Thursday, March 31, 2005

Tumi Flow

Speaking of gadgets, one of the problems with all of these gadgets is having something to put it all in. With your laptop, PDA, cell phone, MP3 player, and digital camera -- well, you need something to hold this and the chargers to go with them...

I haven't actually touched one of these, and I don't own one, but it caught my eye. The Tumi Flow Collection is a set of various bags and totes. What caught my eye? Headphone ports. Hmmm.

The idea that someone is making a bag, knowing that there is probably an iPod inside, is quite interesting. I mean, there are a ton of iPod accessories out there -- various things to hold your iPod and so-on. But, these are very nice looking bags, and they'll work for anything with headphones, I guess. The port is just a little hole to put the wires through, so the back can stay shut, but you can still listen to your tunes...

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Swash

OK, so maybe you think you have all the gadgets you need in life. You've got the Moto cell phone, a few iPods of various sizes, an old Palm-based something or other, a Tivo, and so-on. But, you probably don't have a Swash yet.

What is a Swash? From the web site:

"A Swash is a high-tech toilet seat (also known as a seat bidet) that utilizes two retractable water wands to provide a fresh and hygienic cleansing of posterior and feminine areas. A Swash actually replaces your conventional toilet seat. Better than a conventional toilet seat, it has a heated seat and delivers a warm water wash with temperature, pressure, and pulsation adjustability. All functions are easily operated at the push of a button through side-mounted controls (Swash 400) or through a remote control (Swash 600)."

I don't own one of these, so I can't really comment on the "cool" factor (or warmth, I guess). But, I will say that I have heated seats in my car, and it's one of my favorite features...

ColdKey 3.00

We've just released a new version of ColdKey. Now, with multi-user support, ColdKey provides a method of disabling over 350 keystroke combinations (hot-keys).

Please click on the link for details!

Monday, March 28, 2005

Flickr.com

In the process of creating a new web site, I decided to give Flickr.com a try. Flickr is a photo sharing web site. I usually use my .Mac homepage for this kind of thing, but I wanted to integrate the photos into a blog.

First of all, it's pretty easy. They have several different utilities for Mac and Windows, as well as a way to post photos with e-mail. Then, they integrate into a whole bunch of different blog packages, including Blogger. I had a little trouble, when "blogging" a particular photo, but it did work, and it is considered beta.

So, if you're thinking about making a blog, and you want to add photos regularly, you should try out Flickr.com!

Friday, March 25, 2005

stpetersbasilica.org

Well, it's Good Friday today, and it reminds me of being in Rome last year. I met up with my friend Alan, who is an authority on St. Peter's Basilica, partly because he developed this web site.

Before I left for Italy, I had looked at this web site, browsing through various pictures and reading through the text. But, I was not prepared for how huge and yet also intricate, the largest church in the world really is. Some of the greatest artists in the world were involved in various pieces of its construction, including Bernini and Michelangelo.

So, if you are interested in Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, or maybe just Art, you should take a look at this web site. And if you ever get to Italy, make sure you stop by and see St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s one of those places that you just have to visit!

Thursday, March 24, 2005

ourmedia.org

One of the strange things that sometimes happens when browsing the web, is you read about a web site somewhere, and then you read about it again in a totally different place (not necessarily the news).

I've decided to put it out there again, and tell you about ourmedia.org. Because I am also new to the site, let me quote something from there, to describe it:

"Create. Share. Get noticed. That's what Ourmedia is about.

Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free.

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups — all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other."

This web site hopes to become a non-profit, similar to Wikipedia and other non-profit information sites, where we all add to the information. Although this web site looks really interesting, I did have a problem with Safari (Mac browser) crashing when I viewed a Flash file. It might have just been my configuration, but it always turns me off when my browser crashes...

Anyway, if you are creative, and you want a place to post your creativity for free, this looks like the place! And, it's fun to browse through what other people have posted...

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Lucile's

I really like to eat good food in a good restaurant. On a recent visit to Colorado, I happened to eat at Luciles -- not once, but twice.

I ate there on 2 different days, at 2 different locations. Both meals were excellent. The have locations in Boulder, Longmont, Ft. Collins, and Steamboat. This is basically New Orleans style food. Usually, I think I have to go to New Orleans for that, but in this case, the food was excellent. Of course, it's been a few years since I've been to New Orleans, so I may be off...

Both of the places I visited with converted houses, which provided a cozy atmosphere bustling with people. I ate the Blackened Salmon for lunch one day, with the home-made Ice Tea (available to purchase at the counter). I had the Hank's Eggs for breakfast one day, along with home-made Chai -- which was quite excellent.

I really like a restaurant that dares to make home-made items, like spice blends, Ketsup, Hot Sauce, and so-on. The added flavors are original, and quite yummy. You can buy quite a few of these from the web site’s online store. But, I really recommend stopping in on your next trip to Colorado!

Friday, March 18, 2005

Google Desktop

Google Desktop is something that you might have heard of before, or maybe you've used before. Unlike a lot of products at Google, this one is now out of beta.

This is a great little Windows 2000/XP utility that will search through your files on your hard disk, using your browser interface. It searches through Office documents, e-mail (Outlook, Netscape, Thunderbird) and even through PDF, music, and video files.

So, if you have Windows, it's a pretty cool utility. And -- it's free.

PS - I wanted to write about a new thing called Google X, but it's been pulled for no real reason.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

hubbardston.org

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I wasn't sure what web site to post, to celebrate March 17th, so I decided to tell you about another web site that I manage, at hubbardston.org.

Hubbardston, Michigan is my home town. A lot of us, maybe most of us, are descended directly from people in Ireland. This web site is about the history of Hubbardston, as well as acting as a community web site.

This small town does not celebrate too many holidays, but St. Patrick's Day is always a big day. The only bar in town is Shiels Tavern, claiming to be the oldest in Michigan (first to get a license after prohibition). It will be packed today and especially tonight. People have been known to take today off from work...

The American Legion is the other place in town to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Both usually have a dinner with Irish stew and so-on.

I won't be there tonight, but I know people who will be. The following phrases are from irish-sayings.com:

Saint Patrick's Day
Lá Fhéile Pádraig
/law ae-leh paw-rig/

A pint of Guinness, please.
Pionta Guinness, le do thoil.

Kiss me, I'm Irish!
Tabhair póg dom, táim Éireannach

St. Patrick's Day blessing opun you
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

shamrock
seamróg

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

iPod Shuffle

I bought an iPod Shuffle a month or two ago, when they first came out. I didn't really use it too much, until today.

It's awesome. I thought maybe I would miss not being able to see what song is playing, but actually, I didn't have anything to play with so I just listed to the music. I loaded up a bunch of music that I had just bought, put it on "shuffle", and listened to some great music. (I already own a regular iPod)

The thing weighs almost nothing. I mean, it's strange that a little piece of white plastic can put out great sounding music! It holds a lot of music -- several albums at least.

It charges and loads via USB. It's simple. It's easy. And it just works.

I love it! If you have an extra hundred laying around, you might want to get one!

PS - I'm writing this blog in Chicago's Apple Store. Cool place...

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

A9.com OpenSearch

Remember a few posts back, when I talked about A9.com? Well, they just added a new feature called OpenSearch.

Now, I have to confess that I don't totally get it yet, or maybe it's not quite working right or something. But, A9.com comes with a few different search places. So, it searches the web using Google, Amazon.com for books, and so-on. Each of these searches can be in it's own column, and you can choose which of these columns you want to look at.

OpenSearch provides a way to add more search sources. Like Wikipedia, various news sources, etc. There is a whole list on the web site. They also have a mechanism where authors of web sites can create these kinds of searches and add your own column. They extended the RSS 2.0 specification a little bit, which is one of the formats used for blogging to an XML file.

I know this all sounds kind of techy, and it is. But, if you haven't played with A9.com yet, you might want to try it out now, and see what you think!

Monday, March 14, 2005

OSWD.org

OK, this one is sort of for the folks who code up their own web sites. OSWD stands for Open Source Web Design.

You've probably heard the term "open source" before, but this is kind of different. When you hear about Linux, Apache, or Firefox being open source, it means that if you are a programmer, you can potentially understand and modify the software product.

But, OSWD is basically a web site of templates for web pages. You know how you have a word processor, with pre-built templates? That's what these are, for web sites. People create designs and post them to OSWD.

I think I particularly like this web site because I would typically start a web site design by viewing the source of some other web site that I like. By using OSWD templates, I'm not really taking someone elses hard work without permission. Rather, I'm using a resource that is provided for anyone to use.

Most or all of these templates are text based, meaning that they do not use GIF or JPEG files as part of the design. They depend on tables or cascading style sheets for web site layout.

If you design web sites, take a look!

Friday, March 11, 2005

BBEdit

I have to confess that this product was instrumental in my purchasing decision to buy a Mac to use for web site publishing. I knew that would probably want some Adobe products, which I could get for Windows or the Mac. I read a lot of articles that said that a Mac was more of a natural fit for web site development. I didn't really believe that. But, I kept running across references to BBEdit -- and it was only available on the Mac.

You see, I'm one of those old fashioned kind of web site developers. I code the HTML by hand. Well, OK, maybe not for this web site, where I'm using Blogger. But, most of the time, I code by hand. In Windows, I used Notepad to edit HTML pages...

BBEdit is a dream for this kind of thing, and it keeps getting better. Now at version 8, the editor has a ton of new features. You see, these guys have to keep up with the latest HTML, XHTML, CSS, Perl, Unicode... Well, you get the picture. Maybe you don't understand all of these acronyms, but if you code up web pages, you've at least heard of them.

Like any other word processor or editor out there, I probably use about 10% of this products capabilities. But, I really like the parts that I use. I highly recommend BBEdit!

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Google News

Are you a news junky? If so, maybe you already know about Google News. Google does not have any news editors. They simply go find news from a bunch of news sources, then organize them automatically based on the popularity of that news item, the news source, and who knows how many other variables.

Well, they just added a new feature. You can customize the news page, so the news that you really want to read is where you want it! It's a slick feature, and seems to work pretty well.

And while you're on the page, you might want to check out the News Alert link on the left side. Basically, you can have an e-mail message sent to you about a specific news topic, as it happens.

Google News is still considered "beta", but it's been around for a year or two, so I think it's pretty solid.

Check it out!

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Dingle and Beara Peninsula - Ireland

In July of 2004, I visited Ireland for the 2nd time. I've just posted photos of the Dingle Peninsula, the town of Dingle, and the Beara Peninsula. After clicking the link, click on Ireland 2004.

This is a home page built using .Mac and iPhoto. Apple runs .Mac as a subscription service, and hosting a web site with photographs is just one part of that subscription. I took these photos with my Canon Elph, a small little 4 Meg camera.

Some of the photos are of a stone circle that I found, in a field, on the Beara Peninsula. It's not Stonehenge, but it was pretty cool to walk around and think about how old it is. It was a beautiful setting.

Dingle is my favorite town in Ireland, thus far. If you ever go to Dingle, make sure you stop by Dick Mack's Pub (It's across from the church). I also recommend Benners Hotel, on Main Street.

The Dingle Peninsula is a great place for hiking, biking, archaeology, and even swimming!

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Transmit

Transmit is an FTP utility. At the Panic.com web site, they define FTP as:

"FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is the universal way to send, receive, and manage your files and folders using the internet. If you manage a web site, need to send a file to a friend running an FTP server, need to post eBay images to a image host, or download a lot of software updates, then Transmit is the perfect program for you: it makes FTP easy and fun!"

So, I couldn't have said it better myself. I have used Transmit ever since I bought a Mac to do web site development. It's very easy to use, and does everything that I want - plus a lot more. One of the interesting things about Mac software these days, is when 3rd party software developers enhance an OS X feature. For example, Transmit version 3 provides access to my .Mac iDisk, if I want.

I have yet to write any software for the Mac, but it appears that every new technology is documented well enough for programmers to embrace and enhance, within limits anyway. This is great news, and really makes using a Macintosh a joy.

By the way, I use WS_FTP in Windows, but I'll save that post for another time...

Monday, March 07, 2005

The Tucker Automobile Club of America

The '48 Tucker is one of my favorite cars of all time. As well as the entrepreneur story and movie that goes with it. The Tucker Automobile Club of America web site has just been re-designed.

One of the new announcements is the 31st annual convention, this year in Chicago! If you know the Tucker story, you know that Chicago was the home of the factory, as well as Preston Tucker’s second home. Both of these places will be on the tour.

At least 5 Tucker automobiles -- 10% of all that were made, will be at the show. Who knows, maybe Francis Ford Coppola will show up with his car! Or maybe George Lucas! Both of these famous film makers own Tuckers, and their love of the car and story inspired them to make the movie, “Tucker, The Man And His Dream”.

The new web site is very nice, using a Tucker “radio” for navigation, and with the Tucker logo in the background. The color scheme works well, for a historical web site. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should rent it, it’s very well done. Try out the web site, to learn more about the Tucker.

“Don’t let a Tucker pass you buy!”

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Ruske.net

A friend of mine recently changed the format of his web site, Ruske.net, into a web log of sorts.

He's a really great computer programmer, with topics about .NET, Cocoa, Java, and Forth. He's also the principal writer for another web log named ICOMLore.org, that he and I started, to share stories about the company that we used to work for.

If you are a programmer, or are interested in programming, you should read through his web log, you just might learn something!

Friday, March 04, 2005

WYCE

WYCE is a community radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've never lived in Grand Rapids, but a friend used to be a programmer there, as a volunteer. The radio station runs with very little money, most or all from donations. In other words, little or no advertisements.

The music is Folk, Blues, Jazz, Rock, and Worldbeat -- all in one place. The programmers get to play what they want during their shift, so it's hard to know what you will listen to. They do have a programmer's schedule on their web site.

You'll need Real Audio to listen to the music online, but it's great music!

The web site contains a lot of information about various artists being played at the station as well as local concert schedules, if you live near Grand Rapids.

Please take a look! If you like to listen to them, consider a donation!

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Ovolab Phlink

Have you ever wanted a "smarter" answering machine for your phone? Do you use a Mac? If so, you might want to try Phlink, from Ovolab.

Phlink is a combination of hardware/software that is very easy to use, and quite practical as well. Why buy this product, you get a little box that plugs into your USB port on one end, and a phone line in the other end.

When the phone rings, and the software is running, you will get a small window telling you the caller id, if available. There is only one preferences dialog to configure the software, where you can set how many rings before voicemail, what the voicemail should say, what format to record the call, etc. The software can also deal with faxes, touchtone commands, and applescript -- but I haven’t used these particular features yet.

My favorite feature is to send the recording in an e-mail attachment. This way, when I am home or out of town, I can simply read my e-mail and receive any recordings as well as caller id numbers. This is the real reason that I bought this package and it works quite well!

Phlink sells for about $150, for one adaptor, and I think it’s well worth it. Other products have a few more features, but are more complex as well. This worked so easy that I thought I was missing something.

Ovolab has a couple of other Mac products, called AAChoo and RemoteTunes, both related to the iTunes/iPod products from Apple. I haven’t used them, but take a look and see what you think!

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Annual Credit Report

I heard about this on NPR yesterday. In an effort to reduce identity fraud, there is a new law that provides a free credit report to everyone, once per year. You can do this using the web site AnnualCreditReport.com.

I tried this web site out. Basically, you enter in your personal information, like address, social security number, etc. Then, this information is sent over to the 3 credit agencies. I think you have the option of just using one or two of them, if you want.

I have to tell you, although it is interesting to read your own credit report, it is more than a little unsettling to be entering in private information into any web site. I mean, I'm sure that they try to be as secure as possible. But, giving away personal information, in order to help prevent identity theft? I really hope that they have good security measures in place.

Each of the credit agencies have various questions that they ask, to try to insure that you are who you are. I don't know about you, but it's tough to remember what street address I lived on, 15 years ago... So, it's a little painful, but if you have any questions about what your credit reports say, it's free, and it is interesting.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Apple iPhoto

For digital photo management, I use Apple iPhoto. I really like this program, and I find new ways to use it all of the time.

With my last couple of trips, I took my laptop so that I could take essentially an unlimited number of photos every day, using my Canon Elph. Every night, I moved my photos to the laptop, and cleared the memory in my camera. I label the photos with the location, and maybe Day 1, Day 2, etc. When I get home, I move them all into my iMac and into iPhoto.

iPhoto comes with a new Mac, but it's part of the iLife Suite of products. iLife is a suite that includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garage Band, and iTunes.

For gifts, I use iPhoto to edit and print various photos, then frame them and give them away. I can do all sorts of editing. I own Photoshop, but I have found that iPhoto works great for basic editing work. I publish a lot of photos on my .Mac site. If you want to take a look, please visit here: homepage.mac.com/dfahey This works great for sharing my vacation with family and friends, or posting old family photographs.

I've also created slideshow DVDs, which is a great way to quickly share vacation photos, laying down music from iTunes, and creating a fun "video" of the photos.

Right now, I'm working on picture books, so that I can easily open a book to explain where I've been and where I visited. The books have a great them, called vacation, that will automatically choose different angles, sizes, and page layouts that make it quite easy to do. Once I have created these books in iPhoto, I can order them now, and later -- for great gifts!

iPhoto is only available on the Mac right now. If you have Windows, you might want to check out my Picasa 2 post.