Cross-platform publishing with Soybo

Found this on MacMegasite

Soybo is a cross-platform and device independent technology that allows applications to publish their functionality as web services, accessible by any Internet-enabled device.

Check out the screenshots, it looks quite impressive. I'll give it a go as soon as I get a chance.

Clipboard sharing

ClipboardSharing lets you share anything you copy to the clipboard (text, formatted or not, images, sound, etc.) between RendezVous enabled Macs.

You can manage clipboards, restore a previous clipboard, and choose which to share. Recent clipboards remain available after restarts.
Orig. MacMerc

Battery calibration

An Apple KnowledgeBase article discusses battery calibration for PowerBooks and iBooks.

The battery of an iBook or PowerBook G4 computer has an internal microprocessor that provides an estimate of the amount of energy in the battery during charging and discharging. The battery needs to be recalibrated from time to time to keep the onscreen battery time and percent display accurate. You should perform this procedure when you first use your computer and then every couple of months thereafter.

Previous posts on battery usage

Apple Computer Public Auction

Apparently, Apple has opened an public auction with 377 items starting on Friday 28th at 3:00 PM US Central.

Items include PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25GHz 512/120, 1GHz/512/60, PowerBook 800/512/40, iMac 700/256/40, 600/256/40, iBook 800/128/30, Apple Studio 15"/20" Display, Airport Cards and Base Stations 2 and Extreme.

Apple Store's refurbished section is almost empty.

The MHz Myth is back

An OSCast broadcast (MPEG4) points out that Adobe's pcprefered page is authored by a longtime anti-Mac apologist.

MacCentral has released Apple's response to Adobe's page. (Thanks Maali)

But what's the point of all this? What is Adobe expecting to get out by flaming up the old MHz myth? Why do people buy a Mac? IMHO, it's all a question of usability, working experience, integration, cross application compatibility, etc. I prefer Mac OS over Windows because I can get my job done quicker and in better conditions - and with added personal satisfaction.
Now, let's not forget that a computer is nothing else than a tool - eventhough you might get a different idea by reading this weblog. Basically, it's there to help you create and produce. Sure, some run "faster" than others, but do you actually type or write faster? Edit and create faster? Err..

The Mac experience goes a little further. A Mac tends to be more than just a computer for many people - me included. At the end of the day, I do get the impression that using a Mac adds to my personal work satisfaction. What's your opinion?

Adobe promotes PC .. over Macs

Hmm. Apparently Adobe is recommending PCs overs Macs to their customers ..
The page reports the comparaison of a Dell 2.53GHz P4 and a PowerMac Dual 1GHz in several rendering tasks in which the PC outperforms the Mac at an impressive rate.

What's motivating Adobe to publish such a report and to openly recommend PCs over Macs for running Adobe products? And how will Apple react to Adobe? What's the point?

Spotted on OS News.

Happy Birthday Mac OS X

 
Mac OS X is two today .. remember running the beta with the little apple in the middle of the menu bar ?

;)

DiskWarrior 3 for X

AltSoft DiskWarrior has been one of my essential applications these last few years, and has saved my day (and that of my friends) on more than one occasion.

I was pleased to read the pre-order announcement of DiskWarrior 3 which offers significant improvements on its predecessor:

• Mac OS X native directory repair
• dramatic speed improvements
• supports file journaling
• Mac OS X RAIDs
• full Unicode support
• conforms to Apple's security standardsv
• uses Mac OS X's native memory model
• rebuilds directories on disks as large as 2,000 gigabytes (2 terabytes)

The $40 upgrade is available only on a Mac OS X bootable CD. (No information is available for full version pricing or the ship date.)

B&O goes Mac

Bang & Olufsen have made their BeoSound 2 MP3 player compatible with iTunes after they realized that a "(..) large number of Macintosh users wished to buy the BeoSound 2".

The first Macintosh compatible BeoSound 2 will be available (only) in December., but current owners can make their player Macintosh compatible by downloading the appropriate update.

"All in all, this has been a very positive experience. We cannot say much more than that Macintosh users have good taste. So now we are hoping for a flood of communications from Mac users who are satisfied with us," says Jens Victor Fischer with a smile.

YA iTunes remote control

I recently fell on a post announcing the close down of Stimpsoft, owners of cool Mac freeware such as SnapperHead or Son of Weather Grok, as well as iHam on iRye which is a really cool iTunes remote control.

There's been a lot of talk around iTunes since the iCommune project was closed down, and Earphoria appeared. Well, I must admit that I overlooked iHam which is a great little app to control your iTunes jukebox. The application has been salvaged by SearchWare Solutions which now offers a Windows version in beta.

I must admit that it works like a charm. I prefer it to the other remote control solutions currently available. Give it a try.

2003-03-21 update: version 2 has just been released

Safe Boot / Safe Mode

Looking for something completely different, I fell on the following Knowledge Base article which explains what Safe Boot and Safe Mode are.

Basically, Safe Boot is a special way to startup your Mac and repair your HD, and Safe Mode is the state in which your computer is right after that.

Unfortunately, Safe Boot doesn't give any feedback of what it's up to, or if something has been fixed or not. Booting in Single User Mode and running fsck is much more informative.

WIRED 2013's technolust

If you're accustomed with WIRED mag, you certainly know the Fetish objects section. Cool gizmos avail today. Well WIRED has come up with its 2013 fetish wish list.

Go and take a look and the iPhone (a domain name held by apple, btw), or the roll-up television ..
;)

Lithium-based battery usage

This might interest PowerBook / iBook / cell phone users. According to a paper on batteryuniversity.com,

[..] a lithium-ion battery provides 300 to 500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery.

Lithium-based batteries have a lifetime of two to three years, and the speed at which the they age is function of temperature and state-of-charge.

If possible, store the battery in a cool place at about a 40% state-of-charge. This reserve charge is needed to keep the battery and its protection circuit operational during prolonged storage. The most harmful combination is full charge at high temperature.

The bottom line is to avoid full discharges, recharge more often. Keep the Lithium-ion battery cool but do not freeze. Avoid a hot car.

2003-03-15 update: MacOSXHint has a very interesting article on how to give your PB battery a checkup
2003-03-24 update: Batteries in a portable world, another interesting article

Blue light on steroids

MacMice has just released a companion for Griffin Technology's PowerMate; the IceMate. A translucide stand that enhances the blue light generated by the PowerMate. "Blue light on steroids".

I must admit it looks cool. I'm not sure the ergonomics are right. The knob looks just a little too high to be used comfortably, but then I might be wrong.

Let me know if you happen to lay your fingers on one.

Confessions of a Designer

Enrique sent me this interesting confession:

My name is Doug, and I'm a recovering Windows user.

A die-hard Mac fanatic that chose Windows over Mac OS in the late nineties, and is reconsidering his dependency on Windows and taking a closer look at Mac OS X..

Tabbed Browsing

Interesting comments and point of views on tabbed browsing by Dave Hyatt (Surfin Safari)

Sony Ericsson Clicker photos online

WIRED has published an article on Jonas' Sony Ericsson Clicker, with photos from your Macinblog author.
:)

Previous Macinblog entries (1) (2)

Here comes Camino

Camino 0.7 (ex Chimera) is available for download, with numerous new features:

• New Download Manager, with auto-download and auto-dispatch
• Compatible with URL Manager Pro
• Page Text Encodings menu
• Global History in the sidebar
• Send Link menu item, and other new toolbar buttons
• Dragging of images and links to the desktop, and other applications
• Support for Shockwave Directory content
• Uses Rendezvous to show local FTP and web servers
• Supports Proxy Auto-config

Breakfast impressions:

• feels like there's a notable performance increase (not that much over the nightly builds though
• cosmetic glitch with VersionTracker, the right column doesn't display correctly
  
  10h50 update: apparently this doesn't occur on every Mac. My QuickSilver displays VT correctly (same OS version)
• more comments later on today.. Emma is waking up
  ;)

New Bluetooth scripts from Apple

Apple has posted a whole new bunch of applescripts to use with Sony Ericsson Clicker.

You'll find new scripts for iTunes (prev/next playlists, rewind, track rating, toggle visual display, random, etc.), Keynote, iPhoto (slideshow, prev/next album, etc.), DVD Player, System (toggle scrensaver, system status, etc.), and Sound Studio.

Previous entry (1)

Date/Time bug: another workaround

I picked this one on Macintouch:

Tekserve's Aaron Freimark sent us [Macintouch] a tip that may help with Mac OS X 10.2.4's date/time bug:
People who have lost the time after updating to 10.2.4 may find that many files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory are corrupt (zero length). Replace them with copies from a Mac that isn't having the problem, and everything gets fixed.
An easy way to check to see if you have this problem is to look in your Date & Time Preference Pane, in the Time Zone tab. If it claims you are in GMT, and you're really not, you have corrupt zoneinfo files. I've tried this on a couple of Macs, and it works.
This command should work to copy the files (type it on the Mac with the busted time):

sudo scp -r username@11.22.33.44:/usr/share/zoneinfo /usr/share/

Substitute "11.22.33.44" with the IP address of a Mac with good files on your network (Remote Login must be on) and "username" means a user on that Mac. Note that there are only four spaces in the above command -- type carefully!

Should Apple integrate Bochs ?

There's been a lot of talk about Bochs as a possible alternative since Microsoft acquired Virtual PC last month, but one idea published in BusinessWeek got my attention: integration of x86 emulation into OS X. Waow. Mac OS X would become the most versatile OS out there.

Perhaps even as early as the upcoming Panther release (you know, the one after Jaguar OS X 10.2), Apple users could pop a Windows CD or DVD into the drive, and OS X would seamlessly launch Bochs and run the Windows code. In fact, I bet Apple could get this process to run smoothly enough that loading PC software would differ only slightly from launching Mac programs.

If you want to give Bochs a try, download it from SourceForge project page, or check out OpenOSX WinTel 1.0. Interestingly, multiple G4 CPUs can be utilized and are emulated as a single powerful Pentium processor or as dual Pentium Processors. Virtual PC files are compatible, and can copied over from the Finder.

Apple acknowledges Date/Time bug

Ahhh .. there we are. This date bug was puzzling me as several of my friends suffered from the symptom, but I didn't. A Knowledge Base article offers a workaround that assumes the availability of a network time server, with a promise of more information later.. Hm.