In OS X if you have a two button mouse (and you should) if you click both mouse buttons at the same time it will bring up a Find dialog in many applications, including the Finder, Firefox (though I recommend enabling Find as you Type), Safari, ecto, TextMate and many others . I found this a couple months ago and it’s a great little time saver.
This offer is too good not to share. If you use the link from the IRS website, you can file your taxes for free through H&R Block. If you’re not an H&R Block fan, don’t worry, the same link leads to about a dozen other places you can file for free.
This comparison has nothing to do with search results, but with the design of the site. The test was done in Firefox 1.0 on OS X, but the results are similar in any browser. Click to enlarge the image.
There are 193 pixels of ads and extraneous information before you get to what you’re looking for (search results) on MSN Search. MSN forces you to spend extra time either scrolling or filtering out garbage in an effort to display ads above search results. What Microsoft fails to see is that while they’re trying increase the chances of you clicking an ad to pay their bills, putting the ads where they get in the way of your goal only drives your business away from the site altogether, reducing the chances of you clicking the ads down to zero. Granted, Google sometimes places ads above search results as well, but their ads take up much less space and they don’t show up on every single search result.
The way Google separates the URL line from the results is much better than what MSN does. Google has a normal line break, then 21 pixels from one entry to the next. MSN has 12 pixels after the description then another 17 pixels after the URL line. This makes it significantly more difficult to quickly separate results. While MSN has a total of 29 pixels between results (5 pixels more than Google) , the whitespace on MSN is much more jagged and search results seem to jumble together at a quick glance.
I’ve had PsyncX on my desktop for a couple months now and I’ve been meaning to give it a try. As of now, it looks great! I’ve had all kinds of problems with Retrospect Express from Dantz that came with my external Maxtor drive. Scheduled scripts never seem to run right and they start at arbitrary times. I had the exact same problems with Retrospect Backup on two different Macs and I’m done with trying. PsyncX is priced right (free) and looks like it should do a great job.
I’ve also been experimenting with using OmniOutliner for my task/project/etc. list. It’s not perfect for the GTD method, but it is extremely easy to enter data and pretty customizable. Right now I just have to get it all out of my head somehow, and this is working great for now. OmniOutliner is really nice program, both in looks and functionality–they really know how to do OS X.
At school I’m taking a class on distance education. Last night we were asked to create a framework for distance education in Powerpoint or something similar. It was a quick project, based off work we’d done in class, but one that I think OmniGraffle was perfect for. This is what I came up with. I know I sound like a salesman for the Omni Group, but really.. they’re a great company :).
This could almost be four different posts, but I’ve found that while I’m cleaning out my Bloglines subscriptions, the type of blogs I like best aren’t those that post 20 times a day like Scoble, Instapundit and others. My favorites are low(er) volume blogs, anywhere from under 3 posts a day to a post once a week, where you know most of the time you’ll get something decent. I’ve unsubscribed to almost all high volume websites in favor of picking a few that are either narrowly focused on the information I want or generally focused but only post when it’s something really good. How would this blog fit into that spectrum?
Is it wrong to want to write a blog entry just because the software you write the entry in is so nice? I haven’t written for a couple months and every so often I’ll remember just how nice Ecto is and want to write again. Aside from that, a lot has happened.
I’ve finally started reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. I got two other co-workers reading it at my recommendation (before I even started reading it) and when they they really liked it, I figured I had better have a taste of my own medicine. It lives up to the hype.
GTD has inspired me to find a better way to get everything out of my mind and on “paper.” I really feel his philosophy that you have to have it all out of your mind (which doesn’t know how to manage tasks based on the best time to do them) before you can really become productive and relaxed is right on.
I’ve looked at a few options for doing this and haven’t really ruled any out yet. These are the choices so far:
I don’t think anything is going to be ideal. In order to do that, it would need to:
So that’s where I am with that. I still haven’t even finished the book, but I’m sold on the idea.
I’ve also been working a lot more in Flash, programming in ActionScript. It goes in cycles, I program for a couple months then spend awhile in production. I definitely like the programming (and design) part of the cycles much better.
This time around I found TextMate and it also lives up to the hype. It’s a text editor with a very OS X feel and all the features I need to keep me happy while coding.
Since last time I wrote I’ve been to Florida to visit family, enjoyed a couple good snow storms (including one that’s going on at this very moment), redesigned Silverfish Longboarding, started work on a Masters in Instructional Design and Technology at Old Dominion University and ordered an iPod shuffle (which unfortunately won’t be here for another month).
I’ve also gotten 4782 blogspams which were blocked by MT-Blacklist as well as 634 that were moderated. I’m seriously considering switching to WordPress which my wife uses and I get jealous of every so often. I need to check to see if image uploading is supported by Ecto for WordPress now.
Over the past few months I’ve read less on Bloglines (the best aggregator available IMO) have been unsubscribing to blogs at a rapid pace. I’m no less enthusiastic about weblogs, I’ve just become a little more picky about which ones I read. I continue to be amazed at how much Rui Carmo manages to post on the Tao of Mac.
That’s about it for now. Best Tool for the Job is back (again) from vacation.
I spent the last week in Washington DC, New Jersey, New York City and Providence, more to come on that later possibly. Right now I’d just like to point out something I’m probably the last to notice.
This is the same image in Firefox (on the left) and Safari. I had no idea that the browser affected how colors were displayed on the same computer. Interesting and I must say somewhat disturbing.
Also, I’d like to point out that my second least favorite instrument is the harpsichord. Second only to the bagpipes.
Today I’m not going to mention how my G5 has crashed about 10 times in the last week, or how frustrating that it is that Mac’s are so picky about their RAM that if it doesn’t come from the mothership it’s almost guaranteed to cause kernel panics and everything else to go wrong.
I’m not going to mention how I have to reinstall OS X because I can’t boot into the operating system (after trying every tip, trick and hack possible) and how AppleCare couldn’t do anything but tell me to plugin my other Mac (what other Mac?) to back everything up in Firewire drive mode then start from a clean slate.
Today I’m going to talk about the Finder, and where I feel it could be improved.
It’s been too long since I posted anything about my family. I’d just like to point out that my wife Jenny is extremely creative… There was a contest at one of the blogs she visits to basically make an Elephant out of something soft. This is what she came up with:
It’s so simple, yet perfect. One piece of felt folded over that forms an elephant head, complete with large ears and a trunk. Add a whimsical pocket and little white bird and you have something that could probably be made in 20 minutes but that you might not think of if you had the rest of your life. Kudos Jenny.
She also paints…
(a self-portrait)
is a great photographer…
and a better blogger than I. Visit her site here: www.queenthings.com.
If you’ve been happily using Office X for OS X and are thinking about upgrading, I have one suggestion. Don’t. I did and I’ve had problems with every program.
Word 11: For some reason even though the new document compatibility panel was introduced, Word 11 is less compatible with some documents than its predecessor. This is the same document opened in Office 11 vs Office 10. It’s a simple RTF document that even the built in TextEdit handled fine. The image pretty small, but you can tell that in Office 11 numbers are scattered all over the page while in Office 10 everything is laid out nicely in tables.
This isn’t the only document this has happened with either.
Entourage 11: Entourage 11 has some nice new features, the project center and a nicer layout for reading mail. Entourage also crashes all. the. time. At least for me. I know what the problem is, for some reason I keep getting a large message and Entourage can’t handle it, so it crashes. I have to open Mail.app, get the message, delete it and re-open Entourage. In this case I can’t vouch for Entourage X. I haven’t tested it to see if it works fine there.
One way Entourage 10 is better than Entourage 11 is in it’s Exchange server capabilities, at least with older versions of Exchange. In Entourage 10 I can connect to the Exchange server and get mail (I can’t send for some reason) but with the newer Entourage 11 I can’t even connect to receive mail. The support got worse instead of better. To send and receive I have to go all the way back to Outlook 2001 for Mac.
Powerpoint 11: At work we use Powerpoint for storyboarding. It’s important that graphics and images stay exactly where they are placed. Up until I upgraded to Office 11 I never had a problem getting storyboards from designers working in Office 2000 for Windows, since the upgrade I often find that images and shapes have shifted from their original position. Usually the shift is a move between 5 and 20 pixels on the Y axis. It’s enough of a problem that I’ve switched back to Powerpoint 10.
Excel 11: I haven’t found much wrong with Excel, other than a few new “features” that I have to find a way to turn off. For example, (this is across all Office 11 apps) whose idea was it to make the formatting palette become translucent after a few seconds? What does this improve? I find it plain annoying, and even more annoying how it snaps back to 100% rather than fading nicely in. I disabled that “feature.” 
I also have found that Excel 11 has a bad habit of pointing out every possible problem, even when they’re not problems. If you have a list that is summed up at the end and there are blank cells (like for rows you plan to fill in at some point in the future) you get a little warning sign that just sits there until all empty cells are full. It’s not a big deal, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ll just stick with Excel 10 and avoid having the program correct my non-mistakes.
From my experience, I’d say save your pennies and stick with Office X for Mac. The upgrade has caused nothing but problems for me.
As mentioned previously, I finally decided to learn more about and choose a Wiki. It didn’t take long to figure out that C2 was the best site for comparisons. After reading that site and narrowing it down a bit, it came down to three.
The features I needed for my purposes were;
Aside from that, I really only needed the standard Wiki features, everything editable, simple markup etc. etc.
The first Wiki I installed was (as I’ve mentioned before) MediaWiki. The install was simple, and it’s pretty obvious it can handle large sites. It doesn’t come with RSS feeds and I just wasn’t impressed with the way it handles uploads and user registration. Before you write MediaWiki off, I have to say I probably didn’t give this Wiki a full fair shot. I didn’t like the default template and I couldn’t find an online user community with plugins and support and that turned me off from it.
Next was Twiki. This is far and away the Wiki with the most features. It supports uploads (better than any of the others), advanced plugins, it has a great community built around it and is used by some huge companies (Disney for example). It’s also hard to install. I got it up and running in one evening, but getting it running right was much more difficult. Even after I got it running right, password protecting a section of my site was a challenge and getting sessions to work was yet another challenge. I could tell that theming the site was going to be another challenge. I’m not one to run away from a challenge, but after having my share of them and spending a week and a half setting the thing up, it was just too much.
The decision: PmWiki. PmWiki was the easiest to install. I never had to switch to root or create a database or even touch the command line. It supports uploads (not the best support, but support), it’s easily themable, it’s super fast, easy to understand, easy to password protect portions of the site, yet at the same time powerful. It comes with RSS support, a good community, good plugins and add ons and it feels very stable and solid.
My recommendation for a general purpose, intranet or group Wiki is PmWiki. My recommendation to PmWiki is to revamp your website. it’s way too plain and boring (I’m not against simple but this is too much…) and was the reason I tried PmWiki last.
Also…
A Wiki I may use for quick, personal sites is the great looking Instiki. I’m looking forward to file attachments for this one.
Where’s the wiki? It’s here.