Category: Companies

  • Better to choose form or function for new printer

    Where is fantasy bred, in the heart or in the head? -Willie Wonka (channeling The Merchant of Venice) My basic office printer, an HP Deskjet 6980, is having major problems seeing its ink cartridges and out-of-warranty repairs cost more than a new printer so…time for something new. As HP values ink more highly than gold,…

  • Last minute gift ideas for iPod owners and the gadget deprived

    Not much time left before the year-end holidays are upon us. Still stumped for the perfect little gift for your gadget-loving friends and relations? Here are a few suggestions based on things we actually bought and used this year around Casa GravitationalPull.net. Links below are mostly to manufacturers’ pages, but I’m sure you can find…

  • WordPress 2.7 is the best WordPress yet

    When WordPress 2.5 came out a few months ago, there was a lot to like but there was also a lot to not-so-like. The layout of key parts of the program, including the dashboard and the editing page for new posts, didn’t seem very well thought out. The overall design was visually noisy and distracting,…

  • Bluehost Internet hosting service eases upgrades with SimpleScripts

    I have generally good things to say about my web hosting service, Bluehost. They are very reliable, with uptime for my site of over 99.5% (at least since I started monitoring it in September using the free SiteUpTime service). Bluehost also offer lots of add-ons and free services, like high-end spam filtering and automatic installation…

  • Using Applescript to send articles to my Kindle

    I’m constantly finding new ways to use my Kindle e-book reader. Lately, I’ve found a way to save eye strain and trees when reading long magazine articles posted online. Instead of reading them on my laptop, and making my eyes watery and tired, or printing them out on a zillion pieces of paper, wasting all…

  • Which is smarter? An old-old phone or a new-new phone?

    Planning for a little office reshuffling and reorganzing, the mind of the gadget geek turns to gadgets, unsurprisingly. Ever since I got hooked on AMC’s Mad Men show, I’ve been remembering the visceral pleasure I used to get when I had an old-fashioned, multi-line phone on my desk in a long-ago newsroom. You remember them,…

  • An update on online backup: Mozy’s still good

    I just posted a lengthy comment at MacIntouch about using Mozy for online backup, so I thought it might be worth re-posting here: I have been using Mozy since April 2007 on both my iMac and Powerbook Pro. It is fast and reliable, working in the middle of the night to upload new or changed…

  • Acrylic Software’s Wallet, great password manager for iPhone

    (Updated 12/3) To keep track of all the various web site passwords, log-ins accounts, serial numbers and other top secret secrets in my life, I’ve been using the OS X version of Acrylic Software’s Wallet program (Acrylic was formerly known as Waterfall Software). It’s one of the best looking and best performing password managers I’ve…

  • Extra megapixels in Canon 50D hamper performance

    I’ve written before about the digital camera industry’s misguided megapixel race, leading to ever more pixels crammed onto the same size sensor in each next generation of camera. The problem is that increasing the density of pixels damages the camera’s ability to cleanly pick up detail. So I wanted to call attention to a recent…

  • Foxmarks browser sync adds great password syncing feature

    Don’t you love it when software designers listen to their customers? Gives me a warm feeling all over. So kudos to the authors of the incredibly useful Firefox bookmark synchronization add-on Foxmarks. After the demise of Google’s great browser synching tool back in June, I turned to Foxmarks to keep everything in tune on my…