Category: software

  • Great Google Voice apps for Android and freedom from cell phone plan tyranny

    Are you a big user of Google Voice like I am? Here’s my best advice about apps and some cool tips to use Google Voice with an Android phone. You can also use these apps to make calls from an Android tablet. One of the most important reasons I switched from an iPhone to Android…

  • A longtime Mac user’s first impressions of the Thinkpad X1 Carbon

    Well, as I’d been threatening for a while, I ended my decade plus using a Mac as my main computer this month and jumped to the Windows side, lured by the all-black, super-lightweight Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I’ve had the laptop for about three weeks and here are some of my first impressions. Feel free…

  • Instapaper isn’t Instaworth it anymore – switching to Pocket

    I think I was one of the earliest fans of Marco Arment’s ingenious Instapaper service. I even wrote up a rave review back in March, 2009. This is the original thing that let you save long web articles to read later in your browser or on your phone or ereader. The amazing feature that first…

  • How to delete the horrid sparsebundle from your Time Capsule

    Short version: Here’s how to actually delete a sparsebundle Time Machine backup file from a Time Capsule — use Windows. Long version: We have an Apple Time Capsule here at home and it’s almost always been an incredibly great wifi router with built in storage. The kids, especially, benefit from having all of their laptop…

  • Finally, serious Lightroom photo syncing on the iPad – no iPhoto required

    Old workflow for getting cool pictures I’ve taken from my camera to my iPad: Import photos into Adobe Lightroom. Throw out junk, make fixes, sort and rate. Choose photos I want on my iPad and export to a folder on my hard drive. Drag said folder into iPhoto. Make newly imported photos into a new…

  • A Casual Vacancy, a serious rip off?

    There’s a bit of a surprise in store for you if you go to buy the electronic book version of the new J.K. Rowling novel, “A Casual Vacancy.” Despite it’s best-seller status, the ebook’s price is not $9.99 or $12.99 or even the high-end of best-sellers brought to you by the price fixing cabal of…

  • Microsoft has great news for retina display Mac users

    One of the biggest problems for Mac users wanting to upgrade to a retina display has just been resolved. Microsoft issued version 14.2.4 of its super popular Office suite today expressly to include support for the higher resolution display. That means millions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint users on the Mac can now safely upgrade…

  • History will show journalists missed the big Amazon story today: ebook discounting is back

    There were a gazillion Amazon headlines today across virtually every news site, tech blog and twitter feed I follow but almost none had the truly important news development about Amazon today. While everyone was gorging on the announcement of upgraded “Kindle Fire” tablet computers, U.S. federal judge Denise Cote in New York approved a controversial…

  • A Mac user’s travels in Ultrabook land

    I spent the long weekend with my family tooling around Cape Cod, which ended up offering two unexpected opportunities to sample the latest and greatest light weight laptops, or ultrabooks as they’re known, in Windows land. My 13″ MacBook Pro is getting near replacement age and I’m keeping an open mind so far about which…

  • Why critical reviews matter

    I’m grateful to John Gruber, a great tech writer and proprietor of the popular blog DaringFireball, for linking here the other day and sending lots of traffic to my post criticizing him. I’m also super grateful to the Quick Cache plug-in for WordPress which helped my blog handle all the added traffic without being, as…