Category: Thoughts

  • 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…

  • Facebook isn’t a web site (or a spaceship), it’s a time machine

    I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook lately. A couple of months ago, maybe around the time Barrack Obama got the Democratic presidential nomination in Denver, a funny thing started happening with my 50 or so “friends” on Facebook. Since I joined earlier in ’08, there’s been an awful lot of dead air — most…

  • 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…

  • Netbooks look increasingly appealing but I’m not sold yet

    The category of mini low-cost laptops, known as netbooks, seems to be growing rapidly and not just with copy-cat “me too” offerings but with innovative new features continually cropping up as well. Today I’m intrigued by the latest Hewlett Packard netbook, the HP Mini 1000. It has one of the best physical designs I’ve read…

  • Cleaning up the office for fall

    Spent a good bit of Saturday morning cleaning my office, but I cheated. Sure, I threw away lots of obvious trash, old magazines, empty coffee cups and the like. But I went with the piles of paper method. They’re hidden away, certainly. But I guess I really put off for another day the more difficult…

  • 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…

  • New Mac laptops: one step forward, two steps back

    (Updated 10/21/08) Steve Jobs and Co. rolled out their new line of laptops today, making big changes to the existing Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro models. But with one exception, the new models are more of a step backwards, a lost opportunity, than an improvement. The one indisputable improvement is with the graphics chips.…

  • Sony ereader seeking wide open wireless

    Fascinating week in the land of electronic books and the devices to read them. We got a fresh rumor, complete with picture, about the next generation of the Amazon Kindle which we already know definitely isn’t arriving this year. But the much bigger, non-vaporish news was the announcement of Sony’s third-generation digital book reader, dubbed…