If so, have you ever wondered what external users are listening too. About the only info available from iTunes itself is when you attemp to quit and it complains telling you someone is connected. I found this freeware program called iTunes Monitor that shows you who is listening to what. It is quite simple but still useful. My only complaint is that I wish it could be integrated with iTunes so I'm not required to have an additional program open. Anyway here is a screen shot.

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Posted by Mike Shoemaker on December 20, 2004 7:04:43 AM CST #

Yesterday was the grand opening of the Apple Mini Store located in the St. Louis Galleria. Upon entering the store, it felt like I was inside my Powerbook. The walls were painted a deep gray color with a glowing white roof. Really slick I must say, but then again what would you expect from Apple? The store is rather small but makes decent use of the space by placing all of the merchandise along each wall with the registers in the center at the back of the store. The best word to describe the setup is "shotgun". The best part about going there was that they were giving out Apple TShirts to the first 500 people to enter the store. I wanted to get there before they opened to stand in line with all the fanatics but my wife and I had a morning event we had to attend. We were still able to drop by around 8:45am(opened at 8am) and get tshirt's. Although, it appeared that their stock was going quick. Below are pictures of the box the tshirt came in and a picture of the tshirt itself. I haven't opened the second one yet. I'm hoping it will go for 6 figures on EBay! I will not hold my breath.

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Posted by Mike Shoemaker on December 19, 2004 9:01:31 AM CST #

As an effort to help acclimate two of my buddies to the Apple world, I am sharing the contents of my dock. This idea was inspired by a writeup over at macdevcenter.com. Reading left to right.

Finder - Obviously this isn't really an application but I figured I'd mention it.

iTerm - A better terminal application. Allows tabbed terminals.

Console - Standard OS X application. It is used to view log files located in /var/log

JEdit - a full featured editor written in Java. Plugin API available for extending it's already capable feature set.

CheckBook - An alternative to Quicken. I prefer it's simple interface.

Apple Mail - Standard OS X application. Full featured email client.

iChat - Standard OS X application. Fantastic instant message client. Works with AIM or .mac account.

Adium - multiple protocol instant message client that I use for yahoo and msn messenger accounts.

Firefox - only the greatest browser around.

NetNewsWire - Flagship RSS reader. Perfect product to make your PC user friends jealous.

Safari - Standard OS X browser application.

Sherlock - Standard OS X application. Nifty application that display's dynamic content authored by the channel provider. Have a look, it's worth it.

Address Book - Standard OS X address book application.

iCal - Standard OS X calendar application. Publish/Subscribe to WebDAV repositories.

iPhoto - Standard OS X digital photo organizer.

iTunes - Standard OS X digital jukebox that frontends the iTunes Music Store.

iMovie - Standard OS X movie editor. Simple but powerful for home movies.

iDVD - Standard OS X DVD Creation software.

Activity Monitor - Standard OS X System Resource Monitor.

SubEthaEdit - Rendezvous enabled collaborative text editing. Simply one of a kind.

IntelliJ IDEA - Plugin based Java IDE by the folks over at JetBrains.

Eclipe - Open Source Plugin based Java IDE.

Grab - Standard OS X screen capture utility.

Honorable Mention Applications that are not on my dock but worth a look.

MacStumbler - Wardriving application for OS X.

BBedit - Legendary HTML/Text Editor for the Mac.

CocoaMySQL - MySQL GUI client used for writing queries or backing up databases.

Desktop Manager - Simple and powerful desktop manager. Multiple desktop's at your fingertips.

FetchArt - Applescript utility that pulls album art into iTunes.

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Posted by Mike Shoemaker on December 17, 2004 8:48:05 PM CST #

I'm curious if anyone knows of an Apple or OS X blog aggregator similar to JavaBlogs.com? I googled a couple times to no avail. Seem's like something that would work out well for all of the Apple snobs. I would participate of course :)

Ran across this in the blogosphere. Is this really necessary? I have not done a thing to my Powerbook in 2 years and it still performs as well as the day I got it. Not a single kernel panic either<knocking on wood>. Unlike windoze, a yearly reinstall is not necessary to maintain top performance. No registry either, I wonder if there is a connection.....

I'm proud to say that I have been windoze free for almost a year.

Sometime late last summer, a coworker of mine worked together with management to facilitate Java certification's for our group. Each developer had the choice to go down the SCJP Java Programmer path, the SCEA Enterprise Architect path or to not participate. Even though I have several certifications already, I don't really find true value in them. In the past I had gotten them because the consulting company that I worked for pushed them on us. Their view was that our consultants would be more highly sought after with the certifications. I interpreted that as our billing rate's had the potential to be increased and if two contractors were even, hopefully the certification would make a difference. Regardless, I was young with lots of free time so I did them. Since I'm no longer a consultant, I wondered why I should partake in this effort. After a few days of contemplating it, I decided to take the plunge and go down the Architect route. I picked the Architect path because I think it has the biggest potential to have an upside. Since it requires the person to complete and pass three different tasks(exam, project, essay), fewer people would have it making it more valuable. My reason for doing it at all were twofold. First, nothing bad could happen by getting the certification. Secondly, heck I might even learn something.

So approximately 5 months later, I sit at St Louis Bread Company on a Saturday morning preparing for the first of the three challenges. Im finding that most of what I'm covering isn't new, hopefully this trend will not continue and I will eventually learn something useful. Anyway, back to work.

Wait, why am I doing this again????

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Posted by Mike Shoemaker on December 4, 2004 9:24:14 AM CST #

As seen on WeiqiGao.com.

The 2004 word of the year is Blog. It is defined as a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

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Posted by Mike Shoemaker on December 3, 2004 8:26:19 AM CST #