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Editors' Notes Observations and information straight from the Macworld offices
Seven wikis for seven worlds
Want to dig really deep into your favorite sci-fi or fantasy world? Need to study xenobiology in the Delta Qudrant or catch up on current events on Earth-616? In the old days, your resources might be limited to the few texts that got published (often without authorization from the creators of the TV show, movie, or book). But in the age of online, user-generated content, sci-fi and fantasy fans themselves can contribute to the extensive store of knowledge about their favorite fictional universes—and do they ever. Here are seven encyclopedic resources for fictional worlds so richly detailed that they rival the one you're sitting in right now.
Lostpedia
How many different ways are Jack and Kate connected? What do we know about Richard Alpert’s history? If these are the kinds of burning questions that keep you wide awake and staring at the ceiling as we embark upon the last season of the tortuous narrative that is Lost, then you’d better set aside a hefty chunk of time, because you’re about to find yourself pulled into the jungle that is Lostpedia. Every episode, every character—and, after all, there are truly no minor characters where the Island is concerned—are all here. If it’s speculation you’re after, there’s no shortage of that, either: Got a theory on what the smoke monster is? Where the island is located? You’ll find a willing audience to entertain your thoughts on the matter.
Memory Alpha
Among the most painstakingly constructed sites I’ve ever seen, Memory Alpha is a comprehensive catalog of everything in the mainstream Star Trek canon, from the Prime Directive to the last episode of Enterprise . All five live-action series are covered, along with the animated series and all the movies, including the recent reboot. If you want to go beyond that to the novels and other media, though, you’ll need to check out a second wiki called, naturally, Memory Beta.
Wookieepedia
I’ll come clean: I once managed to win a game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit in just two turns—and that was well before the advent of wikis. These days I’m a little rusty, but if I want to brush up on all things Star Wars, I turn to this brilliantly-named site, which includes not only both series of films but the Clone Wars TV show and the vast reaches of the “expanded universe.” If you’ve ever wanted to delve into the mechanics of lightsabers or wondered what exactly Bothan spies were, this is your only hope.Five sites for smart consumers
We all have our own opinions about politics, sports, and even technology. We all occupy our own particular neighborhoods, income brackets, and sections of the iTunes store. But the one thing we all have in common is that—whether we’re buying necessities, splurging on luxuries, or dealing with everyday financial challenges—we’re consumers.
As it has in so many other parts of our lives, the Internet has transformed the way we consume. We can now look up reviews, compare prices, and check on a vendor’s reputation, all before we pull out our credit cards or sign on the dotted line. The Web has given us voices we didn’t have in the past, to talk back to vendors and tell our fellow consumers what we think. Here are five of my favorite sites for consumer information, advocacy, and savings.
The Consumerist
The Consumerist blog, which covers a wide range of pro-consumer issues, started as a cog in the Gawker Media machine. But it eventually became so popular—and so respected—that the site was purchased by Consumers Union, the organization behind Consumer Reports. Among the most popular articles are reader reports about companies that mistreat their customers; the site has become a sort of crowd-sourced Better Business Bureau. But it also covers personal finance, the banking industry, and maintaining good credit. How influential is The Consumerist? In the past year, the site’s editors have twice had sit-down interviews with White House officials about economic and consumer issues. And horror stories about vendors are often followed up with posts along the lines of, “After The Consumerist posted my letter, the CEO of Company X contacted me directly…”
ConsumerSearch.com
If you’re looking for reviews of Macs, iPods, iPhones, and related products, you know where to go. But for everything else, the best place to start is ConsumerSearch. For a given type of product—say, LCD TVs—the editors at this meta-site gather review information from all over the Web, compile it into a comprehensive report (ranking each source by its credibility), and provide recommendations—best overall, best value, best budget, and more. A full report for each product type provides background information and useful buying advice.Five rib-tickling tech sites
Growing up around Stanford University and the greater Silicon Valley (before it was Silicon Valley) I encountered my fair share of electrical engineers—a brilliant bunch who, to a person, lacked any discernible sense of humor. Today’s crop of propeller heads are a wittier (though occasionally cruder) crew, as evidenced by some of my favorite Websites and Twitter streams:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
A pseudonymous goof on Apple, its CEO, and its passionate fans and detractors, Dan Lyons’ fake diary (Twitter: @fsjblog) can be funny, obscene, insightful, inspirational, and irritating—often all in the same post. Lyons started the blog while he was still a technology writer for Fortune. But even with his identity exposed, Lyons rarely pulls his punches: Companies, corporate heads, publications, politicians, journalists, and celebrities all suffer the wrath of Lyons’ faux CEO.
Walt Mosspuppet
Another fake techno-celebrity site. Walt Mosspuppet (Twitter: @mosspuppet) is a cantankerous puppet-version of Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg. I’ve met Mossberg, and the puppet’s caustic personality is nothing like his. But that doesn’t make the videos, the blog, or the Twitter stream any less of a hoot. As with Fake Steve, the puppet’s humor often transcends mere jokes to offer real insights into technology and journalism.
Crazy Apple Rumors
Crazy Apple Rumors’ John Moltz (Twitter: @carumors and @Moltz) does funny better than any technology writer I know. Why he hasn’t been snapped up by the entertainment industry is beyond me. (Oh, wait, maybe it has something to do with all the sexbot jokes). Crazy Apple Rumors went on hiatus in 2008, but it’s now kinda-sorta back on a “whenever I feel like it” basis.Virtualization: Behind the scenes
I recently wrapped up my second (nearly) annual look at three leading Intel Mac virtualization products—VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, and VirtualBox—along with an overview piece designed to help you figure out which one best suits your needs.
If you followed my Tweets during the development of these articles, you got a glimpse behind the scense at what went into the project: “Spent 5+ hours yesterday setting up a test that will probably only merit a couple sentences in final writeup. But it had to be done.”
Based on the response to those Tweets and some e-mailed inquiries, it appeared there was some interest in a “behind the scenes” look at just how a large comparison review/roundup like this comes together. So if you’re interested, grab an All Access pass from the bin on the right, and join me on a tour of the virtualization review production studio. I’ll try to give you some idea what it takes to put together a comparison test like this, and why it can take so long for it to finally appear online. (I started this project in mid-October, and it wrapped up in mid-January.)
Pre-production
After deciding to tackle this project, I had to figure out how I was going to actually do it this time around. Last time, I didn’t include much specific testing data. This time out, I wanted to change that. But what to test, and on which operating systems, and on which computers? Hard decisions, indeed. In the end, I chose my Mac Pro (2.66GHz quad core, 8GB RAM) because it’s neither the fastest nor the slowest of Apple’s Intel-powered Macs. It also had a lot of drive space available, which I was going to need.
Eight steps to Internet unpopularity
After a particularly trying weekend moderating the Macworld forums, it occurred to me that there are a handful of ways to become an Internet pariah in a very short period of time. In the hope that you might not fall into some of these traps, allow me to enumerate those ways.
1. Troll Let’s start with the most obvious. Take up an unreasonably opposing point of view simply to get a rise out of people. This is most effective when you visit a site devoted to Subject A and then state that just about everything related to that subject stinks. For example, visit a Nikon forum and slam its cameras in favor of Canon. Trail over to the Huffington Post and gush over Sarah Palin’s first literary effort. Drop by our sister publication PC World’s site and let them know just how much you love Snow Leopard and despise Windows. Whether your comments are based in fact or not, they’re unlikely to be welcomed.
2. Passionate cluelessness Okay, we get it that you have very strong political/religious/hygienic views. Derailing a discussion of the benefits of a new computer graphics chip to present those views in inglorious detail may not be the best way to make friends and influence people.
3. Dispassionate cluelessness Several years ago a little something called “Google” rained down from the sky. This Google provides the means for finding answers to many, many questions. I’m routinely amazed at how helpful people can be when others need assistance, but it’s unwise to abuse their patience by clamoring for increasing amounts of help when the answer you seek is a simple Google search away.
The real genius of the Genius Bar
My wife and I recently purchased an iPod touch (8GB, second generation) primarily for our kids to use for games. After setting it up, however, I couldn’t get any sound out of the speaker—audio worked fine in headphones, but not at all when trying to use the speaker. So I made an appointment at the local Apple Store’s Genius Bar to have them take a look.
After a few minutes of blowing compressed air into the headphone jack, and plugging and unplugging headphones, the Genius gave up and handed me a new iPod touch with a functioning speaker. The whole process took about 30 minutes (including my wait time), and didn’t cost me a penny. Well, technically it didn’t cost me a penny.
In actuality, it cost me 17,390 pennies (that’s $173.90 in the more-common dollar units). That’s because I was sucked in by the real genius of the Genius Bar: it puts Apple’s customers in a store filled with desirable Apple products, and with some time to waste while waiting for their appointment at the Genius Bar. In my case, that time gave me a chance to purchase a spare battery for my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and a case and screen protectors for the iPod touch. These were all items on my “I need to get these at some point” list, but the visit to the Genius Bar was the perfect excuse to get my shopping done.
So while the Genius Bar serves an important function for customers (and a popular one—it was swamped the whole time I was there) by providing them direct contact with Apple, it also serves as an incredible sales engine for Apple’s retail arm.
One person's quest for faster broadband
Several months ago, I wrote about how pathetic my broadband options were in San Francisco and, in fact, how bad things are in the country as a whole.
Since then, I decided to make the switch to something faster. At 7,500 feet from an AT&T central office, the fastest standard DSL speeds I could get were 2.5 Mbps down (about 310 KBps) and nearly .5 Mbps up (about 60 KBps). For things like downloading giant Apple software updates and uploading photos and HD videos, that just didn’t cut it. Although I’ve had a great experience with my ISP, DSL Extreme, over the years, the company simply couldn’t offer me better speeds for a reasonable monthly fee.
After I wrote the original story, Comcast—our local cable provider—expanded its broadband options to our house to include several faster tiers. Although weary of the company’s 250GB-per-month bandwidth cap, I bit the bullet and ordered a 15 Mbps/2 Mbps plan for about $65 a month (I don’t have Comcast cable or phone service, otherwise it would have been less expensive).
What happened after I ordered was a tragedy of errors that reaffirmed my contempt for Comcast. After one appointment where the tech was unprepared to complete the job, a second that Comcast cancelled during my appointment window, and a third during which nobody even bothered to show up, I canceled my order and started the search again.
While expressing my dismay at the unbelievable incompetence of Comcast on Twitter, I got in touch with local ISP Sonic.net. The company’s Fusion Broadband product promised speeds of up to 18 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up using ADSL2+ technology. But once I talked with Sonic.net’s CEO, I found out the company had even more ambitious plans to offer a bonded product that combined two DSL lines (two pairs of wires) to dramatically improve both download and upload speeds. I volunteered to be a test subject.
Read more…Opinion: Tear down those Office walls, Microsoft
My first reaction to Microsoft’s Thursday announcement that it will release a new version of its Office suite for the Mac in 2010 can be summed up in one word: Why? The very notion of a software suite like Office seems completely out-of-date.
Of course, I know perfectly well the reason Microsoft wants to keep pumping out new versions of Office across all the platforms it serves: The suite accounts for about 30 percent of Microsoft’s overall revenue. But as a buyer, I just don’t get it.
Read more…Introducing Macworld’s Digital Photography Superguide, third edition
Last weekend a friend stopped by for lunch and to show off his newest purchase—a shiny new SLR camera. Almost as soon as we sat down the questions started. What was the difference between the P and the green square, he asked, pointing to the mode dial. And was using the Portrait mode better than fiddling with the settings himself?
For all the work camera companies have put into making their cameras as easy to use as possible, many people still find the process of getting a good shot shrouded in mystery. That’s partly because, to take advantage of the full creative potential of your camera, you need to take the reins and make some decisions yourself. And that can be scary if you aren’t sure what is happening behind the scenes.
That’s why we regularly feature photography tips and how-to articles on Macworld. Each month we give you stories about the latest camera technologies, managing your photo library, and turning your snapshots into interesting projects—all from a Mac user’s perspective. But we know that digging back through all of those stories—some of which appeared only in print—can be a hassle, if not impossible.
A not-so-deeper look at OS X 10.5.8
Most of the time when Apple releases an OS update—like Wednesday’s Mac OS X 10.5.8 release—I’ll usually spend that evening examining the update package, trying to find information on what’s included in the update that wasn’t specifically covered by Apple and its release notes. It’s become something of a tradition here at Macworld North—I’ve written detailed looks at 10.5.3, 10.5.4, 10.5.5, 10.5.6, and 10.5.7.
But no more, it seems—at least not for this update. Apple’s own notes do a good job at covering the big details of the items it updated this time out. I did take my usual dive inside the update package’s files to see what else might be hiding there. While there is a large list of files that have been updated, the majority of those changes seem to be minor, such as updates to language files.
I did manage to find a couple things that Apple didn’t mention that I think are worth sharing:
- The background of the Sharing tab in Address Book’s preferences now has striped rows for easier reading. This is big. Huge news. Just remember you read this earth-shattering scoop here first!
- The iDisk icon is now blue, instead of purple. I wasn’t too keen on purple, so this is a welcomed change.
- The following Dashboard Widgets were updated: Dictionary, iCal, Movies, Stickies, Stocks, Unit Converter, and Web Clip. I have no idea what’s changed, if anything—consider this a challenge!
- There’s an updated version of the Apache (web sharing) manual in /Library/WebServer/share/httpd/manual.
- The Ruby and Python frameworks were updated, for those of you who work with those languages.
There’s also the usual assortment of updated frameworks, changes to time zone files, and minor updates to many Unix programs and/or their help pages. A long list of system extensions are also updated, but trying to figure out what’s changed in those would be basically impossible.
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