Glen Wolsey has written an in depth article regarding after-market RAM for the Mac.
From personal experience upgrading a (two) 512MB C2D MacBook to 2GB of Crucial RAM proved to be a cheap, easy and effective way of getting the most from the machine.
Archive Page 3 of 18
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are an indie band from Springfield, MO. ‘Oregon Girl’ is one of the catchiest songs ever written, and you can find it at Polyvinyl Records (.mp3).
Via 3Hive
Today Amazon release their $399 eBook reading device, the Kindle.
Catch Engadget’s live coverage here, or watch a video demonstration here.
I often wonder how much time I waste reading Merlin Mann’s productivity blog, 43 Folders. I love the site, yet a lot of it just isn’t relevant to me at this time, but I read it anyway. It doesn’t feel like wasting time because it’s about being productive.
It’s procrastination disguised as productivity.
Being a Mac user, and with Mac developers writing the most beautiful applications, I’ll frequently download GTD applications, spend two hours configuring them and never manage to integrate them into my digital life.
Seth Mnookin has a similar problem with Google’s tools,
“My campaign to increase productivity had become yet another distraction — and a significant one. Suddenly I needed to time-manage my time management.”
We are creating problems in order to use a certain solution.
Every Christmas, without fail, I get a diary and think to myself “Yes, this year I’m going to be organised”, only to give up by February because I find myself constantly making notes only to never refer to them again.
At the moment my life consists of reading long articles about Microformats, writing code and looking for a new job. Looking for a job is something that could be done a lot better using some sort of application - storing URL’s and contact details, locations, and whether or not you actually want to work for them. I did set up a Backpack account for this but soon realised that I was spending much more time organising the Backpage page than I was actually writing to any firms.
I think it’s time to stop GTD’ing and actually get things done.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/7094764.stm
Sulake, the owners of Habbo Hotel, a virtual ‘hotel’ popular amongst children and the socially inept, have reported six teenagers suspected of ‘digital theft’ to Dutch police, including one seventeen year old who allegedy stole £2,840 (4,000 Euro) worth of virtual furniture.
Having three younger brothers I know what goes on in Habbo Hotel. The younger two are regularly requesting my parents credit card for ‘Furni’ (Furniture) for their make-believe rooms, and repeating stories of how users ‘hack’ other users (this, I believe, is as simple as guessing the answer to the secret question to a user’s Hotmail account).
Now, ‘Habbo’ (as I believe the kids are calling it these days) is a service primarily aimed at children. Children don’t generally have any money (unless they are famous film-stars, in which case they will probably be blowing their money on drugs and women) and it’s generally left to the parents to hand over hard-earned cash to Sulake, in exchange for virtual furniture (think Yukka plants, thrones and corporate logos in ornate picture frames).
Eighteen months ago, having spent several week’s pocket money (I say ‘pocket money’, but I really mean ’several weeks worth of not asking for anything else’) my youngest brother was, instantly and without warning, banned from Habbo for allegedly ‘hacking’ an account. He very tearfully explained that he had done nothing wrong and that a friend had reported him ‘for a laugh’. After a very strongly worded email to Sulake nothing was resolved.
Whilst, in the instance of a seventeen year old Danish kid stealing £2,840 worth of ‘furni’, I think that action should have been taken, I believe any company that put itself in the position where it is taking real currency, from children none the less, should be improving security and accepting responsibility.
I’ve studied enough Internet security books to know that prevention is the best cure.
http://www.pascal.com/diary/?p=183
There has been a lot of discussion (see Henry Story, Dave Dribin & John Gruber) regarding Apple’s implementation of virtual desktop, Spaces, in OSX 10.5, and it’s target audience.
Pascal suggests that the user should be able to decide whether Command + Tab should allow the user to leave their current space or not (displaying only the icons for that space, theoretically giving the user four very different environments).
“Suppose you’re in space 3 and all your currently-open Safari windows are in space 1. If you switch to Safari, it would act as if there were no windows open and open a new one for you. So each space is truely like a new monitor, a new workspace, oblivious of its partners.”
I would add that the Command + Tab shortcut could be bettered by adding the Alt key, to provide traditional application switching, and to display the icon status (I work with the dock hidden, and rely on the application switcher to tell me if I have email or IM).
However, as much as I would love the additional functionality I believe that this may not make life any easier for the average user, who will seldom take the time to experiment with preference pane options - I can imagine that this sort of interaction is difficult to explain with one line of text next to a checkbox.
“Tired of the regular Mac OS 10.5 Leopard dock? So were we. Finally, a place where you can download and submit your own docks. And more. “
http://adamhowell.org/2007/05/17/why-i-ditched-tumblr-for-wordpress/
This is exactly what I have done, and Adam is spot on. The whole Tumblelog-for-Wordpress seems to be working out really well, so more on that in the coming days. Via Paul Giacheiro.
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/blog/archives/2007/11/…
Nate Voss & Donovan Beery talk to Mint and IFR creator Shaun Inman. Design meets development.
http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh…
I’m from that school of thought that says the Mac is as much about the hardware as it is the software, but this is a reminder that we’re basically paying a premium for a nice case.
On the other hand it says that we, as Mac users, are paying a little bit extra to run two countless Operating Systems as they are supposed to be run.
