Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, January 10, 2003

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Safari Shows Off The Apple Difference: "If you can get a sense of this true interface philosophy and integrated design, you can see what it is Apple is trying to market." (Low End Mac via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Maintaining your bookmarks regardless of the browser -- Comment()
JMTee's Noteworthy Weblog contains a hint on how to maintain your www bookmarks regardless of the browser you are using on Mac OS X. A nice trick. But perhaps I'll try to stick with Safari for some time, and not change my habits once again.

Coping with Safari -- Comment()
I believe I'm once again switching browsers. I can manage without tabbed browsing. The Mac OS X shortcuts Command-< and Command-> make it easy to navigate between windows. Writing weblog posts is more convenient in Safari than in Chimera, which had several problems with editing text in www forms. Thanks to Safari Enhancer, I managed to get the SSL certificate from an intranet server working in Safari. The speed is still impressive, although I'm starting to get used to it. So far I haven't had a single crash.

Switching browsers is becoming a tradition. I have been using Mac OS X since version 10.0. First I was using IE for some time, and then switched to OmniWeb (and paid for it). Then I experimented with Mozilla, but returned to a new beta of OmniWeb. A couple of months ago I discovered Chimera and started to use it. Now I'm moving to Safari. I wonder is the switch is worth the effort of converting bookmarks and learning new tricks? I certainly hope so.

Burning DVDs with PowerBook G4 -- Comment()
I have burned one DVD with my new PowerBook G4. It seems that getting the SuperDrive version of the PowerBook was a good decision after all. I made a backup of my home directory, various job-related files, and certain important documents. The total disk space required was 3.9 GB, which left some room on the 4.7 GB DVD-R disk.

Reviewing the Keynote presentation software -- Comment()
I'll be reviewing the Keynote application here as soon as I get my hands on it. Keynote is an alternative to PowerPoint, but I doubt that Keynote really is a much better application.

However, if Keynote imports PDF files made with PdfLaTeX (including all the mathematics), then I might start using it. Now I'm using PdfLaTeX (with FoilTeX) for presentations including mathematics, and PowerPoint for other presentations. Lately I have been using PowerPoint less and less, because the user interface is not what I want, and the results are often visually terrible.

Testing Safari -- Comment()
I decided to try out Safari as my default browser on Mac OS X. There are some problems still. The tabbed browsing of Chimera is a feature which I'll probably miss. But in other respects this is a fine browser even in beta. And the speed is indeed impressive. I even managed to import all of my bookmarks from Chimera.

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The 17" PowerBook G4/1000 With GeForce4 440 Go Versus Other Apple Laptops: "But I knew you wanted some idea of the performance, right? So since the demo units were connected to the 'Net, I downloaded Xbench beta and ran it on the two new PowerBooks... along with a few others." (Bare Feats via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Rare-Disease Drugs Find Homes: "Known as 'orphans,' drugs that treat uncommon diseases don't typically attract pharmaceutical companies looking for maximum profit. But a handful of orphan-drug developers are hitting it big -- and helping those who suffer from rare afflictions. By Kristen Philipkoski." [Wired News]

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In-Depth: 12-Inch PowerBook: "I was able to spend time with the PowerBook and its engineers to examine the finest details of the design with a fine-toothed comb to bring you exactly what you can't know without using the unit." (MacNN via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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IBM Rents Processing Power To Petroleum Geo-Services: "IBM said Thursday Petroleum Geo-Services is the first company to rent processing power from the computer giant's supercomputers." [Google Technology News]

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AMD and IBM Working Together on Future Chips: "There is a story over at news.com which says that AMD is teaming up with IBM for its sub-100 nanometer process and is de-emphasizing its previous relationships in that area." [Google Technology News]

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IBM rolls out on-demand computing service: "The new option will allow companies to buy Unix- or Linux-based clusters or save money by simply accessing the computing power when it's needed." [Computerworld News]

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Olympus Mju/Stylus Digital 300 and 400: "Olympus has announced the first digital cameras to carry their famous Mju (Europe) and Stylus (North America) names. The 300 Digital and 400 Digital have an all metal 'weather proof' body..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Casio announce EXILIM Zoom EX-Z3: "Casio has today announced the ultra compact EX-Z3 digital camera, The EX-Z3 has a three megapixel CCD sensor and utilizes Pentax's sliding lens mechanism..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Minolta DiMAGE F300 - five megapixel: "Minolta has today announced the new five megapixel DiMAGE F300 digital camera. Based on the slim DiMAGE F100 the F300 has a 5.3 megapixel 1/1.8" CCD sensor, the same 3x optical zoom..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Safari info: "If you're at all interested in Safari, you should be watching this blog: Surfin' Safari." [Teal Sunglasses]

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Vampire Bat Saliva Compound Could Help Treat Strokes: "The average person wouldn't want to be bitten by a vampire bat. But the animal's saliva may one day give some stroke sufferers a better chance of survival. According to a report published online today by Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, vampire bat saliva contains a potent clot-busting substance that could help a greater number of patients than current medications do." [Scientific American]

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Safari Enhancer: "Unlock development tools and features with Safari Enhancer." [Xspot]

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Dave Winer writes: "It's true, it's true. I've been offered a fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and have, of course, accepted." [Matt Croydon::postneo]

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Why Are Safari And Sherlock Two Different Applications?: "Why the distinction between regular web browsing and web browsing using specialized interfaces for structured data?" (Jason kottke via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Web-Surfing Safari: "According to Apple, KHTML was selected as Safari's foundation for its leanness and speed, and these were the two attributes that impressed us most in tests of the Apple browser." (eWeek via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Apple releases QuickTime 6.1: "Apple has released an update to its cornerstone multimedia technology architecture QuickTime. The new version, QuickTime 6.1, is now available for download through the Network Update pane of System Preferences. [...] Apple noted that QuickTime 6.1 delivers quality and performance enhancement for audio, video, and full screen playback." [MacCentral]

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Never Mind The Notebooks, Here's The Content Management: "Microsoft would be best advised to worry about a third new piece of software, Apple's iLife, the all-in-one digital media application that integrates the Macintosh photo, movie and music management and editing software of the last couple of years." (ZDNet UK via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Lecturing to press officers -- Comment()
Yesterday I lectured to 73 press officers from the Finnish universities about Computational Science: Supercomputers and Databases. This was a nice experience. I used examples from drug discovery, cosmology, etc.

I have been giving lectures to all kinds of audiences, but this kind of audience was the first for me. I hope I managed to give some idea of the possibilities and challenges in this area.