Software
Leopard ate my wi-fi
If your wi-fi’s been flaky since installing Leopard (mine was disappearing every few seconds, forcing me to turn Airport off and back on again each time), this might be the answer:
* Find the AppleAirPort2.kext file in Macintosh HD/System/Library/Extensions and delete it
* Launch Software Update and install (or reinstall) the Login & Keychain update
* Restart
It did the trick on my Powerbook, anyway.
Quick software recommendation - Windows web building?
Anyone know of a cheap PC web design package that’s roughly equivalent to iWeb, Rapidweaver or the like? Something that builds (nice) standards-compliant sites that’ll behave in Firefox, comes with a fully functional tryout and is particularly good for beginners?
I’ve been asked for a recommendation but I haven’t covered PC web stuff for a wee while now, and I think the last one I looked at was Serif’s WebPlus. It’s amazing how quickly you can lose touch with the market when you’re not covering it from month to month.
A must-have for your Mac mail
Using Mail.app? Want a three-panel layout with the message at the right instead of underneath? Then get yourself the Widescreen plugin, a wonderful wee bit of code.
Google’s giving away StarOffice now
A new Opera Mini is out
One for the mobile internet users: the beta of Opera Mini 4 is now available for download. I love Mini and the new features look good, but there’s a temporary issue with the Blackberry Pearl so I can’t run it just yet. If anyone’s given it or is planning to give it a go, I’d be interested in your comments…
For god’s sake Microsoft, support your own file formats
The other day, a nice man at Microsoft sent me an interesting document in Microsoft Word format. I couldn’t open it, because I’m using Microsoft Word on the Mac. He’s on Office 2007, I’m on Office 2004. Office 2004 no likey Office 2007 files.
Dear Mr Microsoft, I replied. Thanks for the file. Any chance I could have it in a format that works with, er, Microsoft Office?
Now, I’m no Microsoft hater, I actually like Office:Mac - I prefer working in Word:Mac to working in any other word processor - and I appreciate that the Mac BU has its work cut out finishing off Office 2008. But Office 2007 has been out since January, the Mac BU promised to ship Mac converters in March or April, and it’s now May. Where’s my sodding .docx converters? It can’t be that difficult, because there are plenty of online converters that will take a .docx and turn it into basic RTF. So where are the official ones?
The lack of converters is really annoying, because when it comes to operating systems I swing both ways, baby. PCs are running Vista and Office 2007, among other things. Macs are running Office 2004. I frequently work on one and then transfer to the other, and even more frequently I’ll be working in 2007 and forget to save the file in the old Office format. And then I call Microsoft very nasty names.
There are two issues here. One, if you promise to ship something on X date and then don’t, it annoys the crap out of your customers - particularly if you don’t pop up and go “hey! Sorry! Here’s what’s happening!”. And two, if you introduce a new file format, it’s a good idea to make sure all your other software actually supports it.
NetNewsWire 3 sneak peek
It’s not even a beta yet, but you can play with the next version of the excellent OS X RSS reader NetNewsWire right now. Despite the warnings it seems perfectly stable on my ageing Powerbook, and it comes with goodies including a shiny new interface, Growl notifications, preview thumbnails and Spotlight searching. NNW is already a great program, but version 3 looks like it’ll be a belter.
You don’t need Vista to view Da Vinci
Can’t remember which paper it was in, but there was a piece this morning saying that Bill Gates is a big old baddie because if you want to see the British Library’s digitisation of his Leonardo Da Vinci notebook, you need to spend at least £100 on Vista. Not true: the app runs on XP too, although you’ll need to install the .NET 3.0 framework. It’s the same tech I wrote about the other week.
Save the children (from porn)
Another day, another bit of blabbing on a radio programme. Yesterday’s blab was for Edinburgh station Talk 107, and the subject was pornography: specifically, stopping kids from seeing it. I’ve talked about the issue endlessly, but this time out as I trotted out the usual things - investigate parental controls, blah blah blah - I was thinking that parental controls are a pain in the arse.
Whether you’re on OS X or Windows, content filtering isn’t brilliant. Stick with the default browser and you’ve got a whitelist system (Mac and Windows), and in the case of Windows you can also use ICRA ratings, although I wonder how many people really know about it. If your browser’s Firefox, there’s a couple of add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts, and that’s about it.
One thing that struck me post-programme was: we’re getting quite good at identifying phishing scams, particularly now anti-phishing tech is in the major browsers. The filters are getting really good really quickly: I needed to get a screengrab of a phishing site the other week and it took hours, because every single fraudulent email in my inbox had already been added to the database.
Would a porn-filtering equivalent work? A cross-browser, cross-platform, not-run-by-lunatics, kids-can’t-bypass-it system that (when enabled) would compare a site or page against a big database (and/or analyse its content) and then block it if it’s full of horse porn? Something that doesn’t rely on site builders rating and classifying their own sites?
Does such a thing exist? The closest equivalent I can find is the ICRA content rating system and the ICRAplus filter, but that’s a Windows-only thing. I’m thinking more of a cross between Firefox’s anti-phishing filter and Google SafeSearch. I’m deliberately discounting the various family-friendly software programs out there, because as far as I know they have their own, separate databases: I reckon that the most effective database would be a big one that everybody uses.
Vista myths
Over at Tech Republic, Deb Shinder’s written a good piece on the various Windows Vista myths flying around - not just anti-Microsoft FUD, but pro-Microsoft nonsense too. It demolishes the “Vista needs a brand new PC” myth, points out that it definitely won’t solve all your security problems and addresses the (bizarre) suggestions that you can’t dual-boot with Vista or use a dual-core PC with anything but the Premium edition.