Most things will work well on Mac but unfortunately, every operating system has its limitations. On Macs, we have what we call “quirks”. These quirks are random issues which are pretty simple to solve but Apple just won’t. OS X users will then rally on the Apple Support forums to try and unravel the solution. Some succeed, others aren’t so lucky. It mostly depends on the issue at hand.
Here’s one: iCal syncs your contacts’ birthdays from Address Book and creates a calendar for it. The problem is you can’t edit it to add an alarm in order to remind yourself about your friend’s birthday. It’s a simple issue, isn’t it? There just doesn’t seem to be a “fix” for it.
As someone who has been on the hunt for an obscure product for some time now I know the power that Amazon Watcher can wield.
My 8 month old daughter has been eating an Israeli cereal by a brand called Taami. I was always able to buy it in the store around my neighborhood in good old Brooklyn, New York. But one day it wasn’t available anymore.
They stopped producing it and I went to Amazon. I was able to buy a few cases that lasted me until a month ago.
A relatively unknown experimental freeware called Subsume provides you with Growl notifications every time your Facebook and MySpace friends update their statuses. When I first started writing for Make Use Of, I covered MoodBlast, which sends out status updates to popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook but this application does the opposite, mainly.
Subsume currently only supports updates from Facebook and MySpace friends. It integrates nicely with Address Book, showing the picture attached for the contact but is optional and you can have Subsume work independently from Address Book. Besides that, every time a computer joins or leaves your network, Subsume will let you know; and can even automatically send out status updates for you on Adium and iChat when you watch something in VLC, Joost, Miro or DVD Player (so your friends know to leave you alone!)
If you need a reminder service, a message scheduler and a generally cool way to organize yourself, I have just found a service that could help you (and me), called Sendible. The main profile is message scheduling, but you can use the tools offered not just to keep in touch with people, but also to manage your online and offline life.
With Sendible you can schedule messages to be sent at any time, down to the minute, and I’m not just talking about email here. SMS, Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5 and Twitter are the services available and all work without fail. The services are completely new so you will probably see some development in this area but the list is already impressive.
The internet is undoubtedly the biggest information resource available to mankind today. Irrespective of where you are and what you do, you can visit Google News or any other such website to get the latest news from around the world.
Considering the huge information overflow online, you can have some excellent tools which help you to effectively organize the information flow and help you stay informed and up to date everyday. Let’s take a look at some of them.
If you’re always checking your RSS feeds for news, stories and other kinds of updates, here’s a really neat tool that may be your new best friend. IM Feeds is a service that takes your pre-existing list of RSS feeds and runs them through an instant messenger (IM) robot which will notify you as soon as a new article is posted. The simplicity of the service is one of its greatest attributes.
GmailAssistant is an amazing little java application that allows you to check multiple Gmail accounts including Gmail for Domains at the same time. GmailAssistant accesses your Google accounts securely using IMAP over SSL. Basically folks, that means that it’s pretty secure!
GmailAssistant allows you to completely customize your notification options. You can choose to have it find all mail, unread in the Inbox, and even mail with specific labels. You can even choose different alert methods…i.e. popup message, chime, blink keyboard LED.
I got my first (and only) Mac about a year ago and discovered I hated one of the major features that makes OS X different from Windows. I resented having to move my mouse so high, just to get at the file or edit menu way up there in the menu bar. I’ve since come to love the menu bar and I’ve recently begun experimenting with some small apps that sit there unobtrusively waiting for me to glance at them or access them — often with a hotkey.
I format my Mac once a year, either because it’s clunked up with old .plist files or because I just feel like performing a zero-out on my hard disk. One good thing about owning a Mac is never having to worry about installing drivers after reformatting. So that’s one problem avoided. Having a checklist of applications to install is quite handy to get my Mac up and running as quickly as possible. So, I’d like to share the applications I consider to be essential:
(1) NeoOffice
A while back, I highlighted five tools for being a better Digger. But I have subsequently found another free Digg tool which will save you not having to constantly check the site to see how your stories are doing. Just as RSS feeds keep you on top of new website content, Digg Alerter lets you know from the desktop when someone diggs or comments on your submissions.
Digg Alerter pops up a window on your PC desktop when your stories are dugg or commented on. But only the stories that you submitted yourself - it doesn’t count the ones that someone else submitted but you dugg later. You can even tell it to include or exclude stories you submitted but which were subsequently buried.
Undeniably RSS is one of the best things that has happened to the web after email. Not only has it made browsing a lot more productive, convenient, fun … you name it, but it has also introduced a number of new ways to interact with content that we could never have imagined before. While you’re most probably already familiar with the idea of RSS feeds and Feedreader (No? See this video) , there are several other ways you can make use of feeds.
It’s been four months since our first Gmail Roundup. And Gmail being as popular as it is, it’s time for a major update. So here you go, over 80 Gmail tools and tips, including Firefox extensions, Greasemonkey scripts, Desktop programs, Web applications and all-purpose ‘HowTo’ guides.
Firefox EXTENSIONS
Gmail Manager - manage multiple Gmail accounts, receive new mail notifications, view unread messages right from your browser statusbar. “…The Gmail Manager Firefox add-on obviates the need to keep your Gmail open in a tab all the time by displaying your email info in a statusbar pop-up…” [via LifeHacker]
Google Reader is an extremely fast, uncluttered, easy-to-use, and probably the best web-based FeedReader. It incorporates several desired features: ‘feed tagging’ letting you tag and store desired items for future reference, ‘item starring’ to star important items on-the-go, and perfectly implemented ’sharing’ feature that lets you share items with friends not only via email but also through an RSS-enabled webpage. Whether you’re a feed-loaded blogger or an occasional reader who is unfond of StartPages and looking for a simple yet sufficient feedreader than definitely give it a try.
