LarryRoth.net

I purchased MacKiev's "Dr. Seuss's ABC", a Mac based educational game for kids. It's a great game to help teach your kids the basics of the alphabet. My three year old loves it and was able to figure it out quite quickly. It comes with the Dr. Seuss book and is sure to be a hit with your kids. Unless you are running you Mac on a drive formatted with case-sensitivity enabled...

If this is the case, the app will not run, but will keep giving you an error message that it can't find the Xtras folder. It turns out there is an easy fix, just execute the following procedure:

• ctrl-click on the Dr. Seuss application
• select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu
• in the finder window that pops up, go into the Contents folder
• next, go into the MacOS folder
• copy the folder called Xtras to your Desktop
• rename the folder to xtras (little x)
• copy the folder back into the MacOS folder
• close the finder window and run the app
• the app will now work

On a related note, the folks from MacKiev have wonderful tech support. I sent a note on Christmas day and received a same-day e-mail from a very nice person who provided me some basic troubleshooting thoughts. They did not give me the procedure above, but did suggest that the app needs to be on a case-insensitive volume. That tip lead me to experiment and to the procedure above.

I must say, I can't remember the last time something was so hyped and I wasn't woefully disappointed when I actually got my hands on it. I feel the iPhone lives up to the promises. The interface is a actually smoother than I ever imagined, the web browsing is better than any mobile device that I ever used, and setup couldn't have been easier. The big question is could it replace a Blackberry? I never had one myself, but having tried some of my friend's Blackberrys, I can say it seems like a powerful replacement.

While I certainly can't wait for a new iPhone (is it June yet?), I am really excited about the new Airport Extreme. It features 802.11n, which will help with increase network capacity and range. But what I think is a great feature is the ability to plug in a USB hard drive and share it with the network.

This solves a big issue for me. I hate using a disk drive for backups, it creates clutter and it is also a pain to plug it in every time I want to backup. With the new Airport Extreme I can keep a large hard drive plugged in and back up one or more computers at anytime. For me this means more regular backup--plus I save a USB port.

Most people complain about the cost of the Apple base stations, but I find that the ease of maintenance, setup and the reliability make up for the price. Plus, you can usually find a refurbished on on Apple's site for $30 off.

I find that when I am traveling, one thing that I often need is to have my travel information (directions, reservations, schedule) printed out. This way I don't have to break out my laptop every time I need some information. The problem is I tend to print out lots of full 8 1/2" x 11" sheets that are both wasteful and cumbersome. I did start an Java ME app that allows me to sync this information to a Java enabled cell phone, but this is still time consuming having to copy/paste the information into a different format.

It would seem that PagePacker is just the application I was looking for. It allows you to easily drag and drop any PDF or image on to one of 8 "spaces". These 8 spaces then print out into one foldable 8 1/2" by 11" page. There is even a catalog of 84 DIY (do-it-yourself) planner pages, such as to-do lists and calendars. And like any good Mac application it is easy to use and doesn't get in the way of getting the job done.

Right now it's free, but is set to expire in June. There is no mention if the June "upgrade" will be free as well—I guess we will have to wait and see.

One of my favorite podcasts, Skepticality, is back after a brief hiatus. It's a great show that discusses critical thinking, debunks common myths, and has some great guest hosts. They are now the official podcast of Skeptic magazine.

At first I was—excuse the pun—skeptical, and asssumed that the podcast would be bitter people not wanting to believe in anything, but as the show taught me a skeptic's goal is to disprove or prove an unverified fact. So for instance, a true skeptic would be/should be equally happy to prove a paranormal experience as to debunk it.

It's a great show, with people that believe in applying critical and applaud analytical thinking. Give it a try!

At the World Wide Developers Conference, Apple has given a sneak preview of their newest version of the Mac OS. Due out in spring 2007—perhaps before Windows Vista ships—Apple promises some key new features.

You can see the whole list on Apple's sneak preview site, but I have heard from conference attendees that Apple is keeping some really significant features under wraps until launch.

Here are some of the new features:

• Timemachine: a backup solution
• Mail.app updates
• Desktop sharing and custom video effects in iChat
• Virtual desktops
• Full 64 bit support

The server version holds even more promise!

There is a helpful post from the folks at "The Authentic Fake" that has various MacBook Pro shortcuts. I found several I didn't know about. My favorite was:

10. Cool shortcut combo To finish off, I’l give a cool (relatively) shurtcut combination. Clicking Control+Option+Command+8 will turn the screen in some sort of high contrast mode, but more like an X-ray screen!¹

Pretty cool!

David Churchville has a nice post that poses the question:

Does the agile software development mantra of "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work" lead to functional, but unremarkable software? ¹

He continues by pointing to an example of when functionality might be chosen over usability.

It's an interesting thought, but I feel the main benefit of agile development is to test early and test often. This testing, if done properly, should help to find usability issues. And then, agile development really helps out by not only finding the issues, but by fixing them before they are released.

Said another way, in traditional software development, it seems all to common that when the deadline slips, one of the items that is often discarded is usability testing. Any early testing—while perhaps not true usability tests—will help out.