If you’ve been wondering just what podcasting is, read on for Andy Affleck’s look at this latest of Internet phenomena. Also this week, Glenn Fleishman explains a visual, Unicode-based security exploit that hides deceptive pages behind apparently innocuous URLs. Adam chimes in with a cautionary tale about troubleshooting bad hardware and a tip about how iPhoto users can better work with Ceiva digital picture frames. In the news, Mac OS 10.3.8 is out and our servers are moving late this week.
TidBITS Servers Moving 18-Feb-05 -- Both digital.forest, our primary Internet host, and Technical Editor Geoff Duncan, who runs our database servers, are moving, and (not-quite-coincidentally) our servers ended up scheduled to move at roughly the same time
Mac OS X 10.3.8 Update Released -- Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.8, a minor bug-fix update to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Changes include faster DNS resolution that should enable certain Internet applications like iChat and Mail to open more quickly, more reliable restarting after power failures, fixes to DVD Player to improve compatibility and display performance in certain situations, a fix for PowerBook G4s that would wake from sleep with an unresponsive black screen, a change that may reduce "jumping cursor" problems on laptop trackpads, and theoretically more reliable fan operation on certain Power Mac G5s (although some MacFixIt readers report increased fan operation after the update)
The clever folks at the Shmoo Group, a bunch of interesting security folks who punch holes in assumptions about what's secure on the Internet, have discovered a simple way to fool most browsers into believing that they've connected to a secure Web site when they've been spoofed into connecting to a rogue location with a different name
As part of dropping our cable television subscription recently, I purchased a Mini-DVI to Video Adapter for my 12-inch PowerBook so we could watch DVDs on our TV (that's right - we've somehow ended up with DVD drives in multiple Macs without ever having purchased a normal consumer DVD player for our TV)
Maybe this is old hat to those in the know, but I've just discovered a neat workaround in my annual quest for an iPhoto export plug-in that would upload photos to Ceiva picture frames
Few buzzwords surrounding Internet technologies have moved into the mainstream more quickly than "podcasting," but because of this speed and an only tangentially related name, few consumer-level technologies have engendered more confusion
We continue to work on updates, with this week bringing a pair of small updates to Joe Kissell's ebooks about Apple Mail.
Ebooks about Apple Mail Updated -- Thanks to author Joe Kissell's tireless efforts in keeping readers of his ebooks up-to-date, we've released minor updates to both "Take Control of Email with Apple Mail" and "Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail." Changes in "Take Control of Email with Apple Mail" include a new sidebar that details how to access Hotmail, MSN, and Gmail accounts from Mail; a new tip about what to do if Mail fails to show a new window after you click Reply; and new info about a bug with rules and color-coded messages
The second URL below each thread description points to the discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be much faster.
Comparison of Macintosh eBay tools -- Prompted by our DealBITS Drawing for iwascoding.com's GarageSale, readers suggest other tools for working with eBay auctions