Internet

Many Tricks says it’s okay to Leech

Posted on May. 7, ’08, 10:16 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Software

Ever need to download a bunch of files at the exact same time? Wish you had a little more control than that offered by your web browser? The clever folks at Many Tricks, the creators of the popular Butler, have released a new download manager called Leech that allows you to do just that.

Firing up Leech presents you with a rather standard looking Downloads window, adorned with an inviting “Drag URLs Here” placeholder. You can do just as the window suggests, or you can paste your URLs into a dialog box summoned with command-O (or chosen from the File menu). Once you’ve got your URLs loaded up, Leech allows you to pause and resume your downloads, and its handy dock icon tells you not only how many files you’re downloading, but also shows you the rough overall level of completion.

Leech is full of other options, such as specifying download folders, letting you decide whether the app should quit when it’s done, and more. If you’re a frequent voluminous downloader, it’s probably worth a look. It’s a Universal Binary and it’ll cost you just &eur;9.95 (~US$15). You can grab a 25-launch demo version from the Many Tricks site, above.

[via Macworld]

Apple tops PC World’s list of Top Vaporware products of all-time

Posted on May. 6, ’08, 12:00 PM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Internet

Emru Townsend, over at sister site PC World, has compiled a list of the “Top 15 Vaporware Products of All Time” and sitting pretty atop the list, with its penchant for first places on lists, is our favorite fruity company. The products in question are W.A.L.T. and VideoPad.

Before there was an iPhone—in fact, before there was an “i” anything—Apple attempted two ventures into “portable” communications. Developed between 1991 and 1993 in conjunction with BellSouth, Apple’s W.A.L.T. (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone, easily the worst name the company has ever come up with) was a tablet that doubled as a PDA; its killer app was the ability to send and receive faxes from the screen. The W.A.L.T. was never released to the general public.

Tenacious as ever, Apple offered up the possibility of a new portable videophone/PDA concept at 1995’s MacWorld Expo. The Newton-like VideoPad three-in-one prototype combined a cell phone, PDA, and videophone, and (get this) sported an integrated CD-ROM drive. While the idea of holding a phone with parts of a CD-ROM unit sticking out of the sides was a little questionable, it was more ambitious than the W.A.L.T. It too failed to pass the prototype stage, however, and Apple would stay away from telephones until 2007. Of course, we all know what happened then.

If nothing else, a true testament to how far Apple has come since those dark days is where once they had product names starting with “Wizzy”, they now have Time Capsules and iPod nanos.

Other Apple products that earn a mention on the list are Taligent and Interactive Television Box (yeah, I’d never heard of it either). In case you were wondering, they didn’t forget Copland and have it listed among the honorable mentions. Three out of fifteen, with the top spot claimed and a honorable mention—that’s not half bad, I say.

[Via Macworld]

AOL Desktop 1.0 is released (much to the Internet’s surprise)

Posted on May. 6, ’08, 7:08 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Internet

At one point, the way to get online was with AOL. It cost multiple dollars a minute to get the privilege of watching graphics download excruciatingly slowly. You could do a lot of stuff, like email, news groups, and download software. Exciting. Then came instant messaging. Then the internet was everywhere in web form and IM was released for free to everybody on the net. It went downhill from there.

Now almost no one uses AOL except for a few stubborn people, and maybe your grandmother. I can’t lump her in with those other people. I hear she makes cookies that come all melty out of the oven. AOL isn’t dead yet and AOL Desktop 1.0 is ready for users of the service. This might be just too little, too late. By “too late” I mean five years too late. Well, your grandmother might like it. I doubt the stubborn people will.

Nab free AT&T Wi-Fi on your Mac, for now

Posted on May. 2, ’08, 10:42 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Internet

If you follow our sister site iPhone Central, you’ll know that Starbucks is switching its Wi-Fi provider to AT&T, and some of the stores seem to be offering free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users (well, specifically those who are also AT&T subscribers). I tried this out at my local Starbucks and it seemed to work well enough, but since I spend more time working on my MacBook than my iPhone, it’s not exactly compelling for me.

The always clever Lifehacker team points out that a little subtle massaging of facts can nab you free Internet access on your computer. If you use Safari, you can change the User Agent to make it look like you’re on an iPhone by enabling the Develop (née “Debug”) menu (here’s an easy way to do that, courtesy of Mac OS X Hints) and selecting “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 — iPhone” from the User Agent submenu. Firefox readers can install an extension that will let them do the same thing.

You’ll still need a valid iPhone phone number in order to get access, which is fine if you’ve got an iPhone yourself, but you might need to convince your friend to let you use their number otherwise.

Of course, once AT&T gets wind of this, I’d expect them to find a way to close the loophole, so take advantage of it while you can.

Microsoft may go hostile on Yahoo…right after lunch

Posted on May. 2, ’08, 9:03 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Business

As a special treat, we now bring you an excerpt from MacUser’s upcoming first published collection, The Zen of Steve Ballmer. The Wall Street Journal talked with the Microsoft CEO, including asking him about a potential hostile takeover of Yahoo.

“With the right circumstances it’ll happen. Without the right circumstances it won’t happen,” said [Ballmer].

After that profound observation, a loud gong was sounded, but Ballmer quickly explained that merely meant that his lunch was ready. His lunch of pure, unsullied souls. Topped with a chipotle spread and a little lemon. Mmm.

Word on the street says that were Microsoft to launch a hostile bid on Yahoo, it could happen as soon as today. In fact, it may be happening as you read this. If you listen very quietly, perhaps you will be able to make out the distant ringing of the gong that indicates Ballmer is once again on the warpath.

[via Macworld]

Chinese Great Firewall strikes again, preys on .Mac

Posted on May. 1, ’08, 11:29 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Internet

.Mac users in China have been feeling a little bereft lately because of their sudden inability to access any of their .Mac hosted websites. Apparently, all HTTP access to the service has been blocked by the Great Firewall, which has been known to block other blogging and community oriented sites in the past, primary among which have been Blogspot and Wikipedia.

.Mac users can still access all the other features the service has to offer which do not require HTTP access, such as their iDisks, the synchronization features and they can even update their sites using iWeb. There’s only this tiny little matter of them not being able to actually see the site that is being updated (and viewing it offline, within iWeb, just doesn’t seem to be good enough).

According to reports, the affected areas seem to be Beijing, Hangzhou, Hunan, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. If you’re a .Mac customer and live in any of those areas, our sympathies are with you. If it’s any comfort, we still can access your swanky websites, so all’s not lost. Hopefully, someone will take notice and this will be sorted out soon. We’ll keep you posted.

[Via Ars Technica]

Adobe drops restrictions on Flash, AIR

Posted on May. 1, ’08, 10:44 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Video

The battle for Internet video continues. Not satisfied with the dominating presence of Flash, Adobe is making moves to spread their influence even further. Their latest thrust in the constant lunge/riposte is the Open Screen Project, which hopes to help extend the presence of Flash and Adobe’s AIR framework to all the devices you use to get on the Internet: your computer, your set-top box, your microwave, etc.

Among the partners Adobe has lined up are device makers like Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson; hardware component makers like Marvell, Intel, and ARM; content producers like BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC; and networks like NTT DoCoMo, Chunghwa Telecom, and Verizon Wireless. Sure, that’s a lot of names, but come on: companies will put their name on pretty much any initiative or alliance that gets bandied about. Where’s the beef?

What’s really important here is that Adobe plans to remove restrictions on the use of Shockwave and Flash formats, publish the device porting layer API and the Adobe Flash Cast protocol, and remove licensing fees for Flash Player and AIR. While Adobe will still be holding back some proprietary info, such as their own implementation of Flash, these developments will significantly lower the barrier of entry for those looking to support Flash video on other devices.

We notice Apple is absent from the list of companies, which is little surprise, since they’re still intent upon pushing MPEG-4/H.264 as the future. Still, in theory, there would be nothing to stop them from creating their own Flash player for the likes of the iPhone and iPod touch, or any other devices they happen to have—you know, if they wanted to.

[via Macworld]

Software Update sneak boosts Safari share

Posted on May. 1, ’08, 9:59 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Windows

Er, so remember that whole thing back in March with Safari and Software Update on Windows? I know, I thought I’d seen the last of it too, but it turns out that there’s actually been some interesting fall out from it. According to the Net Applications, which tracks information like market share via Internet browser traffic, Safari’s share on Windows tripled after the update fiasco.

Safari 3.0 had been holding a pretty steady 0.06-0.07% share in the previous months, but after the Software Update incident, the share of Safari 3.1 (the version installed by the updater) jumped to 0.21%. Now, my understanding is that in order for that information to register, one would presume that those Windows users need to be actually be using Safari on a regular basis. What that makes me wonder how many of those people actually tried Safari intentionally and how many of them are just wondering why Internet Explorer looks so different all of the sudden?

I’m still not condoning what Apple did—even with their most recent changes, I think it’s an icky precedent to set. But apparently not all Windows users see things the same way.

Could this get more overused than blink?

Posted on Apr. 30, ’08, 7:14 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Internet

Safari has implemented a new feature into its CSS lexicon. It now supports reflections. With some style information, you can make Safari into a soulful web browser, thinking back on past crashes and bad rendering of older versions. Actually, it will take and image and give you an alternate representation, to give that reflection effect.

I can practically see every blog across the web putting this in for the header. As a Firefox user, you won’t be seeing it as it’s a WebKit specific set of attributes. All your Safari using friends (and hopelessly confused Windows users that can’t figure out how to uncheck an install box) will get to see it in all its glory (which may make you even more smug). Even better, it even works with videos and features live updating.

Internet Sharing issues reveal subnet snare

Posted on Apr. 25, ’08, 9:17 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Troubleshooting

Some days, all your technology works. I’m not quite sure, but I think that’s the first and third Thursday of every month. Or maybe that’s street sweeping. Other days, the time you spent in the trenches of the IT industry come back to you in lurid detail: the smell of sweat, of fear, the screams pummeling your ears. Today was such a day.

The proposition seemed simple: I was connected to a wireless network at my local cafe, and I wanted to share that connection (over Ethernet or FireWire) with a friend of mine on his own MacBook. Easy peasy, right? Turn on Internet Sharing and connect a cable.

Well, that’s what I thought. Only it didn’t work. As Homer once wrote, “FAIL.” Very puzzling. His computer would get an IP in the 192.168.x.x range, and it even had Bonjour support—he could connect to my computer, we could chat via Bonjour, but he couldn’t get to the outside world at all. What. The. Hell?

Days like this—dark days where even souls fail to see the light of the sun—Google is your best friend. I searched on likely keywords for a while, then decided to narrow my focus to Apple’s support boards, where I found this illuminating post, which contained the following tantalizing detail:

Basically, both ports on the Mac Pro were given the same subnet. This confused the Pro, as it didn’t know which port to forward TCP packets. It was stopping all packets from the Mac Mini.

Ah ha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Unfortunately, there was no link directly to the post where he found the solution, but knowing that subnets were an issue, it was simple enough to assign a manual IP address to my Ethernet connection (I chose something in the 10.0.x.x IP range, since my AirPort connection was already using the 192.168.x.x range), give him a manual IP address in the same range, and voilà: Internet. Case closed. Well, except for getting to shout “I am the king of the world!” That got me some odd looks.

Now, if only Apple would design Internet sharing to be smart enough to take care of this for me. That would make me the happiest panda of them all.