Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Farmville causes a quick Firefox update.
Those of us using Firefox may have noticed that a rather quick update came in over the weekend. That is because the newest Firefox has a feature that helps keep plugins from crashing your Firefox instance. Well the issue people were noticing with Farmville is that the game would cause a timeout waiting for the plugin check to happen. So Mozilla scrambled over the weekend and enabled a temporary fix, which is just basically decreasing the time for the timeout. A more permanent fix will happen in the future.
It just goes to show you how popular Farmville is, I personally have never even seen it in action besides being demoed on stage at WWDC 2010 and I never plan on changing that. Granted it affected other webapps and plugins as well, but Farmville was the one everyone really noticed.
This is a fairly simple process, but not everybody knows how to accomplish it.
1: Put the CD or DVD into the drive
2: Open Disk Utility (Applications -> Utilities)
3: Select the disk, not the media
4: Select File -> New -> Disk Image (It should be the name of the disk you want to make an ISO of)
5: Select CD/DVD master from the “image format” drop down
6: Click save
7: This creates a .cdr extension which is the same as a .iso Just rename the file to .iso and your all done.
Last week I was looking for an app to make my grocery shopping a lot easier. I had read an article on TUAW taking a look at Grocery IQ
(Opens in iTunes).
After reading the review I decided that it was worth the $4.99 and purchased the app. If you are reading this review on Thursday October 9th you can get the app on-sale for only $1.99 that’s 60% off.
I decided to check out all the options, and see how the app worked. I found that it’s quite simple really. You search the database of 130,000 items to find the one you want, then click a button to add it to your list. You can also add the items to your favorites for easy retrieval later.
Grocery IQ Search
Grocery IQ Search
Grocery IQ List
Grocery IQ Favorites
The program will also give you a history of what you’ve purchased just in case you don’t remember if you bought something recently.
Grocery IQ History
You can also arrange the aisles list to represent the way your store is laid out. This helps you to make sure you get everything on your list in the most efficient manor.
Grocery IQ Aisles
You can also e-mail your list to someone in the settings menu. I think this feature is a little hidden, but I was able to uncover it after doing a little searching.
Grocery IQ Settings
Now I’m not saying this app is perfect. It is missing a few features that I would like to see. For all I know they could be working on a new version with these features.
Multiple Stores
Ability to enter prices and keep an average, so you know an approximate cost of your list.
A way for someone else to add an item to your list. Say my wife realizes we need milk and I’m at work, she could text or call me. But imagine if she could send an e-mail to a special address and add items to my list, kind of like how you can email photos to Flickr or twitpic with a special e-mail address.
I’m sure there are more things I will think of in the future, but so far I have to say that I am loving this program and use it daily. It has even taken a place on the coveted iPhone home screen.
I wrote two weeks ago about my troubles with Apple’s Genius. not being able to work with my vast music collection.
I am happy to now say that the problem seems to have been fixed on Apple’s end. I have submitted my Genius report on both my Media Center PC and my wife’s laptop and they were both able to go through. I am going to chalk this one up to network congestion on Apple’s servers. If anybody else is still having the problem, feel free to let me know in the comments below.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Fail, Genius, iTunes, Network Timeout
Tags: Apple, Fail, Genius, iTunes, Network Timeout
iPhone 2.1 Software Update
iPhone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
• decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• significantly improved battery life for most users
• dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• faster installation of 3rd party applications
• fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• improved performance in text messaging
• faster loading and searching of contacts
• improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation
For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the user guide for your iPhone at:
http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/iphone
For more information about iPhone, go to:
http://www.apple.com/iphone
To troubleshoot your iPhone, or to view additional support information go to:
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone
For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
I am downloading it right now, and will report back anything significant. I just can’t wait for my phone to be responsive again.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Firmware 2.1, iPhone
Tags: Apple, Firmware 2.1, iPhone
Well today was the Let’s Rock media event from Apple, and most of the predictions by Kevin Rose were correct. Totally revamped iPod line, iTunes 8, new headphones, new features.
As soon as I heard about the new Genius feature, I figured it was right up my alley, I need something to get me to listen to more of my vast music collection.How vast you say? I have 375,590 songs which if I played straight through would play for 111 days. That’s after the great Windows Home Server data corruption bug lost a whole bunch of tune as well. How did I acquire such a collection? For 7 years I worked for the largest specialty music retailer in the United States (Trans World Entertainment). I started as a seasonal hire, and worked all the way up to being the store manager. It was during my tenure at The Wall (now f.y.e.) that I met a lot of cool people in the business both musicians, and product reps. The product reps were the people to know, not only did I get an unlimited supply of free music, but also a good supply of free DVDs. Of course being the geek that I am I digitized all this content and have had it for years. A lot of it admittedly un-listened to. So you can see why I am going to enjoy Genius.
Well here is my problem. I guess my music collection is a little too large, well too large to send to Apple at least. I keep getting a network connection timeout when trying to upload my Genius information to them, I have tried now three times and the same error happens. Now I’ve checked all my equipment and it’s not a problem on my end, it’s on Apple’s. Maybe the cloud is just over capacity. We all know Apple has had some capacity issues with iTunes before, mainly with the launch of the iPhone, and iPhone 3G.
Then we have reports of the Genius being well just that a genius, but other reports of the Genius being pretty dumb.
Maybe I will write more once I get it working, that is if I ever get my information submitted.
After getting all that written, I am now in the “Delivering your Genius results…” stage. About 33% of the way to be exact, maybe Apple sensed, well fuck as soon as I wrote sensed it time out again.
I’m not using the network for anything else, no large file transfers, just writing this blog post. Like I said, it’s not my connection it just must be Apple having a hard time delivering my Genius information. I guess my copy of iTunes 8 is just going to be a dunce for a while. I hope the issue can be resolved, so that I may get to know my music a little bit better.
I am going to attempt the same thing on my XP machine, and also my OS X machine.
UPDATE!! You can find my newest post here with the resolution.
As you may know I am a strong believer in Windows Home Server and believe home servers are going to be a big part of computing within the upcoming years.
So today is a special day for you. Microsoft is allowing you to download a 120 day trial of Windows Home Server. I personally can not say enough good things about WHS, although in the beginning there were some problems such as the notorious data corruption bug.
For those of you whom may be interested in the trial, here is the information.
To order a trial kit click here.
To learn more about WHS click here.
It is finally here, and hopefully will fix all of our problems. I will be installing it later on this evening when I get my iTunes account setup on my Lenovo laptop since I had to give the MacBook back to my company. I will post more once I have the update installed. Let me know how your experience went with the update in the comments below.
