15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac
I generally do not pay attention to these but this nailed so many of the apps that I use and swear by that I just had to put it up here. If you have not used any or all of these then your in for a treat!
Posted 1 week ago
How To Remove "Security Tool"
Been to Facebook and found that you got a little more than you expected. I had two friends hit me up to fix this one on their systems. Click on the title above to go to a good site that will help you correct the problem.
Posted 3 weeks ago
Snow + Minivan = Fail
This is a bit of rant because I just had to help this person dig their minivan out when they shouldn’t have been on the road to begin with.
Why do people go out on snow covered roads after emergency officials explicitly state that if you go out you are going to get stuck? Even after the Governor declares a state of emergency forbidding them to go out, they ignore it and decide to venture out anyways.
Case in point is my lovely neighborhood. If you have lived her more than a month, you already know that we do not get plowed until after every other area of town gets done. Our roads are always hard to travel because the wind drifts the snow up and the depth of the snow on the road makes it difficult for even trucks to travel.
But, low and behold, here comes someone in their Ford minivan plowing through the drifts looking more like someone on a jet ski breaking the wake of a boat. At first I thought, ok thats cool, they are at least moving. And then they stopped. For no apparent reason, they stopped! WTF, I mean, you don’t stop in the snow or you get stuck, and stuck is what they got.
So an hour and 20 minutes later, the good ole minivan is being towed backwards by some random guy with a jeep so the road can be cleared and available in case the snow plow trucks are generous enough to come today. Oye!
Posted 3 weeks ago
Changes/Feature Requests For Google Buzz
Google announced Buzz today, a photo/videos/link/status sharing service. The big news here isn’t really the functionality of
PownceBuzz, but that Google is boldly integrating this directly into Gmail - essentially taking the product from zero to millions of users in a matter of hours. If Buzz is a success it will mean real competition for Twitter and useful real-time public data for Google.After giving it a go for a couple hours, here are a few changes/feature requests for the Google Buzz team:
- It sounds stupid, but you need a simple url for public profiles, http://google.com/profiles/kevinrose is a mouthful. Imagine a CNN host trying to plug their profile and having to say “google dot com slash profiles slash larry king”, can we just have google.com/larryking? (side note: /profile/kevinrose should redirect to /profiles/kevinrose not 404)
- Speaking of public profiles, this entire page needs to be redesigned. Adding custom backgrounds and a design that feels a little less utilitarian would be a good start.
- This auto-friend stuff is just straight confusing. I get it, but just because I’ve emailed with someone a few times doesn’t mean I want to auto-follow them. Where is the setting to turn this off?
- Is there an option to prevent the Buzz(es?, i?) from coming directly into my inbox? When Buzz starts feeling like a task (email), that bothers me.
- Where is the ‘Compose Buzz’ link? Only within the Buzz tab? Can an email be converted to a Buzz? Having Buzz in my inbox but no way to compose a Buzz from my inbox seems odd.
Not sure where Buzz fits in my arsenal of social media tools, how often I’ll use it, or if it will eventually feel too much like unread email — but I’m happy to see Google taking social media seriously. It’s early days, let the attention/follower wars begin.
Have a feature suggestion for Buzz? Add it to the comments!
Posted 1 month ago
Use Google's DNS Servers
Here’s a quick tip that I found while reading Macworld magazine as I was snowed in during the blizzard of 2010.
Google, like Open DNS, allows you to use their DNS instead of your ISP’s. The only reason you would want to do this is for speed.
To use Google’s DNS, use the following: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
Posted 1 month ago
If there is one key thing I could convey to anyone reading this is to hustle. You will never be prepared for the things you are capable of doing. You will achieve your greatest accomplishments not by building up a grand framework of skill and then deftly creating something glorious, but by starting small and persevering in making it better and better…
Posted 1 month ago
Its Apple keynote time again. I guess its no real secret that Apple will be releasing some type of new device along the lines of a tablet that will change the whole face of tablet computing.
To borrow a page from Kanye: Apple, thats tablet is nice and all and I am going to let you have your keynote, but the rest of Mac/iPhone peeps are expecting a bit more.
- iLife ‘10 - For me, this is only really for one app, iWeb. Yep, I said it. I am looking forward to seeing a major update and step forward to the red headed step child of the iLife suite.
Amongst the features on my wish list: A) Scripting and database support. B) Open theming and the ability to share/import themes. C) Recode how sites are processed with an emphasis on page load times. - iPhone OS 4.0 - In case you haven’t noticed, the iPhone doesn’t have the advantage of being the only game in town anymore. Furthermore, the user interface and menu system that iPhone uses is beginning to look a bit dated, especially compared to the likes of HTC’s SenseUI running on Android.
Topping my list of iPhone OS 4.0 wants: A) An information stuffed home & lock screen that consolidates updates info from various apps. B) Widgets on the actual menu in place of app icons. Some things, like weather, don’t need to be an app, they just need to be a floating widget on the screen. C) Wireless syncing to iTunes. Really, i’m not sure why this is still not done.
- iTunes Subscription Service - Ah yes, my long shot pick. I will gladly pay a monthly fee and deal with DRM in order to have the entire iTunes music catalog available to put on my iPhone.
So thats my wish list for the Jan 27 keynote. Aside from the subscription service, I feel these are very reasonable expectations. Time will tell.
