Sometime back in April I’d talked about Canon 5D Mark II , well guess what I finally got to try one because of the lovely people at Kayell NSW . And truly it blew me away just like every other review of Canon 5D Mark II I’d read thus far! There is a very good reason why everyone wants to own this Canon body! Its outstanding. The things that jumped right out at me in …
Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Have you heard of an App called iEmoji? Well, if you haven’t I suggest you head on over to their site and have a look. Its a great little app if you like putting emoticons(emotional icons) when using SMS, MMS or Emails when using your iPhone. In some ways its a must have App on your iPhone and I agree 
— iEmoji is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch & requires iPhone OS 2.2 or later. Thats all you really need.
Have a read of what Apptism has to say.
Web pages built with iPhone specific emoji are displayed properly only when viewed with the Safari browser on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) with iPhone OS 2.2 or higher.
Go get your copy, Firefox 3.5 is out. And if you have a couple extra minutes have a quick view of Mike Beltzner’s preview of what’s new and exciting in Firefox 3.5.
First noticeable difference for me has been its speed. It rocks — blazing fast.
Its not much of an original post when you copy paste information, but sometimes you *have to* remind giants that sleep at the wheels inconveniencing and killing healthy competition and growth in the IT industry. Yes you guessed it I’m talking about Microsoft. Minutes ago I got an email from Campaign Monitor and The Email Standards Project. And soon I post the message you’ll know what I mean. I quote:
Microsoft have just confirmed they plan on using the crippled Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010.
This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position and no background images. Not to mention the long list of bugs and quirks that break the simplest of layouts.
The iPhone OS 3.0 software update is here. While I must admit I havent played around to check every little update feature yet, the Spotlight search in itself is a big time saver. Cut, Copy & Paste alone save a lot of retyping and mulling over dreaded typos. That is a mega saver, add to that the fact you can type in Landscape which implies lesser typos. Voice Memos – brilliant idea, Internet Tethering will be another hidden gem when you want to get connected easily.
Updating the new software for iPhone was absolutely pain-free and it was over in a couple of minutes. Apps seem a lot more responsive and start and close quicker. The only downside some apps in the App store are still not OS 3.0 ready but thats just a matter of time. Go get your update, its worth it.
My only concern was if Flight Control didn’t work — but it DOES just fine! Just between you, me and the gatepost my score last night was 87! 
At long last I’m a proud iPhone owner and like the rest who has tapped into the power of iPhone I am in sheer, awe, delight and joy of this marvel of technology!
Think I’ve done well to fight the temptation for a whole year since they were available in Australia around July 2008. Over the years I’ve had quite a range of mobile handsets but nothing has ever come close to the goodness of what apple brings in an iPhone. Really nothing comes close or is comparable to the iPhone! It is a masterpiece. A marriage of technology and superb interface. It is a love story of epic proportions if such a phrase could be used to describe a ‘gadget’. it just is! I’m truly floored by the design, the finish, the response, the crazy addictive App Store where thousands of people across the globe write jaw dropping Apps. It has considerably cut down my time in front of the computer! And dare I say I’m loving every bit of iPhone juice I can have.
For a good few months, probably a year or more I had been using Firefox as my main browser. But since the update of Safari 4 Beta I turned by head back to Safari. i dont dislike Safari 4, its just that Firefox’s add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts are a huge timesaver. While most things remain just as excellent with Safari the one that really annoys me is not having the stop/refresh button. Grrrrrr! It is now right next to the RSS icon. God forbid you want stop loading a page and you click the RSS icon instead of the Stop/Refresh icon.
If you are a Camino user chances are you would have noticed at some point surely that photos on Camino look a little less flattering or dull when you use Camino as opposed to Firefox 3 or Safari or Omniweb. This is because the default colour enabling module built in Camino is by default turned off.
Here is a simple thing you can do to enable it and you’d notice a world of difference.
Do you like taking photos? Do you have a Yahoo account? If the answer to the above are ‘yes‘ chances are you also have a Flickr account and post photos there. Yahoo lets you sign on to Flickr using your yahoo ID. My main weakness to Flickr is that there are lots of enthusiast photographers posting photos and discussions to better their skills and knowledge. Looking at other peoples photos often gives me a perspective into the photographers world of image composition, layout and execution of the process. Its very addictive and informative and caught unaware you can spend hours even before you know it. And this quest surely corroborates to heighten the photographic eye.
My age old iPod Nano still works fine but not quite the same when it comes to the earphones. The sound quality is not the best and often there is a cracking noise. I have always found that the earphones slip off easily, or maybe I just have funny ears.
I have been looking for a mid range compact earphone for a while and thanks to some good suggestions from HD and finally bought it from JB Hi-fi this afternoon. It really seems to offer a much richer sound experience. In fact I’m listening to Pink’s recently released Funhouse album as I write this. (Thanks DS, its a really nice album).
Mac OSX has a built in facility to zip your files on the fly and open them on double-clicking. But the only disadvantage with that is the fact that zipped files created this way add hidden files alongside, eg:
- ._filename
- .DS_filename
If you’re sending zipped files to someone on a windows machine these hidden files are of no use to them and worst of all these underscore prefixed files are visible to all and confuse users. In short, there are better ways to send zipped files from your mac. Two applications on mac that do this job really well are:
UPDATE: Google chrome is now available for download. The Speed and functionality on the beta software is noteworthy. Still working out the beta browser before I write more. It looks promising.
Canon EOS 50D
2 items hot off the press — well actually one of these is no longer hot as I let this sit in my draft way too long. Canon has indeed released its EOS 50D last month. and is already making some news. This would be one fantastic upgrade… for previous Canon DSLR users. There is a huge jump in the image resolution to 15.1 megapixels and a maximum burst for 90JPGs, ISO expandable to 12800, Face detection technology! I was a bit surprise to see that the 50D didn’t come with a 1:1 CMOS conversion. Would have been nice but good still.
Here is a little break from all the Hobart talk…
Nearly two years ago, on vacation on the beautiful Island of Corsica, I started to write an iPhoto plugin that was able to automate all manual steps needed to attach a picture to a Gmail message. A few weeks later I gave it to my friends. From their needs and ideas grew Mailplane: A full fledged mail client for Google Mail and Mac OS X.
How about that! Born in France, inspired by a vacation in Corsica. Being struck by an idea that really works when you are on holidays is something to remember. I kinda know the feeling as i get a lot of design inspirations when travelling. Its also because the mind is set aside from the daily drivel. So, what really is MailPlane? Read on.
MacLoc is a brilliant little app that does a simple thing in style — it locks your screen. And yes there are a 101 ways of doing this without getting yet another app on your macintosh free or otherwise(e.g.: Butler, DeskShade, Keychain, Scripts…) but I like the look of the icon — clean and crisp and happy to click lock my screen with MacLoc when I walk out for a coffee or a much needed break.
I have been an Adobe Lightroom fan since the early days and having dabbled in it a bit I could tell the power this piece of software had over others in the market — Capture One, iPhoto, iView MediaPro and so on. Still remember buying the first version before I headed to Perth for a holiday last year and then came version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 all with progressive changes until beta 2 landed on the threshold with some very promising additions. Since using beta 2 of the program I have found it IMPOSSIBLE to go back to Lighroom version 1.x so I literally stuck with it right until yesterday when Lightroom version 2 was released! I was quick to buy the upgrade after a quick look at Matt and Scott’s review and my own experience of working through Lightroom beta 2.
The long wait in nearly over, in less than a few hours iPhone 3G will be released in Australia. While I’d have been one of the contender to get it in the first release Apple having released iPhone with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone only has left me with little choice other than to wait. Perhaps that is a good thing for all I know.
It would be good to see all bugs ironed out when I get mine. It still annoys me to think 3 missed out on such a huge deal… For those who may not know 3 launched in Australia in April 2003 and was the first 3G network here in Australia not to mention its 1.7 million customer base to this day — not sure what went wrong in Apple not choosing 3 during release of iPhone. Surely 3 has a bigger audience base compared to Vodaphone and Optus. This probably saw 3 gets customers to pester Apple for iPhone (via Harry). And after a huge response from a lot of 3 users Noel Hamill, Director Sales, Marketing and Product, 3 wrote in a message that they are going to take this appeal to Apple. But no release dates were mentioned.
Is this short-sightedness on part of Apple? Not sure. Then again when the 2G iPhones launched in US a year back they released them with AT&T. Not the best carrier in US either. Go figure! Apple does great things and I loved most of what they do but Phone carrier market research for Australia has clearly not been their strong point.
Have you heard of PicLens? if not, this will really make your day! Its a simple way to enjoy your digital media that is images and videos right on your desktop in such a way that you’re not tied down to viewing it within the scope of the browser window. Its clickless browsing, with interactive previews at your finger tips. And most of all its a great way to view media on a big screen… and oh so suave
Not convinced? Watch the Demo here.
Download Piclens from Cooliris and give it a whirl. You won’t be disappointed.
Its Firefox party time again. Can a browser really make the Web better? Try Firefox and see for yourself. Learn more. If you want to get a quick update on whats new in Firefox 3.
- Download your copy and install in case you haven’t.
- Once installed, follow these instructions from Mikelao Photography to set your colour management to True(in case it is Flase)
- Colour management plug in can be downloaded from Sean Hayes website
- Once you have done the above steps confirm its all good by visiting the International Color Consortium.
Firefox away!
Update: If you wish to run both Firefox 2 and 3 simultaneously from your Mac or windows. And in case you want to enable kerning here is hope. If you’re unsure what Kerning is, read up at Wikipedia.
For those that Firefox on a daily basis you already know that Firefox 3 beta has been out for a while. And if you haven’t you can always download it from here. But very specially for those that use Gmail a lot and are sick and tired of the look and feel Gmail offers, there is a nifty little extension that re-skins the horrid gmail interface. You can download it here. Its called Better Gmail 2 by Gina Trapani. It has useful extra features and skins to Gmail, hierarchical labels, macros, signatures, file attachment icons. If you are a regular Gmail user, this is for you.
If you shoot, catalogue and process photos and wish to jump on Adobe’s Lightroom 2.0 bandwagon and need an invite — all you have to do is leave a comment here for me and I’ll send you one. Do check out the Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Forum here. I have been using Lightroom since its beta stages and Lightroom 2.0 beta over a month now. Obviously no software is perfect and does all you need in one go but Lightroom comes pretty close to what most professional and amateur photographers need and that is from my own everyday experience. Try it!
Back in the days when mobiles, or cellphone as they are known in America weighed like bricks and looked more like an upright shoe brush I had sunk my teeth in all that mobile gluttony just to see how good they really were. It was a Nokia, I don’t really recall the model number if there was one but it looked close enough to this. It had a rather nice digital screen for its time but did cost me lots of Indian rupees to receive incoming calls and even more to make outgoing ones! Aaah! Mobile technology was here to stay — people had figured out how to make money on the go. Even though it was somewhat awkward due to its size and weight they still were handy at best and mobiles seemed a great tool while commuting. It was a fashion statement for some and lots seem to take photos of them using a mobile even if it wasn’t their own — as if the handset were a new pet. Something to cherish for posterity! You guessed it, it was early to mid 90’s. people mostly kept their word of honour and sense of time. And those that had a mobile had the luxury to run late at the cost of a call. It was the start of a new disease! The running late disease which is so rampant today.
As of this afternoon, after much deliberation I picked up a d2 ±RW LaCie with LightScribe for burning and labelling all my CD/DVDs and miles and miles of photos that I have collected over the years. My macbook’s internal CD/DVD RW drive broke down in December last year purely due to too much wear and tear and possibly way too much movement and dare I say I had dropped my macbook a good few times too. And considering it use it about 10-12 hours every weekday … its a surprise it still works… plus it has travelled ✈ to India, Singapore, UK, France, Barcelona, HK, and as far as Perth in Australia all in less than 2 years. So there, having broken my burner and not having taken Apple Care I thought an external drive was the best way to go. Thanks Harry for your help and suggestions too. He reckons I’m a bit biased towards LaCie products. I think they are good and we do like the French.
I do have a copy of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Fireworks on my mac which gets used every now and then but I’d still like to use a lightweight vector app that does quick easy draws on demand. To that end 2 worthy vector apps stand out: Lineform from Freeverse or DrawIT by Pieter Omvlee.
I like to deal with my mail as it arrives and depending on priority and response deal with the reply or stow away for later or just simple trash it.
In other words I’m more or less diligent with keeping my Inbox clean and tidy and therefore one would hope simple and lightweight. It give me sense of achievement and quite literally peace of mind when my Inbox has less than 5 mails. But overtime every mailbox grows and therefore gets sluggish. Well, if you’re on Mac (Tiger or Leopard) there is a free nifty little program that does an amazing little trick of optimising your mail. Its called SpeedMail. It compresses the Mail SQL database and restores Apple Mail to new life and did I say its free!
I’m excited as a kid would be in a lolly shop… allow me to explain… yes I’m very excited that Paris Hilton is out of jail and Tony Blair is not the prime minister of UK anymore but unfortunately none of those really make me happy or excited as much as the fact that I am all set to get my first ever X-series enabled phone. If you’re wondering what X-Series means: its very best that a mobile and the internet has to offer packaged together. Read here for more information about what X-Series is. It would be good to have Skype on phone and the much needed Mobile Broadband. In a day from when this is posted iPhone would be hitting the US and there is much hype on it already…. but it possibly wouldn’t be before another three quarters of a year or so till they come down to Australia and are as easily available and usable with existing Phone carriers. In the meantime I might as well indulge in the all new Nokia N95. And with a 5 MegaPixel and Carl Zeiss lens you sure can leave your camera back home but my main reason for going forward with the N95 is speed, compatible with Three’s upgraded HSDPA network for ultra fast Mobile Broadband. Thanks for all your help Jez and Harry.
At all times spam is the lowest from of life on earth and perhaps the universe. But there is a good side to it as well.
From: kimberley
Subject: Karmakars.com
Date: 21 June 2007, 2:49:06 PM
To: Amit Karmakar
kimberley wrote:
i love your site. will you marry me? bye. xxx
Website: ———-
IP: 10.42.89.93
UPDATE: 6th Feb 2009: Problem solver perhaps? For the time being anyway.
Over the last few months I’ve come across articles claming Camino (a browser on the mac) to be the bees knees of speedy browsing on the mac. Sure enough its brisk baby as Om Malik puts it Not many come close to the speed performance of Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, but I still wouldn’t use Camino as my default browser for my everyday use. One major annoyance being rendering colour profiles.
Most sites have some form of graphic image, design, pattern or even a gradient. In fact its hard to find a site doesn’t use a photo or colour of any form. What was your last visited site that had no photos or colour? Hard to spot one isn’t it? When browsers donot render colour appropriately it means that the photos you see or the colours you view are less life-like. They are in most cases a flatter, less charming less punchy version of the real thing. Technically they are less saturated, less contrasty and the blacks do not converge at #000. They appear washed out. See the image below. The same picture viewed in 2 browsers (left is Camino, on the right is safari)
I was sent a Mircosoft Word document with 12 pages of information to go out on a website. Normally I don’t print unless I really really need to but I did this time.
The file printed almost successfully, in 13 pages all up and at the bottom of the 13th page, the page counter in the footer of the document read:
Page 13 of 12
Gotta love Microsoft! Life on Earth would perish otherwise.
The mind boggles…
I have had a registered version of Disco app for a while now almost since Disco app beta was available for download. A brilliant little app indeed and with just US $14.95 you just cant go wrong. Give it a whirl and if you head on over to Glenn Wolsey’s quick enough you might even get a discount coupon!! Or head on over to read about the interview with Austin Sarner, Developer Of Disco.
Here is to another vanity update. I once bragged about my Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericssons are so yesterday and fugly. I have got myself a nice flip phone… oh very sleek and with a gorgeous waistline. It black, it hot, its Motorola MotoRazr V3XX Talk to me!
Very shamelessly, yet again… I gave in to my minty lusty last night. Yes, yet again. Mint version 2 works a charm and is a lot faster than its predecessor. Smooth ola-la rounded corners, row hovers, diagonal hatch separators, and overall a lot more readable interface than before. Here is a quick run down of whats new in Mint 2. Well done Shaun.
Continue reading ‘Gave in to my minty update again!’
…real bad Better still I could grab one when we’re in the US in a few months time but will it be compatible in Australia? Am guessing the short answer for now is NO. But it will be in the near future. The internets abuzz with iPhone. I’d rather not bore you with my analysis of it as a lot is being said about it even as I type this now…. almost half a day after the announcement was made by Steve Jobs. What a revolutionary idea. Wow another blow to a hundred odd Mobile handset makers out there! Well done Steve.
This is something I’ve wanted WordPress to do right out of the box, and now that they have it sorted, its definitely worth a mention. Well done Matt and team. I can already see Harvard and Edublog has already take up the offer. Visit the links and have a look at the FAQ’s. This is a big blow to the already dying Movable Type.
Over the last few years… I have used my mac to the fullest… at least 15 hours a day most days, if not more… dragged it through the dry arid Death Valley in Nevada, to the chilling snows of Yosemite, a few road trips, outings, roughly 16 flights and about 5 of those where I couldn’t take it on board with me (American Eagle, and United flights)… everyday to work and back, on the train, the bus, the beach, the mountains… its gone with me almost everywhere. And now… after all these loving tender moments… the Toshiba HardDrive that Apple used for my PowerBook wouldn’t mount. It has what is technically called: a S.M.A.R.T. failure… after I ran my last program Onyx!
Continue reading ‘PowerBook in Mac heaven. RIP’
As much as it is important to have a good site(content, design) with clean valid links, it is also to have a sitemap that is UP-TO-DATE. Generally speaking when we talk about Sitemaps for a website, what comes to mind is a page, mostly static, where you’d have the sitemap laid out like a tree unfolding all the different parts of the website. Continue reading ‘Notify Google with your XML Sitemap’
Would this be an excellent gift for your black Macbook? what do you say?
I’ve been among the lucky few to test Wufoo when it was in beta and I was very impressed indeed at all the functionality and swish ajax driven interface all forms had. Wufoo lauched on the 5th July and it has been a great success since. Here’s wishing Chris, Kevin and Ryan for their hard work and also giving me a beta account. If you havent been to the site yet I strongly recommend you do.
WordPress undoubtedly is one of the most loved Opensource personal Content Management Systems for running a site but like any software its not without its share of much needed improvements. I’m also aware that die hard WordPress enthusiasts are burning the midnight oil to take it to the next level of finesse at Shuttle which encompasses a whole range of changes in terms of user-interface, design, code. I am listing down a a few things that in my opinion could make WordPress go a step further, Feel free to add yours. Some of the points mentioned may have been discussed elsewhere.
Am I spoilt or what? Eli, Neville and I went to Gilroys up the road from where we work and had a rather scrumptious lunch and of course if you go to Gilroys you have to have Kilkennys beer thats a given. On our way back the conversation drifted to wheather I was talking my iPod nano. Well I wasn’t going to but now I am. Trust me when I say I’m spoilt… Eli gave me his Sennheiser Headphones for my US trip. WOW. This is the PXC250 Sennheiser that has the amazing noise cancellation.
Tim Lucas along with fellow Sydney Rail enthusiast Hunter Nield is conducting an Introduction to Ruby on Rails Development half–day workshop as part of this year’s webDU which is targetted at developer interested in learning how to rapidly create quality web applications. This is the first of its kind in Sydney. Further details here.
Join the fun at their Flickr group where most of their session photos and feedback from the day would be posted.
And so the story goes…. MeasureMap was bought over by Google. As Jeff wrote here and here….
Thanks Russ for pointing this amazing tool out. coComment is a neat way of keeping abreast of comments in the blogosphere through RSS or even your browser. It captures shares and alerts as your comments grow in the blogosphere. You would be INFORMED when someone responds to your comments. You can SHARE YOUR COMMENTS on other’s blogs with your own readers? And keep all your comments without LOSING TRACK of your discussions. All in the one place! Neat!
What is the difference between Localization and Internationalization in the world wide web context? What are they and why do we designers and developers need to know?
The Lead of W3C Internationalisation — Richard Ishida (blog) during his visit to Australia conducted seminars in Melbourne and Canberra asking developers to think futuristically to allow for greater localisation of Websites and Web applications.
Russ, Lisa, Ajay and I are off to Canberra for the day to attend Web Standards Group meeting on Internationalization tomorrow. Russ has already blogged it so here goes! Can’t wait the drive will be fun. Canberra here we come. A small road trip before the big one 
UPDATE: Yojimbo widescreen view hack from HicksDesign. This will help the 2 column Yojimbo app to work in 3 columns which in my opinion is a tad more user-friendly if you have a wide screen.
BareBones has done it again!! Another great app with yet another daggy icon. Egh! You’d need 3 shots of tequila to look at it for more than half a second! So RED! So Ninja! (I don’t dislike Ninjas ) but so ‘not’ macish! Was the iconist working in dim light in an underground garage, with pirated software and more specifically designing on a Windows machine? C’mon Barebones!! Hire some good icon makers!!!!
A great new addition to WebKit—the Web Inspector. It lets you browse the live DOM hierarchy in a compact HUD style window, catering to the needs of web developers. The Web Inspector highlights the node on the page as it is selected in the hierarchy. Search for nodes by node name, id and CSS class name is also possible within the same window! Whoa!! I like it already!
Download the nightly build from http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=41 and run the followinf in Terminal.
defaults write com.apple.Safari \
WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
And you should be set to go. You’ll then see a new “Inspect Element” contextual menu item on any web page. This will open up the Web Inspector and refocus to the node under your cursor.
Macintosh is not only the preferred platform for professional web developers but almost most certainly for Professional photographers or most that do dedicated media work! It is true to say that serious photography and print and media work only ever happen on macintosh…not windows! Sorry Bill. This is because when you are on macintosh you get a lot of inherent advantages (native to mac OS X) working your graphics or photography there than you would elsewhere. I recently came across Rawshooter, from Pixmantec ApS a new RAW processing software. The premium package of this software sells for about US$99.00 Not too bad! Certainly competetive and boasts of a lot of features that photographers like myself would love to have… so I did sign up for a trial and to my amazement RawShooter is only available for windows WHAT!! Exactly!
More Measuremap tease is underway. Bright red signifies active visitors (right Jeff?). The scary bit… I think I know who is visiting from Iceland and Peru. Okie for the rest of you do flick in a comment so I know you hate my blog Until the next tease!
Thanks Jeremy for installing RoundCube. At Segpub you are not only looked after but you are spoilt!!
I have been experiementing with it for the last week and its growing on me! Not convinced about this AJAX goodie? Check out Mark Boulton’s review or if you like to sink your teeth in it here’s a little lovin’.
UPDATE: My brut-forced blog that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Matt Mullenweg introduced Akismet just a few days back. It’s a comment-spam defense system for WordPress. Only a few days back I had installed dr Dave’s brilliant SpamKarma v2 which seems to work very well (thanks Ruth). So my question here is: Which of the 2 is better and why?
Flock Developer Preview is now available. Go on give it a whirl. I love it already. Yes well I’m easy pleased BUT if you are anything like me and like technology ( I think ‘geek’ is over-rated) you’d know what I mean. Head on over and have a muck around.
Continue reading ‘Get Flock!’
Please tell me I’m not the first person in Sydney to sign up with plaze. Not again! I know am not. C’mon people sign up already! On that note can I also suggest you add the GeoURL tag to your site if its not in place? This greatly enhances statistical data and aids reporting demographic information more accurately. Onto Plazes now. What is Plazes? Its a service that enables you to be location aware? Why do I recommend it? Because, its a cool new way of interacting/ discovering people, sharing your location, you can automagically geotag your pictures and even your blog posts, enriching the things you create with location. When you need privacy it offers you the magic portion and makes you pseudonymous and totally invisible! In a nut shell Plaze = Location + Context! How cool. Thanks Doug for introducing this in your presentation.![](http://karmakars.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt= "Plaze me! Photo"){kind=icon}
Do you use them or have seen friends and enemies flashing ‘em around? Well I’m considering buying one… okie here’s the bit I am keen to hear about:
What a remarkable use of technology. This is what really makes me happy… people using technology to do things that aid and help for a greater cause. This recording was made a day before landing, STS-114 Mission Specialist Steve Robinson transmitted the first podcast ever from space! Listen to it here.
UPDATE: YAY! I have my new phone now!
Woo-hoo! click click ring ring!
After 13 months of experimentation with Motorola A925 I have decided to move on for obvious reasons…. Motorola A925 doesnt quite cut it for me. I am getting the brand spanking new Sony Ericsson k608i. It is the smallest and lightest 3G video mobile to date. Gawd that alone would be such a change cause I am so used to carrying my A925 brick-o-bile everywhere.
Chris started coding on his iBook 2 months back and look what he has come out with… CoconutBattery — a beauty app written in Cocoa. Download it and have a play. It tell you a lot more about your battery’s health than just a lit up progress-bar. And why on earth is that important? Well, the answer is simple if you know how your battery health better you’d surely be able to utilise it more effectively. It even tells you the load cycles! Wow. Well done Chris. Oh do send him a little donation as he is saving up every bit to get a flat panel display I am not too sure about his coconut fetish but hmmm he seems like a beach person. Well done Chris. CoconutBattery rocks!
UPDATE: Version 0.8 onwards it also tell you the age of your mac! CoconutBattery was previously known as myBattery
Which one do you use? I have downloaded both. iStumler seems more comprehensive but the GUI is less than helpful. IMHO. MacStumbler though mainly for looking up nearby 802.11b/g mainly it has the mac drawer concept, looks crisp and has better icons… alright I am getting a bit vain but really Macstumbler is more eye-candy than iStumbler, then again the latter seems to offer more features. What’s your thought on this?
I’ve been thinking of Informator Pro as it works right through the Finder of Mas OS X but their product isn’t Tiger ready yet and the trial downloads don’t work. GRRRR!! Painful and discouraging!
Continue reading ‘What’s your favourite IPTC editor on Mac OSX’
I bought Xylescope yesterday. I’ve been playing with the previous version a bit and its very handy tool for an web developer/ designer on mac. In fact I will go a step further to say it will save you an awful lot of time using Xylescope! Below is a screengrab of one of my gallery pages. On selecting on one of the thumbnail (backlit leaf) you will notice how the hierarchial navigation, HTML view, CSS view and Selector view are all exposed in the one pane!
Having had a bit of a trouble with Apache + PHP configuration and many trials and re-trials I decided to give MAMP a try. I had heard about MAMP a while back but never really thought of trying it until just about half hour back. Everything is up and running in less than a minute. Yes there is truth in that entry.
Continue reading ‘Mamp for your mac’
I have got a little surprise for you all wonderful people. John Allsopp, Maxine Sherrin and I have been talking a bit about Style Master 4 lately. Especially John as I bug him a fair bit with minor changes and CSS nags(ask him . I have been looking forward to the Style Master 4 upgrade and am so excited its here. I would very strongly recommend you go buy a copy if you don’t have one or atleasy try out the demo. Here are a few questions I decided to ask John and I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I did.
UPDATED 16th March 2006: Capture a Screencast with a Mac — tutorial on how to organise yourself before doing a screencast by Miraz Jordan.
Mac OS X comes with its own screen grabbing tool called Grab and it is fairly comprehensive but I needed something more powerful as I intend using this a whole lot more. On doing some quick searches I landed up here at Pure-mac with 26 applications to choose from. Holy Moly! Jeremy helped me pick the best one and I tell you this is one kick ass screen capture software. Wow!
Westciv, developers of the leading cross platform CSS Editor, Style Master, and long time supporters of web standards have released a special iPod edition of their renowned CSS Guide. Featuring a handy overview of CSS concepts, and in-depth information for every
selector,propertyand@ruleof CSS 2.1
TeamSite is a CMS produced by Interwoven Inc. And an approximate listing says about 1000 clients across the globe use it for pushing content both within the local Intranets and different extranets worldwide. Most sites that talk about Content Management process and architecture like CMSwatch.com, www.cmsmatrix.org and Oscom hold TeamSite in high esteem. But I have always been skeptic about it because I haven’t seen a single site deliver clean, valid code! As a website developer, designer and website consultant I am very pedantic about valid, clean and semantically correct code. But my view about TeamSite changed since David, Ruth and I started working on building a Template for a website.
Having read the entry at Elise’s blog I headed over to download Cocoa and connected to my database, it was so easy to use and blazing fast! You wouldn’t want to connect to mySQL through a browser page ever again if you have had a taste of CocoaMySQL.
I had downloaded a copy of CSSEdit software last night and been playing with it a bit. I do like their site — Macrabbit.com. Clean and crisp! But what made me LMAO was the nagscreen. Here is a screengrab! Enjoy. Jan, it works!!
What is FTP?
File Transfer Protocol — A way of transferring files over the Internet/Intranet from one computer to another. When this process occurs in a secure or encrypted way its called SFTP. You can read more about FTP on Steven Frank’s blog.
Continue reading ‘FTP Clients on Mac and PC’
A big thank you to the core members of the Web Essentials ‘04 group(Russ Weakley, Peter Firminger, John Allsopp, Maxine Sherrin) and all those that helped yesterday’s event come together so beautifully. It was a free briefing session for the Government and Education sector about Web Standards, adherence to code semantics and Accessibility(WAI). The Speakers included Russ Weakley, Roger Hudson, Dean Jackson about raising the consciousness in the Government and Education sector with focus on:
Wouldn’t be so wonderful if people shared, recycled, gave away old books and computers and or IT related hardwares. So often I have seen bookshops like Dymocks, Borders, Angus and Robertson to name a few… who hoard old computer books in the sheer thought of getting every cent out of it? I just got back from Borders in Hornsby a couple of hours back. They have had the Dreamweaver 3 book in their computers section for the last few months now. Also the Microsoft Exchange 5.5. My suggestion is to discount old computer books and sell them off at a lower price for students or to who ever might be interested.
Continue reading ‘Recycling old books and computers’
The BMW iPod Adapter, developed by Apple and BMW, provides seamless integration between an iPod and the car audio system in BMW’s 3 Series, Z4 Roadster, X3 and X5 Sports Activity Vehicles and MINI Cooper.
Drivers can control their iPod or iPod mini through their existing audio system and multi-function steering wheel which means no loss of power, no loss of sound quality and no loss of control.
I’m so excited with my new toys (: I have long been planning to buy my 20GB iPod but it just didn’t happen until last Wedensday. It is one fine piece of music player in fact it is the best in the market. Nothing beats it to-date. The other reason why I was so happy was also because it was my first ever buy in the mac line of things. I do have a lot of respect for anything Apple. Apples are luscious — remember Eve! Yes they are expensive, there are fewer software available. Their products are aesthetically superior, software are robust, design and product architecture is top of the range. My next major computer buy probably will be a mac. Bit fed up and tired of Windows constant catching up on security patches, even Longhorne doesn’t do it for me!
UPDATE: If you have moved to Vista you might like to have a read of this article to make your Vista run faster. Thx Nick.
Disable your unnecessary services to improve performance without sacrificing functionality. Michael Otey writes about Windows XP’s 26 automatic services that startup everytime you boot, Luckily these can be turned off from Control Panel > Services Applet. Few users need all these services and by turing them off you would help your system run more efficiently.
The services that can turned off are:
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