mini-guide to Mac OS X
January 27, 2005
For those Windows folks planning to add a Mac Mini to their stable (or anyone else switching to a Mac, for that matter), Ars Technica has just posted an excellent mini-guide to Mac OS X.
It’ll show you a lot of the ins-and-outs of day to day usage of OS X (it also nicely demonstrates just how easy it is to make the change, if you’ve been sitting on the fence.)
I picked up a trick or two myself.
Hello Kitty iPod Mini
January 24, 2005
Am I the only person that gets more creeped out by Hello Kitty every time I see it? I mean I even like tolerate have been colonized by cats, but there’s just a serious “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” vibe I get every time I see the thing… (I mean geez — crop circles, even?)
In any event, if you’re already a pod person, or otherwise a Hello Kitty fan, there’s now a Hello Kitty iPod mini for you, complete with the trademarked Sanrio emblem and a keychain… There’s even a dock available, shaped like a bear that’s even more creepy looking (if that’s possible.)
Mac Mini — More Than Meets the Eye?
January 24, 2005
Not that I should complain about people dis’ing the Mac Mini, but my objections were more about Apple’s policies than the machine itself, and now that the RAM question seems to be shaking out, I’m a little put off with spins like this one from Technology Review
“But to get the most out of the Mac mini, users need to—yes—think different. Banish any thoughts of desktop use from your mind. Here are a baker’s dozen ways to put the Mac mini to work:”
- As a Portable Depot for Digital Pictures
- As a Satellite Interface for Hams
- As a Regional X10 Server
- As a Christmas Lights Sequencer
- As Part of a Home Theater System
- As a Car Enhancer
- As a Hardware Firewall for Laptops
- As a Physical Security System
- As a Server and/or Gateway
- As a Component of a Low-Cost Parallel Processing Array
- As a SCADA system
- As part of a Beowulf Cluster
- As an iPod Feeding Station
Notably absent from the list is “As anything two grand worth of PowerBook was good for a year ago (outside of the whole battery operated portable with display thing).”
Downhill Battle
January 23, 2005
To commemorate the RIAA’s renewed efforts towards “let’s save our market by sueing our customers”, maybe it’s time to review just what all is wrong with the music industry as it stands — artists not making money of CDs (or pay-for-download sites, for that matter); narrowing diversity by pay-for-play radio, the marginalization of independent artists, etc…
Fortunately, Downhill Battle has done a dandy job of pulling a lot of this together, along with some very tasty and darkly humorous resources for educating the “just don’t get it” crowd.
Meta Tags Optimization
January 22, 2005
You still hear about meta tags, although their importance has decreased in recent years. What are they, should you bother with them, and if so, how do you create them?
www and your domain name
January 21, 2005
It’s common knowledge that your site should come up for users both with and without the “www” on your domain name. Unfortunately, the way this is usually done may cause search engines to penalize you.
PageRank Simplified – What you need to know
January 20, 2005
If you get anywhere near search engine optimization discussions, you’ll hear the term PageRank. There is both a lot of math and a lot of supposition regarding PageRank, but really only a few concepts that you need to know.
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Google, “nofollow” and Comment Spam
January 19, 2005
The ‘net is all a-buzz with word of a new initiative by the Google, MSN and Yahoo search teams to “eliminate” comment spam from blogs. What does this mean to you?
When is a blog a blog?
January 19, 2005
One of the frequently heard objections to adding a weblog to a small business website is that they don’t want their site to look like a blog. Of course, my standard reply is that it doesn’t need to in order to have all of the same functionality. This can work too well, however.
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Finding your passionate voice
January 17, 2005
If you don’t regularly add fresh content written in your own personal voice to your small business web site, you are essentially producing nothing but “brochureware”. The net is full of dead-end typed-in brochures; they don’t get traffic, and they don’t make sales.
