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These articles appear in the Times Record each Friday in the Technology section. |
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| Date | Title |
| 12-26-03 |
Adding Extra Hard Drives in Pursuit of the Digital Lifestyle ... Now you’ve gone and done it. You expanded your digital lifestyle this holiday season. You purchased a digital still camera, or a digital video camera, or a personal digital music player, or some combination thereof. |
| 12-19-03 |
A “Warm Fuzzy” Approach to Computing ... As I pondered more this week on “why I use a Mac”, I realized that some of the reasons I’m a “Mac head” have very little to do with processors, hard drives, megabytes, or gigahertz. Forgive me for getting a bit “esoteric” and “touchy-feely”, but this time I’m going to try to put you “in touch” with my “warm fuzzy” Mac side. |
| 12-12-03 |
Why I Use A Mac – “It Just Works” ... Hmmm. Aside from the fact that Athens bears a striking resemblance (both physically and in its headline features) to the three-year old PowerMac G4 Cube and Apple Cinema Display, doesn’t it sound like Mr. Gates has just described the Apple model? Wow, me and Bill Gates agree? Good for him. |
| 12-05-03 |
Thinking Like a Computer to Stay Organized ... Even though you never told your computer where to put stuff, the software engineers who created it did. And, have you ever met a tidy computer geek? Point made. |
| 11-28-03 |
The Mac Maineiac’s Holiday Gift Guide ... Ok, you’re inundated with “Holiday Gift Guides”. Your snail-mail box is overflowing with catalogs. Your email is flooded with advertisements from every web catalog you gave your email address to this year. |
| 11-21-03 |
A Short List of New Years Computing Resolutions ... “I’m going to spend the New Year free from worms, viruses, spyware, adware, and pop-up windows”. Now, you could spend a ton of time and money on anti-everything-software to protect you from techno-terrorists, egomaniacal hackers, fanatical marketers, purveyors of “adult entertainment”, and the like. Or, you could get a Mac.I |
| 11-14-03 |
Data Loss – Those That Have, Those That Will ... If you use a computer, eventually you’re going to wish you had backed up your important information. It could be a hard drive crash, or an accidental erasure, or a nasty virus. You can guard against losing everything with a little planning and discipline. |
| 11-07-03 |
More on the Pack of New Panther Features ... Now, Mac OS X has always been a multi-user system (as is Windows XP). But the Panther implementation is more powerful, and true-to-Apple-form, stylish as well. The real “cool” stuff comes when you change Users. |
| 10-31-03 |
Mac OS 10.3 "Panther" - Doing What Apple Does Best, Better ... Panther contains both revolutionary and evolutionary changes, and unlike major upgrades from that "other" software company, most Mac users won't have to replace their computers to take advantage of them. |
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10-24-03 |
Home Entertainment on Your Computer – Blessing or Curse? ... There’s another wave of computer hype coming, just in time for the holidays. It’s called Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. Whew. Say that five times fast. In fact, it’s such a “catchy” name, we’ll assign it an acronym before we go any further – WXPMCE2004. |
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10-17-03 |
iTunes for Windows - Music for Everyone's Ears ... When Apple opened their iTunes Music Store (iTMS) six months ago, pundits were skeptical. Why would people pay for music that they could download for free with P2P (peer-to-peer) file distribution applications like Napster and Kazaa? |
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10-10-03 |
To Blog or Not to Blog ... All right, what the heck is a “blog”? No, it’s not some mutant genetic cross between a bloodhound and a frog. Blog is short for weblog, and is all the rage right now on the internet. |
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10-03-03 |
Bits, Bytes, Bluetooth, and Freedom from Wires ... But, hey, who needs wires and cables at all? Wireless networking is now the rage, with “hotspots” popping up in coffee shops, bookstores, hotels, and airports. The 802.11b (Centrino) wireless standard can move 11 Mbps (or around 1.5 MB per second), and the emerging 802.11g standard easily doubles that rate. |
| 09-26-03 | Looking For a “Cheap” Computer in All the Wrong Places... If you tally up all the prices across the surveyed machines, you’ll find that you’d actually spend more, by a slim margin, to buy all the Dells than all the Macs. ($17977 vs $16967). How can this be? After all, Macs are “just too expensive”. |
| 09-19-03 | Email Etiquette: Keeping Email Lean and Efficient... Those attached image files and all that extra code (code that you or your reader never see, but it’s there, in, the background) add at least a few kilobytes (KB) to every message. With gazillions of messages traveling the internet every day, and people replying, forwarding, etc., that becomes a lot of KBs that have to be pushed around. |
| 09-12-03 | Email Attachment Etiquette: Be Bullish on Bandwidth... There’s an unwritten (or, maybe, un-typed) rule: the more email you send, the more you get. If you discover a joke or anecdote and forward it along to others, you will undoubtedly end up on their unofficial “people I send funny stuff to” list. |
| 09-05-03 | Applying Rules and Filters to Control and Organize Your Email ... More advanced email applications can look at more information in the header, and execute actions like deleting, changing message colors in lists, saving attachments, printing, automatically addressing replies, adding senders to your Address Book, etc. |
| 08-29-03 | Taming the Email Beast Within Us All... You’ve gone from experimentation and casual user to full-fledged “email junkie”. Confronted by your loved ones, you say, “I can quit any time”, and maybe you scale back for awhile. But then, out of the shadows, comes Instant Messaging, and your downward spiral begins again. |
| 08-22-03 | Thoughts on IT Managers and Job Preservation... It’s really a marvel of marketing ingenuity. Produce an enterprise computer solution that’s extremely complex and prone to flopping over, then recruit and train an army of people whose livelihood depends on fixing it, and certify them to “recommend” the system to businesses |
| 08-15-03 | Back to School Tech Tips... And, if you’re on a Mac, you can even audio and video chat, again, for free. Although, your college kid may not want you to see the laundry stacked up in the background. But, hey, doing laundry is a great reason to come home for a visit. |
| 08-08-03 | Style Tips for Home Video Masterpieces... Inevitably, you’re going to come across some hand-held footage that’s jittery enough to make even the most seasoned lobster boat captain seasick. |
| 08-01-03 | Web Site Designs That Assault the Senses... We’ve all seen them. The ugly ones, the ones that make us wince and squint, the ones that hurt our ears. You know what I’m talking about. Ugly websites... |
| 07-25-03 | The Great Race, Glitches in the Matrix, and Tiny Bubbles... Some bubbles just create an empty space that moves through the pipeline. Others wipe out all data in the pipeline, requiring the pipeline to fill up completely again before delivering usable data out the other end. |
| 07-18-03 | Computer Clock Speed – Tell Me When It Hertz... Let’s face it – we’re a size, speed, and power obsessed society. SUVs with three hundred horses, 53” TV screens, and 3+ gigahertz (Ghz) computer processors. |
| 07-11-03 | Apple Lets “Cat Out Of The Bag” With Panther Preview... the next major upgrade to Mac OS X, version 10.3, code-named “Panther”. It will roar into stores “later this year”, and will contain over 100 improvements and new features... |
| 06-27-03 | Apple Introduces “The World’s Fastest Personal Computer”... the PowerMac G5 (both single and double processor models, in 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 2 GHz versions) toasted Dell computers running 3 GHz Pentium 4 and dual 3 GHz Xeon processors. |
| 06-20-03 | The Inside Story on Scanners... let’s say a scanner boasts 1600 x 3200 dpi (dots per inch). The first number is the number of photosites on the scanner’s sensor. The second number is the distance the light source advances between scans. |
| 06-13-03 | More Tips and Tools for Printing Digital Photos... Ever had someone tell you “that would be a great picture, if it wasn’t for me being in it”? Now you can grant them their wish. |
| 06-06-03 | Tips for Making Your Photos “Look Good On Paper”... Your printer (either by way of your computer, or on some models, by itself), interprets the digital data about each pixel in your photo, then sends a print head containing hundreds of ink nozzles across the paper, spraying ink droplets to “re-create” the pixels in your picture... |
| 05-30-03 | Managing Your Expanding Digital Photo Library... Generally, “pro” level applications deliver precise control at the expense of simplicity and convenience, while “consumer” applications favor ease-of-use and shallow learning curves. |
| 05-23-03 | “Getting the Picture” to Where You Can See It... So you just took a whole “roll” of digital photos (although it’s not really a roll anymore – it’s more of a “disk” or a “card” or a “stick” full of photos).. |
| 05-16-03 | What To Look For In A Digital Camera... Choosing a camera can be a daunting task, as there are SO many different models and capabilities to choose from... |
| 05-09-03 | Pros and Cons of Digital versus Film Photography... Take a digital photo, review it on the camera’s built-in screen. Don’t like it? Maybe Little Joey had his eyes closed again. No problem. Erase it, and take it again |
| 05-02-03 | iTunes Music Store Off to a Fast Start... According to Billboard.com, in the first 18 hours of operation, an estimated 275,000 tracks at $.99 a piece were sold. Not a bad start... |
| 04-25-03 | Avoiding “Preserving the Moment” On A Postage Stamp... Again, I recommend always shooting at the highest resolution and lowest compression settings your camera and recording media can handle. |
| 04-18-03 | A Picture’s Worth (In This Case) Six Hundred Words...Over the next few weeks we’ll take a geek-free “big picture” look at what you’re creating when you take the picture, how to manipulate and manage your pictures, what to look for in a digital camera, and some pitfalls to avoid as you build your digital photo library. |
| 04-11-03 | A Tale of Two "Als"...They’re both encased in an aircraft-grade aluminum alloy, hence their “unofficial” designation by some as “Little Al” and “Big Al” (“Al” being the symbol for aluminum on the Periodic Table). |
| 04-04-03 | Making the “Road Tape” Evolves in the Age of MP3...some of us probably remember “the old days”, when there were vinyl “LPs” (records), and cassette players. Many of us made “road tapes” – personal compilations of our favorite songs, to take in the car or on a Walkman... |
| 03-28-03 | Rules of the Road for the "Road Warrior" ...some pundits are calling it “the year of the laptop”. Laptops now rival desktop systems in terms of performance and features... |
| 03-21-03 | Recent Announcements a Microcosm of the Industry...yep, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Apple Computer continues to move the industry forward. Why wait for the PC version? |
| 03-14-03 | Web Design Rules to Live By...Even if you’re not a Maine middle or high school student and planning on entering a site in the Maine Student Web Design Awards, you may have considered building a web site for your business or hobby. |
| 03-07-03 | When Your Presentation Really Counts - There's Keynote ...you’ve probably been there. That business lunch you wolfed down is starting to settle. All you want to do is retire to your hotel room for a few “zzzz’s”, and here comes the computer slideshow presentation. |
| 02-28-03 | WiFi and Hot Spots - The Web Without Wires ...several years ago, while Microsoft and Intel were still trumpeting their “groundbreaking” home-network-through-the-electrical outlets and phone lines technologies, Apple Computer was doing what they do best – innovating. |
| 02-21-03 | The Home of the Future - Today ...despite the now rapidly diminishing hoopla surrounding the “computer that is also a TV” (Windows XP Media Center Edition, for example), people are realizing there are serious limitations to family entertainment in front of a computer. |
| 02-14-03 | Seven Good Reasons to Get A Mac ...No cartoon colors, no annoying pop-up “suggestions”. No freezing up, no crashing. |
| 02-07-03 | Mac Users Start Living the iLife ...Apple has significantly upgraded iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD, and packaged them under the moniker “iLife”. |
| 01-31-03 | Making the Move to Mac – Easier Than You Think ...there are some things you’ll have to do without, however. You’ll be without your PC’s cutting edge 1.4 MB floppy drive, which will hold all of one high-resolution picture from your digital camera. |
| 01-24-03 | And the Home Video Editing Award Goes To… (A DV Primer) [Part Two - Software] It’s easy to get caught up in placing eye-catching transitions between scenes, or building flashy titles and special effects that would make George Lucas proud. The question you have to ask yourself is, does this really help tell my story, or does it detract or distract?... |
| 01-17-03 | Apple Raises the Bar Again ...Apple’s position as the computer industry innovator is solidified at every MacWorld show, and this one was no exception. Over 90,000 Mac faithful gathered to see the latest and greatest hardware and software from Apple and third-party developers, and they weren’t disappointed. |
| 01-10-03 | I’m Ready For My Close-Up, Dad ...(A DV Primer) [Part One - Hardware] You’re ready to make an edited home movie masterpiece that even Mr. Spielberg would be proud of. But do you really have “what it takes”? Maybe, maybe not. |
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