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TidBITS#868/26-Feb-07

This issue brings our first reader survey in years, along with much more. Updates from last week look at the removal and reposting of the Norwegian Early Help Desk video on YouTube, better ways of creating permanent URLs for New York Times articles, and a quick Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 update to fix problems introduced in 5.1.3. In other news, Apple and Cisco reach an agreement on the use of the iPhone name, Apple adds cellular data support to Mac OS X, the Your Mac Life radio show changes domains, and we pass on a tip for focused reading of PDFs in Preview. In DealBITS, we give away copies of Panergy’s docXConverter, which converts Word 2007 files to RTF or text, and this week also reveals our final Month of Apple Sales offer for Take Control ebooks. Finally, Joe Kissell anchors the issue with a review of CrashPlan, an innovative new backup program with great promise.

Adam Engst No comments

Please Take the TidBITS 2007 Reader Survey!

It has been many years since we've done a reader survey, but since we're in the middle of some major infrastructure and site redesign work, I'd like to learn more about who you are, what you do, how you acquire technology information, what you think of our content, and most important, what you would like to see more of in TidBITS. So I would greatly appreciate it if you could spare 5 minutes to fill out our TidBITS 2007 Reader Survey

Adam Engst No comments

Your Mac Life Changes Domains

One of the most entertaining Macintosh radio shows/podcasts is Shawn King's Your Mac Life, which had to change its domain name last week. So if you're looking for Your Mac Life on Wednesday evenings at its normally scheduled time of 5:30 PM Pacific/8:30 PM Eastern, head over to www.yourmaclifeshow.com instead of www.yourmaclife.com

Adam Engst No comments

DealBITS Winners: A Sharp’s Opal

Congratulations to John O'Reilly of potomacadvisors.com, Dave Harvey of mac.com, and Cheryll Shubert of sbcglobal.net, whose entries were chosen randomly in last week's DealBITS drawing and who received a copy of A Sharp's Opal, worth $32

Adam Engst No comments

Concentrate on Reading in Preview

Thanks to Bryan Phelan for alerting us to a potentially useful feature in Apple's Preview application. Bryan was noticing that other applications on his Mac were constantly distracting him from reading his Take Control ebooks until he stumbled on the Slideshow feature in Preview

Adam Engst No comments

Early Help Desk Video Gone and Back Again

The day after I wrote it up in TidBITS (see "Early Help Desk Video," 2007-02-19), ZrednaZ, the user who posted the Early Help Desk Video with English subtitles removed the video, generating a flurry of squawks from TidBITS readers who wanted to see it

Adam Engst No comments

Easier New York Times Linking

Ever spend a non-trivial amount of time working on something, only to find that you've almost completely wasted your time? That's what happened last week, when I spent about an hour testing a variety of old and new URLs to articles at the New York Times, attempting to find a reproducible method of linking to them in a way that provided free, permanent access

Adam Engst No comments

Take Control News/26-Feb-07

Month of Apple Sales #4: The Switcher's Kit -- We all know at least one malware-harried Windows user who's on the fence about switching to the Mac. But as much as Mac OS X is simple, secure, and pleasant to use, changing operating systems is still a big step

TidBITS Staff No comments

Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/26-Feb-07

Volume control for family Mac -- The iPod contains a volume limiting option, but what about the Mac? Is there a way to prevent a 7-year-old from cranking up the sound? (1 message) Apple TV play DVD from laptop? As we wait for the Apple TV to ship, a reader wonders if it will be possible to watch a movie on television from a DVD in a Mac elsewhere in the house