I have been following the case of Victoria McClure with interest, and I was dismayed by the CTC’s article in response to it (by Rhia Weston, here). It seems to me that the article shows a lack of joined-up thinking, and also a lack of empathy unbecoming of a campaigning organisation.
Continue reading “The Tragic Verdict of Anthony Hilson and Victoria McClure”
The Xcode 4 Cookbook (by Stephen F. Daniel) is the most misleadingly named titled that I’ve read in a while. If you’re after an Xcode 4 Cookbook and you’re planning a little Mac OS X development then, make no mistake, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re after an iOS Cookbook (that name is already taken hence, I suppose, this title) then read on – this book might be right up your street.
Everyone likes to customise their Mac, perhaps by sticking a sticker or two on its body, or at least with individual screen-savers or wallpaper. Now there’s a new option for customising you Mac, making it your very own. USBleat.
On the face of it, USBleat is a simple customisation App. Install it, plug in a USB device, and your Mac will bleat (or moo, or bray…) at you. Plug in a whole hubful of devices and it’ll be like the entire farmyard has landed on your desk!
More usefully, USBleat represents your USB device tree in the menubar. So if you want to know where a device is plugged in you can look in the menu – no more hunting through the spaghetti of hubs and cables on your desk. Once you’ve found your device in the menus, click on it and USBleat will tell you about it.
It doesn’t stop there either – USBleat Pro will be available shortly, which can itself be customised. USBleat Pro has more options (and sounds) available ‘out of the box’, and additional packs can be downloaded – just in case the farm yard isn’t your thing, or if you’d like something a little more useful than a fun sound effect.
USBleat is available now (for free) on the Mac App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/app/usbleat/id657950431?mt=12)
USBleat Pro will be available soon, subject to review by Apple.
Ambridge (n.)
Indecisiveness brought on by a lack of concern for the actual outcome.
Borchester (n.)
The peculiar form of bloated heartburn engendered by eating too many potatoes too quickly.
Felpersham (n.)
The feeling you get on realising that the driver of the car that you are travelling in is an Archers addict, and the time is swiftly approaching 7PM.
Switching. Such a little word, and it makes it sound so easy. All you have to do is buy a Mac, copy your files over, and your done. Easy as that, you have a new computer. Except that this is very much a best-case scenario and things are never that simple in ‘real life’.
Take e-mail for example. On your old PC you diligently saved the email that you cared about by dragging it to your desktop. Easy. And when you wanted to open it, you just double clicked on the email icon and there it was.
So you switched to a Mac, copying all those e-mail files, and now you want to read one. No problem. You open the folder and… wait a minute… here is the first clue that something might be amiss because all the email icons have gone, replaced by generic document icons. Never mind, it’s a minor thing. You double click and… Nothing. You can’t read the email. Damn.
Is all lost? Have you lost those emails? Have you lost the attachments? No. Not a bit of it. Just visit the App Store and search for ‘MailRaider’ (or ‘Microsoft Outlook msg’, if you want to check out the competition too.) Download MailRaider and try double clicking on that Outlook file again. Hey Presto. Problem solved, and for the unbeatable price of Absolutely Free. You’re all quite welcome.
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I have a couple of problems. I’m short on cash – and, in these recession hit times, aren’t we all. I’m also short on time – which is a nuisance for everyone who uses my software because it means that I can’t provide you with the support that you deserve. I have few ideas which might help me solve these problems – and you can explore them from the labs page. Continue reading “Change to 45RPM Software, Part 2”
One of the major problems with the Apple App Store is that it loads the dice against high quality free software. Take the example of two competing applications on the App Store, one free and one paid for. The developer of the paid app can download, at no cost, the free app and then bad mouth it to the world. The developer of the free app cannot respond (because there is no global mechanism for response in the App Store), at least not without paying good money to the developer who slandered him in the first place.
Money is tight, and the recession is an absolute swine. Up to now I have always resisted adverts on my site – I feel that it cheapens my ‘brand’.
Every little helps though, and I am now seriously considering putting ‘adsense’ on the 45RPMSoftware website – and maybe the blog too.
Before I do though, I’d welcome your thoughts. How would it change your perception of my site and the products that are available here*? Is there a way of adding advertising without devaluing the brand? Your thoughts and opinions would be most welcome.
*don’t worry – the apps will still be advert free!
As you will all have seen (and, I hope, enjoyed), I develop handy little apps for the Mac in my spare time. I only develop an app if no-one else has developed a similar program – I always like to be first in the Market.
MailRaider kind of broke this rule because, when I first developed it (in 2008), there was already an application which purported to open Microsoft Outlook msg files – it just didn’t work. At all. So MailRaider was born. MailRaider does work, and very effectively, and users who encounter an edge case file (not very often these days) have been very good about giving me the details so that the next version of MailRaider performs flawlessly. Continue reading “Spite on the AppStore”
Back in 2005, I blogged that I’d write up my dream party manifesto – and then I failed to write a single, solitary, sodding word. In some ways, therefore, I think that I’ve performed rather better than Her Majesties Government over the last seven years. Sure, I didn’t achieve much – but I buggered up far less than they did too. And, Wow!, didn’t they just bugger it up!