Google has quietly updated its home page, it is now cleaner than ever:
It remains clean if you type
your search query and press Enter.
Other items fade in quickly if you move the mouse
inside the browser window.
This works on all browsers that I tried except Internet Explorer 6 (it works on IE8, I don’t have IE7). Note also the aggressive push for Chrome.
The message “A better way to browse the web / Install Google Chrome” appears on all browsers except Firefox for Windows — it does show in Firefox
for Mac. Bug or feature
?
I’ve always liked the iPhone’s Stocks app, even in version 1.0. In addition to the eye candy, the app showed out of the box thinking.
Most other charts have the axis labels neatly rounded, e.g. if the price range is between 11 and 29,
the Y axis la bels would
be 10, 20, and 30.
But someone forgot to tell the iPhone developers.
Instead, the Y axis on the Stocks app shows the low and high for the stock or index, thus c
onveying very useful information on a diminutive screen.
In the chart on the right, you can tell right away that the low and high for the index are 4683
and 5050.
Recently, I was further impressed with how the app handled an interruption in data feed:
Compare the above with how Yahoo! Finance handled the interruption in data feed on the same day:
When we moved from Phoenix to San Pedro several years ago, I reminded my wife all the time how my commute
became longer, all of 2 miles instead of 1.5.
We moved again a couple of months ago and my commute
is now a whopping 11 miles, driving under blue skies on a scenic coastal road, with the view alternating between Catalina island, beautiful beaches and imposing cliffs, often watching the sun setting on the Pacific Ocean.
It’s horrible!
Or is it
? I never thought I’d say this, but I am now liking my commute.
It all started when I plugged my iPhone to the car’s stereo. After a few days of listening to music, I switched to the WNYC’s Radiolab podcasts and have been enjoying them thoroughly.
I just finished listening to Placebo, their best so far.
In another podcast, I was pleasantly surprised that a guest speaker was one of our own SuperLab customers, Dr. Julian Keenan.
Then there are those days when I don’t feel like listening to anything.
I enjoy that as well.
It’ s the pau
se that refreshes.
Commuting is not so bad after all.
In exploring what we can or cannot do on our new hardware product, I met today with the rep from
the company that
makes all the nameplates used in our hardware products.
I received what I thought was a compliment:
“I don’t know if we can do that.
I’m not saying that we cannot, but it’s just that you ask me to do things that we’ve never done before.”
He may have meant it more like “you’re such a pain where the sun doesn’t shine”, but I chose to take it otherwise!
Until April 2005, some applications provided a dictionary, but each had its own.
Then Mac OS 10.4 Tiger was introduced and included a system-wide dictionary: teach it the word “Hisham” in Mail, for example, and all the other Mac programs now knew that Hisham is not a mistake (though some friends might disagree!)
I thought that Firefox was the only Mac app to still provide its own dictionary instead of taking advantage of the Mac’s built-in one, but I found a worse app this week: it neither uses the built-in one nor provides its own.
The developers suggest that you “Take the time to copy edit your work so that you can avoid embarrassing typos…”:
In essence, you need to type your text in another app, then copy and paste it.
And not just to have your work spell-checked: this app’s edit field is not resizable — a very un-Mac experience.
You don’t h ave to type long before it becomes
a chore.
Yes, you probably realized it by now: the guilty app is Apple’ s own iTune
s. iTunes has always had two faces.
The nice, Mac-like one is fast and feels, well, like a Mac.
The bad face is the iTunes store part of the program that’s built using WebKit.
But this hardly excuses iTunes: Safari too uses WebKit but feels a lot zippier, and yes, supports the built-in dictionary.
On her way out of the house
in the morning, my wife said: “Please remember to close all the windows.
The gardener is coming today.”
“Yes honey.”
” I just cleaned the house.
If you forget, the house will be full of grass dust when I come back.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Please write a note
to remind yourself.”
I have a history of forgetting to do things around the house, I can’ t blame her for insis
ting.
So I wrote a note.
When Air France flight 447 was reported missing, news reports blamed storms over the Atlantic.
As a frequent traveler, this didn’ t make sense
to me. Then reports started coming out blaming the pitot tubes that measure an airplane’s speed. It turns out that both Airbus and Air France already knew of problems with the pitot tubes and were in the process of replacing them.
My outrage is this: why wasn’t GPS technology used to determine the airspeed
? The on-board computer could have compared a calculated speed using GPS data to the speed readings from
the pitot tubes, and automatically warned
the pilot.
The Airbus A330 has state of the art avionics including GPS according to their site. If free or really inexpensive iPhone apps like V-Cockpit GPS and MotionX-GPS can tell Jane and Joe how fast they are going, why can’ t Airbus do so
?
Further, why hasn’t America’s FAA or Europe’s EASA aviation authorities required that GPS information be used as a backup to pitot tubes
? Commercial airplanes have several pitot tubes for redundancy.
But if one stops working due to freezing weather over the Atlantic, then all of them are likely to stop working for the same reason.
An airplane would need an alternate method of measuring speed, not more tubes.
It is a crying sh
ame that a proven technology like GPS was not used.
We programmers are used to being blamed for failures.
Sometimes the blame is well deserved, like the spectacular explosion of the Ariane 5 rocket (see video). Other times, the fault is with management, like the failure of the FBI’s $170 million Virtual Case File (VCF) project. In this case, our pr ofession could have easily saved 228 lives and hundreds
of millions of euros.
I was very excited when I read David Pogue’s May 6 review in the New York Times about a new “personal, portable [...] wireless hot spot” that I could take with me anywhere.
The Verizon MiFi was released about 10 days later.
With three planned trips coming up and hotels charging $10 to $15 a day for Internet access, buying one was an easy decision.
What Is It?
The MiFi is a stylishly designed credit card-sized device.
It connects to the cellular network much like laptop cellular cards, with a difference: the MiFi is wireless, and a router. Simply turn it on, wait about 15 seconds, and you are online.
That simple. And being a router too, you can have up to five devices (laptops, iPhone, etc.) online at the same time.
The subscription cost is $40/month for up to 250MB of data or $60/month for a generous 5GB/month quota.
My Experience
The installation requires that you connect it to a computer via the supplied Micro-USB cable, resulting in a disk appearing in the Finder or Windows Explorer.
The disk contains all the needed software. In my case, I had to unplug and re-plug the MiFi a couple of times before the Mac could see it (Engadget had to try a different Mac, see their review). Once installed, you’re done. Running the VZAccess Manager afterwards is optional.
The MiFi worked largely as advertised. Speeds are decent, and once installed, using it is trivial — just turn
it on. I have used it in two hotels and two airports so far without a hitch. I’ve also used it with my iPhone in an area where there was no AT& T EDGE data signal.
Sleepless Nights
Once upon a time, turning a device off did what you thought it should do: cut off power so that not a single milliamp continues to flow.
Not so anymore: turning a device off or on these days is like submitting a request and asking it to please, kindly do so.
It may or
may not. And the MiFi flat out refuses to honor your request if it’s connected to anything.
I had the MiFi connected to my MacBook to keep it charged then I closed the MacBook to get some sleep.
But I kept hearing the CD-ROM spinning briefly every minute or so, indicating that the MacBook was starting up.
I waited to see how long this would go on and gave up after some time. I got up, unplugged the MiFi from
the MacBook and plugged it into the wall charger. The power LED light turned on.
I tried to turn it off, to no avail; it kept turning on again! The MiFi will only sleep if it’s running on battery.
Another thing, really minor: I found the two green LEDs to be too bright.
I mention this because reducing the unnecessary brightness is also an easy way to increase battery life.
Overall, if you are on the road for any significant length of time, the MiFi is well worth the subscription cost.
[This article was posted using the MiFi]
What if the folder’s icon gave you an idea of how often you use it
? In real life, a wrinkle here and a scratch there lets you know that the folder wasn’ t jus
t purchased, but on our virtual desktops, they all look spiffy.
Keith Lang takes a stab at this and a pretty good one too:
The icons provide nice visu al clues but without
adding color and other distracting elements like a badge.
In other words, just about right.
See the full article here.
Yes, I know.
I know. The original Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984.
Which, by the way, happens to be one day after this immigrant landed at JFK.
I have always wondered how Steve knew about it and very much appreciate that he waited for my arrival. Very sweet! But I digress.
When It All Started
Today marks the 25th birthday of my very own Macintosh 128K.
Yes sirree, after seeing a Mac for the first time, it was love at first sight.
The Mac was a quantum leap and made the IBM PC look like a tiny incremental upgrade over the Superbrain computer that I had access to back home.
Heck, the IBM PC even had just one processor whereas the Superbrain had two (two, I tell ya!) zippy Zilog Z80 microprocessors!
There is nothing magical about this date, February 27, 1984, except that after my encounter with a Mac two weeks earlier,
this is how long it took me to borrow the money from my uncle and have it transferred from the UAE.
Paid full retail price, $2,495. There was a waiting list but the sales guy, Brett Latzko, was happy to let me have the one that was on his desk.
He also threw in free issues
of these new magazines called Macworld and St.
Mac. The latter went to magazine heaven after only a few issues.
(BTW, it’s funny how memory works.
I remember the name of the sales rep but not the name of the Washington, DC store where I bought my Mac.)
Epilogue
Nine months later, my Mac and I travelled to the UAE to spend Christmas with my parents. Mom worked at Total ABK, the local operation of the French oil company. Macs in Abu Dhabi were considerably more expensive than in the U.S., so the head of Total ABK (bonjour Monsieur Naylies!) was happy to pay me full price, $2,495.
Twenty five ye ars l
ater, I am typing this post on a Mac.
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