MobileMe

MobileMe is a new version of pretty established service from Apple, called .Mac. Essentially, it puts bits of information that are stored on your computer or iPhone, and stores them online for you. This works, because it means that both your computer and iPhone can sync themselves using the online version, meaning they are both up to date pretty much all the time.

At the moment I am doing this just with my calendar and contacts, and just with these services, it’s really useful. Say I put a new entry in my calendar on my MacBook: within 15 minutes it will be on my iPhone too, without having to plug the two together, or having to press any buttons. Excellent!

There’s more, though, which I am going to explore – including hosting files online, thus making them accessible from anywhere. This is through the web interface, which allows you to see your files, calendar, contacts and email (if you use the email address supplied with MobileMe – I don’t bother, personally). I am having a few problems with the website at the moment – it isn’t letting me log in, which is a shame. But the fact that the syncing works is great for me.

MobileMe isn’t free, and if I can’t log into the website soon, I am going to be pretty annoyed. The cost is about £60 a year, which I think is worth it just for the syncing alone.

Editing text on a Mac

MacJohn Naughton had a request from a friend for an alternative to MS Word on a Mac. John pointed him in the direction of TextEdit (Windows users, think WordPad), which comes built into OSX. One issue with this was the lack of a wordcount function, which was soon sorted by an extra little bit of software.

I’ve been doing some digging into Mac word processing, and here are some other options:

  • AbiWord – standalone wysiwyg word processor
  • NeoOffice – Mac friendly port of…
  • OpenOffice – the open source MS Office challenger
  • TextWrangler – for pure text editing, no frills or fancy fonts!

Incidentally, I also came across this page, which might prove useful.

I’ve bought a Mac!

Yes, for the first time in my life, I have bought a Mac – to be precise, a MacBook with 2.2Ghz, 120gb hard disk and a paltry 1gb RAM. That will be the first thing to be resolved, I reckon, but I might wait til next pay day for that treat.

My initial thoughts are good, it seems quick and I got it up and running with no problems at all. It’s a lovely size, which makes it ideal for lugging about, which was my intention really when buying it. Installing software seems easy enough, and so far I have added:

  • Firefox – natch
  • NetNewsWire – RSS reader, a Newsgator product so it syncs nicely with FeedDemon on the PC. Doesn’t seem a patch on FD though – and how the hell do I hide feeds from view which don’t have new items? Grr.
  • Marsedit – hoped this would be a useful replacement for Windows Live Writer and BlogJet, and while it has a nice way of managing images – especially from Flickr – it doesn’t even seem to have wysiwyg editing, which strikes me as being rather backward.

So, am impressed with the Mac, less so with the software. Any hints and tips gratefully received!