TameBear: Useful Tools

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:18:24 GMT

Building Green Schools:This is SO inspiring -- the students of the Sidwell Friends K-12 Middleschool in Washington D.C. talk about their LEEDS Platinum-level green building, and how it is helping contribute to a healthier environment where they live and learn: Are YOU inspired yet? Head on over to the U.S. Green Building Council's Build Green Schools web site to find out how you can make these kinds of schools a reality in your district and nationwide. [Rocky Mountain Instititute]

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:06:40 GMT

Kepler: The Search for Microbial Life in the Universe: "If we find a single microbe on just one extraterrestrial rock out in space, then we will know... that life is everywhere." This compelling 7-minute video suggests our search for life elsewhere in the universe should focus on microbes instead of on civilizations. Modern technological civilization on our own planet is a brief moment in time, a mere millenium. Meanwhile life has existed here on Earth for most of the planet's existance (3 out of the 4 billion years since our planet first formed). [European Space Agency/NASA via The Speculist]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:31:25 GMT

Word Processing on iWork 08: The Bear has made the transition to the clean Blank Page of Apple's "Pages" word processor. It's purity and simplicity is enchanting, and yet it's a talented container for all other media, including spreadsheet tables, drawings, bitmap images, movies and audio. "Pages feels right." [Various and Sundry via MyAppleMenu]

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:10:10 GMT

Is Everyone Buying A Mac?: Steve Borsch thinks so, and writes about what he's seeing, including this telling bit from his daughter: "My 18 year old daughter works at a local Apple Store and we talk often about how busy the place is all the time... She's indicated that this back-to-school season is 'awesome' with sales." Especially worth reading the comments (following the story) from switchers who agree their new Macs make their work more productive, fun and hassle-free. [Connect the Dots via MyAppleMenu]

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:10:24 GMT

Portable power from trash: There are reportedly 90 sites throughout the US where garbage is burned to produce heat and electricity. The heat is used to dry burnable biomass, and the process burns relatively cleanly (meeting California's emissions standards.) Now a "portable" system produced by AgriPower can be moved to the source of the biomass, and will burn anything from nuts to old tires. [CNET News.com]

Sun, 20 May 2007 11:41:05 GMT

Aluminum Alloy Extracts Hydrogen From Water On Demand: While cleaning some lab equipment, a Purdue University engineer inadvertently stumbles upon a new method for producing hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need, when you need it. It's possible the technique could be used to replace gasoline in cars. [What's Next In Science & Technology]

Tue, 15 May 2007 11:52:09 GMT

How Apple TV Changes the Economics Of TV: Not only will niche content change the economics of television, but long before that happens many viewers will drop their cable TV service and instead use Apple TV to buy their TV shows and movies a la carte from iTunes -- all for less than the cost of their monthly cable bill. [Micropersuasion via MyAppleMenu]

Tue, 15 May 2007 11:39:57 GMT

Apple TV Surprises and Impressions: Yes, Apple TV works just fine with your normal old 480i "squarish" non-widescreen television, which is what many people have -- provided it has component (vs. composite) input jacks. An update at end of the article will help you figure out the difference. [Rogue Amoeba via Micropersuasion]

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:00:19 GMT

Apple of Our Eye - Macs Save Money: According to this viewpoint, there's been a distinct sea change in the way people think about Apple Inc. in the last few weeks. People have been saying the strangest things about Apple and Macintosh computers; everything is topsy-turvy. Pundits aren't trotting out the old conventional wisdoms any more. They're saying odd stuff, like Macs are good for business; Macs can save money; and that Apple's stock -- at $90 a share -- is a bargain. As a long-time Mac user, The Bear was convinced many years ago of the benefits of Macintosh computers -- especially regarding price. You see, my time is valuable. Therefore when I pay a bit more for a Mac (and mind you it's never been a lot more), the time I save in wasted days not spent in useless troubleshooting has always been a huge benefit. Macs just work, period. My current laptop has been in service for over six years, and it just works. And as for Apple's stock price, well, as an Apple shareholder I can tell you the increase in share price over the past several years has more than paid for all the Apple toys I care to buy. [Wired News]

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:37:39 GMT

Why Apple's 'Consumer' Macs Are Enterprise-Worthy: If the IT decision-makers can get over their prejudice against equipment that's traditionally been aimed at consumers, Apple's lineup is ready and waiting for deployment. The low-end models compare favorably with most of the middle-to-upper model PCs. And with cameras built-in to all models, teleconferencing is now available on every desktop. [Computer World via MyAppleMenu]

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:48:10 GMT

Time To Get A Mac: When the Windows diehards like Chris Pirillo all begin "upgrading" from Windows Vista to Windows XP, the writing is on the wall. Thomas Hawk advises all his Windows power users to make the switch, and admits that he "should have done it years ago". Now a satisfied Mac user, Hawk has no regrets. [Digital Connection via MyAppleMenu]

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 11:08:55 GMT

iPods Set to Usurp CDs: The Beatles settlement clears the way for Apple to begin selling iPods loaded with music. As the cost of flash drives continues to fall, a low-cost shuffle loaded with tunes begins to compete head-to-head with CDs. [Wired News]

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:44:05 GMT

75 Percent of Vista Reviewers Compare Mac OS X: Sample quotes from a dozen different reviews demonstrate how favorable comparisons with the more mature Mac OS X operating system are irresistable. More reviewers are acknowleging features of Vista have been in Mac OS X for years. [Ars Technica via MyAppleMenu]

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:56:35 GMT

Buzzoo.net: Here's one to watch - a news links site started by three Goshen College grads seeks to aggregate the top aggregators. They started with reddit, digg, slashdot and del.icio.us; now they're drawing from the top news on google, netscape, dzone, gigaom, techcrunch, arstechnica, cnn, shoutwire, yahoo, boingboing, furl, and more. See what floats to the top on all your favorite news aggregators, by visiting just one site: Buzzoo. [TameBear Radio]

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:00:57 GMT

U.S. Servers Suck More Power Than Mississippi: Power-hungry servers consumed 45 million kilowatt-hours of power in 2005 - twice the power usage of 2000. One obvious solution: solar powered servers. [CNET News.com]

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:52:47 GMT

Wind Resource Off Eastern U.S. Coast Could Provide Energy for Nine States: Enough energy to supply the needs of nine states from Massachusetts to North Carolina, plus the District of Columbia--with enough left over to support a 50 percent increase in future energy demand, according to a study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Stanford University. [What's Next Network]

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:05:25 GMT

How Soon are You Moving to Vista?: The results of a Cnet poll of over 13,000 readers provides this telling statistic... slightly more than half of the respondents indicate they are "Sticking with the Mac -- or moving there soon". [Cnet Polls]

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:56:13 GMT

Why Apple Makes Me Cry: Now that all the hype and hubbub about Apple's new iPhone has simmered down a bit, here comes a Momus commentary that teases out the emotional content of Apple's creations... "This company understands the importance of beauty, managing to set the right balance between desire and spirituality, complexity and simplicity, form and function, software and hardware." [Wired News]

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:12:04 GMT

How Yahoo Blew It: In 2002 Yahoo had a chance to buy Google for $5 billion. Didn't happen - Yahoo CEO Terry Semel thought that was too much to pay, and bought Overture instead. This tale of the text-ad-against-search competition between the two search giants, Yahoo and Google, focuses on the relative merits of deals and marketing vs. engineering and technology. In the winner-takes-all ecosystem of the global net, has second place become last place? [Wired News]

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:59:25 GMT

Light Theory - Transcripts: In response to our growing audience of listeners, we've begun publishing transcripts of some of our more notable "TameBear Radio" podcasts. Three episodes in particular have been getting a lot of attention, and so we're featuring them here. These are the initial episodes in what is likely to be an ongoing theme regarding the Bear's "Theory of Light and Existence"...

Into the Light - Everything we perceive of the material world, including ourselves, is made of light, and is moving through space at light speed. (Also known as the "To Be Or Not To Be" episode.)
Choices, Choices - Every moment is a decision point, and every choice we make splits the universe. All possible choices exist in a multverse of overlapping existence. (Also known as the "To Do Or Not To Do" episode.)
Riding Waves - The light that we and all things are made of exists as both particle and wave simultaneously. Particles are the physical stuff we are made of; waves are the ephemeral sensory processing, thoughts, and dreams of our mind. There exists a unity of light, mind, and body.

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:11:13 GMT

The American Energy Vision: A hopeful new report from the Worldwatch Institute is titled "American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security". The report shows that an energy future based on abundant and clean renewable resources is not only urgently needed, but achievable. In advocating the thoughtful expansion of renewable technologies, American Energy presents a clear and practical path to end this country's troublesome addiction to fossil fuels, and in the process make headway against the equally challenging problem of global warming. The report is available in downloadable PDF format. [Worldwatch Institute]

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:23:58 GMT

THC Slows Onset of Alzheimer's Disease: One more reason to legalize pot? Medical investigators at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla CA have discovered that the active ingredient in Marijuana is more effective at blocking the formation of beta amyloid plaques than currently available medications. "While we are certainly not advocating the use of illegal drugs, these findings offer convincing evidence that THC possesses remarkable inhibitory qualities," says a new study published this month. [Scripps Research Institute via FuturePundit]

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:13:58 GMT

Trend Toward Home Backup Electric Generators: Standby electric power generators for homes are on the rise in areas where grid electricity outtages can last for hours or days. These are not the small noisy gas-guzzling backup generators... homeowners who can afford it are installing whole-home systems to generate as much as 40 kilowatts from propane, natural gas, or photovoltaics. The systems can be costly, but in some affluent neighborhoods they are becoming status symbols. [Christian Science Monitor via FuturePundit]

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:53:19 GMT

Artifical Muscle Displays Enable More Lifelike Color: Today's plasma and LCD screens produce color images by mixing three basic colors of red, green, and blue. A new development in optics uses and adjustable diffraction grating technology to fine-tune those three basic colors, resulting in a much fuller range of colors than is currently possible, giving such a life-like viewing experience that it could be hard to go back to your old TV. The invention could begin showing up in competitively priced consumer products in eight years. [What's Next In Science & Technology]

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:25:56 GMT

Mac Hack Demo Rigged: All laptop owners were put on notice recently when presenters at the Black Hat security conference used a new MacBook Pro to demo a WiFi-related vulnerability. The presenters said the vulnerability was present on Windows OS computers, but that they demonstrated it on a Mac because of the broad perception that "Macs are more secure." Well, Mac users get the last laugh this time, as the presenters are now admitting they modified the MacBook Pro prior to the demo because the driver the computer comes with isn't actually vulnerable to the attack. [VAR Business via Techdirt]

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:31:08 GMT

Apple Thrashes Dell on Mac Pro Pricing: Apple is clearly bent on busting the long-standing myth that Macs cost more than Windows boxes. A well-reasoned price shopping comparison conducted just days after the release of the new high-end Intel-based Mac Pro demonstrates how some configurations can save buyers as much as $462 over an equivalent Windows system from Dell. (And while the Mac can also run the Windows OS and any Windows apps, the Dell will never be able to run Mac OS X!) [The Inquirer via Insanely Great]

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 11:37:39 GMT

Adding a Dimension: Microsoft will be presenting some new research and software next week at Siggraph. They're calling it "Photosynth", and essentially it's a tool for stitching together a bunch of photos to generate a 3D environment for a virtual walk-through. [EE Times via The Speculist]

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:00:52 GMT

Five "Arghs" from a Switcher: Robyn Peterson of PC Magazine describes his first few weeks with a new MacBook, and the things that a typical Windows user is bound to find different about using a Mac. In a follow-up article Robyn promised to tell about editing his old wedding videos using iMovie. [PC Magazine]

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 11:56:49 GMT

Biotown, USA: The town of Reynolds, Indiana -- population 533 -- is also home to some 150,000 hogs. Some smart state officials have conviced Reynolds to become a showcase "biotown", generating all their electricity from biogas produced by the decomposition of pig manure. Looks like they're planning to power municipal vehicles on ethanol or biodiesel too. [theWatt: Energy News and Discussion]

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 11:25:51 GMT

Key To "An Inconvenient Truth": Apple's "Keynote" is the presentation workhorse behind Al Gore's highly acclaimed documentary on global climate change. Keynote's ability to import, sequence, and transition extremely high resolution images and video clips for display on a 15x45 foot screen is what made it so appealing and useful for this film project. [Apple Hot News via MyAppleMenu]

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 10:52:43 GMT

Microsoft Strips Adobe PDF from Office 2007: Here's a major dustup over the "Portable Document Format" (PDF) invented by Adobe and made freely available to all software vendors that want to use it. Microsoft got into trouble because of their penchant for "embrace and extend" -- they wanted PDF in Office 2007 alongside their own rival "XPS" work-alike product, which in Adobe's view threatened to steal marketshare from PDF. By comparison, for nearly five years PDF has been an integral part of Mac OS X at the operating system level, making "print to PDF" available to all applications, not just a suite subset. Virtually any document on a Mac can easily be made into a PDF that's viewable on any other computer platform. For all computer users, it's simple, elegant, and easy. So why is Microsoft so intent on reinventing this in their own image? [Information Week]

Tue, 30 May 2006 15:10:38 GMT

ImageBurner 2.0: An update of the graphical front end app for hdutil, the command-line utility for burning disk images to CD or DVD. ImageBurner is a free Universal Binary for Mac OS v10.4. [ADG Software via Macintouch]

Sat, 27 May 2006 03:54:34 GMT

Solar Powered: In this followup to last year's "Preparing for Solar" episode, the Bear interviews webmaster Peter Oakley to learn more about the solar electric power system that was installed at his home office this Spring. Pete describes how solar panels work, the components of the system, interconnection with the electric utility grid, battery backup, environmental reasons for going solar, total cost and payback. A very informative episode for everyone interested in reducing their ecological footprint. [TameBear Radio 2006]

Thu, 18 May 2006 11:10:53 GMT

Why Booting Windows on Macs Matters: In the short term, Apple's free "Boot Camp" software for running the Microsoft Windows OS natively on new Intel Macs will be especially useful to those who want to own a Mac but who need to run a few Windows-only apps they can't live without. [PC Magazine]

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:39:42 GMT

Running Windows on a Mac: Apple's "Boot Camp" software lets anyone now install and run Windows natively on the new Intel-processor Macintosh computers. Here is a good review of the whole process, and a description of how well it works. [Macworld via MyAppleMenu]

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:55:24 GMT

Let Computers Screen Air Baggage:"It seems like every time someone tests airport security, airport security fails." So begins this article focusing on technologies to replace humans at the baggage scanners. If you heard the TameBear Radio podcast titled The Dynamite Bomb, you have some sense of the inevitable failure when humans are involved in the thankless job of watching the screen. [Wired News]

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:33:33 GMT

The Many Faces of Solar Power: Browse this photo-essay of several companies that are using a variety of approaches to cut the cost of PV cells, develop new materials, and produce new products to make solar electricity more cost-competitive. [CNET News.com]

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 11:15:06 GMT

Virtual Utility in a Light Pole: Solar-powered streetlights can double as WiFi base stations, and more. [World Changing via Futurismic]

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:46:11 GMT

Secure Remote Access to a Mac from Windows: Are you required to use a Windows computer at work while your nice Mac laptop laguishes on your home wireless network? Here's how to establish a secure ssh connection home through your corporate proxy server and tunnel the ports you need to VNC share the Mac's screen and control it remotely from your desk at work. [macosxhints]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 21:07:34 GMT

Quantum Dots Boost Hopes for LED Lighting: It was an accidental discovery, but an experiment with quantum dots -- tiny bundles of energetic atoms -- produces a bright white light with very low energy input and no thermal loss. [MSNBC]