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Our launch today of the newly designed TidBITS Web site is the result of about 15 months of work in transitioning our old architecture for writing and editing articles, assembling and publishing issues, and feeding out articles and other bits online.
Adam wrote about our back-end transition for managing assembling issues that are sent out via email back on 11-Sep-2006 in "Behind the TidBITS Curtain." That overhaul also meant a new back-end for db.tidbits.com, the site that served as our arti...
We'll be updating this page with known issues and fixes; please don't feel the need to report anything that's here.
[To Do] Right now, www.tidbits.com is redirecting to db.tidbits.com. Since we have a lot of old pages on www.tidbits.com that can't move over easily, this was the easiest method of bringing the redesign online without breaking older URLs. Eventually we'll figure out how to get the two systems communicating better.
[To Do] When you do a search, the Refine Search link is curren...
The redesign of TidBITS is now live, and we'll be writing more about the experience soon, but I wanted to note something quickly that saved me a bunch of work. In the upper-left corner, at the top of the navigation bar, you'll see icons for RSS and Podcast links. Initially, I made my own icons and, well, they were terrible.
Most people probably aren't aware that designing icons well is really hard work, especially tiny icons. In this case, I needed to create something that has become familiar...
I don't have an iPhone. Nor do I (yet) have an iPod touch, which can roughly be described as an iPhone without the phone part. But I still want to see what our Web sites look like on an iPhone, for obvious reasons. I'm sure I'm not alone, and there are plenty of Web designers out there tasked with developing sites that are at least readable on an iPhone, but whose managers won't actually spring for an iPhone or iPod touch.
Thanks to iPhoney, a new open source browser developed initially by Ma...
I just tried to make something in Numbers for the first time - a race results sheet for a race I'm organizing. The sheet is tremendously simple - just a grid with finish places pre-filled in the left-most column. I'm no spreadsheet expert, but I was initially boggled by the lack of a Fill Down command in Numbers. After a quick trip to the help, I discovered it was just a matter of entering 1 in the first cell, typing =A1+1 in the second cell, selecting the second cell, and then dragging down to ...
Here's a novel concept: When you hear a song you like on the radio, you'll be able to press a button on your receiver to mark your interest, and later purchase it via iTunes. The only problem? A fair number of steps and requirements: a new digital AM/FM receiver with a special hardware button and an iPod dock. It's not that far-fetched, though.
Let's start with the radio. You'll need a radio that tunes in digital AM and FM, known as HD Radio (the trademarked name) or in-band, on-channel (IBOC...
My consumption of TV programming is far below the national average, but there are a few shows my wife and I watch religiously. When we were contemplating our move to France, that's one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about. French TV stations don't carry most of our favorite shows, so how are we going to keep up with them? To make a long story short, I eventually learned that the iTunes Store had about 80 percent of the content I cared about, and the rest appeared to be available fr...
Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted an open letter to the company's Web site today acknowledging the dissatisfaction over yesterday's iPhone price drop shared by the hundreds of thousands of people who previously purchased iPhones. Although details are still being worked out, Apple plans to offer "every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail...
On the day Apple introduced the flat-panel G4 ("lampshade") iMac, back in January of 2002, I ordered one online. During the check-out process, Apple helpfully suggested a number of accessories I might like to purchase with my iMac, and although I didn't think I really needed it, I caved to the marketing pressure and bought an iPod - that is, the original, 5 GB, scroll wheel iPod (for $399 - can you imagine?), which had just hit the market a couple of months earlier.
As it turned out, I never ...
I'm sure the question "Why hasn't Matt Neuburg been publishing many TidBITS articles lately?" is right up there in most people's minds along with other burning questions of the day. Or maybe not. But I'm going to tell you the answer anyway: it's because I've been very heavily occupied with FaceSpan 5, which is currently under heavy development by Late Night Software.
FaceSpan 5 is an application development environment - it's an application that you use to write applications, with the distinc...
As you probably know, I've written Take Control of Customizing... books for Panther and Tiger, and for the past two weeks I've been busily working on what might be last major draft for the Leopard version. These books are not really just about customizing; the "customizing" concept is more like way of introducing what's new and important in the system. So when this book comes out, it could be a good way to get acquainted with Leopard in general. That's what I'm aiming at, anyway.
I can't tel...
The Mac OS has long boasted speech synthesis - the capability to read text aloud - but honestly, the quality of the voices, though perhaps better than the competition, is still pretty awful. No one with a choice would listen to Victoria's robotic intonations all day long, although Jeff Carlson's interview with Fred was a hoot (see "Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh: Fred," 2003-04-01).
That's why the speech quality of the voices in Infovox iVox is so impressive. They're not perfect; yo...
Recently I've been using Linotype's FontExplorer X, and now I'm wondering what on earth I was thinking, to have waited so long. It's terrific. All I'm using it for, basically, is to keep the fonts I don't use deactivated, so that applications start up quickly and font menus are kept short. I used to use Apple's Font Book for this, but FontExplorer is way better. The interface is an order of magnitude beyond what Font Book is capable of; it's ingenious but simple, and shows you incredible amounts...
Red Sweater Software has released MarsEdit 2.0, the first major release since acquiring the weblog publishing software from NewsGator Technologies in February 2007. Originally developed by Brent Simmons of Ranchero Software, MarsEdit had languished somewhat after NewsGator purchased Ranchero for the NetNewsWire application. Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater has been hard at work ever since, refining the user interface, making it significantly easier to add files and images to posts, creating seamless...
Just keeping up with Apple is taking some effort these days, as the company rolls out new hardware and software products every few months. At a special event on 05-Sep-07, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced new versions of all current iPods, a new version of iTunes with a custom ringtone maker for some purchased tracks, the new touch-screen and Wi-Fi-enabled iPod touch, and the capability for the iPod touch and iPhone to purchase music from the iTunes Store via Wi-Fi connections.
But first, let's...
Nearly 11 months after Qualcomm announced that the venerable email client Eudora would transition to an open source platform based on the Thunderbird client, we have a public beta release! (For the original announcement, see "Eudora Goes Open Source with Thunderbird," 2006-10-16.) The Penelope project has released Eudora 8.0.0b1, an in-progress look at how those aspects of email that were unique to Eudora are gradually being grafted on top of the Thunderbird core.
Somewhat confusingly, two t...
In a post to The Official Palm Blog, CEO Ed Colligan announced that Palm is killing the Foleo, the smartphone accessory that looked and acted like a laptop, but which wasn't a laptop, Palm employees insisted. The Foleo was due to ship this month. (The Kerbango was an Internet radio device that was killed at the last minute by former Palm parent company 3Com.)
Colligan's reasoning is that Palm is well under way to develop its next-generation software platform, and because the Foleo apparently ...
Mac OS X 10.5 promises to provide screen sharing, but for the next few months, or when needing to share screens with people on other platforms, take a look at Yugma, which provides WebEx-like screen sharing in any Web browser. I ran across it a while ago, and have used it once successfully when getting a demo of SpotDJ, though on another attempt, Jeff Carlson wasn't able to get it to load. Basic features available for free (with ads) for up to 10 users include desktop sharing, free teleconferenc...
Ambrosia Software released iToner 1.0 today, a simple utility that lets you add MP3 or AAC audio files to an iPhone for use as custom ringtones. By default, the iPhone includes a limited set of 25 ringtones (which admittedly sound better than the beeps and clicks found on most phones); you can't yet purchase others through AT&T, a business that has proven to be surprisingly lucrative for the phone carriers (about $600 million in 2005, for example). What's notable about iToner is that it doesn't ...
Apple has announced that the iTunes Store will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming season. According to Apple, NBC Universal decided not to renew its agreement with Apple after Apple declined to pay NBC more than double the wholesale price per episode. That would have had the effect of increasing the per-episode price of NBC TV shows from $1.99 to $4.99. Three of the top 10 TV shows on iTunes came from NBC, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.
That loss will no ...
QuickerTek released several new Wi-Fi adapters for Macs of all makes and models today at prices far below their previous pricing, and undercutting the cost of adapters from other providers of wireless alternatives to Apple's gear. The adapters include both 802.11g and 802.11n adapters to complement or update the firm's existing line-up and prices.
While Apple has offered AirPort Extreme with 802.11g since 2003 as an optional or included adapter card or built-in interface on all Macs, and mor...
This might seem like an obscure announcement, but the AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n now has Wi-Fi certification for its underlying and in-progress wireless networking technology. The AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n Firmware 7.2.1 update upgrades the unit's firmware to a version that earned Apple a certified Wi-Fi mark. (It also fixes an obscure IPv6 problem in the 100 Mbps base station only.)
The 802.11n standard dramatically improves the speed of wireless networks - I'...
Ah, the wonders of the public domain! After Ergonis Software created a version of our public domain TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for Typinator 2.0 (see "TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary Enhances Typinator," 2007-08-27), Greg Scown of SmileOnMyMac contacted me to verify that it was indeed in the public domain so they could distribute it for TextExpander. I told him it was, and less than a week later, SmileOnMyMac posted a version of the dictionary for TextExpander. And, since Riccardo Ettore's Ty...
Apple has released iPhoto 7.0.2, an update to the version of iPhoto included with iLife '08 and often referred to as iPhoto '08 by Apple. The terse release notes call out fixes related to publishing to .Mac Web galleries, rebuilding thumbnails, and editing books. iPhoto 7.0.2 also reportedly fixes a number of other minor bugs. The 8.8 MB update is available via Software Update and as a standalone download.
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My sincere apologies to the 10,000 or so people who received spam sent through our TidBITS text issue list today. Joe alerted me to the problem while I was out picking up Tristan at his grandmother's house, so I rushed home to deal with it. When I saw that our server still had some 12,000 messages to deliver, I shut it down and deleted the entire outgoing mail queue. After examining the traces of what happened, I don't believe it was a targeted attack, just the result of an automated spam progra...
Our buddy Andy Ihnatko, who most of you probably know from his writing in Macworld or the Chicago Sun-Times, is breaking into TV. On last week's CBS Early Saturday show he explains, in his inimitable style, the best (and worst) ways of drying out cell phones (and by extension, iPods and iPhones) that suffer a dunking in a puddle, sink, or worse. Who knew that kitty litter worked well for bringing sodden electronics back to life?
...
As of 12:00 PM Eastern on 27-Aug-07, the Flash animation at the top of the Microsoft Exchange Server page shows a swirl of "smoke" displaying all the benefits that Exchange Server purportedly delivers, email, compliance, calendaring, viruses, voicemail, unified messaging, viruses, flexibility, viruses... Thanks to Marshall Clow for pointing this one out.
Where did it come from - a disaffected graphic artist taking a pot shot, or a marketing bullet point gone horribly wrong? We'll likely n...
For a long time, I was depressed about Twitter. Apparently, lots of people were using Twitter to microblog on their mobile phones, sending short text messages to friends - and strangers! - about what they were doing. I work at home and have poor mobile phone connectivity, so I felt left out of the party.
A week or so ago, in a fit of modernization, I tried Twitter, though not from my phone. Instead, I went to the source, the Twitter home page. I had a great experience. It was easy to make an ...
Thanks to our friend Ned Holbrook for the correction of the week. In "C4 Conference Rethinks MacHack" (2007-08-20), I described Erlang as a "new" language, but it turns out that, although there has been renewed interest in it of late, Erlang was first used within Ericsson around 1987, making it about 20 years old. "And," as Ned said, "if you enjoyed this correction, you might also enjoy 'Erlang: The Movie'." Don't miss the martial arts "Erlang Quan: Basic Applications" movie that YouTube thinks ...
Lest you think that the Internet is solely a medium of light and electricity, this illustrated tale should remind you that the Internet full of heavy and electricity, too.
Our long-time co-location facility, Digital Forest - the folks that house our servers and provide juice, cooling, and connectivity - needed to add additional capacity for their power backup. I'm used to seeing uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) that are the size of a shoebox or a little larger. They contain batteries or ...
Apple recently updated the iPhone and two iLife '08 applications, fixing mostly unspecified bugs. iPhone 1.0.2 offers no details as to what's changed other than "bug fixes" and is available only through iTunes. iMovie 7.0.1 also offers unknown fixes, but also solves an issue with publishing movies to .Mac Web galleries; the updater is a 9 MB download. Speaking of publishing Web sites, iWeb 2.0.1 (a 12 MB download) tackles problems when upgrading and publishing sites created using iWeb 1.x.
...
I just got a text message from AT&T on my iPhone:
"AT&T free msg: We are simplifying your paper bill, removing itemized detail. To view all detail go to att.com/mywireless. Still need full paper bill? Call 611."
So, after AT&T defended the practice of sending 300-plus page bills with useless itemizations, it's now caving under the public-relations pressure and making the full print bill the optional item. Yay!...
Life has been hectic of late, with lots of guests, the C4 conference in Chicago, Tonya and Tristan off on vacation, and oodles of things to do. I realized I was going to have trouble finding time to get my MacBook ready for a trip (basically a matter of copying my Eudora folder over so I read email on the laptop rather than my desktop Mac), so I did it a few days before leaving. And since I've gotten back, I've been sufficiently busy - and I've had a few instances where I needed to use the MacBo...
When Ergonis Software released Typinator 2.0 with the capability to correct typos on the fly and import text files of errors and their corrections (see "Typinator Turns Two," 2007-06-11), I immediately thought of the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary, a huge list of misspelled words and their correct variants that we made available for Eudora users who wanted to take advantage of Eudora's hidden auto-correction feature (see "An ATypoKill Eudora Hack," 2000-09-04). That dictionary, created largely b...
The Apple Store in Seattle's University Village mall suffered a security breach - through the roof! Thieves broke in and stole laptops that were left for repair, which will be a bummer for those who didn't heed Apple's advice to back up computers before service. One expects Apple's insurance will cover replacements for the poor Mac owners whose laptops were absconded with.
The burglars set off motion detectors at 4.44 am, but because they didn't go through the door, whoever responded - the a...
"Sidejacking" has entered the lexicon of network attacks. This newly defined term (it's not even in Wikipedia yet) refers to a method of hijacking an in-progress Web session with a remote service - like Gmail - by intercepting and re-using the credentials that identify you to that server. A sidejacker can read and send email from your Gmail account, update MySpace pages, and potentially steal your identity and make your friends and colleagues think you're evil, insane, or criminal. And that's ju...
Just a month after releasing a security update to Microsoft Office 2004 (see "Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.6 Addresses Security Issues," 2007-07-16), Microsoft has done it again, releasing Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.7 Update. The 8.5 MB update, which you can also install directly from within the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility, reportedly fixes a vulnerability that an attacker could use "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." The 11.3.7 update requires that ...
There are two big controversies brewing in the iPhone world right now, both squarely in AT&T's purview.
The first is that AT&T defaults to sending you detailed information about your phone use, including a printout, arriving through the mail, of every text message you send or receive, as well as every block of data; they do this even if you have unlimited service. The canonical example is a customer whose 300-page phone bill cost AT&T $10 to send.
This is an idiotic waste of paper (blogger...
Want to see how the new low-profile Apple Keyboard compares to a variety of other keyboards from Apple's past? Check out Blake Peterson's image gallery showing the new keyboard next to the Apple Lisa Keyboard, the Mac Plus keyboard, the Newton keyboard, and others.
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At C4, I ran into David Teare, who publishes the 1Passwd utility, and I complimented him on how smoothly 1Passwd updates itself. Although it does have to interact with the user to quit open browsers (since 1Passwd is a browser plug-in), the rest of the process is nearly seamless. When you launch the 1Passwd application and an update is available, it displays a window showing release notes for the latest version, nicely color coding the headings for new features, changed features, and fixed bugs....
