Okay, so I have mixed feeling about this one. On the one hand, WIRED is one of those magazines that I think really represents good design and I love flipping through it… not only for the articles (which are always awesome), but also because it has a beautiful layout and interesting typography that is hard to find sometimes. I also would hate to see the paper version die. BUT the iPad app IS the paper version… with much more functionality, video clips, interactive content, etc. It’s like having the magazine come alive in your hands. Now that is cool. (Video embedded below.)
I would take the printed version over the online version any day, but the iPad version versus the printed version? I have a feeling the iPad version will win me over. It’s the same layout and great design with added bonuses. This is another one of those apps that will make me get the iPad. Imagine what other magazines could do with it. Popular Science would be another good tech magazine to do this. What about National Geographic embedding short videos when you click on a photo so you could see more? Or giving a voice over if you wanted to hear fun facts? Bon Appetit could upload videos with each recipe or how-to videos in sections where they explain unique cooking techniques. Sports Illustrated also comes to mind… of course there are sections I wouldn’t want to “come alive,” but what about including clips from games? Or mini-sports games in the app. The possibilities are endless.
I hate to say it, but if print is on it’s way out in the future… jumping on the mobile bandwagon seems like it could save a lot of magazines and newspapers. Of course, that might speed up the process, but I can’t help but think we’re headed that ways anyways. This might actually be a good stimulus to get more people reading magazines. For all those people with short attention spans who can’t take the time to read, maybe interactive reading apps like this could get them to read and find out more about what they are looking at.
Who knows. All I know is, this makes me want an iPad even more. I’m waiting a bit to see what Android Froyo does with tethering (through my DROID). I’m pretty curious about Google’s plans. My only concern is – if Google creates a tablet will all these apps eventually come to Android?
Alright. I guess I’m not alone. I recently came across the bookmark saving site called xmarks. Like most applications, xmarks has its own add-ons/plugins for Safari, Firefox, etc. I thought, eh, why not? Figured it would be nice to be able to sync my bookmarks between Firefox and Safari. This would be especially helpful since I was actually enjoying Safari 4. I installed xmarks on both browsers and was notified that I could lose bookmarks. As I don’t really use all of the bookmarks I marked before moving to delicious, I figured I’d just import them to delicious so I wouldn’t lose my favorite ones. That was all fine and dandy. Delicious actually works.
I went ahead and synced the bookmarks. Of course, it all seemed fine….until it synced again and they all disappeared. Fine. So it was working finally on Safari, but Firefox was having a fit. I uninstalled it on Firefox thinking the add-on was gone. It should work fine now, right? Just make new bookmarks? Working working….restart Firefox. Poof! All bookmarks are gone again. Safari was still working fine, but sporadically choosing which bookmarks to delete. So I uninstalled it for both browsers? Problem solved? Of course not. Apparently this is an issue that remains unanswered by many. But I did get it to work again.
To fix Firefox, the quick and dirty solution is to create a new profile and delete your old one. Apparently it’s a known issue that xmarks messes things up. Nice. Here’s how to use Terminal on OSX to get into the Firefox Profile Manager (For other OS, see articles linked below): /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager
I chose to create a new one and then fully delete my default user (along with deleting my files). Some people may want to chose to just delete the profile and not the files.
There may be other solutions to this problem. I suggest people post them because there seems to be a lot of confusion in forums right now with this issue. I’m not saying the profile solution is the best way to go, it’s just best solution I saw out there and it worked fine for me.
In the past year, there’s quite a few magazines that I subscribed to. A few are worthwhile while others don’t really cut it. One of the ones I am planning on renewing is Mac|Life. It’s usually got great articles, great reviews, and just enough ads so that you don’t find yourself flipping through 5 pages between every article. This month’s cover article was: 50 Things Every Mac Geek Should Know. It’s probably a good thing that I can honestly say, I actually learned quite a few things that I didn’t already use on my Mac. Here’s a few of my favorites with the corresponding numbers from the article.
#9 Spotlight Can Do Math – Definitely didn’t know this one. I always find myself opening Calculator to perform calculations. Apparently OS X Leopard has a built-in feature where you can simply press Command-Space to pop open Spotlight, start typing in an equation, and press Return. Tada!
#13 Safari’s Private Surfing Is Not So Private – Fortunately, I don’t use Safari anyways, and my computer is my personal machine. BUT, if you are often at work, school, or some other public place, and enter pages you may not want people knowing you enter, this may be helpful. Private Browsing actually stores your preferences so anyone (boss, IT, etc.) can see your history by using the Terminal and typing: dscacheutil -cachedump -entries Host . You can purge this by typing this into the Terminal: dscacheutil -flushcache
#15 How To Reset Your iPod or iPhone – Okay, so I already knew this one…but since it’s extremely useful if you have an iPod touch or iPhone (and something I’ve had to use numerous times), I’ve included it. Just press and hold the wake/sleep button (top of device on the left) and the Home button at the same time until the Apple logo appears. Let go and let it reboot. (For clickwheel iPods it’s the Menu and center buttons at the same time.)
#18 Play Tetris In The Terminal – This is awesome . (1) Launch Terminal, (2) Type emacs and press Return, (3) Press Escape, then type x, (4) Type tetris
#20 The Dock Is Cool, But It Ain’t Perfect – Add A Recent Items Stack: (1) Open Terminal, (2) Type defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’ and press Return. Type killall Dock and press Return, (3) When it restarts, Control-Click to customize….or….to make dock icons magnified really big if you have them really small, just hold Shift-Control when you mouse over them.
#32 The Finder’s Not the Only Way to Access Files On Your Mac – Shares info on the app Path Finder ($39.95) which you can use as a replacement Finder with more features. Cool.
#33 Zap Your PRAM – Delete your parameter RAM: (1) Shut down the computer, (2) Turn on the computer, (3) Press and hold Command-Option-P-R before the grey screen appears, (4) Release once the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
#36 Use Encrypted Disk Images to Hold Super Secret Files – (1) Launch Disk Utility, (2) Choose File > New > Blank Disk Image and enter a name for your image. Notice where it is going to save and change if necessary, (3) Select size, (4) Choose 128-bit AES encryption from the drop-down, (5) Choose read/write disk image from Image Format drop-down, (6) Create.
#45 Use FSCK If Safe Boot Isn’t Enough – Reboot your Mac while holding down Command-S. At the command-line, type: /sbin/fsck –fy. Let it do its thing. If you get: ** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK, then everything is good. If you get: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****, then keep running FSCK until you get the first message. When you’re done, type: reboot, in the command-line prompt. Your Mac will restart.
#46 Fix Startup Issues With Safe Boot – Hold down the Shift key when you start or restart. Once you do that successfully, restart it in normal mode.
#48 Essential Third-Party OS X Utilities – PRODUCTIVITY: Quicksilver (free beta), AUDIO: Audio Hijack Pro ($32), MENU: FruitMenu ($12), ICON: CandyBar ($29), BACKUP: Déjà Vu ($24.95), CLEAN-DESKTOP: DragThing ($29)
#50 Play Snake in the Terminal – (1) Launch Terminal, (2) Type emacs and press Return, (3) Press Escape, then type x, (4) Type snake
Part III – Boxee – Right now, Boxee is a good app for those who have a Mac, or perhaps AppleTV, but I’m not sure it’s quite there yet for Windows/Linux users. It’s getting a lot of coverage lately so I’m going to cover it in this series.
Boxee, unlike the options in the previous post, is freeware based off of the opensource XBMC media center. Unless you’re simply going to run Boxee off of your Mac, it take a little bit of installation procedures to get it working on another system. Here’s a few links to those installations here:
Boxee is simply huge. It will pick media from your computer or give you various options of where you want to look for media including the web. Built-in, Boxee streams from services such as Joost, Last.fm, ABC, CNET, CNN, CBS, Hulu, Comedy Central, YouTube, MTV, Flickr…and sooooo many more. From music to photos to television and movies. If it’s accessible to your computer/internet connection, you can watch it through boxee.
. (1) Launch Terminal, (2) Type emacs and press Return, (3) Press Escape, then type x, (4) Type tetris
