TYCHAY  I forgot to mention that it’s still free. :-)  
(Version 1.0)

TYCHAY  There is a new version of Plaxo for Mac that does Calendar sync and has Mail integration. It’s part of the Plaxo Preview (http://preview.plaxo.com/). To download go to the preview site, log in, and add a "Mac" sync endpoint (at the bottom). There is a link to the download button. (You'll need Firefox because currently the preview site don't support Safari).

I used to work at Plaxo, but don't anymore. Just trying to give you a heads up.  
(Version 1.0)

TYCHAY  Yep, same with me. 8.5b1 crashes DevonThink and Safari after wake from sleep with 100% certainty.

These people need better QA if such a fundamental corruption got through to public beta.  
(Version 8.5b1)

TYCHAY  I am not the developer but I do work for Plaxo.

The entries for your AIM account should now be correctly delivered to your address book. To import them into your iChat, you just add them from your iChat via the "Add Buddy…" menu (Cmd-Shift-A). Scrolling down the right side will show you which of your Address Book contacts have AIM accounts attached to them.

I'll ask the developer if there is a way to automate this process.

I'm not sure about Skype since I haven't installed it since my system crash. I'll ask the developer to look at that.

BTW, if you use Windows, download the AIM beta client ("Triton"). Plaxo is built into it and you can use it to link up with all the AIM users who have e-mails attached to their AIM ID. That's pretty cool. :-)

Take care,

terry  
(Version 1.0b2)

TYCHAY  (I am actually not the developer, but I do work for Plaxo and do use the Mac client.)

Actually, you don't need to set manual syncing to avoid having your contacts modified by other Plaxo members.

See here.

Simply go to your Plaxo Account Preferences, communication pane and uncheck "Automatically accept updated information in my address book".

While you are there, I also unchecked "Plaxo Alerts", which cuts down on the stuff coming in my inbox considerably. The problem is if you do so, you must remember to visit My Plaxo and allow/disallow updates coming in individually. (Yes, I know this doesn't work so well in Safari, and that is entirely my fault. Now that the Mac client is out in beta, getting the online experience in Safari is a top priority.)

I hope this helps,

terry  
(Version 1.0b2)

TYCHAY  It's a pity that the person writing the Ars Technica review doesn't know what the hell he is talking about, but instead parrots complaints by other photographers who don't know what the hell they are talking about.

For instance, he complains about the RAW processing in Aperture and then compares it to the "universally acclaimed" Adobe Camera RAW in Photoshop.

1) Does he know that the DEFAULT settings of Adobe Camera RAW apply post-processing that has nothing to do with RAW processing? For instance, it boosts contrast, reduces color noise, and sharpens the image, Obviously the idiot has no idea because all his complains about Aperture's RAW processing are reducable to one of those three post processing effects.

2) In what universe is ACR acclaimed? Oh yeah, in the Canon universe where the company is too lazy to make decent RAW processing software. Typical crap, if you want to see good RAW processing, compare it to DxO Optics Pro which blows both Aperture and ACR out of the water.

3) In reality, Aperture's Camera RAW is truer to the actual RAW image. For instance, I saw one example (Canon 5D fashion shot) where ACR processed out some chromatic abberations. Newsflash! Chromatic Abberations are lens defects, the "processing out" in ACR is due it's default increase in contrast and then removal of color noise which pushes the chromatic abberations to black!

Just take a look at any RAW photograph of skintones. You'll see that ACR by default oversharpens them.

Many of the rest of complains are along a similar vein in that they don't understand that Aperture's tools are not meant to replace Photoshop, they are meant to work on photos. Lack of posterization due to dithering? Let's see, are these PHOTOS were are talking about? I thought so.  
(Version 1.0.1)

TYCHAY  Re: crashing your system and Apple.

This driver installs things into /System/Library/Extensions, including a kernel extension. If you are patching the kernel, Apple can't really be blamed if your computer crashes, especially when it is so adamant about what should and shouldn't be done to anything in the "/System" so there is a risk involved.

Simply put, Apple doesn't have those resources, Microsoft does, but they also have a much larger mess to deal with.

If you system is always unstable (getting a lot of kernel crash screens) as you imply, then my guess is you have bad RAM. Use memtest to do a full test of all you RAM.  
(Version 4.2.5)

TYCHAY  There seems to be a lot of confusion here re: the Displays Updater. This is pretty much only for the cards listed and only for AFTERMARKET cards. If you have a Radeon card that came bundled with your Macintosh (OEM), this updater is technically not from you but instead you should be using Apple's Software Update.

This is why the features of your card aren't enabled. Does your card have a TV-OUT? Then why should it magically, through software, suddenly get one?

Of course, ATI's site certainly doesn't help the matter.

Not that this is totally useless, Look through MacUpdate for "Radeon Enabler" and you will find a product that uses this ATI Displays Updater and then patches it to work with your OEM card. Then you can activate hidden features like Full Screen Anti-Aliasing!

Hope this helps clear up some of the confusion,

terry  
(Version 4.2.5)

TYCHAY  I fail to see what this does that PHP doesn't do already 100 ways from Sunday. (Well besides WebStar Mac OS Classic support).

PHP is installed by default in Mac OS X (a two line edit to turn on in the client version, easily configurable on Mac OS X Server). It is the most prevalent web scripting language (on more web servers than all the Windows IIS servers out there). It also runs on nearly every web server and nearly every operating system.

Plus, it's installed by all the cheapest hosting sites and has far better database integration.

And if you don't like PHP's quirks there is always Python, Ruby and Perl.

Since I won't use this product, I won't rate it.  
(Version 1.0.3)

TYCHAY  Mini Review: This is an essential program. Ignore my ratings and download it now, read the ReadMe, and run it on your computer right now!

Long Review:

This is a straight port of memtest86 to the Mac OS X. That's all it is.

What's bad: First there is no GUI, so unless you know the command line, you're screwed. Also, this isn't a bootable CD so you have to boot into your operating system. The manual recommends NOT booting into single user mode and I agree. Especially in a G5 since single user mode will not load the drivers necessary to control the fan. Finally, you must not test "all" the memory because it needs room at the top.

However, this tool is indispensable. In the PC world, you need it to mess with the RAM timings. In the Mac world, I have found a number of "flaky" computers simply by running RAM test on it and finding bad RAM. These are computers that pass Apple's hardware test, Norton, and TechTool! Testing RAM is not as simple as putting a "1" in every slot and reading it: different combinations can cause a memory fault in a different location of RAM and this is the only program that does an extensive battery of tests--not complete, a complete test would take longer than the life of the universe.

The price can't be beat. Don't trust any commercial product to test your RAM fully.

If your Mac OS X system has gotten "unstable", run memtest on it. If memtest finds a bug, you will have to reinstall from scratch because bad RAM means you don't know which file has gotten corrupted. Modern operating systems like Mac OS X use ALL the RAM so faulty memory problems which weren't noticeable on Mac OS 9 or earlier become evident in strange crashing behavior. Also, static charge can mean that the RAM which may have tested fine a couple of years ago is exhibiting a strange memory fault now many years later.

If this is so important why doesn't every vendor run memtest? The DRAM market is very competitive. If you had to stick every RAM board on a computer for four hours, you'd go out of business quick.

If you must run a complete test, reverse the order of boards in your DIMM and run the test again. The lowest and highest RAM do not get tested by this code.  
(Version 2.93.1)

TYCHAY  This program replaces the PHP keywords in BBEdit so that syntax highlighting recognizes more of them. Note that you need to go to the website of the author and download his keywords file.

(I haven't tested this yet so I can't rate it.)  
(Version 1.0)

TYCHAY  Version tested (10.2 14D): The interface is alien to me, however I was able to install it on my computer for a friend who picks up his e-mail through AOL. This is useful because the web-based AOL e-mail client seems to not work in IE for some attachments. It seemed easy enough to configure to access AOL through network. Strangely, it seems to store it's folder cache in a globally accessible manner (in /Users/Shared) which is probably not a good idea. Maybe just an accident of a hurried installation.

I don't use AOL, so I can't comment on features or value. (I gave it those ratings because MacUpdate requires I rate all fields.)  
(Version 10.2 14D)

TYCHAY  This program allows one to take a screensaver and have it appear on the your main desktop as the entire desktop or as part of one.

Caveats: 1) It doesn't seem to be able to do many 3rd party screen savers (including Randomize) in some cases it crashes app; 2) it is a CPU hog (not much that can be done here); 3) there is no support for multiple monitors (I think); 4) It will cover all icons on your desktop.

Having said that, the price (free) can't be beat. Try it out, it'll certainly be something fun to show off to others. Kudos to the author.  
(Version 1.1)

TYCHAY  I forgot to mention that the lack of support of multiple IMAP accounts in 3.x was (is still?) abhorrent and another reason for switching.

I'm sorry I can't review PowerMail 4.x. If I start using it and it expires, they will extract a $30 upgrade fee from a $50(?) program that I have barely used because of the issues outlined above. I wish them the best luck...  
(Version 4.0b3)

TYCHAY  Very expensive app, but given the importance of e-mail to work, fully justified.

I went to this program when I needed to read e-mail in both Classic and MacOS X, at a time when Eudora was just not being fixed and a satisfactory rate, but had to leave the application because of stability issues which 3.0-3.1 didn't fix (hopefully 4.x will).

It's main strength is the ability to seemlessly import other application e-mails and the tight integration with Apple's Find By Content system a la Cyberdog. It also has supposedly great support of international encodings, but that wasn't a factor for me.

Weaknesses include an app specific address book (hopefully they'll integrate this with Jaguar's address book functionality, but I'm not holding my breath). And styled e-mail (it uses Apple's built in HTML renderer in a limited way and poorly at that). Some may consider the last a strength, while the others may have been fixed in later releases.

A major weakness for me was Exporting capability (I could only export to Apple's Mail program one mailbox at a time--ick!). To understand this as a weakness, you must see that being able to leave this program is a strong selling point for me, I despise Outlook Express and Entourage for their locking my e-mail behind a database with non-existent documentation and forcing cruddy AppleScript routines for removal.

Crashing made me leave PowerMail 3.x, and the difficulty of exporting made me freeze it. IN all fairness, because PowerMail is scriptable, I could get around the latter problem easily if needed.

I gave it a 5 for ease of use, but really I should have given it a 4.5 because I feel that Apple's Mail program sets a new standard for mail programs (in the use a panes alone) that PowerMail needs to live up to, while fixing Apple Mail's quirks (non-intuitive location of mail accounts and filters, lack of find by content capability, overly unix-like creation and management of Mail folders, etc.)

Apple's built in Mail program should be more up to snuff in Jaguar (including a much needed revamp of filters and address book), hopefully PowerMail 4.x will improve import/export capability and the added improvements in base e-mail clients like Apple Mail and Outlook Express (or even the advert version of Eudora) will improve this product and other commercial e-mail products coming from a Unix slant.

BTW, the trial is not as easy as it might seem. The number of days never seems enough for testing features the way people use e-mail (try to keep the ship afloat for 30 days is itself a task).  
(Version 4.0b3)