Using Konfabulator + Yahoo

I never really liked Yahoo, I just tolerated it. And was saddened when they acquired Konfabulator (now with an ultra lame name : Yahoo Widget Engine) and Flickr. I was a Google flag waver.

Then my iTools (uh – I mean, DotMac) account expired due to my refusal of paying $99 a year. My Macs started getting out of sync…

At the same time I’ve been somewhat playing with the Yahoolized version of Konfabulator, then they released what to me looks like a NeXT Dock for your widgets – with the widgets now fully tied in with Yahoo such as the Day Planner with Yahoo Calendar, Notepad and the Flickr Widget that allows you to upload pics directly into your Flickr account, I decided to give them a second chance.

I resurrected an old yahoo account that has premium services left over from when I had Yahoo SBC DSL to tie everything in and get the full experience. Together with disposable email addresses (premium option), I must say I’m really starting to enjoy it again.

I simply install Konfabulator (Yahoo Widget Engine, sorry – I refuse to call it by that super-lame name!) and the Yahoo Toolbar on my Firefox Browser on all my computers – Mac or PC and have instant access to my schedule, notes, contacts, etc.

I only wish I would have chosen a better base name for my disposable email addresses before it locked me down to it (you can only change it once).

The only real problem I see is with Yahoo’s latest implementation of Mail – it hides advanced features, such as the ability to use disposable email addresses (only available with a premium account), having to switch back to the older version of mail.

Back to Firefox

I’ve been using Firefox pretty much since the beginning, I even remember using Netscape on Linux before Firefox was made public.

I used Safari when it first came out for Mac – but missing my Firefox extensions I switched back. Then found OmniWeb – commercial but someone bought me a license. But it has too many bugs/incompatibilities so back to Firefox I went.

Then I found PimpMySafari.com and that helped fill the gap that I was missing from Firefox for a while. But I was still “home sick”, so I finally downloaded Firefox 2 and installed all the extensions that made surviving on the web a little more tolerable. (especially when forced to use such horrid sites such as myspace).

Click here for a list of the tools I use to help keep my sanity while online.

Steve Balmer defeated by Malware

Saw it on MacDailyNews,

“Allchin says Ballmer, the world’s 13th wealthiest man with a fortune of about $18 billion, spent almost two days trying to rid the PC of worms, viruses, spyware, malware and severe fragmentation without success,” Frith reports. “He lumped the thing back to Microsoft’s headquarters and turned it over to a team of top engineers, who spent several days on the machine, finding it infected with more than 100 pieces of malware, some of which were nearly impossible to eradicate.”

Brings a smile to my face and a tear to my eye.

Article on MacDailyNews
Original article on Australian IT News

Solution? Turning off iMac’s Screen – kinda

Following up my rant about not being able to shut off the iMac’s screen, here’s a workaround.
It’s really a command line script executed by applescript that changes the display sleep timeout. But it’s the best I can come up with so far.

Rant : Not being able to turn off an iMac’s screen

Ok, this is really starting to piss me off!

For what reason did Apple decide to NOT be able to turn off the screen on an iMac???