ), _, , -, ' . .

The following are not special characters and are OK to use in the printer name, Windows computer name, Windows user name, and Windows user password:

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 . ! $ * ( ) _ - '"

By the time we all support UTF-8, we'll need to move to a character set that supports non-human languages ....

Google groups

Google Groups has been revampled including integration of Google Page Creator. Groups have RSS feeds. When they add Google Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Writely and Google Blogger to Google Groups this will be a sensational resource for small organizations, like my cub scout troop.

Even now one can tie those things together independently, but as a kit they'll be worth much more.

Subversive: build google gadgets into your web page

Sneaky. Very sneaky. You can now put a Google gadget on a web page. Will they work with Safari? I suspect not. Another nail in Safari's coffin -- Long-live Safari/Gecko.

Is it my imagination, or has Google made a sudden dramatic shift away from a 'portal' strategy to more of an 'cloud' strategy? Diffuse functionality everywhere...

Insidious.

Drive spindown in OS X: pmset and other methods

macosxhints.com - Set minutes until hard drive spins down. I'll see if I can use this to make my external firewire drive spin down very quickly ...

iTunes 7: can't select multiple playlists

iTunes 7 no longer allows shift-click selection of multiple playlists for either playing or moving into folders.

One of several highly annoying "features" of this "update".

Mac OS X 10.3.9: failed connection to WPA2 WLAN after Airport security update

Mac OS X 10.4.8: AirPort does not auto-connect to existing networks after restart or wake from sleep is NOT the bug I just had after installing the recent AirPort sercurity patches.

I couldn't connect with my 10.3.9 802.11b iBook to my WLAN. The connect icon was black, but all tcp/ip services were unavailable. Shut down / restart didn't fix anything.

I had to switch from non-Admin to an Admin account and get the 'keychain updated dialog'. Then I switched back to my regular account and this time it showed the 'keychain updated' dialog. Then it worked.

A relatively minor bug with this update, but it would have flummoxed most users.

What's better: Bloglines or the New Google Reader?

I was surprised to read that Matt Cutts, a senior Google developer, is a longtime Bloglines user. Like me, he thought Google's Reader was fairly lame.

Now he compares Bloglines to the new Google Reader and calls it a draw. Since he's a Google employee, he'll switch.

That's fair enough! I'll stay with Bloglines since I'm not a Google employee, but I'll try running Google reader in parallel on occasion. Note Matt Cutts pays attention to "Lock-In", while also advocating the Google vision of cloud-based personal data. I'd like to see him reconcile the two concerns ...

For most people the choices now are Bloglines or Google's Reader, and Bloglines has been good for much longer ...