From the Whimsical Street Art of Nomerz, the kind of graffiti you don’t mind. Unless you own the building.
And another…
Priceless.
December 2, 2011
The Best Pandora App For Your Mac Music Pleasure
500 television channels and nothing’s on. 100 radio stations and not one I can listen to for more than an hour.
Then, there’s Pandora. Think of it as internet music radio the way God intended. My latest app love is PandaBar, which plays and controls your Pandora account from the Mac’s Menubar.
It’s cheap, easy to use, out of the way, configurable, and comes with the right blend of extras to make it the most usable Pandora app for the Mac.
What’s not to like about this?
Click the PandaBar icon in the Menubar and get what’s playing, a button for Stations, a button to skip onward, duration, and like or dislike options.
Stations? One click to your customized stations. One click to select.
PandaBar features Growl notification support (nice at first, but distracting after awhile), keyboard hotkeys (and Apple keyboard for play, pause, and next).
It even works with your Apple Remote Control. No clutter. No complexity. Just Pandora when you want it. Even the panda bear icon is cute (I admit it; that’s what makes me look at an app). It’s cheap and available in the Mac App Store.
Shame on Pandora for requiring Adobe’s Flash plugin on the Pandora home page. Hey! Ever heard of HTML5, guys?
November 30, 2011
Complaints About Reading News On Mac, iPhone, And iPad
There’s something to be said about the old fashioned way to get news. The newspaper makes it easy to scan pages, find an interesting headline, and dig into a few details with a quick glance.
Alas, killing trees to deliver daily news is so yesteryear. Nearly everything I read these days is online. Mac, iPhone, iPad. Multiple screen sizes and shapes, and the wide variance between apps make for as much discomfort as new media makes for variety.
RSS readers deliver the headlines and a summary in typical form. You still need to click or touch to get the details, but scanning is anything but similar to a newspaper.
Check out the screen of Glance News, a popular Mac App Store app for news reading.
Yes, everything on the screen is a glance, but ohmygawd– what’s with all the screen clutter.
Contrast that with my favorite news devouring app, Flipboard on the iPad.
This is the way to get your news, but it’s iPad only. What prevents a similar interface from being utilized in a Mac app?
Obviously, the iPhone brings viewing restrictions so most news apps provide a headline, a matching graphic, and a brief summary. A tap gets you the details (or, more details and link to the original and even more details).
Just because someone can put 60 or 70 headlines on a Mac’s screen doesn’t mean they should. Show me a better interface than Flipboard for viewing the news and I’ll buy it.
November 29, 2011
2 Ways To Kill And Use Flash On Your Mac
Got Flash? Of course. It’s the video standard for the world wide web. Everybody uses Flash video, right? It’s not dead yet, but if there’s a God in heaven, may Flash die quickly and without mercy.
In the meantime, we have browsers to use and web pages to view. Many of those web pages display Flash videos and ads. Here are a couple of beneficial ways to eliminate Flash or to manage Flash on your Mac.
First, delete the Flash plugin from your Mac. That means no Flash on Safari or Firefox. Both browsers will run better without the plugin. That means fewer crashes, longer battery life, and you won’t miss the ads.
What about Flash video?
These days, most videos on the world wide web are also available using HTML5, which is why your iPhone and iPad can view most YouTube videos (Flash doesn’t work on Apple’s iDevices, and works poorly on other handheld devices).
Here’s the way I can still view Flash videos on my Mac. Whenever I encounter a video that requires the Flash plugin, and it happens less and less these days, I bring up Google’s Chrome browser. Flash is built in to Chrome, and for some strange reason, it actually works better than Adobe’s plugin for Safari and Firefox (courtesy of Daring Fireball’s John Gruber).
If you don’t like that burdensome two step approach, there’s another way. Rather, a couple of other ways. First, there’s ClickToFlash, a free Mac Safari extension which prevents the Flash plugin from loading automatically. Second, there’s ClickToPlugin by the same developer.
With ClickToFlash, every Flash object is replaced by a simple placeholder. If you want to see the Flash video, simply click the placeholder. ClickToPlugin works similarly, but simple prevents any plugin from loading in Safari until you want it to.
Other solutions include the commercial FlashFrozen which works differently. If Flash begins to hog your Mac’s CPU, or drain the batter, or both, FlashFrozen can freeze it, or even kill the plugin.
Flash shows up on so many web site pages as ads that your Mac can overheat. Battery life is reduced. I’m in favor of an online Occupy Flash movement.
Out with the old. In with the new.
November 28, 2011
Microsoft Still Doesn’t Get It
Here’s another episode of Microsoft Doesn’t Get It. This time, it’s Microsoft’s TellMe vs. Apple’s highly-touted and loved Siri. Eric Savitz in Forbes, interviews Microsoft executive Craig Mundie. Mundie:
TellMe facility’s been in the Windows 7 Phone (sic) for more than a year! I just think that people are infatuated with Apple announcing it… it’s good marketing. At least as a technological capability, you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows phones for more than a year. You could take these Windows phones and pick them up and say, ‘Text Eric,’ and it’ll say, ‘What do you want to say?’ and it transcribes it… You can query anything through Bing by just saying the words. I mean, all that’s already there. Completely functional, been there for a year.
So, TellMe is the same thing as Siri and it’s been there for a year. Let’s compare the two side-by-side:
Microsoft’s executives have no shame.
November 25, 2011
Samsung’s Next Big Thing? A TV Commercial
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then Samsung is in love with Apple. First, the company shamelessly copies Apple’s iPhone and iPad designs, now they copy Apple’s tasteful and highly effect Mac vs. PC television commercials.
How? By making fun of Apple’s iPhone customers. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?
The problem here is that Samsung copies imperfectly. The Galaxy Tabs are not iPads. This commercial is not Apple quality, either. It insults the customer, while Apple’s TV commercials insulted Windows PCs.
Samsung’s next big thing? A bad reputation.
November 23, 2011
R and D Bang for the Buck
From Seeking Alpha, Stephen Rosenman takes a look at Apple’s relatively small R & D budget compared to Dell, Nokia, HP, Intel and RIM.
In 2006, Apple spent $500 million and in 2007, it spent $800 million, and came up with the iPhone and a host of other products. In 2007, Microsoft spent over $7 billion and, in 2008, came up with what? I’ll let you be the judge which company spent more wisely. This year Apple devoted $2.4 billion to R&D. Imagine what Apple’s got up its sleeve.
So, research and development, as a percentage of Apple’s revenue has been going down, while the overall amount has increased.
And, Apple is now devoting over $2-billion to R & D, three times the amount that brought us the iPhone.
What’s up Apple’s sleeve indeed.