http://thedesignspace.net/ My daily explorations, troubleshooting, solutions and discoveries. en-us ellen@thedesignspace.net Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:12:53 -0500 http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000858.html I've been doing a series of phone interviews lately, and I find it difficult to take notes while I talk, so I needed a reliable way to record these conversations (after getting all parties' permission, of course!). An added complication is that the interviews usually involve multiple participants, so we typically use a conference line to connect - either DimDim... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000857.html An interesting peek at the not too distant future of visual, gestural interfaces. Thin, light, responsive and embedded. Every incremental improvement in devices and UI's enables a whole new range of expression and interaction, so I'm looking forward to a small cultural revolution based on the ideas shown here.... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000850.html If you have followed all the instructions that come with your new iPhone, only to be faced with a "Waiting for Activation" message that remains unchanged for hours, try powering the phone down completely. Press and hold down the Sleep/Wake button on the top right corner of the phone until the red "slide to power off" slider appears, then slide... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000821.html Previous posts on this topic: iPhone "No Service" message Troubleshooting "No Service" messages on iPhone, part 2 I've written in the past about some of the solutions people have come up with to deal with the dreaded "No-Service" message on an iPhone. But yesterday I realized I'd forgotten one of the easiest to try: make sure your hand is... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000795.html It used to be possible to silence the loud "Bong" sound that all Macs make on startup by simply hitting the "Mute" key on the keyboard before starting the computer. This no longer works on the Intel iMacs, nor does adjusting any sound settings in the System Preferences. However it turns out there is a Preference Pane you can install... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000774.html A lot of people are unaware that it's possible to set up multiple email accounts on Mail.app. You can even add your office GroupWise account! This is true for most mail clients, including Entourage and Outlook, but I'm just going to discuss Mail.app here, since everyone's getting iPads these days, it seems...  ... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000772.html I must have a heavy touch: every time I tried to shoot a screenshot on the iPad, following all the directions I've read on other sites, I'd end up turning off the iPad instead. But after some experimenting, I figured out exactly how to shoot a screenshot without shutting down the iPad: Step 1. Hold down the round Home button... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000754.html When I first heard of the LiveScribe Pulse smartpen, I wondered: "OK, it's a pen that records a lecture. I already carry with me two or three devices that can record audio and video. Why would I want another ? After trying it out, I can tell you why you might want this. It is a lot more than... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000749.html I have an old Brother HL-5250DN Laser Printer that's been giving good service for years. Seems like forever since I replaced the toner cartridge (TN350 Black Toner Cartridge). But the other day, it simply stopped printing! It was out of toner, apparently. There must have been a "toner low" message, but I missed it. Unfortunately it is quite unforgiving. Once... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000733.html For several days I've already been enjoying a great pre-Christmas present: a new Kindle DX! Despite being early, it didn't come a moment too soon. For quite a while, I've been hoping for a better way to read to cope with my aging eyesight and tired eyes and the ever-increasing amount of reading on my desk. Most of my work-related... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000703.html My Linpus Acer Aspire One was laying idle for a few months, then I pulled it out to use it, and was dismayed when it would not charge. The orange battery charging light would flash for a second, then turn off. Problem 1: The Acer would not power up with the AC adapter. After scanning the web for a while,... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000660.html New Iomega drives ship with NTFS filesystems, formatted for MSDOS. They must be reformatted to work with Mac OS X. However when attempting to format these drives you may get this error: "Partition size not a multiple of 4k" Here's how to fix it. Open Disk Utility and select the drive. Click Partition tab : Options : GUID Partition Table... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000658.html A new problem that's been plaguing my Mac these days is that the keyboard sometimes stops working, but only in the Finder. In all the other applications, it remains functional. I use a Wacom tablet, and suspect it may have something to do with that, but more generally I'm guessing there is a key-command somewhere that is conflicting with something... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000653.html A few days ago, my iTunes started giving me messages like "iTunes could not sync contacts to the iPhone "My iPhone" because the iPhone disconnected." It wasn't syncing anything to the iPhone anymore. After reading this forum thread I tried resetting the sync history in the iSync application preferences. This did not help and instead caused iSync reminder messages to... http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000650.html A friend's iPhone stopped functioning correctly when making or receiving calls. When he would call, people on both ends could not hear each other, unless he hit the "Speaker" icon. I tried resetting all settings and rebooting the phone to no avail. Then during a test call, I hit the volume switch to try to increase the volume. The volume...