Parallels 4
Its been months since Parallels 4 has been released. My experience with it has been quite pleasant, but there are some quirks in Parallels 4.
For example, every time I run a Windows VM, Parallels messes up my system bar, for example:
Instead of replacing the icon for networking it just keep appending a new icon as the state changes. Very annoying. Will Parallels please fix this!
Best Task Manager for Mac OSX
I've been looking for a good task manager for Mac OSX for a while. I'm impressed by Things.
I've been using it for over a week, and it has some excellent features which I like and appreciate: A native Mac OSX look and feel, a system wide shortcut to add new tasks, classic GTD categorization and much more.
One lacking feature however, is integration with Quicksilver, but the provision os a system-wide shortcut kind of compensates for that.
You can find a comparison of Things with other task managers here, and not surprisingly Things comes out ahead.
Mozilla Ubiquity Rocks!
Mozilla Ubiquity is a very impressive new project form Mozilla. It will be an extension to firefox, which allows you to easily create mashups using common natural language. Once released its impact I presume could be massive in extending Firefox's lead in the Browser war.
For now I'm sure its something only geeks would use, until Microsoft copies it into IE9.
Just watch a demo here:
Why I think strong password generators are a bad idea
Recently in twit.tv's MacBreak Weekly, they advised about a simple technique to get secure passwords, by using openssl, then in another episode they talked about 1Password.
The advise was to generate a strong password and have your keychain manager remember it! Now, if you do follow that advise, and set up complex passwords, and have your keychain manager remember it, what happens if your keychain becomes corrupted due to any reason (or your hard disk crashes and you don't have a backup), you would be completely locked out of your accounts, because the password was too complex to remember. Or imagine your traveling and get your laptop stolen (happened to a friend recently), there is no way you can login into any service, because you don't remember the passwords any more. So are strong random passwords really a good idea??
I rather think, that phrases, you remember are better as passwords. Or if possible try to use openssl keys for identification. The best methods I've seen so far, and I think its pretty secure from keyloggers as well, is method used by my bank.
The site does not prompt for the entire password, rather, you have to type in certain characters in the password, for instance:
And every time you login the character a different set of characters is asked. This method is secure from keyloggers for sure, because no one will have an idea what character was asked.
Zinio makes Magazines accessible!
Don't you love to read magazines in your field? I love to read MacWorld, PC Magazine, PC World it helps me keep up to date and provides a good way to pass my leisure time. However before today I did not want to subscribe to magazines independently and have them pile up in my room.
Today I ordered a Digital subscription of MacWorld, in order to be environmentally friendly, preemptively remove a lot of mess in my room and make the content searchable. The MacWorld site took me to Zinio, where I discovered what a treasure trove it is.
Zinio makes a lot of magazines accessible to the casual reader. It offers a wide range of popular magazines from MacWorld to Playboy to Jane's Defense Weekly. Subscription are cheap. For a whole year subscription like costs $20 for a single magazine.
The only downside of ZInio is the DRM'd format in which the digital magazines are delivered. The content is not indexable by spotlight. I have to use their own search utility to search through the magazines. They have a client for Mac, which downloads new magazines available to you.
Create desktop client easily for web applications
I love to use tada lists, however I hate to open a browser and go to the URL and login. I would love to have a desktop client for tada lists. Similarly there are various web applications which I love to use, however I dont want to browse to the site. If you face these problems, enter Fluid.
Fluid allows you to create a 'desktop type' application of any web applications, for example, I used it to create desktop client applications for tada lists, my mail, facebook and some other sites.
Fluid can also support various client application modes. For example
This is a standard client application of tada lists.
And this is another mode, this is a Digg Application, where you can access it form the system menu bar.
How to remove data from Time Machine backups
I've done this short video, to demonstrate how one can remove data from Time machine backup. Because there are certain folders which have been backed up since ages, and they change often (like a virtual machine), and hence one can end up with a lot of space wasted in the backup drive.
Everything now is a cloud service??
I'm all for Cloud computing, and I love services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and S3. But I hate when people abuse the term.
I just came across this article, which starts with:
"Google’s Gmail outage on Monday was the latest stumble for nascent cloud computing services, which are becoming the lifeblood for small businesses and startups."
Gmail and a cloud service and 'nascent' too? Gmail is theoretically similar to Yahoo Mail which is like 'ancient' in internet time, but would you name that a 'cloud service'?
Everytime someone abuses this term on the internet, he definitely has no idea what he is talking about.
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