I’ve been using my Kindle with my Instapaper feed for a few months now. It works really well, but I wanted an easier way to sync the two. The Instapaper blog recently pointed to an Automator script that makes the process much easier, but I thought I’d take it a bit further.
Posts Tagged: mac
9
Oct 09
The Mac Tablet is (Relatively) Pointless
The Apple tablet is the white whale of the Mac enthusiast community. It’s one of those products that every die hard geek seems to think will change the world, but seem to overlook it’s painfully obvious lack of usefulness in the real world. Heck, I want one, and I have absolutely no practical use for the damn thing. So what’s the big deal?
Who would really need a Mac tablet? Well, the same people who have already adopted those dreadful PC tablets Gates has been pushing for the last 5 years. We’re talking doctors, educators, engineers and I suppose a small audience of digital artists. Ironically, these are also the fields that seem to have a disproportionally higher number of Mac users.1 Why walk around with a bunch of patient history papers when you can carry one device with all that information, and everything else you could possibly want to know about them, their condition, etc. It only makes sense that these fields, and I suppose others, would want to move towards this.
Of course, this leads the obvious question: is there any practical use for these things in my home? For me, there isn’t. I do want one, because the idea of just picking up a device and taking it into the living room to browser the web without the hassle of trackpads or positioning the laptop display just right so it isn’t blocking my view but I can still see the TV.
Wait, I think we already have this. It’s called an iPhone.
10
May 08
Getting FolderShare for Mac to Play Nice
I’ve been using Microsoft’s FolderShare (now Windows Live FolderShare blah blah blah) service for years now, and I’ve got to admit that as much as I hate most of Microsoft’s Live apps, FolderShare is one utility that I couldn’t live without. Well, OK- I could, but I wouldn’t want to.
My recent addition of a shiny new MacBook Air
Disable FolderShare encryption across all the Macs and PCs you want to sync. Yep.
Now, don’t ask me why my Mac Pro didn’t have the problem with encryption; both machines run Leopard, and neither have their Firewalls enabled. In any case, disabling encryption solves the problem, though I’m not at all a fan of the fact that my data is getting tossed around in plain text now. I suppose I could funnel everything through my Hamachi network to encrypt it, but… bleh.
Anyway, there’s the solution, Mr. Googler with a Mac. Hopefully Microsoft will fix the problem sooner rather than later, but if their track record with FolderShare updates is any indication I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’m hoping to get a Dropbox invite to see if it’s a worthy replacement. Stay tuned on that.
6
Mar 08
iPhone SDK (finally) announced
And I’m shocked to say, it was totally worth the wait. This is exciting as hell— Apple really seems to have listed to the developers and gone all out on a professional, robust SDK and platform upgrade to really make it attractive to customers and developers alike. What I’m most pleased to hear is how they’ve gone with a very Microsoft XNA-like route in giving developers a free SDK to develop with, very inexpensive licensing terms ($99 for freeware/hobbyist and lower end commercials apps), and implementing an onboard applications store. Plus, freeware apps can remain freeware; great news.
I wont go over all the details you’ve undoubtedly seen fifteen times in your RSS reader this morning, so I’ll just link those of you who aren’t up to speed to the Engadget coverage. Likewise, those of the programming percsuation might want to head on over to the Apple Developer Connect and grab yourself a copy of the free SDK.
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