Talamathi

Google has announced in a couple of places that they’ve released a beta of Picasa for the Mac (or in their terms, it’s “in Google Labs”). I’ve downloaded it, and hope to try it out once I have some real time. What I’d really like to see is how well it works with iPhoto. Given how iPhoto and iTunes (among others) integrate with the Mac, that’s really important if something like Picasa is going to survive on the Mac. Once I try it out, I’ll post something here. So, uh, why care? Despite how nice iPhoto generally is, Picasa on the PC is actually a nicer program. In fact, it’s one of very few Windows-only programs I actually enjoy using, and even want to have ported over. Technorati Tags: Google , Picasa , iPhoto

I thought this was a joke , but after a little bit of searching around, I managed to find the “Bells and Whistles” option. Don’t believe me? Check out the image. Technorati Tags: Google , iPhone

This happened over a month ago, but a really nice thing to come along was the release of “ PHP Markdown Extra + PHP SmartyPants Typographer Text Filter for MarsEdit .” I still use MarsEdit 1.2.1, well, because I don’t really post enough to justify getting an update. That means some of how this works might be different. But, basically, after you put the folder in ~/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/TextFilters there is a formatting option to pick the new Markdown and SmartyPants filter. This means that the preview will now be run with a PHP version of SmartyPants , and the enhanced version of PHP Markdown . 1 Blogger doesn’t use Markdown, or SmartyPants, so it has to be converted before being sent. For this, I’ve been using “Translate Markdown to HTML,” from Drew Thaler . 2 This has been updated to 1.0.3 , which I am guessing probably makes the change even easier. In order to get this to work with my newer Markdown and SmartyPants, I ch...

I happen to love newspaper comics, but over the years I’ve either not gotten a newspaper, or not gotten a newspaper carrying all the comics I’d like to read. I know I’m not alone in loving comics; just take a look at Comics Curmudgeon . The people who both read and post comments there clearly love comics, which is half of what makes it fun. Add in to it with some of the cartoonists clearly joining in with the joke, and really its a lot of fun. The lack of print has made things difficult in the past, but I have tended to get by. The general solution most people use is to go to the online sites of newspapers carrying the comic of their choice, in particular, one that also puts it up online. The more industrious of us use things like the Perl tool dailystrips . Basically, you tell it the pattern for finding a comic of a particular date, and it scrapes the website for that comic. This works, but has some hangups. Most importantly, it means the newspaper is not getting a...

I didn’t mention it at the time, but a hint I sent in to Mac OS X Hints was accepted (for some reason, they list me as anonymous). What reminded me was it getting rementioned on Macworld. Technorati Tags: Leopard , Mac , Mac OS X Hints , Macworld

A comment by Jeff reminded me I never went and confirmed how the iPhone 2.0 software does with 802.1x. I hope Jeff does come back and tell about his experiences, but here's what I’ve seen so far: Basically, it just works. As in, it works even better than on a Mac. After the iPhone/iPod Touch sees the network, it asks if you want to join and figures out all the encryption details for itself. Unfortunately, on the Mac (Leopard at least) you need to tell it if you want LEAP, PEAP, etc. So basically, I hope this stuff percolates back to Mac OS X from the OS X on the iPhone. Technorati Tags: iPhone , iPod

There was great new yesterday in the Columbus Dispatch : Riders can go to the COTA Web site, www.cota.com , and punch in the starting and ending points of their trip, along with the date and time the trip will be made. Google Transit processes the information and tells riders where and when to meet the bus that will take them where they want to go. Actually, I’m not sure why it was necessary to identify one of the people they interview as homeless, but that’s a totally different topic. I will say that I tried it out, and was generally impressed. It gave me the general route I sometimes take. The one thing I would say is that it appears COTA has given Google only the major pick up spots for each bus. So while there’s one just a minute away from where I live, Google would have me walk to a stop seven minutes away. Similary, Google tries to guess the route the bus will take, by using those major stops. That means it didn’t even show the circuitous route of the bus...