Archive for Mac OS X
Building A Laptop
Building your own laptop is not always as efficient and as inexpensive as purchasing a branded laptop. For instance if you wanted a car and instead of buying one from the auto shop you purchase parts from the junkyard and start building it from scratch.
For some people gifted with the do it yourself gene this may not be a problem. However one needs knowledge money and patience for such a project.
Related Technical Knowledge
In order to build a new laptop for yourself from scratch you will need to have a lot of content related information about the project that you are about to undertake.
First of all, we should have the knowledge about the technical vocabulary associated with the task at hand. This aspect of knowledge is the most neglected however this is the most vital as it helps understanding the technical details and specifications.
Secondly we should search for an instructional step by step book or any other form of help in order to identify the correct parts to be purchased at the minimum cost. Not only this but the book should also provide us with trouble shooting phase when the laptop is built and ready to be used.
Compatibility Of The Components
Knowledge of not only the components is needed but also their technical specification should be known like the bus speed, the clock cycle, whether all the components are compatible or not, whether you have provided enough ram for the operating system to boot or not etc should also be known beforehand. Read More
Must Have iPad Applications
The App Store has brought out a bunch of apps for the iPad. While there are many that were already available for the iPhone, they will look much better in the larger iPad. There are many new ones too. The costs are a bit high to what you would usually find in the App Store.
1. News and Social
NYT Editor’s Choice:
This app shows you what the ‘New York Times’ looks like on the iPad. It is free. There may be hidden subscription charges.
USA Today:
This app shows you how the ‘USA Today’ looks like on the iPad. This is free but there may be hidden subscription charges.
WSJ:
The Wall Street Journal has launched an app to allow its followers on iPad to read the paper. It is a free app. There may be hidden subscription charges.
AP:
This is a really good app. It includes video, image and text content as well. It has an unorthodox design. This is another free app.
NPR for iPad:
This is a digital version of the NPR. There is text and photo news along with the audio. It is a free app.
Popular Science:
The tease at the App Store hints that this is not only a magazine scan. Rather it has been influenced by the amazing concept that surfaces in December. This app costs $5.
BBC:
This old broadcaster is now on iPad with its very own app. There is all the BBC’s news coverage. This includes print, video and radio.
Bloomberg:
The app for all of you with a business sense. Your iPad can become a finance terminal with this app. It is free for now.
StumbleUpon:
You can use your Stumble Upon account for simple link sharing and discovery. It is a free app.
Instapaper:
The app that lets you save anything that you have come across online in a cleaned-up format for later use. It costs $5.
NewsRack:
NewsRack worked great for the iPhone as an RSS reader. The great news is that if you have already paid $5 for the iPhone version, then the iPad download is absolutely free.
Feeddler:
Feeddler is a free app that will cover all the basics if you do not want to spend money for a feed reader.
Fluent News:
Some of you might not like the RSS readers. If that is the case, then Fluent is your thing. It will make your daily news to be a little guided into a single interface. This app is free.
Accuweather Cirrus:
The app that will make you an expert weatherperson. It includes prediction and reading. It is free.
Tweetdeck:
Tweet deck worked great with the iPhone. It takes the column-based desktop app, and adapts it to the iPhone’s screen. The end result is in either two column (a portrait) or three column (landscape) modes.
AIM:
AIM is the AOL’s instant messaging app. It looks pretty stunning. This app is free.
IM+:
The app that will let you do some serious multi-protocol messaging. That includes Live, Facebook and Yahoo, among others. This app is for $10.
Loopt Pulse:
This app provides localism. Find out what is going on around your sofa, right from your sofa. It is free.
Dash Four:
Foursquare on the iPad might sound like a strange idea now. Yet it won’t seem so strange the next time you are in Starbucks, with your iPad. This app costs $2.
Craigsphone:
While the Craiglist website is a disaster, the Craigslist iPad app looks great. It is free.
2. Entertainment and Video
Netflix:
An app that provides Netflix streaming over Wi-Fi. You should first have a NetFlix account that costs around $9 a month these days. After that, you can have thousands of brilliant TV shows and movies in your hand. The app is free.
ABC Player:
ABC Player is one of the first TV apps available in the store. It has made a promising start. It provides an amazing slick interface for the ABC video content that is available on their website. This app is free.
Marvel Comics:
An app that turns your iPad into a comic book for real. It provides a free reader but the comics have to be paid for.
iBooks:
iBooks is the Apple’s ebook store. It is the best thing yet for iPad ebooks. There is no competition for now, but Amazon and Barnes will be hoping to change that soon.
NBA Game Time Courtside:
An app that provides you with a full and interactive dashboard for all the basketball games that you watch. It is a joy for all the basketball fans. It is absolutely free.
MLB At Bat:
It is an app that enables you to watch the live games like the iPhone version. The extra bit added is that it simulates the games you are unable to watch due to blackout or licensing issues. There are also statistics at hand. It costs $15.
ESPN ScoreCenter:
For all of you out there who like to eat, drink and sleep sports, this is the app for you. It provides a constant feed of sports information. There are the specific game scores like on the iPhone app, but the iPad app has been enhanced to include scores of columns, frames and panes. If you love sports, it costs a mere $5.
Yahoo Entertainment:
Yahoo Entertainment pulls info from the vast network of Yahoo sites. It has complete TV listings, videos and entertainment news. It has been amazingly designed, and it is free so it is definitely worth a download.
SoundHound:
SoundHound is a song recognition app with a difference. It has an immensely fast recognition engine. It does not only ID any music that is playing, but also provides lyrics, charts, music discovery and full playlist playback. The charts are based on what people are Idling and not based on buying statistics. It is for $5.
Shazam:
It is an app that provides song recognition. Still, it will not recognize your own singing voice or humming like SoundHound can. Also, the song recognition ability is not as good. Still, it is a free app so you can try it.
Pandora:
The Pandora’s iPad app is sticking to its basic customized radio feature. It provides artist info along with your playlists. Read More
7 Useful Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 9
1. Install Codecs, Flash, Microsoft Fonts and DVD Playback Stuff
Ubuntu-Restricted-Extras provides you a lot more than your expectations. They offer Adobe Flash to view YouTube videos, Microsoft Core Fonts to view few sites clearly, Java, MP3/M4A/ACC/ETC playback, and RAR extraction. It provides almost all video codec’s that an individual might need including .avi, .divx, .wmv, etc.
All the things mentioned above are not only helpful but also easy to install. To install follow the steps listed below:
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Open Ubuntu Software Centre
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Look for for ‘Ubuntu Restricted Extras’
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Click install or download
2. Install your Graphics Card Drivers
With the help of Ubuntu, accessing graphics card becomes very simple and trouble-free. In order to take advantage of the most recent supported driver just open up the Appearance menu and switch on compiz . This will enable you to download needed drivers for your device that is not installed.
Office 2010 For Mac: What’s The Reasons
Office 2010 version is announced recently for the Mac. Mac user are growing day by day in corporate environment and now Microsoft has to go forward to take its share out of money-making Apple. 
ITIC/Sunbelt Software group has conducted a survey in the fourth quarter of last year and got that more than 2/3 of corporates were available for Mac into IT field and greater than 50% of survey respondent want to have Mac with iPhones.
Due to less development of comprehensive application by PC software maker and desktop virtualization we do not have much to get Windows application to execute on Mac. Such application like Parallels Desktop for Mac provide enable us to have Windows and its desired software up and running.
10 Systems For Your Server Room: Part-2
With the blade competition getting more intense, IBM didn’t get the second best award sitting still. HP is having Shorty, and Big Blue coming with the BladeCenter S. The 7U unit is expandable to 11U to increase blades, storage or tape backup. Designed for smaller offices that mostly not have a separated server room, the BladeCenter S comes with two nice features: number of inbuilt air filters that prevent from dust & a noise attenuator, which muffles the noise of the fans.
Operating System
We will be fair to say it was this area that surprised us the most. Windows Server 2008 was introduced on Feb 27. It qualified for this awards program by just days. Windows gets a lot of press, but let’s faces it; it’s more often than not press that Microsoft doesn’t want. 
Yet despite contest from what is most of times thought hipper and cooler — a stellar enterprise-class Linux, a well-known energetic variant, a mature Unix distro, and the cultish Leopard — Windows Server 2008 was the favorite OS by far. If this analysis is any kind of barometer, the rule of Windows Server 2008 in the data center has begun.
Firefox 3.5 RC2 Now Publicly Available
On Monday the second release candidate (RC) for Firefox 3.5 has been unveiled by Mozilla.
Firefox 3.5 RC2 is the second release candidate built by the developers, but for the first time Mozilla site has released version 3.5 for download directly from the Mozilla site. It is the event of last week when the first RC was made available to about 800,000 beta users, and the feedback received from that release urged Mozilla to build RC2, as said by Mozilla.
According to Mozilla, this version of Firefox released by Mozilla is the fastest version of the browser ever.
Speed Increasing Features Of Firefox 3.5 RC2
Other adjustments that were made to increase the speed includes JavaScript that runs up to three times faster as compared to Firefox 3, and page load and manipulation which is two times faster than the previous version.
50 Best Firefox Extensions for Powerful Browsing – Part-1
Below we have given you the list of 50 Firefox add-ons by which your Firefox browser experience will become better.
Adblock Plus
It is one of the most important Firefox add-on due to which any advertisements will not appear on any webpage, in this way it blogs all advertisements.
Aging Tabs
It fades the unused tabs and highlights the tabs which we have selected.
All-in-One Sidebar
It controls the side bar with award winning user experience.
Auto Copy
It automatically copies down the text to clipboard, it is the same thing that happens in Linux or mlrc.
GNOME is better than KDE?
Linux desktop arena is under battle and it is believed that GNOME is pulling ahead of today’s KDE in terms of design, stability, and usability.
Many of you won’t even believe that KDE has left behind GNOME in the desktop war since long. But what about now? Now the situation is totally different, and GNOME is pulling ahead of KDE. Still don’t believe? Let’s look at how this happened (We will be comparing GNOME version 2.22 or later with KDE version 4.1 or later.)
1: KDE 4
KDE4 was a redesign from KDE; and when it was released, you can say it wasn’t ready to be released at that time. It was not possible to configure KDE according to your exact specifications. In fact, KDE was taking a clear inspiration of Microsoft. The release was really painful, and was unable to get attention of users. This is what was given as feedback.
While GNOME is still moving forward in the same direction where it is moving since years.
2: Start menu
GNOME is providing three menus from the main panel:
- Application
- Places
- Administration
Each menu represents the items you can find from it. Also, navigation the menus is efficient, elegant, and simple.
While, KDE4 is containing a really clumsy menu. Five visible tabs, when one clicks on the menu, are
- Applications
- Computer
- Favourites
- Recently Used
- Leave
The ‘Favorites’ menu is containing System Settings and File Manager by-default. If you are to open an application, you have to click on Applications tab, then navigate to the category of the application, look for the application entry, and finally click on it. Isn’t it weird? Adding an application launcher widget to the panel is also irrelevant as chances are there that the panel will be full of launchers if you are in hobby of using a number of applications.
Worldwide Developers Conference 2009 (WWDC2009)
Worldwide Developers Conference 2009 (WWDC2009) has been announced by the World leading company in the manufacturing of computers, Apple. This conference is scheduled to take place in the first or second week of June, similar to every year.
The venue of this WWDC is Moscone Center, West, San Francisco and will continue from June 8 to June 12. Every one in the technology field is waiting for this happening event.
WWDC is very useful to Developers and IT professionals. They get benefit from it by acquiring exhaustive technical guidance and hands-on learning experience about upcoming and exiting technologies in iPhone OS and Mac OS X from the creators of this technology i.e. Apple engineers.
Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
This elegant external hard drive, reminiscent of a book, is the perfect storage solution. It takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf. Installation is a snap because you don’t really install this drive, you just plug it in and it’s ready to use. A USB 2.0 simple connection offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers. Dimensions – Height 6.5 x Length 5.4 x Width 2.1 Weight – 2.5 Pounds
Are you running out of hard drive capacity? Do you need to archive some important digital documents, photos, or music? The Western Digital WDH1U10000N My Book Essential Edition 2.0 1 TB external hard drive, which takes no more space than a paperback book, is the perfect solution. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf.
My Book Essential Edition 2.0 is easy to set up and easy to use. Installation is a snap because you don’t really install this drive, you just plug it in and it’s ready to use. This external hard drive also turns itself on and off with your computer. It’s ideal for anyone who needs instant storage for their important files or a digital photo collection.
A USB 2.0 connection is available for convenience and compatibility among multiple computers. The drive is also PC and Mac compatible: You can use the My Book Essential Edition with both PCs running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista and Macs running OSX 10.4.8 or higher.
The My Book Essential Edition is backed by a 1-year limited warranty.
What It Holds:
- Up to 285,000 digital photos
- Up to 250,000 songs (MP3)
- Up to 25,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
- Up to 76 hours of Digital Video (DV)
- Up to 440 hours of DVD quality video
- Up to 120 hours of HD video
One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes. One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.
Product Features:
- Easy to set up, easy to use – Installation is a snap because you don’t really install this drive, you just plug it in and it’s ready to use.
- USB 2.0 interface – A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers.
- Fits right in – Takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf.
- Smart and energy efficient – Turns itself on and off with your computer.
- PC and Mac compatible – Works with both Windows® 2000/XP/Vista and Mac® OS X 10.4.8 or later
Ideal for
- Instant storage
- Easy to use
- USB 2.0
- Saving and organizing your digital photo collection
System Requirements
- Available USB port
- Windows® 2000/XP/Vista™
- Mac® OS X 10.4.8 or later
Package Includes
- External hard drive
- USB cable
- AC adapter
- Quick Install Guide
Which external drive interface is the right choice: USB, FireWire, eSATA, or Gigabit Ethernet? The right choice depends on compatibility with your computer and how you want to use your device. First, look at the connections on your computer.
Note: For convenience and flexibility, choose a WD hard drive with both USB and FireWire interfaces
(available in dual and triple interface configurations) or with both USB and eSATA interfaces.
