Feeling waterlogged?
August 6, 2010
I was playing around with Safari Extensions the other day, trying to figure out something simple just to play with and work through the process.
Anyway, although I do like the site, lefsetz.com is really annoying in that it uses the crosshair cursor as the default. It just drives me mad. So here is a simple Safari extension that resets the cursor on lefsetz.com to the default. Aaaand now I can read the site again.
June 21, 2010
Apple kindly sent me a reminder to get a new iPhone. Good thing they did…I had almost forgotten. No. Not really.
July 2, 2009
Uncategorized macheist, softwarereview Leave a comment
This is just a short review of the RSS reader, Times. It came as part of the MacHeist bundle this year, which I enthusiastically purchased, and now have a pile of apps to sort through.
The user interface of Times is the big draw. Basically it presents what appears to be a newspaper like layout based on defined RSS feeds. The overall effect of this is pretty pleasing. It is actually a nice alternative to the list-of-links that most RSS readers provide.
That being said, a little more capability to configure the application to look the way you want would be nice. A few more themes would really move this from a reformat of an RSS reader to something different. My suggestion in this area would be to mimic the layout of various newspapers. Themes that laid out the page like the wall st journal, the NYT, or perhaps some other papers would be a welcome and fun feature for the UI.
As it now stands, neither the background color nor the font are configurable which isn’t a huge problem, but the main UI can look a lot like a Google News page.
Times focuses largely on adding additional ‘pages’ with different feeds on them. This functionality works pretty well, though determining exactly where a new feed will end up when dragged to the main window is somewhat difficult.
Times can also post to Twitter, Digg, Facebook and Delicious, as well as any other page that can accept data about the current article. Configuration of these options is stellar, and the full custom URL building is very well done.
The “Shelf” in Times is much like clippings in NetNewsWire — a place to store articles to come back to later. The UI is great, and has adorable animations to go with it. It would likely get unwieldy to keep a large number of documents on the shelf — the shelf accommodates four “piles” of stuff which perform stack-like popup animations on mouse over.
For the non-RSS junkie, Times is an approachable and pretty aggregator, though it does need some additional touches for RSS neophytes.
To really bean aggregator for them, it might need a little more prompting or wizard-ish help to get users started; for example, the ‘edit’ and ‘shelf’ buttons aren’t entirely clear, the ‘Page’ menu lacks a ‘new page’ function (this is instead on the ‘file’ menu), and the UI could use additional clarity in the areas of adding feeds to the page, and managing the shelf area.
This is the area that makes Times largely unsuitable for me. I subscribe to hundreds of feeds, which NetNewsWire dutifully updates on my MBP in < 1 minute. Times, however, can’t seem to handle this many feeds. I attempted to import the OPML from NNW’s feed list, only to have Times crash or hang every time. Simply put, Times can’t handle a huge list of feeds.
Despite the manual configuration (specifying feeds instead of importing a gigantic list of feeds), Times is quite pleasant to use once configured.
Times is great for a leisurely poke around sites you might have some interest in. For blasting through tons of news, it simply isn’t the right tool. It is, however, an RSS aggregator that my mother or brother might use and enjoy.
June 17, 2009
Woot. Finally got my Eclipse + subversion to stop choking on their own vomit:
Lesson #2: If the subversion integration in Eclipse ever goes haywire for a project, delete this file:
[workspace dir]\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\[project name]\.syncinfo
May 23, 2009
FYI — this is what I looked like when I was smaller. My parents, as you can see, occasionally kept me in wheelbarrows.
April 7, 2009
So…I’m playing with some of the new apps I got as part of MacHeist yesterday. I didn’t really need any of these apps, but figured that if I found one or two in the mix that appeared worthwhile, it would pay for itself. And if not…well…at least I’d get to play with some apps for a while.
Anyway. I think my plan here is to do separate reviews for each app. So far I’m starting with the first one I’m seriously playing with — Times. Hopefully I’ll post the review this evening.
March 13, 2009
Kyle and I picked up a new iPod 3G each last night (me = black, Kyle = silver). They are definitely adorable. Just a few things we discovered:
Before they are loaded with music, they come with a voiceover note saying to please connect it to iTunes to load music. I don’t remember the exact wording, but…I thought it was cute.
As far as headphones go, the iPod does start playing when a headphone is connected to it, regardless of whether is it the 3G headphone or not. The 3G headphones are not the same as the headphones released earlier this year — they do not contain a microphone.
The shuffle 3g works with the (newest) Apple in-ear headphones in exactly the same manner as the bundled ones. Presumably, they would also work correctly with the volume/action/mic headphones released along with the new in-ears. The iPhone headphones’ action button does not function with the shuffle, nor does the Shure iPhone adapter.
The 3G headset does work as an action button with the iPhone, obviously without a mic. The 3G headphone also works with the new Macbook pros (unibody) as a remote for tracks and for volume. Unfortunately, iTunes 8.1 does not have voiceover, so clicking and holding the button doesn’t really do anything except pause the music when let go.
Anyway, the new shuffle itself is rather nice. Figuring out how to sync music to it, getting enough on the iPod without overflowing it was a bit of trial and error. Generally I keep my iPhone sync’d to iTunes, so there is approx 11GB of ‘checked’ music in iTunes, so…I made some smart playlists to contain a random sampling of stuff to fill up the iPod.
Generally voiceover is pretty good, though it does read things a little faster than I would like — I haven’t found a setting for voice speed yet, but…I’ll have to look around again.
All in all, the shuffle is a well done device. If you need something super portable that can be run without looking at it, the shuffle is a great choice. If you’re going to be irritated by having to use Apple headphones (or a forthcoming adapter), and don’t really buy into the non-visual navigation, then you want a nano.
I’m happy with the shuffle, however. Hopefully as things warm up here in Massachusetts, I’ll get a chance to use it outdoors more often 
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