I want Sandy!!

Most Mac users are only just discovering the addition of To Do in email. I find it really handy and use it al the time, but if for whatever reason you cannot or do not want to use this feature you might like Sandy, your own personal assistant. Basically you go to the site www.iwantsandy.com and sign up (its free). Then, whenever you need to record a to do, meeting, or a reminder, or you just need to remember something email Sandy and she will email you or sms you when your event comes up. Sandy can also create a feed for you that you can sync to your favourite calendar app.
One cool feature is that Sandy can Twitter you about your various reminders, to do etc.

If your in the market for only a To Do app www.rememberthemilk.com is a very simple easy to use online to do list maker.

Now, go on...become more productive or just waste some time trying!

Facebook Chat

Facebook now has chat! its kind of like meeting your friends by accident at the local bar. You don't know who is going to be there but its nice when someone is online at the same time as you. Of course for the more anti-social of us, you can just make yourself offline and not chat to anyone... to check it out you need to have a facebook account, which if you don't have one by now you have a) been in a coma for the past 2 years b) took a religious vow and have separated yourself form society or c) been valiantly trying to not join any social networks despite rigourous pressure from friends and family. Just accept it, resistence is futile get a Facebook account and join the rest of the virtual world. Its more fun and less maintenance then you think.

Pimp My Safari--Boomarklets

Safari is gaining more and more market-share in browser and its up to almost 6% by some surveys. I know that doesn't seem much but its enough that anyone in the web development community has to start thinking about making sure their stuff works in Safari. Many peopel already knwo about WebKit. Something i like to call the Developers Safari which first included the fantastic 'Inspect Element' option. I htink this is now available in normal Safari as well. Just Right click on the object your curious about and instantly a nifty and may I say rather sexy DOm inspector shoots up showing you al kinds of info. But, its still not quite as good as having the Lifesaver that is Firefox Developer Toolbar (All hail the creators!). Enter Safari Bookmarklets, bits of scrumptious Javascript Code, that do nifty things like resize your window, list classes, show IDs and Classes, Validate and heaps more. Not quite the Toolbar but if you create yourself a little folder of the little bookmarklets can become really handy. To get yours go to the ever cool Pimp My Safari/ and go to bookmarklets.

Enjoy!

Help...My Mac has lost its voice!

A couple of days ago i noticed that my Powerbook was a little quite. When I turned it on, no start-up sound announcing its beginning to the working day. No error bleeps, No paper airplane sound for sending mail....it was all a little strange, but I wasn't overly concerned until I wanted to listen to some music. Nothing wanted to play!

So I started to investigate, and low and behold when i went to the 'sound' options the powerbook was convinced it had no 'Output' device (for that matter no input device either). The mute checkbox was checked and greyed out. When I pressed the shortcuts for bringing volume up or down, when pressed, showed a little 'not allowed' sign.

Well now I was a little worried. As per normal the internet was little help assuaging my worries since the only suggestion people gave for getting drivers for internal speakers was to reinstall the OS. I went through enough pain with Leopard to know I wanted to avoid doing that. I did note that some people said this only happened for a particular user. So I though let me a create a user, see if they have speakers. What do you know they do!. My computer can speak...it just doesn't want to when I am logged in...or does it. When I logged back in the mac had miraculously found its speakers and all is well again. Yipeee!

Well, so for those that loose their sound in the Powerbooks (or even MacBooks) try this, it might work.

Making the Rich List

The concept of online advertising is still really in its infancy. While it is getting more sophisticated most of us still think of those annoying banner ads as online advertising. But as the recent viral campaign for Dexter shows there is a world of opportunity in how you can reach an audience. The following site Global Rich List is a case in point. It asks you find out how rich you are in terms of the Global Rich list. You don't really know why they are asking but its kind of fun to find out. I was in the top 1% of the world!
Anyway its actually for the Care charity, and its kind of cool how it encourages you to realize your own wealth and perhaps your ability to share it with the less fortunate.
Check it out.