Hello There Macintosh User!
If you are getting this email you have sometime been a client of mine — Thank you for your past custom!
1. The iPhone 4: Lucky me, I got the 6th and last one in the Optus Store in Byron on release day! Everyone else had to sign the forms and wait…and wait. It is all I expected without the reported antennae issues which were a media beat up par excellence — it works just fine. The camera is much improved, movies are very clear, the screen amazingly sharp and of course it does all the usual smart-phone things like Calendar, Contacts and iPod seamlessly. Love it and it’s free on a $59 Optus plan!
2. iPad/iPhone Apps: The iPad goes from strength to strength! PrintCentral Print direct to any WiFi printer or any Shared printer on any Mac or PC. Also mounts your iPhone/iPad as a hard drive so you can copy files to and from any computer. Email app, view Office docs and heaps more. Amazing! $9.99 ProPrompter Tele prompter (both) to keep those speech writers on course…$12.99 Property Guide from the Commonwealth Bank (for iPhone or iPad 3G) lets you point your iPhone at a property and find out what it last sold for, who owns it etc! Free.
And of course it’s becoming a very popular gaming platform too…
3. Mendeley: This interesting free research management tool aims to open up research for academics enabling them to collaborate more easily and effectively. http://www.mendeley.com/
4. Crowdmap: Born out of the Kenyan election fiasco of 2007 when a tool was needed to document the myriad events witnessed by ordinary people. ‘Crowdsourcing’ is the term for collecting mobile generated data and putting it into a form that people can use. Ushahidi – meaning witness in Swahili – was the initial application which has been simplified into Crowdmap and has been used all over the world in the Haiti earthquake and extreme weather conditions in Russia, Chile, Philippines and Peru. http://crowdmap.com/
5. Freelancer: As the online world merges with our old paradigm world view more and more aspects of life are opened up by it. Getting work or finding employees are both aided by Freelancer, an Australian company who specialise in sorting out both these issues very successfully. Sign up and browse the jobs, bid for them or out source the work you need done. http://www.freelancer.com/
6. World Data: The Guardian, UK newspaper, champions opening government data up to public access and has created this portal to help people find out stuff. As usual, our government is rather behind the curve, after all they’re still arguing about how little they can spend on broadband infrastructure! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data
7. Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?: A very polarising topic! American writer Nicholas Carr has written 2 books on the subject of use of the internet actually altering our brain structure. This page has ‘experts’ offering their 2 bob’s worth to the debate. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/15/internet-brain-neuroscience-debate
8. 1 Password to Rule Them All: This is the solution to your password problems, yes everyone has the same issue: how to remember passwords and how to make them strong enough. Presently the kid’s names (or pet’s names if you don’t have kids) are the preferred passwords and they are not secure. But how do you create a secure password and remember it? Enter 1Password. This brilliant app does all that in a simple graphic rich — ie pretty — interface. It is free to download and install then US$40 and very simple to use. You will only ever need 1 password again, the one to unlock 1Password which does the rest. http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password
9. Send Email From Anywhere: Often we move our computer to a different location and internet connection and then we can’t send emails because our email application is using a different mail server than at home. This is a constant problem for some people who aren’t using Gmail. Enter SMTPtoGo who re-route your email without you even noticing. No more changing mail servers and the hassle of finding out just what the mail server address is where you are staying. Free for 7 days, then US$2 per month which seems cheap for a permanent fix of an annoying problem. http://www.smtp2go.com/
10. iChat Instead of Skype: For video conferencing and general computer to computer chat for free via your broadband account we all use Skype, but if you are going from Mac to Mac it is better to use iChat; better quality and multi-chat is possible with several people at once. To use it you need to set up a free account at AIM AOL Instant Messenger. Click the small Get a Username link to go through the registration process, then use the same user name and password that you created when you open iChat and the setup window appears. Find out the user name of the person you want to chat with, enter them and off you go. http://www.aim.com/
11. Facebook: Having hit half a billion users this month, Facebook gets bigger and stronger. It is both a useful Social Networking tool, perhaps the SN platform, and is also becoming a business tool as you can make a business page and send update notifications to all your business ‘friends’ telling them of your specials etc. But please keep your personal and business pages separate! It is a fantastic way to keep in touch with a global mob of friends without emailing or talking on the phone and you can post photos right from iPhoto for viewing by all your friends. They are currently adding Places, a location based service to let us all tell each other where we are and what is going on from our smart phone or laptop. The world shrinks even further…
12. A Reminder of My Rates: I charge $88 per hour including GST. No call-out fee or travel charge in the Byron Shire. Half hour minimum. Telephone support costs the same in 15 minute increments. Email support is still free! Please include plenty of detail in your email inquiries. Serving the Byron Macintosh community for over 10 years.
Items for Sale is a free monthly service for my Mailing List. If you want to list something for sale send me the full description/specifications and contact details. Goes out around 14th of the month. Until next time, Thank you Tommi ;>)
Mr Macintosh Tom Hain http://www.mrmacintosh.com.au PO Box 1040 Byron Bay NSW 2481 6685 5504 041 840 8869