I don’t know if you take a lot of time looking on the sidebar section of my site. There is one section in particular I’d like to draw your attention to though: The Utility Of The Day section.
Though I haven’t been posting a whole lot on the blog, I have been updating that Utility Of The Day link. This is nothing but an RSS feed to my UtilityOfTheDay tag on my del.icio.us profile.
You can always check that on here, there is a whole lot of really cool utilities, a lot of which is now becoming web 2.0 tools, all the better… that means less downloading and installing stuff on your machine!
Of course you can always have my feed straight into your RSS reader that will deliver the UtilityOfTheDay straight to you:
I got my hands on a copy of Mac Office 2008, and was so excited to check out the new entourage, since I’ve always had gripes about the lack of functionality of Entourage. Well, turns out that all Microsoft did with Entourage is add a few eye candy features, and shipped it back out. I figured, in 4 years, they would’ve had enough time to invest in sprucing up the functionality to become at least comparable to the PC version. I was wrong!
I am just recently a Mac person, and never really had any bias towards Mac users, but now that I have my own Mac, I will refer to “US MAC USERS”! :-P, we, feel left out.
Here’s my opinion about it though, ever since Leopard came out with the spiffed up version of OS X mail, I’ve been using that with no complaints. ok, maybe a couple, like the lack of a nice archiving system like the PC version of outlook has, and which Entourage STILL doesn’t have! I have not tested full functionality of Office 2008, because I’m still dealing with the initial shock of disappointment!!
At this point, I’m thinking of reverting back to OS X Mail, and using the PC version running Office 2007, on my Parallels VM. cloodgy? maybe, though with the Parallels tools installs, the locations of my files don’t even matter.
Before I finish my rant on Office, I have one more gripe! Pricing!
Hello!? $400??? for the standard version of Office 2008 that actually supports connection to Microsoft Exchange. Hmm… I work for a school district, and when they create a version of office that says on it “Teacher and Student edition” … I would expect all teachers and students jumping on that version, when, in reality, in my case, 100% of the teachers will actually need Exchange functionality! So now, $150 for the retail price of the Teacher and Student edition won’t be enough anymore, and the $399 edition will be required. Granted, educational pricing will probably still be lower than that, I think that the featureset that got offered in this version does not deserve this big hype, and certainly not this high price!
Oh, and I don’t believe I’m the only one that had this issue with Office 2008 for Mac… reading reviews about it, I see these complains all over… Microsoft! get on the ball with Mac users!
I am a relatively new Mac user, and I am still learning the ropes. One of the things that I used to be bale to do very easily on the PC was to create an ISO (CD Image file) from a CD. On the Mac, I attempted to do it using DiskUtility, which is a native tool that comes with OS X, but it does not really do the job. So, after a little bit of research, I found a cool way to do it, which is fairly easy. For this to work, you probably have to be a little comfortable using your “Terminal” application. I will try to put the steps in as much detail as possible, so that you can follow along:
Disclaimer: Please note that the tool used in this article (dd) can be dangerous, and, if used incorrectly, can end up wiping your whole hard drive, so, consider yourself warned!!
- Open “Terminal” : Applications / Utilities / Terminal
- With your CD mounted. (You should be able to see the CD on your desktop, type: df -h
The important line is /dev/disk1s1s3 . This is the device reference to your CDROM drive.
This number may vary, and in order to be sure that your CD device reference is the correct one, you can run the following command, and that should give you at lease the first part of the device without the reference to the volume:
drutil status
This /dev/disk1 is the CD Drive.
- Unmount your CD:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1 Disk /dev/disk1 unmounted.
- Now create the ISO
dd if=/dev/disk1s1s3 of=mynewcd.iso bs=2048
- When the process finishes, you should be able to mount that image using this command:
hdid mynewcd.iso
Or you can mount it by double clicking on the iso file, and it should show up on your desktop.
Gotchas:
- The main problem that I had with doing this process was to refer to the CD device, instead of the volume that I need to rip. (i.e: /dev/disk1, as opposed to /dev/disk1s1s3). If you use dd and get the final file, it’ll look fine, but when you try to mount it, you will get an error. So make sure you refer to the correct volume.
- Make sure that you are writing the ISO file somewhere within the filesystem that you have WRITE access. The safest place would probably be your home directory, so your dd line would be best that way:
So, I don’t know if you are aware of the RSS feed that is available on this site, and other sites for that matter. it’s a great little tool to be able to keep track of any updates on the site without having to keep checking back.
To add my site to your RSS feeds, all you have to do is click on the “Entries RSS”, or “Comments RSS” and, if you have Firefox, or Safari, you would have a built in RSS reader, otherwise, you would need to download one before you add the feed.
A little confused? check out the YouTube video below, which will tell you a bit more, in simple terms about RSS Feeds:
Have you ever heard of the phenomenon that happens with some community sites that come around? If you are even the slightest internet user , you would be aware of eBay, MySpace, Facebook, etc …
With all my experience on these sites, and these communities, I had not known about the site I’m going to introduce you to until just recently. It is, indeed, a cultural phenomenon in itself… when you go to it, and start participating in the forums, you will know why.
Let’s start with the basics, the site is called WOOT! , and you can find it at http://www.woot.com
The concept of the site is actually very simple: They place one item up everyday for a ridiculously cheap price, and you can buy it for that price. it’s that simple. When I say cheap, I’m talking 60, 70, or 80% off the retail price. granted, sometimes, for electronics, the items are refurbished, but they are great nonetheless. Also, a lot of items, are actually brand new, and a lot of times, their items come in a 2 for 1 package, which ends up being a truly amazing price for that item.
I have personally purchased a refurb vaccuum cleaner from there, and it is working like a charm.
If that isn’t enough, there is actually an event that happens every so often, and it is called a “Woot Out” … where they basically have a marathon of items on display, as soon as the item is out of stock, they put up the next one, and the next one. The trick to that, is that there is no way for us to know how many (quantity) of a particular item they have, so basically you have to keep looking. The deals that come up during a Woot Out! are unbelievable, sometimes very stupid, but sometimes really good.
The cultural piece to that is that the fact that people who are hooked on this site, actually spend an all nighter waiting for the next item, as to not miss out on something that may be cool, the forums, during these events (and even regular days, for that matter) , are hilarious .. check them out …
Are you convinced? No ?? seriously? Ok … here’s one more thing… during a Woot Out! , there is one special item, which is, hilariously called, the Woot “Bag of Crap”, yup , you heard it right, the site has a weird sense of humor, but nothing dirty ever, so you can safely let your kids go to it. ok, back to the “Bag of Crap” .. it’s basically, well, just that, colloquially speaking, of course
The best deal about this bag is that you only pay $1 for it, that’s it! It doesn’t matter what is in it, sometimes valuable stuff, and sometimes, not so valuable, but what can you lose for $1…
I personally have never gotten the “Bag of Crap”, because, I’m not known to have that lucky streak, but I know other people have, and maybe if you end up getting it sometime, you can tell me what’s in it
I hope that you liked this little review about Woot! , and perhaps you will start taking a look at it like I do.
And by the way, if you end up getting hooked, and you happen to use Firefox, you can download a Woot Watcher Add-On, which will show you the current woot in your firefox taskbar, kind of a cool little utility, though to be honest, it doesn’t update as often, or as I’d expect it to, but it works, sorta
If you’ve never heard of Zoho, you may be wondering what the heck that subject means. Well, it’s very easy to explain: 99% of users have used an office suite of some sort, whether it be Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, Open Office, or any other product. Unfortunately, up until very recently, most of them were actually offline productivity tools. With the new and upcoming Web 2.0, the world has changed, and shifted to online collaboration and productivity tools.
If you are at all involved in the online world, you may be familiar with the Google Docs applications. Zoho is a very similar set of online tools, whose sole purpose is to not only provide a set of application that seamlessly integrate together, but also allow for simple collaboration between groups. The applications range from any thing simple like creating a word document or an excel spreadsheet, to creating a full fledged application with backend database supporting it, using a very user friendly interface, as well as options to script the application manually (for advanced users) using the Deluge scripting language.
One of the very cool features that I personally like about zoho, is that they allow you embed any application, anywhere, they also have plugins for outlook, to collaborate when using their CRM product, as well as other plugins to integrate with other office products, as as facebook.
Now, even you can create something really cool to impress your friends on your MySpace page, or even your professional website, collecting customer’s contact information, or a poll or what have you …
If you are intrigued as to what Zoho can do, you can check out that YouTube video that gives a brief demonstration of the product.
You can also run this search to get a whole slew of additional videos that demonstrate the different products that Zoho offers.
Alright, so maybe it’s not as exciting a fight as I may have made it sound in the title, but there’s a method to the madness.
You see, a lot of times, I find myself on IM trying to send someone a picture, and it takes forever to do so, for many reasons:
Sometimes you are at work, and there is a firewall that blocks / limits bandwidth for sending files or media files
Sometimes it is just the mere fact that some of the providers (i.e MSN has a very bad file transfer protocol, which is inherently slow
and sometimes, ok , you get my point …..
This is when a website like picoodle or tinypic will come in play.
Basically, they are sites that allow you to quickly upload any type of pictures, tag it, resize it, and send your friends a link to that image. the best thing about these 2 services are that tend to support most linking methods. so if you are unfamiliar on the format of a link in order to embed your picture in MySpace, Facebook, your blog or any other location, do not worry, because they give you the list of links, and you can choose the one most appropriate for your needs.
When on IM, usually, you would just use the “Direct Image” link.
now you may ask…. well, which one should I use? well, you can use whichever one you like. they are almost exactly the same, with one major difference however, which could, make or break the deal for you!
Picoodle allows you to login and keep track of the pictures that you uploaded for future reference to their links where TinyPic does not seem to allow that, once you upload the picture and send the link, and navigate away from the page, you pretty much lost the link, unless you saved it on your computer somewhere or bookmarked it. other than that, it’s super simple, try it out, and you’ll see what I mean.
Now…. for people who are interested in still sharing pictures in a more dynamic level and don’t want to keep uploading the whole time they are chatting, there is a solution (unfortunately, it is only for Windows, and I am bummed about that because, I have a Mac). the Software is called “Hello” .. yup it’s that simple, it’s a part of the google suite, and integrates very nicely with Picasa. essentially it is an IM client just like AIM, Yahoo, MSN, with one big difference, in that it is very media oriented, which means that when you initiate a chat session with someone, a big white screen shows up next to that session, where you can drag photos from your desktop, or your favorite photo browser (Picasa supports sending a picture straight to Hello), the picture will upload and your chat partner can immediately see the picture you uploaded. You can choose to save the pictures as you see them, or just look at them and move on. Also, you can have your buddy “drive” guiding you through the pictures as they explain. So basically, it is a remote presentation of pictures.
Do you ever find yourself trying to make a plan with your friends, but have a hard time coordinating times when everyone is available? Or even on different level trying to decide what movie to go watch prior to the event, or what travel destination a group is interested in? Without Doodle , this can be a tedious process involving a lot of emails, or phone calls and text messages. Now, check this out, you create a simple poll with Doodle, and then send it to your friends with an email link, and each will put their availability times, and this will give you a very nice overview as to everyone’s availability and/or preference. what do I think about the idea? Slick’n'Simple!
Since I am the techy guy amongst my family my friends, I constantly get calls and requests for help with purchasing technology, among other things. as I was browing around, I found a site that helps with this very issue. It is called TechSelector.Â
I have tried it myself, on a printer that I would have recommended, and TechSelector actually came up, as part of a bigger list, with the printer that I would’ve chosen. That’s a good thing.
I have not done very extensive testing, though I noticed that they still don’t have any laptops or desktops on there, which was a bit of a bummer, since most of the requests I et are usually for laptops and desktop recommendations.
I have not given up on the site though, they do state that they are expanding their list, and they are still in Beta. So I will keep an eye on the site, and hopefully will recommend it more as it matures.
Ever found these CDs that have scratches on them, and went out and bought one of those $20-$30 kits to clean the scratches? … well .. not only is this solution viable for CDs, but also to clean any surface that is scratched, in this case, an iPod.
I have not personally tried it, but I would think it should work.
Have you tried this method at all? has it worked for you? I have a pretty scratched up iPod, so I’m going to give it a whirl, perhaps, I’ll post an update on this article to verify the veracity of the information presented in the video
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If you’ve never heard of Zoho, you may be wondering what the heck that subject means. Well, it’s very easy to explain: 99% of users have used an office suite of some sort, whether it be Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, Open Office, or any other product. Unfortunately, up until very recently, most of them were actually offline productivity tools. With the new and upcoming 
