Man Plus Machine

Internet copyright bad boy Janus Friis and his team finally released a Mac OS X version of their latest product, Joost. Joost is a program for streaming TV programes and videos using some of the same P2P techniques as Skype and KaZaa. At this moment Joost has enough programmes to be interesting enough, for instance from National Geographic, MTV, IndieFlix, and Danish national television.

The Joost interface is clean and easy once you get to know it and you quickly learn to navigate the program. The TV image has “sensitive” borders which trigger four menus when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen: channel picker, about this programme, about Joost and of course the controls. The icons are bright and clear but the text can get fuzzy in windowed mode and especially for smaller window sizes. Also, the buttons are not very intuitive at first sight, but luckily a ballon text informs you about the buttons’ functions and you will adapt in no time. It IS a (closed) beta.

The amount of programmes and channels in Joost keeps on growing and lately the TV network Viacom decided to supply Joost with material from among others Comedy Central (puhleeeze let it be the new episodes of Futurama!).

Joost for Mac OS X runs with no problems for me besides the few font issues I described above. It loads rather quickly and the video and in-program graphics are bright and clear. Kudos and a “great work” to the guys at Joost from me!

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Visit Modern Life for some pretty good views on the ongoing Windows (Vista) vs. Mac OS X battle. Darn good views, I might add. Not because he likes Vista over Mac OS X but because he puts on a perspective many people seem to forget.

Visit Open Source Mac for some fine open source software for your Mac. Some you might know, some you might like.

Visit Mac Specialist for even more software (open source or not). The essential…

Visit Chip.Chuccio.us for the last list of software. Now don’t come running saying you don’t have enough software to choose from.

Finally, please try out WriteRoom.

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Most (if not all) newer cellphones have support for bluetooth. Using bluetooth, the phone is capable of much useful stuff like synchronizing calendars and contacts, and Windows users may be familiar with floAt’s Mobile Agent (FMA) which is an all-round program for manipulating your cellphone in several ways.

Mac OS X users also have this opportunity. It’s called BluePhoneElite and it doesn’t have a gazillion features like FMA. On the other hand the program is much more stable and clean. It’s easy to navigate and use and you quickly adopt the program as one of the most used in your toolbox.

BluePhoneElite can help you manage your cellphone and ease some tedious tasks. It can synchronize your contacts and calendar with AddressBook and iCal, and you can use BluePhoneElite for reading and writing text messages, answering and initiating phone calls. When someone calls you, the program blinks the screen and shows you a message with the name and number - if the number exists in AddressBook. Are you using iTunes, the program can also pause the music and resume again when the conversation is over. This is very nice if you’re listening to loud music and of can course be annoying if the volume is low enough for talking on the phone and listening to music at the same time.

What BluePhoneElite does best in my opinion is handle text messages. Incoming messages are shown on your screen and you can easily write a response with your keyboard thus releaving you from squinting to see the tiny cellphone screen and typing the small keypad with your large, clumsy thumbs. People will be surprised and very impressed that you manage to answer their messages that fast and will regard you in awe for all eternity. Almost.

There are also some more exotic features in BluePhoneElite. For instance, the program can start the screen saver when the phone goes out of range and stop it again as the phone comes back into contact with your machine. A very cool feature for those Macbook owners working side by side with other laptop users. Again the keyword is “awe”. Another feature is running AppleScripts when the phone and machine connect or disconnect. This can help BluePhoneElite interact with other programs - for instance update your online status in Adium X. There are some scripts available at the homepage or you can write your own.

To summarize, I’d recommend BluePhoneElite if you use your cellphone a lot. The program gives you the ability to use your phone on a completely different level and is very helpful when handling calls and text messages. It may not be as feature rich as FMA but it does the job a lot better, and at the price of only $20 it is almost an offer you can’t refuse. At least download the demo and give it a try.

As a final note I want to point out that BluePhoneElite is on its way to version 2.0. A beta version is out but I haven’t tested it yet. I’m going to in the near future, though. If it is very different from the current version I’ll write an update.

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Part of the “deal” on buying the iMac was that my girlfriend could have the old PC (which is not that old) and take it to her “office” (she’s volunteering at a music festival). Sure, I said.

The PC was already running Gentoo Linux but I didn’t expect her to maintain that in any way. Not that I expect her to maintain anything at all. The machine could use some reinstalling anyway. In addition, I’d like to try out some of the new Linux distributions out there. So I fired up the latest openSUSE 10.2 DVD I got from Linux Magazine and started the installation.

Everything went smoothly and the OS was installed in about an hour all in all. Since the PC was supposed to move to the music festival’s offices, I had installed a wireless adapter and I was eager to get it up and running to. I was under the impression that Linux and wireless adapters are a bad combo.

Of course the adapter didn’t work out of the box. Due to the license restrictions in openSUSE I had to manually add an installation source from where I could get the madwifi package, and after some installing the wireless adapter was up and running. Perfectly. I was impressed.

Since the machine was running perfectly and I’d only spent about an hour going from nothing to this, I wanted to play around some more. The user interface (GNOME) is very slick and appealing, but I knew it was capable of more. So I installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver and suddenly XGL was available. Most people find it useless, but I think it’s awesome. Wobbly windows and a cube desktop. What more could one want?

This was were the feeling struck me; It was a sensation of regret. Very weak, but it was there. Later, I have come to learn that I’m not regretting making the switch from Linux to Mac OS X because Mac OS X is cooler in the long run. No, I was regretting that I stuck with Gentoo for so long and didn’t bother try out some of the new and exciting (and above all user friendly!) Linux distributions out there. They deserve the credit.

Now you might think that I could just install Linux on my iMac. Sure, I could if I wanted to. But I don’t. New Linux distributions might be very user friendly and exciting, but Mac OS X is even more user friendly and exciting (in my opinion) and it’s just what I was looking for: An operating system that does ALL the work and leaves the fun parts to me.

Not said that I’ll never meet up with Linux again.

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Apple Inc. and Apple Corps have finally reached an agreement. Hopefully we’ll see The Beatles in iTunes pretty darn soon.

Version 10.4.9 of Mac OS X is just around the corner but the fixes keep coming in. Hopefully this is the last stop before Leopard.

If you’re planning to run Vista (God forbid!) you might want to hold back on that if you’re a heavy iTunes user.

And by the way… Adium has gone 1.0!

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