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August 11, 2007
Fun with Photo Booth
Okay, so I've just discovered the world's most entertaining time waster - the new Photo Booth software that comes with the built-in iSight camera on a Mac.
More photos here.
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March 30, 2007
BlogHer Business 2007
Last week I was in NYC participating in the first BlogHer Business Conference. Since its inaugural conference in the summer of 2005, BlogHer has been a focal point for women's voices in the blogosphere, both in its conferences and on the BlogHer website, an effort which I am proud to be part of.
As a business woman and a woman with a blog that has evolved into a business, what better place to meet peers and share ideas than at a women's conference devoted to the more professional aspects of blogging. Diva Marketing's Toby Bloomberg and I have been to all the conferences so far, and we shared a moment or two of awe at how far things have come, since July 05.
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August 8, 2006
BlogHer 2006
Arianna Huffington after the closing panel at BlogHer06. Photo by Elise Bauer.
Well, a week has passed since BlogHer06, and I have finally recovered my voice, worn hoarse by two days and 3 nights of almost non-stop interaction with the hundreds of intelligent, interesting, expressive, and opinionated people, mostly women, who made up the conference. Why do I love the BlogHer conference? The reason is similar to the epiphany I had the first time I attended a women-in-business conference at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I received my MBA. Having worked in the technology field for twenty years, and having attended countless professional conferences, my world, at least in work, has been almost entirely made up of men, and with it men's interests and attitudes about the world. Sitting in the classrooms which are usually occupied mostly by men, it was almost magical to look around the room and see bright, open, intelligent faces of women, women more concerned with contributing to the discussion and connecting with others than sounding smarter than everyone else.
I have four younger brothers, I have worked in technology, and I have trained in martial arts (mostly with men), for most of my adult life. I enjoy the company of men. But sometimes, it's just more fun to hang out with women. We tend to be more supportive of each other, and therefore more willing to take risks, e.g. display more vulnerability, in front of each other.
So this is the appeal of BlogHer for me - relaxing, engaging, and talking about subjects that interest me profoundly, with women. Every other conference geared toward the web, blogging, internet technology, etc. is top-heavy with men. And often the same men too, doing the speaking rounds at all the conferences.
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March 2, 2006
Macromedia Breeze
The holy grail of web collaboration has arrived. I just got a demonstration of Macromedia Breeze today during a business meeting. Wow. This is what we were trying to invent several years ago at Multitude (now defunct). These programs - WebEx, Placeware, etc. - never work on a Mac, at least not seamlessly. In today's meeting the initiator in San Francisco was on a PC, I (Sacramento) was on a Mac, one participant was on a PC (East Coast) and another on a Mac (United Arab Emirates). We all logged in as visitors and we were there, on Mr. San Francisco's computer, seeing all his mouse clicks. It just worked. Nothing to install (perhaps because I had the latest Flash already installed?), just through a web browser. Oh yes, we were all on different browsers too.
Haven't tried the VOIP (don't really need it with FreeConference.com) and didn't use the video. Video conferencing, unless it is with my bestest friends, is over-rated in general. Much more useful to have the white-boarding capability that works.
Of course, it's priced for business not for personal use, making it steep for casual collaborations, but extremely reasonable for corporate. The per-user Pay-Per-Use plan is about $20 per participant per hour.
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February 2, 2006
Apple Aperture Review
This is not a comprehensive review of Aperture, Apple's latest software for photographers, but some observations from one month of using of the product. Aperture is designed for "professional" photographers, which I am not. I am an amateur photographer, concerned mostly with managing the thousands of photographs I am taking, primarily of food, for my food and cooking weblog. I'm what one would call a "pro-consumer", who has outgrown iPhoto. Note that I am running Aperture on a dual Mac G5, with a 23-inch cinema display.
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April 15, 2005
Unified Messaging from SBC
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A few days ago my friend Sridhar emailed me a voicemail message he had received. I played the voicemail right from my email client. Cool. Thankful was I for the message, but how did he do that? Turns out the SBC Unified Communications service lets you combine all of your email, voicemail, and faxes into one online message center. If you use Cingular wireless you can even combine your cel phone voicemail in with your landline voicemail. And you can get your email read to you with a text-to-speech technology if you are on the road and call in to your voicemail box. I'm not interested in having my emails read to me. However, what I really really need is to have my voice messages emailed to me, as audio files. So I can pick them up wherever I am as soon as they come in, not when I happen to remember to call in and check my voicemail. This last feature is a godsend to people like me who are online all the time, often away from the main phone and are terrible at remembering to pick up messages.
Here's the good news.
If you are already signed up with SBC for your phone service, and already use their $8/month voice mail service, Unified Communications is only an additional $3 per month. Cheap!!
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April 13, 2005
Mac Maintenance - Repairing Permissions
Every time my Mac begins to act funny - lots of Safari crashes, Mail crashes - and I call Apple support, they walk me through the process of booting from my start-up disk and repairing permissions.
Click to enlarge
Apparently you are supposed to repair permissions on your hard drive on a regular basis, every month or even every week. Why they don't tell you that in the booklet that comes with the computer I don't know. Explaining what permissions are in the first place would be helpful too.
If you have Mac OS 10.3.8, you don't need to use the boot disk, you can repair permissions by launching "Disk Utility" from Hard drive > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Just open up your Disk Utility, select your main hard drive, and click on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button.
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February 16, 2005
Jambo
My friend Kelly's brother and his partner launched their company Jambo Networks at Demo yesterday. Jambo uses wi-fi devices to help you locate people physically close by who share common interests. This takes social networking to a whole new level. Imagine sitting at a table at Whole Foods at 4th and Folsom, tuning in and finding that someone else who (fill in the blank - trains show dogs, obsesses over Kant, parachutes for fun, etc.) is sitting at the next table. This is either really scary, or the next thing in online dating. Big congrats to Kelly's brother Jim and his business partner Charles!
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December 1, 2004
HP PSC 1350 Multifunction Printer Review
Yay! A printer that works like it's supposed to! (Unlike the HP Deskjet 5850.) The HP PSC 1350 is an all-in-one, multifunction printer that does color printing, copying, and scanning. After the fiasco I had with the HP wireless printer, I went back to the Apple store and bought this simple machine for $129. No, it's not wireless, but for the same price I get a photocopier and a scanner as well. It really is plug-and-play (though you do have to buy the USB cable separately to plug it into the computer; had to go back to the store for it.) And the best news? It works! Pretty well actually. The printer prints fine quality color and black-and-white files, photos onto photo paper. It's not slow. It is really easy to set up. And it is so practical having a copier around the house. Not useful for large amounts of copying, but perfect for the one-off jobs that comprise 95% of our copying needs.
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September 28, 2004
Apple iSight Review
I love my iSight! ISight is the video conferencing camera from Apple Computer, which when used with Apple's iChat software (which comes included with the computer) delivers extraordinary quality video conferencing for the money ($150). It's hard to convince people of this though until they actually use it. I've been trying to talk my friend Tom into buying one for months, so I could more easily visit with him and his rambunctious family. Finally I just gave up and shipped him one. My uncle is getting one soon too, as an early birthday present. Generous, you may think. Nah, having your closest friends on iChat with iSight just improves the value of your own iSight installation. The camera gets exponentially more useful the more people that you want to talk with have one. Amazon has a good deal on them right now. I think I paid $139 with free shipping. Update April 15, 2005: Amazon is now shipping the latest model of the Apple iSight with Autofocus. The price last checked was $140.
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September 16, 2004
Protect Yourself From Computer Viruses - Switch to Mac
I love Walter Mossberg. In today's Wall St. Journal he writes, under How to Protect Yourself From Vandals, Viruses If You Use Windows that
The single most effective way to avoid viruses and spyware is to simply chuck Windows altogether and buy an Apple Macintosh. Apple's operating system, Mac OS X, is harder for the criminals to infect, and the Mac's market share is so small that hackers, virus writers and spies get little thrill, financial gain or publicity from attacking the platform.Yes! Tell it like it is Walt!There has never been a successful virus written for Mac OS X, and there is almost no spyware that targets the Mac. Plus, the Mac is invulnerable to viruses and spyware written for Windows. Not only is it more secure, but the Mac operating system is more capable, more modern and more attractive than Windows XP, and just as stable.
Macs are as good as, and often better than, Windows PCs at doing the most common computing tasks: Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, music and video. The Mac version of Microsoft Office can handle Windows Office files with ease, and it produces files that Office for Windows handles effortlessly. Apple's computers are also gorgeous.
It has always amazed me the degree to which people value conformity over brilliance, beauty, and quality. The reason an investment banking MBA friend of mine told me he used a PC was that 90% of the world couldn't be wrong (this was a while ago). Hello? Lemmings. You're all lemmings. Get a Mac and start enjoying your computer instead of screaming at it.
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September 14, 2004
Apple iPod Mini Review
Updated April 17, 2005.
I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and bought an Apple iPod Mini. It was a barely considered impulse purchase at the local Apple store which happened to have them in stock that day. I rationalized the purchase by reminding myself that now that my old Palm pilot was dead I could put my address book on it. I got it home and immediately had buyer's remorse. What the heck was I going to do with this thing? I have no interest in walking around the world, oblivious to sounds outside of music pumping in my head. I have my entire record collection of 5000 songs in iTunes on my desktop, which is where I actually like to play music. iTunes is great, but do I really need to carry these songs with me everywhere I go?
I have now found a useful purpose for this gorgeous $200 device. Audible.com offers a $15 per month subscription to their digital books - the iTunes version of Books on Tape. (See 50% off special offer.) It actually works seamlessly with iTunes, downloading the digital audio files you purchase directly into the program. A $15 subscription gets you one book per month, a $20 subscription gets you two. You can cancel whenever you want. Since I spend hours on the road and I have lists of books to read, this is a useful service. (If you sign up, tell them that user BauerElise referred you.)
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July 7, 2004
HP DeskJet 5850 Printer Review
Last week I bought a brand new HP DeskJet 5850 Wireless Inkjet Printer from our local Apple store where it was a featured Apple-friendly printer. I bought it primarily because 1) I need a new printer and 2) it has a wireless networking option which would give me much more flexibility on where I could place the printer in my home office.
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June 13, 2004
iSight Tripod
Apple design is legendary and well deservedly so. Thus I was surprised to find when I purchased my iSight video camera that the mounting attachments that came with the camera did not include an attachment for a camera tripod. If you affix the iSight to your Apple monitor with one of the included attachments, you have little flexibility with adjusting the position of the camera. Mounting the iSight on to a mini-tripod however, would solve the problem. Oddly enough, an easy tripod attchment mechanism was not part of the iSight's design. The Apple plastic iSight mount will fit over a tripod bolt, but there isn't enough room in the plastic opening to allow one to secure the mount with a nut.
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March 5, 2004
Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Review
(If the image doesn't appear, refresh the page in your browser).
Usually when I review something it is because I really really like it. Rarely do I take the trouble to publicly express extreme dissatisfaction over a product. But here's an exception. After many months of frustration with my Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, I'm finally chucking it for a Kensington wireless mouse. I use a Mac, OSX, if that makes a difference. I have two main complaints about the Microsoft mouse.
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February 20, 2004
Using Google to Find Wi-Fi Hot Spots
You can use Google Search by Location to find Wi-Fi hotspots near a given address, city, or zip code.
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February 17, 2004
Apple RSS Feeds
Apple - RSS Information gives a list of all the RSS feeds that Apple publishes.
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January 25, 2004
iTunes RSS Generator
Apple iTunes just released a generator that creates RSS feeds based on genre. You can get separate feeds for new releases, top sellers, etc.
What's RSS? Click here for an explanation.
Posted by elise to Computers, Music | Permalink | Email to a friend
October 31, 2003
Skype Hype
Skype has been making the news lately, the new voice IM client from the same people who brought us the peer-to-peer music sharing system KaZaa. With over two million downloads since its launch this summer, and hosting over a 100,000 simultaneous users, Skype hype would have us believe that this is the Second Coming. Actually it is more like the fourth or fifth. The valley is still littered with the ashes of the companies who collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars and used hundreds of man-years to develop essentially the same thing - free internet phone calling through your computer. Some of the companies are still running, but at orders of magnitude lower valuations. My former company Multitude's product Firetalk was one of the more feature-rich of the Internet phones at the time. We too had over two million downloads of our Windows application and tens of thousands of simultaneous users. The current version of Skype is reminiscent of the early versions of Firetalk - presence information, buddy lists, instant messaging, do-not-disturb signs indicators. The main difference is that Skype is built on a peer-to-peer architecture, which although limiting in conferencing functionality (Firetalk's server architecture allowed up to a thousand people on one conference call), is ultimately more scalable at a fraction of the cost. Unlike previous peer-to-peer Internet phones, Skype can work through firewalls, making user adoption much easier.
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August 29, 2003
Big Mac with free Wi-Fi
Wayport has just rolled out a test of providing 802.11 WiFi wireless access to 75 Bay Area McDonalds. You can try it out for 2 hours of free access just by emailing Wayport. I found this on a wireless industry newsletter...
Wayport, leading provider of Wi-Fi and wired high-speed Internet access in hotels and airports, invites you to try our recently launched Wi-Fi service at 75 McDonaldís restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you need a convenient place to connect in the Bay Area, email marketing@wayport.net to get your free two-hour connection today!
Sent in my email, and voila! they sent me a passcode. Now to go try it out...
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August 20, 2003
Google Adsense, Ad"sensation" that is
Google continues to turn the search engine world upside down. For years, advertisers have been paying for high placement in search results for keyword searches on Yahoo, Alta Visa, and Google. Overture, recently bought by Yahoo, built its business by brokering such placements around different high profile sites. Google recently released a program called Adsense that extends the placement of keyword sponsored ads beyond high profile sites to almost any site. Adsense allows any website, large or small, to place Google keyword sponsor ads directly on their web pages. By placing a few lines of special Google javascript on your page, you can automatically serve up simple, unobtrusive, text-based ads that are contextually appropriate to your page. The more targeted, content-rich your page, the more targeted and appropriate the Google ads will be.
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August 10, 2003
Search Engine Optimization
Google has quickly risen to claim the number one way in which we find things on the web. How your website gets listed on Google can make or break your business. Here are Eric Wolfram's thoughts on Google Optimizing.
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August 8, 2003
Meetup.com
Meetup.com takes eVite to a whole new level and solves the problem of anyone who's wanted to meet fellow chihuahua lovers but didn't know where to look.
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May 24, 2003
Retro Desktop Patterns
Great RETRO desktop patterns for your Mac.
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May 23, 2003
Social implications of computing
Yesterday I attended an event at Xerox PARC honoring the 30th anniversary of the computer networking standard Ethernet. It was a true geek-fest, with most of the key people who created and brought to market Ethernet in attendance. Of interest to me was the panel discussion on the future of Ethernet and of computing. Dr. Rebecca Grinter from PARC challenged the panelists to discuss the social implications of a world in which not only are networks now Ad Hoc, in other words, devices naturally connect to other devices without users needing to configure anything, but also a world in which there is networking ubiquity. Everything is networked to everything else.
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May 6, 2003
Where's the iPod recorder?
One of the things that surprised me when I started to get more into digital creativity (making movies, creating musical slide shows) was that there was no good MP3 recorder for the Mac. Apple, you say you make tools for creative people, where's this one? I don't need an iPod to take with me to play music (I mostly listen to CDs in my car or iTunes at my desk). I need an iPod recorder to take with me to record my grandmother's memories, so I can make a digital collage with her voice. I need an iPod to take with me to my singing lesson, so I can send my mom a personal happy birthday song. I don't want your canned music for my photos, I want my own voice, my own commentary. And I shouldn't have to jump through technical hoops to get there.
Update:
An add-on available this spring: iTalk
Update March 1, 2004:
Belkin announced an
iPod microphone adapter.
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