Pixel-fitting by Dustin Curtis
Until we have Retina displays everywhere, we’re going to have to live with antialiasing techniques. The problem is that computers are terrible at doing it automatically. Because the computer doesn’t know what is in the resized image, it doesn’t know where to optimize using half-pixels.
You learn something new every day.
You’re probably well aware that you can plug an external monitor into your Macbook and use both the built-in display and the external monitors in a dual display configuration. Since your Mac only has one monitor port, it would seem that one external display is the maximum, but there are ways around that limitation. I’m going to describe the solution I found, but I’m going to warn you right now that my solution may not be for everyone.
A “journalist” named Preston Gralla recently wrote a Computerworld article titled Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OS X. Based on the overwhelming -467 ranking of this article and the scathing comments, it’s pretty clear that this guy is out to lunch.
Now, back when I was a Windows user I would have chalked this type of reaction up to the frothing-at-the-mouth Mac fanboys. And, to be sure, that could have something to do with it.
As well, the article may have been a simple attempt at baiting the Mac fan base. But Computerworld isn’t renowned for its Mac coverage; it’s mostly a PC / Windows oriented rag. So this incredible negative reaction is presumably coming, at least in part, from Windows users.
Yikes.
I’ve been on a Mac now for months, and those perplexing little symbols for keyboard shortcuts have been driving me crazy. I finally broke down and searched to figure out exactly what they all mean. I found a table at a site called OSXkeyboardshortcuts.com which has exactly what I needed: OS X Keyboard Shortcuts.
Wow, just wow. I just watched the video for the upcoming version of Evernote, an application I used to use regularly back when I was a Windows user.
Evernote’s claim to fame was that it allowed users to capture notes in a never-ending ribbon of paper paradigm. You could simply scroll back in time endlessly looking at the notes and information that you had captured to your Evernote file. Neat stuff, and really useful.
I’ve never really found a note taking utility on the Mac that was as seamless as Evernote was on Windows. But I’ve also moved a lot of my note taking to online tools like Google Notebook and Backpack. I like being able to get to my notes from my phone or Pocket PC.
Jay Hathaway, one of my fellow bloggers at Download Squad, wrote a post that mentioned that Evernote has a beta version for the Mac coming out, along with a web version and mobile versions. Wow! As excited as I was to hear this, I couldn’t help but think that I’m not sure I want to be tied to an offline software tool for ubiquitous capture of information.
Then I watched the screencast of the new Evernote that is coming out. It blew me away.
Everything you put into your system can be synchronized and is therefore available from the web and mobile devices. Plus, it has built-in character recognition so if you take a photo of something with text on it and put that into your Evernote library, the text in those objects is searchable – even handwritten text!
Of course I signed up for the beta right away. I can’t wait to give this a try. The screencast shows some very mature looking user interfaces, so I suspect the beta will already be a very usable product. This is one product release I’m looking forward to.
I’ve been reading quite a bit about the latest beta version of Ecto, and decided that I had to try it out for myself. Typically I’m not big on external editors for blogs, however I have to say this one is growing on me, and I’ve only been using it for about four minutes.
I wish that it were possible to have my AOL overlords allow API access of some manner so that I could use one unified interface (something like Ecto) to write posts for all of the blogs that I could potentially write for.
If you’re a Mac user and you want to see what I’m talking about, check out this page.
Hat tip to David Chartier.