A more common question on the Macworld Forums is about using a Mac as a wireless base station. I’ve done it several times and at one point, it was a cost saving thing to do. That was back when Airport Base Stations cost $300 and WiFi wasn’t a household name. I freaked out my friends by surfing the net wirelessly.
Things are different now. In a pinch, using Internet Sharing to facilitate the use of a Mac as a base station is a good idea. However, using it as a long term solution isn’t. Apple hasn’t really dropped pricing on its base stations much however, causing many Mac users to think that it is a cost effective solution. Really, $129 for an Airport Express is a bit excessive. The Airport Express Base Station has even less value per dollar for consumers at $199.
This is standard update fare. Fire up software update or download the updates from Apple (1.3.1 and 2.0.1).
Apple’s documentation is pretty light on what’s changed.
Safari version 2.0.1/1.3.1 for Mac OS X Tiger/Panther improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications.
It sounds like WebKit might have been updated (perhaps to include Acid test compatibility). It could also be that minor parts of the interface were amended, but I didn’t find any such changes. If you use Saft, you’re going to have to update that too.
Because I’m a cheap bastard, I decided to buy my cable modem instead of rent or buy from Comcast.
Review # It’s hard to review a cable modem really. Sites like CNet can do group comparisons, but I have neither the cash nor the time to do a full comparison like that. I can use it for a bit to see if I need to reset it and what kinds of speeds I can get.
I got the opportunity to write another article for Macworld Online (I don’t know if it’ll get used in Macworld Magazine or not). Check it out.
I got to review one of my favorite pieces of Mac software, Growl. In short, it manages all kinds of alerts. It’s still not 1.0, so the review is a “Promising Prospect” piece. I hope that by the time it reaches 1.0, it’s part of every good Mac user’s arsenal; it’s part of mine.
After many rumors, Google has released its own IM and VoIP system, Google Talk (in beta).
Google decided to use Jabber as the backbone. That means you can IM Google Talk users with any Jabber client using their Gmail address as their username. You can even do so using iChat. If I gave you a Jabber account for godlikenerd.com, you can use that as well. Update: Or not. I can’t seem to connect to chat via anything but a Gmail name. That’s not cool. According to Google:
Lately my car has been making some unusual noise. It got worse yesterday, so I dropped it off at the mechanic and rode into work with my father. We took 128 North, then cut onto Commerce Way.
Somehow we ended up behind a police cruiser. Normally, that’s not an issue because they speed. This morning, we ended up behind that rare police officer that doesn’t. In fact, according to our speedometer, he was below the speed limit (by an MPH or two). We normally end up in the left lane because one has to turn left into Raytheon anyway.
The next big thing in Internet news is digg. According to the site it is:
Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.
That’s a lot of buzzwords to be sure. It’s much easier to explain in another way. Digg is a site where people post what they consider interesting stories. Other users can agree by “digging” the entry. Each user can “digg” a story only once.
I’d like to thank whoever bought Meet the Fockers, Pirates of Silicon Valley, and The Bourne Identity through my Amazon links. I really appreciate it. Hopefully this will be the start of a trend. Living in your own place is a little expensive.
When I first read that Flickr was merging accounts with Yahoo! accounts, I thought it would be a good idea.
As of now, anyone can log in to Flickr using their Yahoo! ID. New users will have to use their Yahoo! ID (or create a new one if they don’t have one); older users can continue to use their existing Flickr.com account details to log in, or choose to merge their Flickr.com accounts and Yahoo! IDs together*. One note: Existing users will be able to keep their existing screen names on Flickr whether they choose to merge accounts now or not – you don’t have to change your name.