Solving technology problems, one at a time
After a couple of months of watching Microsoft’s teaser “Mojave Experiment” commercials on TV, I finally got around to looking at the Mojave Experiment site. The TV commercials (unlike the web commercials) give the impression
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Ever since I got the new iMac, the FKeys never seemed to work as expected. The special functions on each, like brightness, volume, dashboard, etc. would take precedence over whatever function my applications had assigned
Continue readingAfter years of institutionalized incompatibility in their browser software, office software, and video software, Microsoft has come out with with Silverlight, their Rich Internet application platform and supposed Flash Killer. Flash is universally accepted because
Continue readingOne important element that is often left out of beginner Dreamweaver courses is how to make your photos web-ready. Today’s cameras turn out multi-megapixel images that are several feet wide when dropped into a web page at web resolution. Here’s how to take a folder of high-resolution images and turn them into smaller files that will display at about 5-6″ wide at 72dpi using Photoshop.
A colleague at work needed to know how to turn on captions in Windows Media Player. I started to write her a note explaining it, but needed to check exactly how to get to the setting since I knew how to do it in older versions but not 11.
This turned out to be just another opportunity to experience Microsoft’s creative approach to usability.
Here’s a snapshot of the the player. Note, there is no "File" menu, no Open command, nothing that appears useful unless you are purchasing music from their store or ripping from an old CD. And really, aren’t "Rip" and "Burn" SO 2006? Who even cares about ripping CD’s anymore?
There are many iPhone applications available, but so far, no one has come out with an official application that does video recording. To get that functionality, you must jailbreak the iPhone and install one of the unofficial video recorder apps, and some type of networking so you can transfer the video files back to your computer.
The main problem with jailbreaking the iphone is that it is no longer in a standard, supportable condition afterward, and so things may not work as expected. I found that my syncing setup was all messed up, and I was basically starting from square one in terms of settings. There are some things it still does not do well, like syncing to iPhoto. However, there are enough benefits to a jailbroken phone to try it out, and hopefully (haven’t tried it yet!) it can be restored if it no longer seems worth all the effort.
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I just noticed that iPhoto was no longer syncing new photos off the iPhone. As you can see in the image above, when the iPhone was plugged in, nothing shows in the import window, although there really are photos there!
From the number of pictures left on the phone this has probably been going on for about a week or so. I tried downloading them using Image Capture and it appeared to see them and looked like it was downloading them, but ever nothing arrived in the download folder.
Continue readingMy first attempts to work with Vista have definitely been an “experience”. I’m trying to get a Lenovo ThinkPad set up for use primarily for Qwizdom and Powerpoint, which would seem to be well within the limits of what Microsoft intended, but you almost have to wonder if they ever tried Vista on a laptop before releasing it! What a mess!
The default size of windows is often just a little too big for the screen. I’ve double and triple checked the screen resolution – it is set to maximum. We did set the default font size larger than the minimum because it is too hard to see otherwise.
Yet the windows are all over the place in sizing – sometimes they are correct, sometimes obviously wrong, with title bars above the top of the screen or dialogs with Accept/Cancel buttons below the bottom of the screen.
Continue readingThe case of the missing confirmation dialog
A problem I’ve encountered several times on Vista: dialogs will open, then refuse to disappear, and the Windows Task Manager simply tells you they are “expecting a response”. They are “expecting a response” from a confirmation dialog that has completely disappeared.
This seems to happen when another window pops up and steals focus unexpectedly. The confirmation dialog is not hidden behind any other windows, nor minimized, but simply vanished. This can be very confusing even when you know what you are looking for. This happened while I was installing Adobe Reader. Here’s what it looked like when it got stuck:
We were having trouble connecting a ThinkPad to a local wireless network. It would first say there were no networks available, then when I would locate one, it kept requesting Username, Password and Domain, as if there were an authentication server involved. The wireless network is simply set up with a WEP key, so there are no individual users associated with it – anyone with the WEP key can log on.
It turned out that previous efforts to connect had set up a “wireless network” entry in a list somewhere which needed to be deleted and set up again correctly.