I use iCal at home, and about two months ago I took a brief and fruitless stab at merging two calendars. Rob Griffiths, however, figured out how to do it. The solution is so simple I feel like beating my head against a wall for not seeing it.
Looks like Seagate, who was first to market with a 750GB hard drive (and still makes the only one in the consumer arena, I think), is now poised to be first to market with a consumer 1 terabyte drive. Fan. Tastic. Imagine a Mac mini with an attached 1TB drive in an aftermarket case. A huge video and music jukebox in the tiniest possible package. Incredible.
Someone asked me a good question this morning: How do I make iPhoto's "Email" button work with Entourage, instead of Apple Mail?
As is so often the case, Google is your friend. More specifically, MacUpdate is your friend. Go there, and download Simon Jacquier's iPhoto Mailer Patcher (currently at version 4.1).
After it downloads, mount the disk image by double-clicking the .dmg file. I recommend copying the iPhoto Mailer Patcher application to your Applications file. Then, launch the program and click Patch (make sure iPhoto is not running).
When the patch is complete, launch iPhoto and open its Preferences dialog. At the bottom of the General tab, you'll see a menu for "Email Photos Using"...open that menu and choose Microsoft Entourage.
Bang. Done.
I love elegant solutions. If you use this, it's freeware, but in my book it's worth sending Mr. Jacquier enough euros for a beer or two.
(h/t to Gerardo Marti for reminding me about this)
As we move ahead with the new year, those of you who use Entourage for calendaring are going to notice an oddity when you start scheduling March appointments. Specifically, appointments set during the March 11-31 period will appear off by an hour from their set time.
Up through 2006, daylight savings time started the first Sunday in April (which, for 2007, is April 1). The Energy Policy Act of 2005 dictates a shift in that start date, back to the second Sunday in March (which, for 2007 is...wait for it...March 11). Since Entourage was released about four years ago, it doesn't yet know about this change, and so it screws up the scheduling.
One hopes that MS will have a patch out prior to March 11, but beware, nonetheless.
If you want a longer discussion of the issue, check this thread from the Entourage-Talk mailing list.
I've been looking for a decent GPS/mapping package for OS X for years. Which makes me one of a very large group. Unfortunately, no GPS manufacturers really support the Mac (sorry, Garmin...keep trying), and I've never really got the hang of MacGPS. I used GPSy under OS 9, but it's only recently been ported to OS X.
So I'm interested in RoadNav. It does everything a good basic mapping package should, plus it has a live GPS interface for position tracking, and it uses free online map resources. I think I may have to give this one a stab.
(h/t TUAW)
Spam.
Spam, spam, spam, eggs, bacon and spam. Etc. etc. etc.
I don't know about you, but lately I've been seeing more spam than usual in my inbox. Not just at work...at home, too. At work it's more annoying, though, because you sort of get accustomed to PureMessage catching most of it, and Entourage catching most of the rest of the 100 or so junk mails that come in daily.
Now more and more seems to be sneaking through those layers of protection. Enough that I'm actually considering spending my own money on a third-party antispam tool. It occurred to me that some of y'all might be interested, so here's the short list of tools I'm considering. All of these are Entourage and Apple Mail compatible, and all run on your machine (as opposed to running on the mail server).
Bains Software's SpamSweep
Cheap and easy. Free demo available. Documentation doesn't look so hot, but maybe it doesn't need to be.
SpamSieve
Slightly pricier, but still very reasonable. Comes highly recommended by People Paid to Know About These Things™. Growl-savvy, if you're into that sort of thing (if you don't know what growl is, check it out).
JunkBroom
Entourage-specific, and not being developed and more, so it's only getting light attention from me. Still, it's interesting and free. Apparently, it teaches Entourage to recognize what constitutes legitimate mail, rather than what constitutes junk.
Intego Personal Antispam
Expensive (nearly twice as much as SpamSieve). On the other hand, it's a fully-supported commercial product, and if you're having real spam problems, $50 may not be unreasonable. Learns as you go, and works with both Mail and Entourage.
That's my short list. At the moment, SpamSieve is probably top of the list. It's inexpensive and reputed to be quite powerful. I like the growl integration feature, too. If I opt to get serious about installing something like this, I'll post the results here.
Got something you'd like to see written up here? Need a procedure or technology explained? Questions about which widget to buy, or how Macs compare? Found something cool and want to let others know?
Shoot me a note (you all know my address). The more I can write about what you need to know, the better this blog becomes!
This could be very handy -- a simple way to have your Mac execute a specific action based on the subject line of incoming mail messages. Unfortunately, it doesn't look to be Entourage-capable right off the bad, but that's not unfixable.
(h/t TUAW)
I suppose it's required that I make some kind of MacWorld predictions or observations. Lord knows everyone else who works with a Mac is doing so. The show is next week. If you're all hot and bothered about it, you can even get a snazzy widget to keep you posted on the wait. Me, well...it'll get here when it gets here.
So, on with the review of what's predicted.
And welcome back from break. Hope yours was good.
As the new year begins, the College is up and running with our standardized blogging solution, so I'm going to take another stab at providing news updates. Previous incarnations have been, for one reason or another, difficult to manage, broken from off-campus, or too much work to put together. Here's hoping that Movable Type solves those problems, and that we can move forward with regular Mac news, distilled for the campus.
A note on comments: In other blogs, I've seen problems with comment spam run amok. It's a difficult problem to manage. Frankly, the route I've taken is a little painful on the user's end, but ends up being the least overall trouble. To comment, you'll be required to register for a free TypeKey username and password. This take about two minutes. Once you're registered, comment away! Implementing this solution should prevent a lot of the PPP (porn, pills and poker) comment spam that seems to crop up with regularity.
I'll begin posting some news today, so keep your eye out for it.