It would be interesting to see tags applied to contacts. I’d love to see a web-based instant messaging client take an initiative on this, such as meebo, or desktop clients such as Adium or Trillian, because they are more flexible and can apply these types of features without requiring that the actual network support it.

The problem with my list currently is that I actually ran out of the number of groups allowed on MSN since I have quite a few contacts and I try to keep a limit of 25 or so as the maximum number of contacts in a group, to make it easier to browse through the dozens of groups that I have.

If I were able to tag each contact, then that would introduce a whole new paradigm into the scheme of things, and give a whole different perspective into IM management. In general, I’d love to see new innovation in the instant messaging field beyond the expected features like audio and video support.

What do YOU think about this? Do you have anything that you’d like to see supported in IM services?

There’s that Mac Mini that I have…

I have a Mac Mini that I haven’t touched since obtaining my MacBook Pro, and it’s just been sitting on my table, collecting dust. I had thought of using it as an ‘entertainment hub’ for my home for some time, since it has built-in wifi.

The synergy of the Wii and the Mini is a great thing

I thought of purchasing an infrared receiver for my Mac Mini so that my Apple Remote which came with my MacBook Pro could be used for it. My eyes then laid upon my Wii Remote, with its simplified-yet-useful set of buttons, and inside of it, its built-in motion sensor… and I thought, why can’t I use that as a remote for my Mac Mini? Well, it turns out that I can, with the help of DarwiinRemote! I installed the application immediately, and lo-and-behold, I’m now using my Wii Remote as a remote for both my Nintendo Wii AND my Mac Mini. The Wii Remote works with my Mac Mini because both devices have Bluetooth enabled. I’m now deciding upon which media center program to use; my options include Front Row, MediaCentral, and CenterStage, among others.

At this point, the Nintendo Wii is used for gaming purposes, which the Mac Mini can also be used for - but primarily, the Mac Mini is used for viewing media, such as movies or TV. I’m also thinking of also integrating my Tivo box into the equation to include time-shifting abilities, but that’ll be a project for the future.

All in all, though, it wasn’t all that bad. I surprised myself at how much I didn’t really depend on my laptop if I didn’t need to; a lot of the stuff that I used were online, including Gmail for email, Google Calendar for my events and tasks, Bookmarks Synchronizer to upload my Firefox bookmarks online, and even ListMixer, a place where I store temporary bookmarks; these are basically my most essential items that I need in order to pass the day. Of course, I was forced to return to Windows XP for this fairly brief period of time as well, and the differences between OS X and XP really dawned on me at that point, such as how inconvenient a lot of tasks are made to be in XP.

I’m curious, can you guys survive without your primary desktop/laptop for a few days, or even a few weeks? Or do you really need to lug it along with you almost everywhere you go? Feel free to reply back by commenting on this post!

What’s most interesting to me is that, the head of product development in ECS, the team behind the AlgoAlert, is Carl Carrie, the person who I met while I was in Europe this past summer. Cool stuff!

I’ve tried both the Parallels method, which runs Windows in an application in Mac OS X, but it uses up RAM which it takes from Mac OS X, because both Windows and Mac OS X run at the same time. Also, Parallels does not have access to my computer’s video card, so I can’t play games in it. But, Parallels is useful for those moments when I quickly need to boot up a Windows-only program.

Then, I tried Boot Camp, which is directly from Apple. It allows me to run Windows on my Mac as well, but in order to do so, I have to restart my computer and then choose to run Windows instead of Mac OS X when my computer starts up. The disadvantage of this is, of course, that I have to restart my computer to run Windows, and that I can’t run both Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously. The advantage is that all of the processor, the RAM, etc. AND the video card is dedicated and is able to be used by Windows. This is most useful when I need to run programs that require higher specs to run, and it is especially good for Windows-only games.

And finally, I’m trying out Crossover Mac, which allows me to run Windows programs on my Mac - without running Windows! One of the biggest advantage of this is that it uses much less RAM because it doesn’t have to run Windows itself, and so I can run, say, Internet Explorer, which is useful for me to test websites to make sure they look good in IE, as a web developer. Now, as it is still beta, and it was released yesterday to the public, I’m sure there are bugs. But so far, I’ve got several Windows programs to work without any problems, such as Internet Explorer 6.0, which I’m sure I’ll be using quite a lot now. The Firefox for Mac OS X is currently using about 80 MB (granted, I have a lot of tabs opened), but Crossover AND Internet Explorer running in it uses less than 20 MB in total. That’s a HUGE plus for me. Now, I can hold off my extra RAM purchase a bit longer! (I’ve only got 512 MB RAM - hey, I’m on a college budget now!)

Unfortunately, us Mac users can’t jump in on the fun and run Windows viruses, just yet!

Internet Explorer:

FileZilla:

Xfire:

This is perfect timing, because now I’ll be doubly as efficient now that I have both my fast laptop AND an extra monitor. Words don’t do it any justice. Photos do!

UPDATE: I’m debating as to whether I should also add in my 15″ LCD monitor as well. It’d be a nice, long desktop. And when you add in the virtual desktops , that’s 4x as much length!

1. Improve your relations with at least one of the civilizations, enough so that your relation with that civilization turns to ‘Friendly’. (Trade resources and technology, and give some free gold to speed this up.) In my game, I was China and my ally was the United States. (I had set my civilizations to Random. Honestly!)
2. Once you’ve reached the relation level of Friendly, form a Defensive Pact with that civilization. This was pretty easy, because the Americans had no State Religion, and so they didn’t have any opinion about what State Religion my civilization was.
3. Provoke a war with another civilization (preferably the one that already wants to go to war with you.) You can do this by demanding technology, resources, gold, or anything else from that civilization. People don’t like getting pushed around, and neither do world leaders! At this point, I had provoked the Romans. (The Roman Empire isn’t supposed to exist in the year 1800 AD, anyways!)
4. Once a civilization has declared war on you, your Defensive Pact with the other civilization will come into effect, and both you and your ally will be at war with your opposing civilization.
5. After a few turns at war, you should be able to form a Permanent Alliance with your ally.
6. Your civilization might get a huge boost from the technology that your Permanent Alliance has given you from your ally; it did so to me, which was absolutely fantastic.
7. At this point, if you can, continue with your war that’s going on. Every time you take one of the opponent’s cities, check the trade window with the opponent to see if they are willing to Capitulate to you. If so, great, and if not, then continue taking cities until it IS available. Once it is, click on it to trade it (it’ll also automatically cause you to have Peace with your enemy AI.) What this does is it makes that civilization a vassalage of yours, meaning that it follows your rule (if you go to war with another civilization, then it’ll follow suit, or if you vote one way in the United Nations, then it’ll vote the same way, etc. - but it does NOT share any of your technologies, resources, etc.) The civilization is basically a protected nation under your command, somewhat like Puerto Rico and the United States, I suppose. They can be a self-governing nation once again if they grow large enough (such as reaching 50% the size of your total nation, including theirs.)
8. Continue the above steps of going to war and forming vassalage nations until you’ve created the United Nations.
9. Now you have a lot of votes and you should be able to win a Diplomatic Victory! (Or even a Conquest or Domination victory, because forming vassalage nations is just like conquering them - and it’s more quicker, too!)

I suppose that my monitor dying now is a better time than never, since I’ll be away in Europe for a week and a bit in a few days. Once I return, WWDC will have taken place, and I’ll then be able to make my final decision on which MacBook to buy for university in September.

Well, I’m no Quicksilver aficionado, but I do know that I can use it to do exactly what the above paragraph describes - all without even leaving the window that I’m working on at the time. Hitting ctrl+space just opens the little window that you see below; I then type in the first few letters of my playlist (my favorite playlist is aptly named ‘good songs’, and so I just type ‘go’ to find it), hit the right arrow key, then start typing the first few letters of the song I want.

When I compare the iTunes method with the Quicksilver method, the iTunes method took 15 seconds while the Quicksilver method took no more than 6 seconds. Just imagine multiplying that over several dozen times a day (yes, I have picky song choices sometimes!). How’s that for great productivity?

Just to test the problem, I once again ran Keychain First Aid, and sure enough, the same thing occurred. The program removed all references to my login keychain, so I had to re-import it. Again, I don’t know WHY it does this, but it did. For some reason now, though, after playing around a bit, I have TWO System keychains (I should only have one; they both appear to be duplicates of each other, and I can’t delete either of them) and after running the Repair option again, my login keychain doesn’t disappear.

If someone could explain what is going on, then that’d be nice.