Well behind the American iTunes Store, earlier this month (June 2008) Apple gave iTunes Store customers in the UK the chance to rent (or purchase) movie downloads. Initially I wasn't sure I'd want to watch movies at my computer, even though I have a good screen and sound system. But I had to try it. With a 17Mbps downstream broadband connection getting the movie onto the computer posed no problem (a typical 1GB movie takes a few minutes). Trouble is all I see is a grey box with no audio. Now that I can't do it, of course I'm more inclined to want to.
Continue reading 'Silent and grey iTunes movie rentals'
Tag archive for 'Mac'
As mentioned in an earlier post on using faux Contacts for collecting, managing, and synching tasks offline on the iPhone, I've been reading Getting things done (GTD) by David Allen. I have to say I found the book a difficult, overly repetitive and non-engaging read, despite my motivation to learn from it. If you could get a lot of things done in the time it takes to read 267 anecdote-heavy pages, here's my somewhat condensed take on the bits worth sharing, along with a few Mac-specific embellishments.
Continue reading 'Personal productivity on Mac and iPhone'
The developer of CDFinder has released GPS-Info CMM, a free contextual menu plug-in for the OS X Finder. Images with coordinates in EXIF can be plotted directly using several online mapping services or in Google Earth. Meanwhile the iCab browser b49 delivers extended geotagging support, such as recognition of EXIF-GPS data within images displayed inline on a web page: auto-detection activates the geotag icon.
Be Unlimited provide ADSL2+ services in the UK, supplying a Be-branded Thompson SpeedTouch wireless router called the BeBox. The Member Forum is full of complaints about router instability and errant behaviour. My 780WL had been doing well for around 6 months, then started resetting itself sometimes several times within a short period, but at least daily. Sometimes after a reset I was left with no Internet connectivity. Eventually Be sent me a replacement router, which came with replacement problems. So how do you turn a flaky BeBox into a rock-solid Internet router? Just take the "Be" out of your BeBox.
Continue reading 'Resolving router issues with Be Unlimited'
Over the past 16 years I've had the pleasure of being responsible for eight well-used Macs and associated hardware. In that time I've seen the failure of one display, one hard drive (thankfully post-TM), one power supply, and now one logic board. So what are your choices when a piece of kit fails? For most people the options considered will be either fixing it (until they get a quote), or replacing it. But there may be at least two more choices worthy of consideration: sharing a Mac, or rethinking what you actually need from a computer and recycling pre-loved equipment. Older equipment can be like older people: once you get past a certain point it's evidence of good genes! I'd bet my PowerBook 100 of 1992 vintage would still boot if it had any juice in the battery. Here's how we looked to the past to save money, and in so doing saved an ancient (i.e. any computer over 3 years old) iMac from premature retirement.
Continue reading 'Rethink, reuse, recycle'
You're in Prague for 6 days with your camera (shooting in raw format), packing your data logger for geotagging, and your MacBook. At the end of each day you plan to download your images and track logs to geotag them before processing via Adobe Bridge. Given this scenario how do GPSPhotoLinker and PhotoGPSEditor—two free Mac apps—stack up against two commercial alternatives, Geophoto and HoudahGeo?
Continue reading 'Mac geotagging software showdown'
