TalkRhubarb

Apple have released Safari 3 (beta) for Windows. Up until today it’s been a Mac OS X only web browser. You can download it from Apple’s US website. But I have to ask myself why would you bother? It doesn’t have all the great extensions of Firefox. And it STILL doesn’t support the beta version of Yahoo! mail. (Which is funny, because they have a great picture of Yahoo! on the main download page). On the Mac the new version does feel a bit quicker, but on Windows it didn’t feel much nippier at all, and even a hefty speed bump wouldn’t make me switch from Firefox on windows, when you lose so many features.
My bookmarks were automatically imported from Firefox and IE on Windows, but I didn’t realise it had done that as the bookmark bar in firefox didn’t overwrite Safari’s. All the firefox shortcuts were in a “Mozilla Firefox” folder. It all seems a bit of a waste of time. Particularly when there’s more than a few bugs still in Leopard that those developers could have been sorting out instead.

This post comes to you from a Safari browser on a Mac. Don’t you just love irony.

I upgraded Wordpress today. Widgets are integrated so K2’s sidebar widgets are broken unless you download a plugin to disable them. Straightforward enough.

Should really be GmailRhubarb but there we go. I was trying to get Google Apps for your domain up and running for merriweather.org.uk, but it’s very difficult because of the lack of options UKReg (who I registered the domain with) provide. No matter how hard I tried Google wouldn’t verify that I was the owner of the domain. Last night I gave up and decided I’d try with talkrhubarb.com (hosted with powweb.com). The result is that I have 50 talkrhubarb.com 2Gb gmail accounts setup so I’ve added a link to the login page at the top of the page. Powweb’s setup made it soooo much easier.

I downloaded this game last night and have found it strangely compelling.  It’s taken me back 20 years to when I doodled similar sketches in 2nd year physics at high school - only sketchfighter brings those doodles to life.  It gives it a weird mix of nostalgia and novelty I really like. What does that say about me?

There’s multiplayer competitive or co-op options too, both of which have you tethered to another player.  Unfortunately my firewall stopped me finding internet players, but even sharing a keyboard works quite well.

You can get Sketchfighter here

Some Swiss developers have used the flickr API to allow you to create mosaics of your own, or people’s flickr photos, providing they’ve used a creative commons license. It’s a nice little app, but unfortunately it’s just too slow for me to use without frustration. Hopefully you mileage varies. I mention it because it seems a photo I took of dolphons at Parc Asterix last summer is used as one of the sample mosaics. Check it out:
Mosaickr sample

Ok that’s stretching it a bit. But this article on BBC News immediately brought to my mind the Babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have created a device that translates mouthed words into one of a number of languages. With a very limited vocabulary of less than three hundred words, and only an 80% success rate, it’s clearly not a product that’s going to be available anytime soon. And that’s a shame, because I was looking forward to special promotions at Amazon along the lines of “Free Babelfish with every Hitchhikers Guide DVD”. It would be a great way to get rid of excess stock of the dire movie adaptation.

Some people have incredible ingenuity which flies in the face of much more obvious and simple solutions. Here’s someone explaining how they use a torch and their iSight webcam to switch on and off iTunes on their mac.
MacOSXhints.com article

As the editor of the site above says - it’s a lot easier to go and buy a remote control! And did I mention that all new macs (with the exception of the high end mac pro’s) come bunded with a remote control? Alternatively with bluetooth on the computer you can use your phone as a remote, with the salling clicker software. This is also available for Windows users too.

This is an old trick- but still a good one**. You can get details here.

**If you’re windows user, or a mac user without a webcam, you’ll just have to take my word for it!

I’m using an older, free version of FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto. I happen to notice that the latest version released 25 Aug is now £12. I’m a naturally lazy person. It’s a real effort to get me to take pictures. It’s an effort for me to upload them onto the computer and it’s even more of an effort to share them with family and friends. It’s really where iPhoto on the Mac really shines.
I plug in the camera.
click The photo’s are imported.
click They’re in an album.
click I’m watching a slideshow with moving images.
And with FLickrEXport I just select the photos I want and select the File-> Export menu option.
Then click the Export button on the screen that pops up and voila - my photo’s are in flickr (it signs in for me).
Now it’s debateable whether my photo’s are worth sharing, but the truth is, if it wasn’t as easy as Apple and the guys at connectedflow have made it, that question would be irrelevant because there wouldn’t be any of my photo’s to debate.

Just completed a quick and easy upgrade to Wordpress 2. I’m using some widgets and am on the lookout for a new theme now. Must say I like it so far.