AuburnCom Weblog

Have you tried the NetNewsWire application for the iPhone?

It’s awesome.

Subscribe to your favorite sites using RSS through an online (free) version at Newsgator.com, use the (Recently) Free Mac Desktop version of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire on the iPhone will synchronize your subscription list and pull all those stories from all those sites (my iPhone is currently displaying 2367 stories unread!) to your iPhone for local reading, you can switch off all your wireless functions, put the iPhone in Airplane Mode and go into a nuclear bunker, the playa, or an airplane, and all those stories are there in full glory waiting to be read.

If you’re new to RSS here are some great RSS feeds to begin with:

The Macalope RSS Feed

Dilbert Comic Strip RSS Feed

“iPhone” ads on Craigslist RSS Feed

Why did I feature these feeds? One very big reason, all three offer ‘Full’ Syndication, the posts that come through the RSS feed are the entire subject, uncut! Other Rss feeds like the Nytimes, BBC and even our own SFgate offer only short clips of stories in the RSS feed, avoid those, stick with good full feeds and embrace papers and journals that offer such RSS feeds, my favorite paper and electronic journal: Wired

Try out NetNewsWire Today

!

P.S. When you start getting too many feeds to handle on your iPhone, go to the newsgator website. Settings->Edit Locations->NetNewsWire iPhone/iPod-Touch — you can edit the feeds you get there! (thanks to davidbro)

Thanks to a tweet by jaxmac, a mac Sysadmin from Florida, I’ve been trying out the new free wordpress application for the iPhone and iPod touch.

You can post to multiple different wordpress blogs, write posts while offline! And it’s pretty simple to use, even easier than the actual wordpress web browser interface, and leaves just one question, when will we get a foldable portable bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone, which is rapidly becoming the one device to rule them all!

A great stand: the iRizer

Apple Wireless Keyboard 

Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse 

Sony Quick Battery Charger and rechargable Batteries  

 A brief question from a valued client: 

Chris has mentioned you set him up at home where he can use virtualdesktop to log into work? Can you send me the instructions for this or alink to the download? Ideally I can do this with our imac so I do notneed to bring my lap top home.

  You’ll need VPN access to your work network, once you have that you need to make that connection, if it’s a simple VPN connection, then the built in VPN functions of the Mac can get you connected, if it’s more complex or secured, you’ll need “VPN Tracker”($119), available from: http://www.equinux.com/us/products/vpntracker/Once you can get connected to the office, you open and execute “Remote Desktop Connection”($Free) from Microsoft, available here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspxThe VPN settings for your company should be easy to get from your Tech Department, putting those into the Mac or VPN Tracker may be difficult, but after that, setting up “Remote Desktop Connection” is pretty straightforward.Don’t hesitate to ask more about this, I build VPN solutions often for clients, for both large and small companies,

Thanks to John Gruber for pointing out this article on Tom’s Hardware.As a client of mine pointed out just before I bought my Air, the early SSD drives are not mind bendingly better at saving power than the good seagate spinning disk hard drives. They DO however have a much much much lower failure rate.Average hard drives fail between 1 and three years into usage, Hitachi’s sometimes in the first week, that’s why we supply and install only Seagate hard drives that come with industry leading Five year warranties, meaning that as long as your time machine backups are being kept, your hard drive will be replaced free up till 2013 (when hard drives will be a distant memory ;)  

Oh, Yeah!Adam C. Engst reports for tidbits that

“Precipitate Shines Mac Spotlight into Google’s Cloud”Stuart Morgan of Google has released a free Mac OS X preference pane called Precipitate that enables Spotlight and Google Desktop to search documents stored in your Google Docs account, along with your Google Bookmarks. 

 Try it out here: http://code.google.com/p/precipitate/

Segway’s now former CTO Doug Field, has just joined Apple, working directly with Johnathan Ive (arguably todays DaVinci, he creates some of the most beautiful functional design around), The executive is rumored to be working on a scooter for Apple, imagine that! Wouldn’t that be awesome?! 

WSJ’s Walt Mossberg has written a neat article over on the All things digital website, it covers some simple things to know for switchers, like:

 Menu Bars: In Windows, each program typically has its own menu bar. On the Mac, there’s a single menu bar at the top of the screen that changes, depending on which program you are actively using.

Task Bar: The equivalent of the Windows XP Task Bar on the Mac is the Dock. Unlike the Task Bar, which primarily holds icons representing open windows, the Mac Dock primarily holds icons of programs you use most often. To place a program onto the Dock, you just drag its icon there. To remove it, you just drag its icon off the Dock and it disappears in a puff of animated smoke.Start Menu: There is no Start Menu on a Mac. Its functions are divided between the Dock and the Apple menu at the upper left of the Mac screen.Control Panel: The Mac equivalent of the Windows Control Panel is called System Preferences, and it can be launched from either the Dock or the Apple menu.Keyboard shortcuts: Common Windows keyboard commands, such as Ctrl-S for Save, Ctrl-P for Print, and many others, are also available on the Mac. However, instead of using the Control key, they use the Mac’s Command key, which bears either a cloverlike symbol or an Apple logo. So, on the Mac, for instance, Command-S is for Save.

But, best of all are the comments, of which there are currently 43, which all have more advanced tips like:

 If you are lucky enough to live close to an Apple store, they offer a great program called One to One, which is personal training. For just $99 a year you can come in up to once a week for training on your Mac. My neighbor just got her first Mac and it’s amazing what she has learned so far. She says that the trainers are very patient and make the lessons on what she wants to do with her laptop. She hardly calls me anymore with computer questions. It’s a bargain! 

—————————–One argument I often hear from Windows people is that menus belong to an application so should be in the window. This is logical programmer’s thinking, but Apple thinks different. Well for one thing that wastes screen space because every window requires menu space. But there is a much more fundamental reason - Mac menus are much faster for the user. It’s called Fitts’ Law and is expounded by Bruce Tognazzini at:http://www.asktog.com/basics/f…..l#fittsLaw

What this means is that an object (the menu) at the top of the screen is infinitely big in the up direction. Thus a user needs only flick the mouse upwards and has an easy-to-hit target. In Windows, the user must carefully position the mouse over the menu before clicking. The claim (backed by some tests) is that Mac users are five times faster hitting menus than Windows users. It is probably why Windows users much more rely on so-called keyboard shortcuts, which aren’t even shortcuts compared to the shortcuts on the Mac.IanPosted by Ian Joyner at July 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm  

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I switched last December. My concern at the time was the learning curve after using Windows all my life (I’m 64). Within hours I was up and running and had no problems what so ever. I believe that the iMac I purchased was one of the best investments I have made and even today it still amazes me.

Posted by Allan Sherman at July 3rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm  

 

 

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You can find an excellent free switchers tutorial at MacProVideo, as well as other quality video tutorials… Highly recommended!

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/xpToLeopard 

A lot of folks love Google Talk over any other instan messanger, even Adium or iChat, because of a couple of features,

one, it works in your browser with no extra software,

two, it saves all your chats, and includes their text when you search through your emails

three, it has a neat “off the record” feature that disables item two, other software like ichat is either in “always record conversations” or “never record conversations”

Well, starting today, Google talk has a slick new webapp for the iphone that gives you all your Google talk benefits right to your iPhone or iPod touch, try it out here: google.com/talk