A few years ago a friend of mine suggested to me that if Microsoft had stopped support for Internet Explorer for the Macintosh, that Apple would die. I thought that was ridiculous at the time and told him he was way too biased toward Windows and was drinking the “Gates, kool-aid.” I told him at the time, long before Apple released Safari, that he was largely “over-estimating” Internet Explorer as it was a dinosaur of a browser lacking many advanced features.
Continue reading Camino Another Nice Web Browser for OS X…

Recording Skype conversations on the Mac just got easier. Recording audio and video conversations for podcasts can sometimes get complex. Here are two shareware applications from Ecamm to makes it simple for Mac OS X.

Call Recorder, $12.95 – Easy way to record your Skype calls and podcasts. Call Recorder is an add-on for Skype which automatically transforms your calls into QuickTime movies.
Continue reading Record Skype Calls on the Mac…

If you like Pandora, my favorite free “personnal” online radio station, you will love the free PandoraMan. If you haven’t tried Pandora yet, give it a listen. Pandora accounts are free and it is a great way hear lots of new music you WILL like. See my post on Pandora.

PandoraMan is an OS X’s native Cocoa wrapper built on Apple’s webkit, that makes Pandora act like its own compact application. PandoraMan lets Pandora users login to their Pandora account and play music without the use of their browser. PandoraMan is OS X only.

Download PandoraMan here.

Dictionary Tooltip is another solution for the missing Cocoa application dictionary for Firefox. You may or may not like it better than the Answers extension I already recommended.

Press ctrl+shift+D (or) double-click (or) right-click after selecting a word to see its meaning. This extension is ideal for those who doesn’t like to switch their window to see the meaning of a word. The developer says it was not tested on a Mac, but it works fine on my Mac.

One of the best features of Safari is its “Snap Back” technology. I miss this feature when using Firefox. I found this extension that attempts to do a similar function.

SnapBack similar to Apple’s Safari. Save an URL as “waypoint”. Follow as many links as you want and then jump back. This extension does not add itself to any toolbar. You must install it and customize your toolbar manually. Also you must save the URL for Snap Back to work unlike Safari.

If you miss the built-in dictionary in all of Apple’s Cocoa applications (this includes Safari) when using Firefox, this add-on for Firefox may just provide the “answers.” Pun intended!

Answers – Answers.com provides reliable facts and definitions from over 100 dictionaries, encyclopedias and almanacs without having to search through lists of search engine links.

Hold down Alt (or Option on a Mac) and click on any word to get a quick definition, an up-to-the-minute reference and more. You don’t even need to highlight the word!
Continue reading Firefox Add-ons: “Answers” Adds Missing Cocoa Feature To Firefox…

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Continue reading iPhoto Tip #8: Move All Your Images To Another Mac…

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Continue reading OS X Tip #93: Quickly and Easily Move Data Between Macs…

Continue reading OS X Tip #92: Moving Your Stuff to Your New Mac…

Are you a Mac user at home and forced to use Windows at work? Maybe, you never touched a Mac and are interested in some tips to make your daily Windows use easier and more productive. Or maybe you are a Mac user experimenting with Boot Camp or the Parallels solution and to run a few Windows apps you want to use. I was a full-time Windows user for many years and wanted to share with you what I do to make Windows XP more productive for me. I will discuss some of the applications that I consider “must-haves” for Windows XP. Most of them are free. They will certainly not make your Windows XP box into a Mac. But they will help ease the pain of working on a Redmond-based computer.

Continue reading Make Windows XP More Useful and Tolerable…

If you ever have trouble getting a website to work with Firefox, although rare, it does happen in our MS Internet Explorer dominated world, you can sometimes change your browser’s user agent to look like another browser. It does not work all the time, but often it does. Some websites incorrectly detect encryption capabilities and report that Mozilla Suite and Firefox do not have 128-bit encryption. You may be able to get around this problem by changing the browser’s user agent string to that of Internet Explorer.

User Agent Switcher Extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

Continue reading Firefox Add-ons: User Agent Extension…

Google is constantly said to be a threat to Microsoft. They are. Gates and Ballmer seem to be obsessed with this. Even making Microsoft change the way they do business in response. Google has done more to Microsoft than beat them in search. With Google Spreadsheets (recently released) being added to the Google purchase of Writely (online Word replacement), Gmail, Gmail Notifier, and Google Calendar is seems Microsoft Outlook and maybe even Microsoft Office can be replaced with free Google products for many users.

Let’s not forget Google Earth (ok, Google Mars too), Google Maps, Picasa Photo App (Windows and Linux, not for Macs yet), Gtalk and Google Video. All of which are free and can be replacements for Microsoft products.

Even with not having an operating system or a desktop computer, Google is leveraging the Internet and open source to bite into Microsoft’s crown jewels. Google has brought Windows users Desktop Search that is better than anything Microsoft has been able to deliver. Google is using the open source Firefox web browser to best Microsoft with even more features users want. Google has a track record of providing developers APIs to all of their tools to further leverage Google’s assets. This is a real threat to Microsoft as Firefox numbers are rising and Internet Explorer with its rocky security record, has lost market share. Google has added some more Firefox extensions to its Google Toolbar. I am now using the Google Bookmark Sync, Google Toolbar, and Google Phone extensions for Firefox along with Gmail daily.

Why, you may ask is a die-hard Apple person doing this? Because Apple has really basically dropped the ball on some online services opportunities that have existed. Google is very much cutting into Apple’s turf as well as Microsoft. As Google innovates further and starts to integrate their free (ad driven) online services they could make Apple’s $99 a year .Mac virtually obsolete. How so, you ask?
Continue reading Google Makes Gains on Apple’s .Mac…

Google’s Send to Phone for Firefox is an extension that enables you to send short text messages (SMS) of web page content to your mobile phone. For example, you might text message yourself or someone else a phone number, an address, directions, or a blog entry that you find on the Web.
Continue reading Firefox Add-ons: Google Send to Phone Extension…

One of the things I missed the most using Firefox over Safari was .Mac synchronizing bookmarks and passwords between my various Macs. I have been using Bookmark Synchronizer 3, with Firefox which did part of the job. Google, in its assault on Apple’s .Mac service, has just released a Browser Sync extension for Firefox that allows users to continuously synchronize your browser settings across computers including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies and saved passwords. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. The Browser Sync extension works with all of the operating systems supported by Firefox the opens-source browser. Unlike .Mac this includes Windows and Linux as well as Mac OS X and is FREE. This makes all my computers happy!

Google does warns that using the extension can increase your browser’s start-up time. Installing the extension is pretty easy and I will now say goodbye to Bookmark Synchronizer 3 as Google’s Browser Sync works better and does more. Browser Sync uses encryption to protect your data over the Internet so passwords are not sent over the Net in the clear. Your data is stored with your Google Account which is free. If you have Gmail, you already have a Google account.

To use Google Browser Sync, simply install and configure the extension on all computers for which you’d like your browser settings automatically kept in sync. Even if you only install Browser Sync on a single computer, you can use it to backup your browser settings and to restore your open tabs and windows across browser sessions.
Continue reading Firefox Add-ons: Google Adds The “Missing Sync”…

Continue reading iPod Tip #32: Rename Your iPod…