Not Quite Genius

Posted and filed under music, Software.

So Apple released a new version of iTunes today. Version 8 includes a new feature called “Genius”. Play a song, click the Genius button, and iTunes creates a playlist of other songs from your library that go great together. This sounds like a cool idea, although I consider myself already pretty handy at creating smart… Read more »

Screen Capture on a Mac

Posted and filed under images, Software.

Jim just showed me a bitchin’ cool Mac trick: If you press Shift, the Apple (“command”) key, and the 4 key at the same time, it will change your mouse cursor into a targeting device. Then hit the space bar and your cursor will turn into a camera icon. Use the mouse to move the… Read more »

Sinnerman

Posted and filed under movies, music.

While we were waiting for the Olympics to start out here on the West coast, we caught the end of an old Entourage episode on HBO. The track playing over the end credits was Sinnerman, by Nina Simone. That song is also played during the conclusion of The Thomas Crown Affair remake with Pierce Brosnan,… Read more »

iPhone SMS Alarm Bug

Posted and filed under Software, technology.

This morning I discovered what is possibly the world’s most annoying iPhone bug. For some time now I’ve been trying to determine why every now and then I seem to sleep right through my alarm. The iPhone alarm can be set to be tragically loud and uncomfortably annoying, so the fact that I have frequently… Read more »

Adium

Posted and filed under Software.

I really can’t say enough good things about Adium. This awesome little Mac app lets you connect to ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, iChat, and GTalk instant messenger contacts all in one place. It is the holy grail of IM clients. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and am thoroughly pleased. (It’s… Read more »

Microsoft Money and a Mac

Posted and filed under popular, rants, Software.

Update: March 20, 2012: It’s been four years and there is still not a viable replacement. Update: July 26, 2011: If you only are concerned with tracking bills and don’t care about investments or balancing your checkbook or importing statements or anything like that, I can highly recommend Chronicle. It’s a very well-done app that… Read more »

iPhone 3G Bluetooth

Posted and filed under rants, Software.

It takes four actions to enable Bluetooth on the new iPhone. Click “Settings”. Click “General”. Click “Bluetooth”. Click on/off slider. Leaving Bluetooth enabled all the time drains the battery much too quickly, so it makes sense to only enable it when you are using it, and to disable it when you are finished. (The same… Read more »

iPhone Camera Bug

Posted and filed under Software.

The restore I did yesterday on my iPhone failed to fix the problem I was having with the camera. Even after completely wiping the phone and resetting multiple times, the camera simply refused to save photos to its internal file system. I was ready to just complain at a Genius Bar in an Apple store… Read more »

Faceted Email Browsing

Posted and filed under Software.

Seek allows for ‘faceted browsing’ of email and looks, pretty much, like the coolest thing to hit email since the @ symbol. It’s Thunderbird only, though. At this point I don’t know if it would be possible for me to abandon Outlook. The email functionality I could take or leave, but the address book and… Read more »

Are you sure you want to exit?

Posted and filed under Hardware, rants, Software.

About six months ago I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go 160 GB USB External Hard Drive from the evil empire™. As far as hard drives go, well, it’s big and it stores data. So in that regard it performs perfectly. It also has a soothing amber glow that pulses while it’s spinning, which is very… Read more »

Outlook 2007 Is a Memory Hog

Posted and filed under rants, Software.

When I got my new laptop a few weeks ago I thought it was pretty cool that it came with Office 2007. The nifty new toolbars and embedded wavey swooshes are slick. I don’t really mind that by default Word and Excel assume you want to save files with a .docx or .xlsx extension. (That’s… Read more »

Unwanted Software

Posted and filed under Hardware, Software.

Yesterday I became the proud new owner of a Dell D630 Latitude. Today I began the tiresome task of transferring my life from my old D610 to it. The old laptop was Anchor. (Previous computers were Budweiser, Guinness, and Corona.) The new laptop is Maui. Here is a list of the software that Dell decided… Read more »