i-rant

I need to try this:

http://howto.diveintomark.org/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/

I figure – if you legitimately purchase the movie there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to play it on your iPod.  Its just like CD’s.  Those that know me know I’m a bit of an irritant about sharing music.  I do this this is fair.  Just like I think one or two time use of burning the new iPod movies for sale on iTunes to a DVD would be fair.

Here’s an idea – invent something new that solves a problem! OK, duhhh. But think about it – then do it for a problem that is because a really big company doesn’t want to deal with it. Microsoft Windows Media Player for Mac OS X is a dead product. If you want to run WMV files in Quicktime you need the plug-in from Flip4Mac. Its simple really – and now it is free. I wonder if Microsoft put some big $$ into the company. The payoff is of course the Visio model – they built a better workflow diagramming solution for Windows and eventually Microsoft bought them. Great exit strategy. Not sure if that will happen here – but it did work for the company that made Virtual PC for Mac (running Windows on Mac).

UPDATE: As you can see in the comment below; they didn’t put money into the company – at least to help develop the product; who knows from here on out.

I just downloaded and immediately upgraded to the version that lets me export files from Quicktime to WMV. You can even get it from Microsoft now! Now I can put videos out here for my friends who won’t or cannot upgrade to the latest Quicktime for Windows. I think the latest MPEG format is a better quality video but who am I to judge.

Jim

Comments weren’t counting. There might be several posted comments and it would show them but say at the top “no responses for…” And olderposts with new comments showed the old count.I did the procedure suggesed by those on the WP Blog – turned off Spam Karma and then went in and edited the comments of at least one from each post. It brought the count back.

I need Spam Karma – it caught 55 spam comments this week.

Image ones are hard to install, what should I do? 0 I’ll check the Spam Karma site. I don’t know If I can go edit the database..

I’m trying out Ecto Blogging client software so that I can do posting offline and publish them on the blog at will. After spell check, formatting , etc.
Software is called Ecto

This Post From Ecto!

Microsoft stopped updating Internet Explorer for Mac OS X when Apple built Safari. Safari is based on Mozilla – or the base code for Netscape Navigator and Firefox – the fastest growing internet browser out there. If you already use Firefox for Windows XP then you get it.

Safari has a few cool features IE doesn’t. One is the idea of tabbed browsing. Firefox has this too. You can open a new tab by clicking on the File menu and selecting New Tab or just type command-T (apple key and the T key simultaneously). This allows you to move between pages. You can also open multiple bookmarks in tabs with one click – I do this every morning – I have several pages I open at once in tabs – WSJ, ETrade, etc..

The other cool feature is RSS. Firefox has a plugin for it too. Many sites now have hidden code that puts all of their headlines in RSS data streams. If you go to http://news.yahoo.com/ for example, you will see an RSS in the right hand corner of the address bar. Click on it and it will open a window with all the “RSS feeds” – its a way to do a quick read of the articles on the website. I use this for sites like BBC, WSJ, Yahoo news, etc to see all headlines quickly.

Oh, one more cool feature. Google is built into the top of the Safari browser – on the right just type in what you want to search for. In Firefox that same box appears and its configurable to add other search engines. I use it all the time.

The only problem is older websites that have Microsoft specific code in them – they sometimes behave badly in Safari or Firefox. This is a pain in the butt but its also why the Mac is more secure. In email and web browsing Microsoft Active X controls don’t work. And the hackers use these controls to “control” your computer. Smart programmers use more advanced tools like java and flash to do cool stuff, lazy ones use active x – in my opinion. When you hit a website like that try using the old version of IE or unfortunately go to a Windows XP machine. Finally, don’t forget you will probably have to load up plugins from time to time – like Macromedia Flash and Adobe Acrobat. There are Mac versions of those applications too.

Jim

Switchers – those that Switch from Windows XP to Mac OSX often struggle with the concept of active applications. A friend asked how do you close a window without closing the whole application. She clicked on the red x and thought it was all gone. In short:

Make what you want to close “active”, go the the menu and click on the first item (the name of the application and pull down the menu to quit. OR simply type the command key (the apple key next to the space bar) and Q at the same time.

Key principle here is that Mac OS X applications can run simultaneously and you can switch between them by either clicking on the active application on the Dock at the bottom or holding down the command (apple) key and hitting the tab key. You can tell an application is active when there is a black triangle underneath it. Note, the finder (the face) and the dashboard (speedometer) are always active.

Each application shares the menu at the top when its “active” so you will see it change when you command-tab or click on the application in the dock.

Windows are closed with the red dot but that doesn’t close the application. Windows are minimized with the yellow button (they drop down to the dock). And they are optimized by the green dot – either made bigger or fit to the screen.