Two Important Links for Understanding the World Today

Check out these two links:

Global Trends 2025: The National Intelligence Council's 2025 Project

This report, produced by the NIC, offers an analysis of current global trends to see how they might shape the next 15 years. A must-read for anyone interested in global affairs.

The End of Wall Street's Boom

This is a great article by Michael Lewis about the current financial meltdown. It's contributed a lot to my understanding of just what is going on in the financial system and how we got to where we are today.

Expansion

I'm expanding the subject matter that I cover here. I thought about starting separate blogs, but with the difficulty I have at staying up with just this one, having any more would just be untenable.

The topics I'll mostly be covering (in addition to continuing with the Mac, iPhone, etc. stuff) will be European football (soccer) and international affairs. These are two other areas of great interest for me and I want an outlet to write about them. Hope you'll enjoy it!

Merlin Mann suggests an Internet diet

Merlin Mann's article titled Better, presents a fundamental shift in the way that we view the online experience, especially in the era of Web 2.0. Although he writes the piece from his own personal perspective, I feel that it is an extremely interesting view and one that many, myself included, should ponder.

On the flipside, for those of us who are fans of Merlin's work, he has been taking a bit of a hiatus from the places we normally see him. For me, these are mainly at 43Folders and on MacBreak Weekly. Although I still love the MBW cast, I feel he's sorely missed on the show. Thankfully though, to get our Merlin fix, there is still You Look Nice Today, perhaps the funniest podcast on the Internet. If you haven't already, check it out.

Going from A to B

As mentioned in a previous post, I've been helping my mother get up and running on her new MacBook Air. While doing so, however, I've been sort of reexamining my own Mac usage. Not directly related to this, but also happening at the same time, I've been reexamining the system that I use to track tasks and to do's and all that. 

I'm very interested in David Allen's GTD system and many of the spin-offs that have been created and I'm trying to implement a modification of it for myself. I'm trying to find what works, and what doesn't, and fashion a system that works for me. 

While helping my mother get her Mac set up, I've noticed peculiar habits that I have and things that I do on my Mac, most often without really thinking about them. I go from A to Z without really thinking about A to B. Helping my mother (and in general helping or talking about this stuff with anyone other than myself) has really made me analyze this stuff A to B. I've really realized the truth behind what Merlin Mann says about talking to other people about productivity systems. To paraphrase what he said on the Apple Phone Show #65, talking to people about a lot of this productivity stuff is like trying to sell them on your favorite condiment, when it gets down to it, it's really a matter of personal choice. 

So I'm going to write a series of posts on things of this sort, as I try to deconstruct A to B... 

My iPhone Apps

I thought I'd give a quick rundown of some of the iPhone applications that I have right now and what I think of them. Here goes:

MobileFinder ($1.99): This application, previously available for download on jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, gives you a file browser much like the Finder on your Mac. You add files to your device via SSH over the WiFi. The app was only released days ago, so the documentation that I've found has been spotty. I've been able to figure out a decent amount of it, however, and so far it seems like it has promise. One key feature that might prove to be important is the ability to edit text files. I've heard that some issues will be addressed in a coming update, such as the ability to view files in landscape mode, hopefully this comes soon. In the meantime it should be interesting seeing what else this app can do.  

NetNewsWire (free): One of my favorite iPhone apps so far, this has been excellent. A rather simple RSS reader, NetNewsWire syncs via NewsGator. After setting up an account on NewsGator, you manage your feeds on the desktop, and it's all synced to the iPhone. It's worked great so far. Downloading feeds is fairly quick, even over EDGE. It also includes a rudimentary browser to view the articles as well. If you use NetNewsWire for the desktop, its a great mobile option.

Cube Runner (free): This is a simple game in whcih you fly your spaceship through a landscape strewn with colored blocks. You steer left and right by tipping the iPhone to either side. It's a simple game but one that is addicting and fun. It's an enjoyable accelerometer game that's well worth a download.

Twitterrific (free): I'm using the free version of this app which, partly because I'm not a complete Twitter addict, works great for me. The difference between the free and paid version is that the free version occasionally shows an ad. They are unobtrusive, however, and often I don't even really notice them. It's a really pleasing interface to keep up with all the tweets you follow.

These are some of the apps I'm most happy with. I have several others that I'm playing with as well. One of these is Evernote, which I find endlessly frustrating because I know that there is some excellent use for this application and its capabilities, I just can't seem to figure out what it is.

Nicholas Jitkoff's Google Code Page

Nicholas's Google Code Page

In the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly (episode 100), the featured guest was Nicholas Jitkoff, known to many as Alcor, the creator of that world-changing Mac app called Quicksilver.

One of the things referred to in the interview was his Google code page (he's now working at Google). On it, it lists all his current projects. It's really interesting and I thought I'd provide a quick link to it.

Yes iPhone!

I had posted before why I hadn't gotten an iPhone. Well, with all the excitement over the new iPhone 3G, I finally broke down and got one. I didn't, however, get the 3G.

I bought a first generation model on eBay. So far I am loving it. I have the 2.0 software and have installed a number of apps. Aside from a few random application crashes, I haven't experienced any of the major problems that other people have complained of.

To avoid these problems with the 3rd party applications, I've pretty much been downloading applications and updates exclusively in iTunes and syncing them to the phone. On episode 100 of MacBreak Weekly, it was said that buying and updating apps on the phone might be the cause of a lot of these problems. This was before the 2.0.1 update, however, and its possible that that update solved the problem. Regardless, for now I'm sticking with the app store in iTunes.

My adventures with IMAP mail in Gmail and syncing with Mail.app and the iPhone have been pretty extensive in recent weeks. After much fiddling I have, however, found the magic voodoo to get all three working in sync, I'll share all the settings and the method for doing it in the next post. 

Apps for the New Mac User

Finally, my mother is coming over from the Dark Side. She's ditching her two PCs and just bought a MacBook Air. Not only am I excited that she finally saw the light and switched to Apple, it'll also be pretty cool to have an Air in the house.

Looking through the apps on my computer, I decided to come up with a list of applications that I feel any Mac user shouldn't be without. These are the main ones I'm recommending to her as she begins her happy relationship with her Mac. I've used them all for quite some time now and I thoroughly enjoy them.

1Password ($35) = All in one password, secure note, and sensitive data vault. Excellent browser integration. In addition to the desktop app, there is an application for the iPhone available.

AppZapper ($13) = An uninstaller that deletes not only the app, but also all the miscellaneous files that the app installed across your hard drive, excellent for comprehensive housecleaning.

ImageTool (Free) = Very simply utility to resize images, allows export in numerous formats.

HandBrake (Free) = Invaluable utility that allows you to rip DVDs to your hard drive.

TubeTV (Free) = Grabs videos off of YouTube and other video sharing sites and saves them to your hard drive.

iSquint (Free) = Converts numerous video file formats into MP4, the format most compatible with iPods/iPhones.

Flip4Mac (Free) = Installs a plug-in for Quicktime that allows you to play Windows Media files.

So there you have it, the essentials for any new Mac user. In a later post, I'll give a list of applications more suited for the experienced Mac-user.

For the Unix geeks...

Leopard's Unix Tricks

This is a good article on Macworld.com about the Terminal in Leopard. 

As someone who is very interested in learning the Unix core at the heart of Mac OS X, this type of thing always makes for interesting reading.

Do GTD with the tools built into your Mac

An interesting article on Dennis Best's blog about ditching the plethora of GTD apps that are popping up everywhere and going back to basics: using the apps that are built right into your Mac. 

Personally, I've tried several of the GTD apps out there and haven't had much luck. I might try some of these suggestions and see if I can get more functionality out of what I already have.

Putting a damper on my SSD hopes...

So, the Macbook Air is pretty cool I guess. For most its really only a viable option as a mobile complement to a desktop computer at home, but its still a cool product. I have to say though that I am a bit disappointed in the price of the 64GB SSD drive option for the Air. 

$999 is very steep for 1TB drive, let alone a 64GB drive. Maybe I was just overly optimistic (or misinformed) but I was hoping that these drives would be a bit cheaper. For me at least, someone who's interested in using a SSD for my laptop, 64GB is the absolute lowest that I'd go. My iTunes library alone would fill about half that. I know I can offload it to an external drive and then reference it in iTunes, but I really want to be able to have my complete library with me at all times. Right now I have a 120GB drive with about 80GB full.

As file sizes for media grow larger and larger, it'll be interesting to see how this coincides with advances in hard drive design. It seems to me at least that solid-state drives are the future and yet they are seriously lagging behind in terms of capacity. SSD is a great idea and probably is the hard drive of the future, but the capacity is going to have to go up substantially and the prices down for it to gain widespread use. Perhaps its only a matter of time, but right now at least, SSD seems to be lagging quite far behind the needs of consumers.

Solid State Laptop Hard Drives in Early 2008!

Lexar Media has announced plans to release 32GB and 64GB SSD Flash laptop hard drives (2.5 inch) sometime in the first quarter of '08. Here is the link to the story in Macworld.

I'm really excited about this and the possibility of having a flash drive in my notebook. On Engadget here is an article talking about having a flash drive in a notebook. There are some other articles out there about testing flash drives in laptops as well. It sounds like a pretty good experience.

The only downside to these drives could be price; they could end up being quite pricey. We'll see though...