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Here, we offer our occasional commentary on the Macintosh, job markets and anything else that catches our notice. Feedback welcome!

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September 26, 2007
Is your Web Address Secure?

In the Sept 25 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Delaney writes about the problems of domain name theft (if link expired use this PDF). I've seen several people lose their domain through carelessness, ignoring invoices or forgetting to keep their contact information current, especially their email address. As a domain name reseller we automatically renew our client's domain names for them, and collect the funds later if necessary, to avoid this. But as domain names are valuable property, actual theft is becoming an everyday occurence, so watch out - use a secure email address with hard to crack password. Keep your email address current at Network Solutions, GoDaddy, eNom or your domain registrar as approriate. Use this link to check your current domain name Who Is information. It might not be the most current and accurate, so if you use another registrar, go to their website and check it there. And if you want to register a domain name, or just have a question, contact us, we can help. We charge $17 per year, you get personal and prompt service and we will never let your domain name expire and get lost unintentionally. There are many domain scams out there. A company called Domaion Names of America sends out official lookig invoices which if you pay them, will transfer your domain to a different registrar of unknown security. So watch out!

August 9, 2007
New iMac access is retrograde step

As an owner of the original 128K Mac, over the years I have struggled to repair many Mac models, while being overjoyed with the ease of accessing some model's innards (loved the LC 475 pizza box!). After viewing the new 2007 iMac take apart pictures posted here I am once again distressed by Apple's total disregard for the future ease of repair/upgrade of the iMac once the warranty/Applecare period has expired. I own a 2nd Generation iMac G5 and can pop off the back in seconds and replace the hard drive with a simple screwdriver. The look is not that much different from the new ones, yet accessibility is so much better in the original. With the Intel chip Apple does not have the same cooling problems, but they managed to make the latest design so much more complex. Why???? I think this disregard for ease of maintenance is just as much a crime as options backdating, and in this case Steve Jobs is most certainly complicit!

June 23, 2007
UK Update - is $10 gas around the corner?

I was on holiday in the UK last week, visiting some old haunts in my home country, Scotland, including my favorite place, Tighnabruaich. I mention it with reservations, as the last thing I want to do is encourage too many visitors and spoil the tranquility! While not much has changed over the years, they now have DSL in this remote village.

Some observations: With gas, or petrol as the British call it, at around £1 a litre, which equates to $7.50 a US gallon, it's not surprising that small cars are popular. Many tiny cars not seen in the USA abound - Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, FIAT, as well as many Japanese microcars. My sister's Peugeot 407 diesel wagon with its panoramic glass roof gets over 45 mpg around town, and is quite zippy. Seeing large SUVs on the road is not rare, but there are few petrol guzzling pickup trucks. I wonder why?

There are now even more layers of government in Scotland - as well as local and regional councils, they have members of Parliament for Scotland, UK and Europe. Way too much rule making - the more law makers, the more legislation, the more red tape, as they justify their existence, fat salaries and expense accounts. One example - the UK leads the world in the number of Big Brother closed circuit TV cameras watching the public, as well as many speed-trap cameras ready to catch unwary motorists. I've read estimates that there are over 4 million CCTV cameras and over 4800 speed trap cameras in UK! Scary. Orwell's 1984 prediction was 20 years premature, but accurate. Perhaps they were watching me when I visited the Regent Street Apple Store in London. That's a neat store, the largest I believe at 28,000 sq.ft. The impressive glass staircase leads upstairs to a huge theater and Genius Bar. Sadly I was too early for the opening of the Apple store in Glasgow Scotland. But I am happy to report that iPods and Macs are seen everywhere.

May 5, 2007
Neat Mac icon collage on Flickr - By factoryjoe

May 2, 2007
The power of Google, squared

Today I read a tip on PC Mag's daily email on how to use Google to perform calculations. Earlier today I was hunting around my desk for a calculator for a simple calculation. I could have just typed my calculation into the Google search bar in my Firefox browser. I've also been using the free Google spreadsheet, ideal for real time collaboration. These Google guys are awesome for the amount of free stuff they give us. I've also been reading about Open Document Format, an effort get away from Microslug Word and Excel as mandatory document exchange formats. I applaud this initiative.

March 28, 2007.
Host your iWeb Website with your own domain name on Mac servers

Every new Apple computer comes with iLife'06. One of the best features introduced with iLife'06 is iWeb - a revolutionary application that lets you create really cool web sites with true drag and drop ease. I've been building websites for years with almost every tool available, and iWeb is for sure the easiest way I know to get a website online if you are a beginner. Apple would like you to become a Dot Mac member and host your iWeb site with a URL like http://iweb.mac.com/somesitename - but that's not very convenient and certainly not professional if you want a business website. Now Mactalent is offering iWeb hosting - with your own domain name, plus email addresses @ your domain name, visitor stats, Mac-friendly and knowledgeable support, and much more. Visit our hosting page for more information - there are links to some iWeb sites hosted on MacTalent servers. Mention MacTalent when you call, and for a limited time get free setup ($25 value) when you subscribe to our hosting! And if you have an older version of iLife and don't have iWeb, you can upgrade to iLife'06 for just $79.

January 30, 2007.
iPhone Fever? Not me.

Do I want an iPhone? Is the sky blue? But will I shell out $500? No way, not unless I win the lottery. And not as long as Cingular is the only provider. Least dropped calls, maybe. Most likely for calls to dissolve into unintelligible noises? For sure! I have a ROKR, was the first one to buy one from my local Cingular reseller, and it works OK for me, though I am not that obsessed about email to use its a pokey keyboard to send messages. I do think Apple has another winner with iPhone, once again setting the standard for coolness and functionality. It will be interesting to see how good the iPhone camera is, and how easy it will be to upload images to my computer.

November 9, 2006.
Review: Slingbox comes to Mac

I had been eyeing those nifty Slingboxes at the computer store for some time, but they only worked with Winblows. Now the SlingPlayer software for Mac OS X is in beta and available for download, and I am pleased to say it works well.

The Slingbox will turn your computer into a TV. You can watch your favorite program while working on the computer. Any computer on the network can now become a TV as well. But wait, there's more. If you are at work, you can tap into your home TV signal over the net. Just run the SlingPlayer software, enter in the ID of your home Slingbox and voila, you can tune to any channel you receive on your home cable. (Satellite will work too but I have not tried it). Albeit the quality of remote viewing is lower quality than if you are on your home network, it's still acceptable. And it doesn't cost you anything. I used to pay for a DirecTV dish at my office so I could watch TV, now I don't need to!

There are several models now, I purchased a Slingbox Classic and it works fine with my Comcast cable (no box); the Pro, AV and Tuner models offer additional functionality for more complex setups. Setup was pretty simple, no changes to my router were required. Initially I could not get the software to see the Slingbox but after I rebooted by router, suddenly there was TV picture and sound! And the remote connection at my office was very easy!

October 21, 2006. Autumn change of color

One of our old friends, Bill Ross, a talented and humorous technical writer and blogger, remarked that our little blog was hard to read, so we have toned the background color down. We always appreciate feedback. We plan to redesign MacTalent next time we have a gap between paying design jobs :) And if you are seeking a writer for your project, Bill is your man!

September 12, 2006. Beware TigerDirect Rebates

An Macintouch article describes a reader's difficulty getting rebates from OnRebate.com which is a sister company to TigerDirect. Here is some more info:The Rip Off report. I had difficulty getting a rebate last year and vow never to buy a product with rebate from TigerDirect again. Their store is a stones throw from my office but getting that rebate is next to impossible.

August 15, 2006. 175,000 new blogs a day

Dave Sifry of Technorati was interviewed by Scott Simon on NPR on Saturday 8/12. He noted that 175,000 new blogs are created each day, and the blogosphere now contains about 50 million blogs! Phew!

August 11, 2006. Apple completes move to Intel

With the much anticipated debut at WWDC of the Mac Pro desktop models sporting dual Intel Xeon processors, Apple has completed the transition from Motorola G5 processors to Intel. And these machines seem on paper to be screamers. I took a look at one in my local Apple Store, a dual 2.66 Ghz model with 1GB RAM, and it did not seem particularly fast. Maybe 2GB RAM would help. Or Leopard! I got some annoying beachballs switching from iWeb to Photoshop. And until Adobe offers Universal applications, the true potential of these machines will not be realized by many users. I do like the design internally. Swapping drives looks like a breeze with the four (yes four!) hard drive bays. No more kluges to fit those extra drives.

Me? I'll probably take the opportunity to pick up a G5 tower cheaper than it was last week!

I was excited to hear about some of the Leopard features. Spaces sounds like what I need. I keep a messy desktop, now maybe I can have three or four slightly less messy desktops. Being able to switch from my web design mode to web host maintenance mode to email without having to re-arrange windows sounds cool.

Apple also promises improvements to Spotlight, which is good because right now with the thousands of files I've accumulated on my computer it is always bringing up far too many files. It has potential but the first cut sucks. I just want it to search on file name most of the time, I don't want it to bring up files based on content unless the first pass does not find what I am looking for. Roll on Spring 2007!

June 13, 2006. More Apple TV ads debut

Three cute new Get A Mac TV ads have been released by Apple. For years users have been asking Apple to tout the advantages of Windows, but Apple was reticent for some reason. Now that they can actually run Windows on their hardware, they are suddenly being aggressive about touting their differences. Weird logic, I'd have said if Apple had asked me. But they didn't, did they? MacObserver has some commentary worth reading. Here are the links to the Quicktime videos.
Work vs. Home
Touché
Out of the Box

June 09, 2006. 20 Things You Won't Like About Windows Vista

Interesting Computerworld article previewing Windows Vista says: " Where does Windows Vista fit among many of the PC-based operating systems of today and the last couple of decades? With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability. It's hard to beat Apple's top-notch GUI design grafted onto an implementation of Unix variant, BSD. Mac OS X has excellent reliability, security and usability. That isn't to say that its user interface wouldn't gain if Apple adopted some other best ideas of the day, but Apple has the best operating system this year, last year and next year. It'll be interesting to see what the company delivers in its 10.5 Leopard version of Mac OS X...." [More]

June 05, 2006. A simple solution

Not computer related, but I am sure many readers face this annoyance cutting their lawns. And it's my blog so I can share! I've struggled with refilling the spool on my Ryobi string trimmer. Like many other brands, the spooled line always springs apart as I try to mount it, and jams once in use. I found a replacement at Home Depot for $20, Echo Rapid Loader. It's easy to load - cut two 9" lengths of trimmer line and push them into spring loaded holes. When they need replacing, pull old strings from the center to remove, and push another couple of pieces into the holes. Such a simple solution, it could have been designed by Apple!

June 05, 2006. Apple nixes off-shore support in India

I am so happy to hear that Apple won't be relocating tech support to India. It's not bigotry, just common sense. I've worked with many engineers from India over my career and they were very smart people. But the ones hired for phone support need to have exceptional communication skills and sadly, few do. They just read scripts from a screen. Early in my career, my heavy Scottish (Glaswegian) accent was a barrier to my telephone sales job and that was just selling to the English! So I know that accent plays a large part in getting along with customers. Luckily my accent adapts to wherever I am living. Nowadays few people can tell my origin - often my mixed Scottish/American accent is interpreted as Canadian! Last week I had three calls to Vonage support in India to resolve a minor annoyance. It was hopeless. They were poorly trained and hard to understand. Only when I requested a senior tech was my issue resolved - in 30 seconds! Not only do support reps have to be easily understood, they have to be well trained. Sadly many companies seem to think that it's more important to save money by pushing support offshore, than to invest in GREAT support. It's short term thinking. If I am not happy with support, next time I will vote with my feet and buy elsewhere.

May 19, 2006. 96 Genii wanted!

Apple's new Fifth Avenue store will be open 24 hours and have a staff of 300, with 96 people for the Genius Bar. That might allow folks to get their sick Macs repaired overnight. Compared to the less than 6 people behind most Apple Store Genius Bars, that's some serious muscle!

May 19, 2006. 2 thumbs up, 1 thumb down.

Tonight's final Will & Grace episode was cute, showing the cast aging but together. And Boston Legal's season finale was good too, with the usual excellent snappy repartee. But I was disappointed in The West Wing final show. Out with a whimper, I'd say. Possibly truer to real life, but boring. And that is a sad end to a once awesome show.

May 5, 2006. Dell wants to sell OS X PCs

Jim Louderback interviews Michael Dell on a podcast. He asks "when is Apple going to licence the Mac OS X to the other 97% of the market?" If that ever happens, you too will be able to call India for support. Reminds me of my friend Mujibar. You may know him:
Mujibar was trying to get a job in India. The Personnel Manager said, "Mujibar, you have passed all the tests, except one. Unless you pass it you cannot qualify for this job."
Mujibar said, "I am ready."
The manager said, "Make a sentence using the words Yellow, Pink, and Green."
Mujibar thought for a few minutes and said, "The telephone goes green, green, green, and I pink it up, and say "Yellow, this is Mujibar."
Mujibar now works as technician at a call center for computer problems.
No doubt you have spoken to him.

May 4, 2006. I've seen Daylight!

Last night I saw a demo of Daylite 3 presented by John, an Apple Consultant from Fobis at the local Apple Store. Daylite is the "ACT" or "Goldmine" for the Mac. It's contact management plus integrated calendaring and project management. Pretty powerful, and multi-user too. With links into Apple Mail so you can easily track email relating to a project. Sadly, no Entourage integration yet... and the report writer seemed over-complicated. I was lucky enough to win a copy in the drawing, so expect a detailed review once I have tried it out.

May 4, 2006. TypeIt4Me 3 goes Beta

TypeIt4me, written by Ricardo Ettore, has been one of my essential accessories for many years. It reduces the amount of typing by automatically expanding abbreviations into words or even paragraphs. For example I assign the abbrevation mtx for MacTalent, so when I type the abbreviation and hit the space bar, the full text is inserted. Works in any application! I have one for my URL, my address, my email address - anything I type frequently. TypeIt4Me 3 public beta is now available for download. It adds a nice Preference Pane and more configurability, and works more reliably under OS X than earlier versions. A must have app!

May 3, 2006. Thinking about Boot Camp?

Got an Intel Mac and the urge to run Windows? Version Tracker has a useful Resource Center. And Macintouch also has some good Boot Camp info.

May 3, 2006. Spam Filters Gone Wild

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today. Seems that AOL, Verizon and other ISPs are being over-zealous and blocking legitimate mail. This is not news to me, as an ISP, mail is my biggest headache. You either block more mail and users complain, or you reduce your filtering level and users complain about too much spam. I wrote about SpamArrest a while back which is a challenge response system. Works well if you have a closed group of friends who email you, but not so great if many strangers legitimately want to contact you. Since the challenge emails sometimes never get through their spam filters, or else they just ignore the message. Sigh. Maybe IM is the way to go. But I like the idea that email allows you to read and answer questions at you own pace. IM and cell phones are instant interruptors.

May 2, 2006 - Apple's new TV ads debut
Hey, Apple is finally is runing a TV ad that's not for iPod or iTunes! Gotta love these new Why you'll love a Mac ads. There are six in the series. I saw the Wall Street Journal one on TV last night, (I think during ABC's "What about Brian" show). The WSJ TV ad quotes their tech editor Walt Mossberg describing Macintosh as "the finest desktop PC on the market at any price". Wow! Walt must be Apple's favorite journalist. I like him too - he doesn't pull any punches, when he doesn't like something, you know. You can watch him on CNBC's Power Lunch on Thursdays.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

May 2, 2006 - Apple Retail is hiring ...

In the last few weeks Apple HR has finally woken up and started posting ads for Mac Specialists and Mac Geniuses on MacTalent! Now, where's that new 17 inch MacBook Pro they promised me? Maybe one of these days I'll write about my own experiences working in an Apple Store. Unless I get a "cease and desist" from Apple Legal. Talking of those guys, did you see the story last month about the third grade student who wrote to Apple with some suggestions for improving the iPod? She got a nasty response from Apple. Though they did later repent and apologize.

May 2, 2006. Wanna be published?

If there are any aspiring writers out there who want to post articles, product or book reviews on MacTalent, get in contact with us. Reviews can be short or lengthy. We will maintain editorial control and determine if the review is appropriate for the site. Products of course must be Mac related. And you will get a free Lifetime membership if we post your article.

May 2, 2006. MacTalent now offering Filemaker 8 and Lasso 8 Web Hosting.

See here for details. I attended the Lasso Summit conference a couple of months back, Omnipilot have been busy bees, and Lasso 8.5 is now in public beta. Lasso has come a long way and a lot of what they talked about was over my head, but just being in the same room with the gurus, some knowledge hopefully rubbed off!

May 2, 2006. Firefox is acting weird on me

Some of the graphics on my home page seem to be cached and won't display on my main computer (iMac G5, 10.4.5), though they seem OK on other machines. If you see any weirdness let me know.