I'd never heard of World Backup Day before seeing an article about it in Wired today, but it sounds like a good idea, especially for those whose friends may partake in a little bit of the April Foolery tomorrow. So, it's a good time for me to discuss backup software …

Launched just ahead of the first move by the US to switch from first-to-invent to first-to-file, a new site, FirsttoDisclose.org has launched, with the idea of putting your materials in the public view in order to limit other people from attempting to claim patent protection for ideas you are …

Hi folks. We're back on the air with a new server and a new design. Hopefully this less noisy design is a bit more paletable. Any links to the old site will cease to function today, but there weren't many anyway (according to Google Webmaster Tools), but we have preserved …

I received a question this afternoon from my cousin about the amount of free flash in her MacBook Air and figured that the answer would probably be useful to others as well. Note that none of this is officially from Apple, so it might be wrong, but I have had …

This is a note for those of us who might run into this problem. When working on some changes for Cartographica, I ran into some difficulty when using a verb-first command that could take either a list of one type of user-defined object or another type of user-defined object. The …

So with all the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over Adobe Flash in the last few days, I just wanted to make sure I got this little tidbit in. When it comes to user experience, Adobe just doesn't understand. Their "platform" of flash brings a mediocrity born of …

Wow! Apple certainly wants more people to sign up as Mac developers, that's for sure. In changes made today, the ADC Premier and Select tiers have disappeared and they have been replaced with Mac Developer through the current developer portal (which has the iPhone developer sign-up as well). Mac and …

That didn't take too long. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has a column coming out tomorrow (which I won't link to because of my theory that this is all about the flame bait and web hits). The article basically states that Glenn Beck is more admired than The Pope …

David Pogue (NY Times) has written a blog entry about his experience as an author selling an ebook with no DRM... and it wasn't the end of the world, or even his career as an author. With the nook and a possible Apple tablet coming to contend with the Kindle …

Crunks 2009: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections is well worth a read to anyone who watches the media at all. In particular, the "Correction of the Year" (a 9/11 vs 911 confusion) and the pointer to When should editors "unpublish" online news reports? from the Canadian Journalism …

I'm an iPhone user... my wife (Hi, Carol!) is an iPhone user, and I even have an iPhone set up for development purposes that doesn't get used for anything else (despite the fact that we pay for it monthly). I also have an AT&T Data card, for use when …

For those of you digital photography enthusiasts who use Aperture, here's a little bit of info on how I deal with going out of town with my laptop, but wanting to do the "real work" on my desktop when I get home. It turns out that if you are careful …

Ah, a new release.... must be time for another slew of articles aimed at getting press and money for the "security" folks out there. For those of us with Macintoshes, here is my take on the whole Macintosh virus situation. Every time a new OS release comes out, a whole …

This is a pretty esoteric topic, but I ran into it and maybe the google will help somebody find my solution before they waste too much time. I have a custom control with a custom IBPlugin which we use in Cartographica. The IBPlugin compiles in all 4 binary modes, but …

Cool piece on Gizmodo about Alton Brown's favorite Kitchen hacks.

Many of you have already seen that Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) will be releasing on Friday. I've been running it as my primary OS on my laptop since the WWDC in June and look forward to getting a real install on there. You're probably also aware that PPC …

In line with my BackUPS/SmartUPS story earlier today, I wanted to say a little something about how I "watched" it. First, I am very pleased with my KILL-A-WATT for figuring out the real load (not needing to trust the meter on the UPS, which was reasonably accurate), so I …

This is one of those "should have figured that out myself" problems, but I figure I will warn anyone who might be in my shoes.... Check the specifications carefully before investing in an APC UPS. Not that I'm going to suggest going with another manufacturer, just that I'm going to …

In the process of moving, I had occasion to find my CD collection (yes, intellectual property fans, I have every single CD that I used to load my iPod with). I decided that it was time to replace the nasty 128kbps CBR MP3 encoded with the zing encoder using a …

Due to a problem encountered by a friend recently when trying to deal with a lost admin password on a relative's Macintosh, I had occasion to revisit the topic of resetting Macintosh passwords. This is both an interesting tip, and a cautionary tale for those with important data on their …