the life and times of a code monkey
I like…
I’ve heard some great things about the tiny little eeePC, but this is the best thing I’ve heard so far: it can be a Mac. Twitterer Gregory Cohen has pictures on Picasa of his completed eeeMac, an eeePC transformed (perhaps in similar fashion to this previous attempt — details please, Gregory) into an OS X-running ultraportable, complete with a tiny little lit Apple logo on the back.
via TUAW
That’s it, I REALLY want an iPhone now…
You don’t need Steve Jobs’ permission to watch TV on your iPhone any more. And you don’t need to pay the cable company twice. A native Orb client for the iPhone and iPod Touch popped up on the installer networks overnight, and Orb confirms that it’s official.
The client software allows you to watch live TV on an iPhone or Touch wherever you are, in addition to your music. You’ll need a TV card or adaptor for your PC, of course, to get the live TV. So provided you have an internet connection, there’s no need to perform DIY transcoding using software such as Visual Hub. The client will even transcode the video stream nicely for 2.75G Edge networks. Orb does in software what Sling Media does in hardware.
Ohh, now the question is - do we wait for the 3G version or not… (I think this - if it is true - is a pretty good sign that the 3G version is around the corner).
O2 will cut £100 off the price of the Apple iPhone tomorrow, it has been claimed. Carphone Warehouse is said to be planning to match the move.
There’s no official confirmation yet, of course. The claim was made today by website Mobile Today.
If O2 and CW do knock £100 off the price of the iPhone, taking the handset’s price to £169, it will undoubtedly further fuel speculation that carriers are clearing out stocks of the 2.5G phone ahead of the widely anticipated introduction of a 3G version in June.
I don’t give many presentations these days, but this is a great tip:
If you give many presentations on the Mac, chances are you’re using Apple’s Keynote presentation software. One cool feature in Keynote is the ability to demo something on your Mac without giving away your next slide or notes. When you’re in the middle of a presentation, just hit the “h” key on your keyboard. This will hide the entire Keynote application and show your desktop.
When you press the h key, the Keynote icon in the dock will change and include a play button. When you want to resume your presentation, just click the Keynote icon in the dock.
Finally, a common sense response to all of these MacBook Air bashing articles. I admit - I don’t want one, i’d rather have a ‘regular’ MacBook or a MacBook Pro, but there are people out there that would want something like this…
Direct from the Canadian Ministry of Silly Punditry we learn that the MacBook Air may increase risk of laptop loss (tip o’ the antlers to Colin Morton).
Indeed. The only way to ensure your laptop won’t get stolen is to buy big fat honkin’ ugly ones.
But, clearly, neither of those beats this gem from PC World’s Mike Barton:
MacBook Air Amiss: Time to License Mac OS X?
Good question! Like “I Have Stubbed My Toe And Find It Painful: Time to Commit Suicide?”
This is great news - NetNewsWire, the best news reader on the Mac is now completely free! Not just the ‘Lite’ version anymore, but the full product! This is my default (and only) news reader on the Mac.
There’s a FAQ that explains a bunch of things—I’m not going to repeat it all here.
But I will say that, for me personally, this is a dream come true. Every developer wants to be able to work on the software they love, make a living at it, and give it to the world for free.
Usually you get to pick two out of three—if you’re lucky. Me, I get all three.
At the moment I’m a very happy user of Google calendar and Spanning Sync for all my scheduling needs. But the geek in me fancies playing about with things so I’m thinking about setting up a CalDav server (when time permits) so Cat and I can organise our lives accordingly.
Here’s some pages I’ve been reading whilst doing my research.
Will possibly post more as and when I get a chance to play about with things…
I love Quicksilver, it’s one of those applications that makes working on the Mac really really great. Lifehacker has a quick rundown on 10 of the best plugins to help improve your Quicksilver experience:
Open source Mac utility Quicksilver isn’t just an application launcher—it’s a comprehensive keyboard interface. Launching applications and documents is just Quicksilver’s gateway drug: The more you get used to doing things with Quicksilver, the more things you want to do with it. Out of the box Quicksilver comes with the barest essentials, but once you add the right plug-ins that interact with menus, apps, documents, and settings, you can accomplish more and more complex tasks from that familiar three-paned prompt. After the jump, check out top 10 favorite Quicksilver plug-ins, and how to set them up.
This is a great idea to improve the appearance (and usability) of stacks in Leopard.
Stacks is pretty much Leopard’s only non-eyecandy change to the dock, and it had the potential to be pretty handy, but the fact that the icon representing the stack is whatever the top file in the folder happens to be really ruins it (for me at least). However, if you haven’t yet given up on stacks and thrown them off your dock, there is a solution: overlaying stacks icons.
In essence, these are just small-ish semi-transparent icons that are permanently our top icon. This picture explain it best (before & after):
Stephen Fry:
I have been using an Apple iPhone now for more than four months. This is due to an unhealthy mixture of friendship with its designer, a slobbery and pathetic love of the new, the possession of an American billing address (necessary until today for the activation and use of the device) and a willingness to pay preposterous international roaming charges. It puts me in a good position however, to tell you what you’re in for if you decide to own one of these honeys.