Category: Technology

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The move to Apple

I’ve never been one of those “Macs are stupid” or “PCs suck” kind of guys.  I’ve always had an appreciation for the Mac design ethic but I’ve also never really appreciated that the way they keep their systems so ‘easy’ is that they so adamantly control every aspect of the user experience.  This in particular has always struck me as a little contradictory – I mean, Apple launched the Mac with an anti-Orwellian campaign and yet here they are keeping a tight fist on the Apple experience.

That all being said, The main reason I’ve avoided Apple products in the past is their price.  For the same price as a Mac desktop or Laptop I was able to build a screaming PC – for $100 less I was able to get a Creative Labs MP3 player with the same specs as an Ipod.

But eventually I caved and got an Ipod and of course loved it.

So, when it came time to buy a laptop computer, I decided on a MacBook Pro.  This is actually the first laptop that I’ve ever owned (the rest being company machines) and I really like it.  My main reason for buying the Mac was that I figured if I get another computer through work someday, it will more-than-likely be a PC, so I might as well supplement that experience with the Mac.  But since loading up photos, music, applications, and preferences, I’ve really started to like it.

.. So much so that I decided to go whole hog.  I’ve spent the last few days converting all of my files over to my new Apple Time Capsule – which acts as my wireless network router and backup storage device.  I can’t believe how well it works!  I’ve never – NEVER been able to get two computers in my apartment to talk to each other before – until now.  So now I can easily transfer files between machines – and even share a printer.  And having the disk drive in the system means that I can wirelessly access my files from anywhere in my apartment (thus negating the limitation of the 200gb laptop hard disk).  But of course, being Apple, it doesn’t stop there.  I can access this hard drive from any internet connection – meaning I can keep just the files I want on the laptop (read: the files I have room for) and know that I can still access anything as long as I can connect to the internet.

It’s going so well in fact, that I’ve also got Apple TV running on my stereo/television.  Again, this solved a problem that I’ve been toying around with since I bought an Audiotron so many years ago. I can now stream my music (in good quality) easily to my Stereo – but in addition I can watch photo slideshows on my TV.  And I can even queue up podcasts (audio or video) and try to stay better on top of all of that content that I’m downloading…

I never thought I’d dive in so fully to the Mac experience, but I’m glad I have.  iPhone here I come 🙂

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more data online

One of the goals that I set for myself during this little work hiatus was to get my personal data off of my desktop & scribbled notes. By ‘personal data’ I’m referring to all of that information that we all carry around in one fashion or another that gets us through the connected world – emails, contacts, finances, etc.,

I started with email a few years ago, and that’s worked out pretty well so far. I use Google Mail & Yahoo mail to manage my mail online. Yahoo accepts all of my potential spam while Google mail routes and services all of my personal mail which I generally have sent to knuetter.com.

The next step was to get my bookmarks off of my computers (work, home, etc.,) and I chose Del.icio.us for that service. I’m not completely satisfied with the service (I will probably try out Digg one of these days) but they provide a pretty straightforward service and a few nice tools like Firefox integration that make me happy enough.

Next was my calendar, which I used Google for as I wrote about in an earlier post.

Recently I decided to give Plaxo a try.  Over the years I’ve received a few requests to join and so when I was looking for a way to organize my contacts they were a natural choice.  Their system lets you plug in all of your various contact points (outlook, gmail, yahoo mail, apple address book, etc.,) and it will then gather all of the contacts and publish them out to all of these so that they’re all kept in sync.  Additionally, if any of your contacts are using the service, it will automatically update your contact lists when they change their information.  So far I’ve found it to be pretty useful and while a few features I would like are hidden behind the annual service charge, I’ve mostly been able to work around that though if I continue to find the service useful I’ll certainly consider upgrading.

One of the nice surprises about Plaxo is that it also syncs calendars and to-do lists so the Google Calendar syncing that I set up earlier may not be necessary.  One of the downsides to Plaxo is that they’re desperately trying to get into the social networking space, so I fear random sporadic updates ala facebook.  Hopefully they don’t go too far down this path.

Next up, I’ve got to figure out how to securely store passwords online and I’m still debating whether I want to aggregate all of my finances (ala Quicken) online or whether I’m OK with each of the individual banking websites that I use.  In each case I have to decide whether I’m confident enough in internet security to handle these items.

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Google applications

I just started using Gogle’s Calendar application and I have to say, I’m impressed.

For years I’ve been using Microsoft Outlook as a way to archive all of my email – both personal and work.  About a year or two ago I started to use GMail as a way to organize and coordinate my email for storage and writing both offline and online.

Basically, I like Outlook as an email client – which is not a rave review, but suffice it to say, I don’t think the web browser is the end-all be-all application environment.  There’s still something to be said for a fully-featured desktop app.  I would probably like other applications, like Thunderbird or Eudora or you name it – but I’ve used Outlook at every job for the last 10 years and it’s good enough for what I want.

The beauty of GMail is that I can continue to use Outlook when I’m at my desktop or I can use GMail when I’m away from the desktop – either way I still have all of my email accessible to me.  This is because of two beautiful concepts from Google.  First, they store all of my email – no deletion policies (ask me about my cell phone’s deletion policies in which I can’t have more than 50 text messages before it starts denying delivery).  Second, they have a very open policy with POP/SMTP connectivity, allowing the free-flow of emails back and forth the way I want it.

As an aside, Google also does not stamp stupid ads at the bottom of my email (a la Yahoo) and they allow me to send mail using my GMail account but signed from my domain name (knuetter.com).

Well, after wanting better access to my calendar, I decided to follow suit.  I downloaded a Google App that sits on my desktop computer that automatically syncs my Google Calendar (GCalendar?) with my Outlook.  We’ll see how it goes (as I’ve only just recently done this) but I’m optimistic that this is going to work out as expected and allow me to have untethered access to my calendar – just like my mail.

Now I just need to upgrade my cell phone with better internet access (instead of the horrific Verizon internet interface).