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ATPM 7.11
November 2001

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About This Particular Web Site

by Paul Fatula, pfatula@atpm.com

Mac OS X Hints

This is an extensive news site devoted to all things X. You can browse through recent news in various categories (Unix, Desktop, System, etc.), or make use of the very helpful search feature to find a hint on a particular subject. This site taught me how to do things like change the size of icons on my desktop, show double arrows at both ends of scroll bars, and which program to use to pin my dock to the edge of the screen (TinkerTool, highly recommended).

FatChuck’s list of Corrupt CDs

Sure, you and I know that copyright law allows you to make a copy of an album you purchased for personal use, but someone forgot to tell a number of music labels. This site gives a list of “corrupt CDs,” that is, CDs which either are somehow copy-protected or which just plain won’t play on “any computerized device.” The list, for the moment, is rather short, but as people add contributions, it will grow and become a very useful resource. Regardless of whether you side with the music industry or with ordinary listeners, this site will give you an idea what you’re buying before you bring it home and find you can’t copy it onto your MP3 player.

Everything USB

Just in case you can’t guess what’s on this site from its title, well, it contains pretty much everything that anyone will ever need to know about USB devices. It covers releases of new USB devices, offers a FAQ on USB 2, and has an extensive USB Product Finder. I found this site looking for a Mac compatible USB modem. Everyone I called said only one company made them, and they were out of stock, but Everything USB showed me a number of options, each with a link letting me find the lowest price available.

HotAIR

The site’s subtitle will give you a better idea of what it’s all about than its name: “Rare and well-done tidbits from the Annals of Improbable Research.” It’s been giving out its own Nobel Prizes for a decade now, for professional research in questionable fields and published papers like “A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample” (concluding that many adolescents pick their noses) and “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” My favorite from this year has got to be the technology prize, which went to a man who was granted an Australian “Innovation Patent” for the wheel.

Mac OS X Apps

Start with X, end with X. This site, whose current poll reveals that 1.71% of its readers have never heard of a Mac, is similar to the first site I mentioned except that it focuses on applications. The front page lists recent releases, and lets you browse specific types of applications, like Docklets, Command Line, and the all-important UI. The site also provided me with a link to Mac OS X Ports, which hosts a number of very useful compiled Unix applications, including SSH2, that can be run from the Terminal. For finding X applications, I prefer Mac OS X Apps even to VersionTracker, which has an annoying tendency to return classic-only applications when you do a search for X programs.

appleCopyright © 2001 Paul Fatula, pfatula@atpm.com.

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