Technology

For some time now, I was using Watson to look through TV listings, look at show descriptions, change the channel on my EyeTV, and schedule recordings. Due to changes at TVGuide.com, all those features have been lost. I originally bought Watson solely for those features. I’ll be surprised if the EyeTV support is kept for the product that is succeeding Watson due to its cross-platform and Java nature. I know the changes to TVGuide.com are outside of Mr. Wood’s hands, but the sudden disappearance of the EyeTV features just smacks of the lack of support that I expected to come after he announced the end of support in October. ...

A large part of my time is spent reading and responding to posts at Macworld’s Forums. I enjoy learning new things, helping others, and generally raising the level of knowledge. It’s all very fulfilling. All except a few select kinds of posts. Some of my personal pet peeves are fairly evident, cross-posting, repeatedly posting “It’s not working” and nothing else, calling a (forward) slash a backslash, etc. Much less evident and I don’t mention because most people would interpret it incorrectly. That is the fabled “Windows does this” line. To give a little perspective, let me give an example: ...

Netscape 7.2 improves pop-up controls, security: “Netscape Communications released on Tuesday Netscape 7.2, an upgrade to the company’s Web browser that improves control over pop-up windows and adds security enhancements. This is a free download for all users; you can also order it on CD, with a guidebook, for US$14.95. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.1.x or higher, a G3 running at 400MHz, 256MB RAM and 60MB free hard drive space.” (Via MacCentral.) ...

For any of you using an EyeTV, be wary of its automatic recording checking. This feature will check your TitanTV account for any remote scheduling you’ve done. That sounds well and good. It even works as advertised. The problem is how persistent it is in trying connect to the site. Current EyeTV users are familiar with a feature that allows one to wake or start up the computer to record a show. Unfortunately, the TitanTV account checking function also uses this mechanism. You may wonder why I would warn about such a thing. Well, if you turn it on to do it hourly, it will start up every hour if it is off. My computer has been keeping me up at night, freaking me out for several nights now. ...

I’ve recently started using Firefox instead of Safari. My two leading problems are spell-checking and the fact that Firefox insists upon opening external links in a new window. I finally a solution for spell-checking. Although it’s not nearly as nice as OS X’s system spell checker (which checks on the fly), this is an acceptable stop-gap solution. Long term I think I may have to go back to Safari though (if only PithHelmet would accept new rules from me, damnit). ...

I wanted to add some neat appearance effects to my resume’s page without having to make images and use tables, etc. Instead, I thought I’d try my hand at CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as it seemed to do a good job with both this blog and the FAQ. It turns out CSS is a lot easier than I’d originally thought. Using objects and inheritance to propagate style changes, it’s a natural language (and I use that term loosely in this case) to pick up for an OO programmer. ...

Linux on the Rise Macminute has a couple stories on Linux in relation to Macs. The first is that Linux has surpassed the Mac as the second most prevalent desktop OS. It’s not entirely surprising as Linux combines the low price of x86 hardware, the low cost of the Linux OS, and the hard stability and functionality of a *nix operating system. It’s ideal for many corporate and software development settings. Despite looking like a loss for Apple, this is actually a win. Increased use of Linux will lead to the necessity of all businesses needing a cross-platform solution. It will also decrease the amount of web pages that are Windows IE only as more and more customers will not have that as an option. Additionally, most software being developed for Linux is also being made available for OS X through the terminal and X11. This is a major win for Apple. ...

I hope that no one falls for this classic pyramid scheme, but in case you were thinking about it, please take five minutes, calm yourself down and realize that it is too good to be true. Please do not fall for this scam, nor should you let any of your friends do the same. It’s worse than falling for the $1000 Microsoft tracking email scam because you are willingly giving your address to spammers and you will receive nothing in return. ...