Congratulations to Mike (a colleague) and the entire team at Impara for the success of Plopp.

Read the MacUser review on their innovated kids painting program: Read

My 7 year old Royal AG-X10 finally died after I whacked the top to loosen some paper. A component on the circuit board blew out, so I went on a hunt. I didn’t like anything I found online and all reviews were bad.

While at Fred Meyer, I found a Fellowes DS-2 on sale for $60 so I picked one up. It is fairly nice with a larger basket, a lift handle, can do credit cards but not CDs and if you touch the shredder opening, it stops. It also has a opening in front for dropping in clippings.

I tossed a bag inside of it (which obscures the window showing how full it is) and shredded a few items - Quiet and quick. We’ll see how long it lasts, but for this price, I can buy a new one yearly for five years and still be cheaper than the cost of a higher rated unit.

My Harmony 890 Universal Remote arrived today!

The included paper documentation is useless. I already had the software installed, so I ran it and told it to change the remote. It found the 890 and had me update the firmware. Then it had me plug in the remote extender to update that.

That worked fine, and I plugged the remote extender into an outlet and then plugged two IR extenders into it. Each extension cable has two IR emitters, which I glued to my DVD player, my stereo, my video switch box and my Comcast DVR.

Everything functioned well, even the DVR player, but the DVD player did not at all. I was sure I had the emitter in the right place, but no luck.

So I used the software’s knowledge base and discovered that I had to enable the emitters. The remote was controlling my devices not the RF extender!

So I told it to use the RF extender for everything but the TV. It then had to reprogram the extender, which I had to dig out from the A/V rack and reprogrammed the remote.

All works fine now.

So then I decide to put an emitter on my new Mitsubishi 57732 TV. I can’t find the IR sensor anywhere so I look in the manual and guess what? My TV uses the entire screen as the IR sensor! The sensors are inside and it uses the mirror to reflect down to them. LOL. So I’m kinda hosed in controlling the TV from under the blankets for the moment, as I am sure where I can put the sensor and have it:

a. functional
b. not look awful

Matt Riggins writes:

Why I’ll never use the Amazon Unbox / Tivo Service again. (after only using it once)

Tonight I got an automatically generated email from Tivo regarding the Amazon Unboxed / Tivo deal and how I can rent or download movies from Amazon directly to the Tivo. This seemed like a nice option as having a young child my wife and I have not really gone to the movies in 2 years. Having them on my Tivo seemed like a nice option.

Here are my experiences.

1. The Amazon Unbox web UI is horrible. They list out x amount of movies per page, out of over 5,000 something movies and tv shows. You can search, but the overall ease of use is the worst I’ve ever seen. Episodes are mixed in with rentals and those are mixed in with full movie purchases. One slip and you could be buying a movie, not renting one.

2. It mentioned that if I “signed up” prior to late April, I would receive $15 for purchases. I signed up which was free, and then proceeded to rent a movie. It asked me for my credit card information. Never did it ever state I had a $15 credit on Amazon’s website. Eventually after the “rental” purchase, I received an email showing the subtotal of the rental which was $3.99, minus discounts/promotions of $3.99 and total for his order $0.00. The email gives me no running balance. Very lame.

3. It then starts to transfer the movie to my Tivo, which is connected to my network via the wireless adapter. As we know, this is no way to transfer large amounts of data. 2 hours later, I had the rental movie on my Tivo.

4. I rented the movie on 3/12/07. Upon looking at the Now Playing list and clicking once on the rental to look at it, in very small and (not aligned) text across the entire middle of the screen it stated this movie would be kept until 3/14/07 and deleted on 4/11/07. How confusing is that? I tried to figure it out, ok maybe it’ll be kept in Now Playing until 3/14/07 (so, two days rental time, for $3.99 weak!) and then get moved to deleted, where I can retrieve it up until 4/11/07? Who knows, I had no clue.

5. And to top it all off, after spending 10 minutes on number 4, trying to figure out how long I could keep the movie, I hit Play. It then shows me another screen that says to this likes… Due to copyright restrictions, this movie can only be kept for 24 hours after the first initial play of the movie. Once the timer starts, you can play the movie as much as you want for 24 hours. After that it will be deleted.

This is by far the most lame dvd/movie/rental/dvr setup I’ve ever seen, for all the reasons above. I’ll never buy another Amazon Unboxed rental/movie again for my Tivo or PC. It’s back to my nice iTunes account, which I can play forever on my machine and sync to my iPod. I’ll buy an Apple TV and have all my purchases ready for play, when ever I want, on my TV.

Matt Riggins mattriggins@ca.rr.com

This is how it should work!

I am subscribed to the Red Sweater Blog because the author is an Apple Developer, just as I am. Recently he acquired the wonderful MarsEdit RSS publishing software, which I used until I switched to the geekier TextMate.

Lo and Behold, MarsEdit has an update, life is good and in the process, he mentions his other software, FlexTime. So I take a peek and $19 later, I own it, because:

• The price is very affordable. I love <= $20 utilities (That is why BetterHTMLExport Standard Edition is still $20)

• It fit a task I needed today - I just replaced my $800 Mirra chair with a $45 inflatable ball to strengthen my back, but I need to switch every 30 mins. So now I have a “Routine” that every 30 mins speaks to me saying “Go sit in your chair” or “Go sit on your ball” hehe.

• Its cool software! The dude even added a feature to export your Routine to an audio file, which you can sync to itunes. So lets say you were doing yoga, you could have a routine that said “Time for exercise 1″ and then in 30 seconds “time for exercise 2″ etc, etc. Have that recorded to your iPod and then take it to the mat, literally. Very nice.

I love small Mac developers. Way to go, Red Sweater!

MailTags was updated to 2.0b8 today and wow it is fast!

What is MailTags? MailTags is a bundle extension for Mail.app that lets you:

• Add any number of keywords to mail
• Add a project tag to mail
• Add todo events to mail, complete with alarms. This integrates with iCal
• Add notes to mail

And much more. Why is this cool? Have you ever made folders in mail like:

• My Project
  • Web Stuff
  • Money Stuff
  • Documentation Stuff
  • Bugs
    • Bugs with UI
    • Bugs with Feature Foo

If you have, you may also have many mail rules to try and file all of this mail. This form of categorization, which we’ve used since 1984 and the consumer advent of folders on the Macintosh 128K, is a simple form of embedded keywords. Each folder name is a keyword, and the hierarchy denotes projects or parents.

With MailTags, you can create a Project Tag named “My Project” and assign all emails with that project. You can then search for that project and have simple categorization. Need more? Add keywords! Add a “Web” keyword, or a “Money” keyword, or if you have money coming in from ads on your website, add both the “Web” and “Money” keywords!

MailTags also lets you search for keywords using the simple mail search box. If that is not enough power, you can make a Mail Smart Mailbox. MailTags extends the Smart Mailbox criteria to allow you to search for Project “My Project” AND keywords “Money” and “Web” Very nice!

This is a great little utility and now with IMAP support, it may become a essential tool to my daily mail usage.

And yes, yours truly, your beloved geek, the one on the bleeding edge, just had to run it on his a) encrypted disk image and b) his mac book pro!

In both cases, DiskWarrior 4 found errors - Improperly named .journal files on the disk image and various icon and text encoding issues on the laptop, as well as giving me back 200mb of free disk.

Now compatible with Intel macs, this utility is (sadly) a must have for any Mac user. I’ve used Macs since Feb, 1984, so I know what I am talking about here.

If you do not own Disk Warrior, run to your nearest Mac retail store, or go to Alsoft and pick up a copy.

If you own an older version, upgrade! Support these guys. DiskWarrior 4 now repairs disk images and Apple’s file vault, which is a huge huge deal. You can upgrade at Alsoft’s website.

Read

(Thanks, Ketra!)

I downloaded the 30 day Aperture trial to give it a go. I like the app!

I imported my 7500 some odd photos from iPhoto. Took about 8 hours to import, generate thumbnails and previews. Resulting Aperture library is about 1gb larger than the iPhoto library.

If you’re into photography and especially if you shoot RAW, give the trial a test run for yourself!

Aperture Trial

yes my favorite movie, The Princess Bride, has been re-re-released. This marks the fourth time I have purchased it. Laserdisc, DVD, not-as-crappy Special Edition DVD, very nice DVD.

This new edition comes in two box covers, The Dread Pirate edition and The Princess Buttercup edition. I bought the latter because the art depicts them face to face, whereas the DPR edition depicts Wesley close with Buttercup in the distance on her horse, which just didn’t feel right.

I have not looked at much but I did watch the Battle of Wits scene, which on the previous two DVDs was horribly dirty with nasty film noise. This new DVD is very clean. I still don’t think it holds up to the Criterion laserdisc print, but it is acceptable.

Of course, once the HD wars are won I am sure I’ll be buying this movie yet again.

This is a two disc set and sells for the very reasonable $19.99.

Cute, colorful, intelligent and easy to play but tough to solve. Check out the demo of:

Professor Fizzwizzle

I have to say that since the iTunes Music Store happened, I’ve gotten more up to speed with music. With the advent of the Radio Shark, I can listen to the radio, jump back to see who sung a song, or what the title was and get into the loop quicker.

With that, I’ve gotten into a couple of groups lately.

Jem’s 24 is really haunting and I love the big voice from such a small package.

I saw The Redwalls on Conan and I’m not sure if it is the Bob Dylan sound, or the 60s beat, but I really dig these guys. “You’ll Never Know” is one of my favs.

Ok that album was released in 2003, but that is recent for me They do have a new album just out, De Nova.