The new iWeb 09 has the ability to publish your website to an ftp server. Here is how to use this feature so that you don’t need a .mac account to host your iWeb site. If you have iWeb 08 or earlier, read here.
ShareAug 21
Yesterday Telstra turned on internet tethering for the iphone! (I think they are the only carrier in Australia to do this.)
Tethering is where you use your iPhone as a wireless modem to connect your computer to the web. It’s useful if you are out with your laptop and you don’t have access to the web. Just plug your iPhone into your laptop via USB and it acts as a wireless modem! Here’s how to get it going.
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Aug 04
I just checked on Google today and it tells me that as of August 1 there are 1,146,787 links to macintshhowto.com!
We average about 30,000 visits a month – that’s 1000 a day.
So hello whoever you are and thanks for reading!
Wayne
ShareAug 04
It doesn’t matter what kind of wireless network you are running at your home, be it an Apple Airport base station, or one of many other brands like D-Link, Asus, Billion, Netgear, or even a branded one like a Bigpond home wirless network, they all suffer the problem of network congestion. By network congestion I mean there are so many other people in your street or block of units with wireless equipment and they all interfere with each other – a bit like lots of people talking together in a crowded room. This can manifest itself as reduced range on your WiFi network, a drop in speed, your wireless signal dropping out, or your wireless signal strength going up and down randomly. Here’s how to change your wireless channel so that you won’t clash with the other people around you.
ShareAug 02
There’s no doubt about it – Macs are great computers, but they re not cheap, and it’s hard to find them on special! What you may not know is that you can buy iMacs, Macbooks, Macbook Pros, Mac Minis – almost the entire Apple range, refurbished from Apple, often at reduced prices. I always buy my Macintoshs from the Apple refurbished store rather than new from a retail store. In my opinion the computers at the refurbished outlet are BETTER than a new one – as well as being cheaper! Here’s why, and here’s some tips on how to go about getting one.
ShareJul 28
I was an early adopter of speech recognition. Despite being a long time Apple user user, in 1999 I purchased my first PC just to run Dragon Naturally Speaking. I would dictate to the PC and then copy the dictated files over to my Mac on a thumb drive! Dragon Naturally Speaking was by far the best dictation software but it was not available for the Appel platform.
Not too long later, Viavoice arrived on the Macintosh. It was not as good as Dragon but did the job. I used IBM ViaVoice for the next 6 years, with a brief but disappointing trial of iListen in the middle of that time.
So I’ve been waiting for almost 10 years for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to arrive on the Macintosh! And finally it’s here – Macspeech Dictate.
‘At the core of MacSpeech Dictate is the world-renowned speech recognition engine, Dragon NaturallySpeaking.’
After using Macspeech Dictate since it’s release 2 years ago, I can say MacSpeech Dictate is easily the best dictation software for the Mac. It is now up to version 1.5 and with each new release it keeps getting better. For those who for many years were limping along with iListen or Via Voice – you won’t believe the difference! The latest version of Macspeech Dictate achieves almost full accuracy with just 5-10 minutes of training.
There are a few (small) weaknesses. One is that every time it boots up you need to click to select your voice profile – it doesn’t have a default option.
Another weakness is that although the accuracy seems on par with Dragon naturally speaking, the learning as you dictate is not quite as good. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking if I retrained a word it would never mistake it again. I could even retrain it with words that I pronounced badly, so that it would learn my bad pronunciation. With Macspeech Dictate sometimes I have to retrain a difficult word five or six times and even then it doesn’t learn it exactly how I said it – thinks. So there must be some difference between the way Dragon Naturally Speaking and Macspeech Dictate handle the retraining of words.
That said, it’s a fantastic product. I use it every day, and I’d totally recommend that you try it out if you do a lot of typing. At the very least find a friend who has a copy and give it a trial! That’s what I did 10 years ago with Dragon Naturally Speaking and I was hooked.
If you live in the US It’s available directly from MacSpeech for $199, or people from Australia can grab it from Amazon who ship internationally.
There’s also a wireless version for $299 but if you really want the absolute best option, I’d go for the standard Macspeech Dictate version and buy your own separate top of the line wireless headset - I have written a separate article here on the best microphone to buy.
NOTE: You can read my older and less flattering reviews of the earlier versions of Macspeech Dictate here.
Jul 25
I’ve recently had some ask the question, ‘How do I know how much memory my Macintosh has?’ It’s very easy to find out how much memory your mac has – just go to the apple menu (top left of your screen) and select About this Mac.
Jun 27
My search for a good notetaking app has been a little on the obsessive side, but to me, the one thing a computer should be able to do well is take notes. I have spent 2 years on this one. I’m talking about an application where I can make a short note to myself and come back later and find it easily.
The combination of Notational Velocity on the mac, synced with Simplenote on the iphone, is for me the winner.
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