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I’m really trying to “federate” (Lotusphere term there) myself from the world of Microsoft. One of the last steps to doing this is to remove my dependancy on MS Office applications … which is hard to do.

OpenOffice is getting there but has a few goofy things about it, especially when you get into graphs and such with Excel. My other alternative is Pages & Keynote, which I like but haven’t spent much time with (oh, and notice there’s no Excel replacement there).

However, I’m also finding that my default file associations are making things harder on me. I easily find a file using Spotlight and then open it with whatever the default app is … and at the moment, its always a Microsoft app. Until now …

You can change your file associations on Mac by finding a file type in Finder, then right (or Control) clicking the file. When the menu appears, press “Option” and you’ll see the “Open With…” menu replaced with “Always open with…” which allows you to set the program you wish to have associated with that file type.

Like Windows, this setting is system-wide, so when you launch a file in Notes, MacOS will open whatever you set as the default association.

Remember when I said that Notes 7.0.2 on a Mac improved the Sametime integration and seemed less buggy? I think I spoke too soon.

I’m noticing that my IM contact list doesn’t fully populate. I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it at the moment. The second I open up Parallels and run Notes in Windows (and, of course, shut down the Mac client first) it all works properly. Which is what makes me think its something on the Mac side.

Its also kind of hard to get a handle on IM message windows. Since its not a separate application, its hard to keep track of conversations. I actually miss the little blinking windows on the Start bar in Windows.

I’m going to keep testing it and will post any findings I have. If it gets too bad, I might just have to go back to Adium … which is just too cool of an IM program to not use anyway.

Update (1.16.2007): The problem went away. My IT staff reports that they have not rebooted the server recently, either. So who knows why it occurred or went away, I’m glad it did!

For the first time in a long while, I used Domino Web Access or iNotes or DWA or WebMail or whatever you want to call it — on a Mac. My browser of choice on my Mac is Camino, which is lightweight and does a good job of being compatible with almost everything (but stumbles on some Flash pages consistenly).

DWA based on the Notes 7.0.2 template is great! I’m amazed at how fast it is and how many features they were able to pack into that thing. This was the first time in a long while that I used it to respond to several emails and didn’t leave the program craving to have my Notes client back.

Well, until I went to exit that is. — For some reason, the logout routine really messes with Camino. In fact it leaves Camino thinking about the whole thing and then just getting lost until you “force quit” the application.

No clue why, but I’ll have to try it in Safari and FireFox and see what happens. Other than that … it ROCKS!

Twas the night before MacWorld and all ‘cross the lands
Not a person could wait to hear Steve’s latest plans.
The bloggers were predicting with usual glee
and readers would speculate – what’ll Steve bring to me?

Steve surely knows how much we all need
iPhones, new iPods and an iTV with HD.
Soon he’ll take the stage and announce with great joy
lots of new Mac stuff for every girl and boy.

My browser’s all queued up to bloggers that are there
I’ll keep hitting refresh, no time to spare!
The excitement is clear, more Apple stuff this day
with wallet in hand, I’m ready to pay.

What joyous news will Steve Jobs reveal?
Can’t wait to find out which rumors were real.
I simply hope it doesn’t take long
The best part is watching predictions that were wrong.

Bloggers do their best to all have the scoop
but Steve, he knows this, and out-smarts that group.
Secrets and tech with us he shall share
My only last wish is that I could be there!

[ratings]

Now that I’m waaay past my college era and pretty sure I’m not interested in going back for any more/other degrees … I keep coming up with great ideas for large research papers or a thesis or something. My latest idea for a great topic is all about the impact spellcheck has had on people’s ability to spell.

For example, does spellcheck (especially instant spellcheck) make you a better or worse speller? People I’ve talked to about this are undecided. Some think it makes you better, since you can instantly see when you type something wrong and learn the correct way. Others think it makes you worse because you become dependent on it. I’m not sure it makes me worse, but I’m pretty sure its not making me better either.

In fact, once I came up with this idea, I started to be a bit more aware of my spelling and how often my computer told me I was spelling something wrong. I quickly realized that I was frequently typing the same words wrong over and over again. Apparently, I can’t spell:

- Appropriate (apropriate)
- Functionalities (functionalites)
- Commitment (committment)
- Tomorrow (tommorrow)
- Stored (storred)
- Transferring (transfering)
- Tactical (tacticle)
- Impaired (impared)
- Received (recieved)
- Misspelled (mispelled)

(Kinda makes you wonder why I use THOSE words so frequently, doesn’t it?!)

So … based on my own little study, it looks like spellcheck isn’t making me a worse speller, but its not really helping things either, other than to give me the ability to correct it before I hit save.

Here’s why I’m posting it on my blog: I realized that my IMs (Sametime inside Notes on a Mac) didn’t have spellcheck and I was probably spelling all of these words wrong all the time. So I decided to sign on to IM in Windows (using Parallels) so I could use the new Sametime 7.5 client (which has spellcheck built in). My spelling instantly improved (well, at least to those that received my messages since it corrected it by the time I hit “send.”

Here’s a screen shot of what I’m talking about. Notice that “Sametime” is misspelled.

I can’t remember where I read this … but someone on some blog I often go to posed the question about which screen capture application is best on a Mac. I have an answer (or at least a preference) … but I don’t have the source for the question.

Oh well, that won’t stop me.

I use Screenshot Plus, a Mac dashboard tool that is simple and handy. You can set where you want things saved (clipboard or a folder) and the format you want (several to choose from) and has a minimal amount of clicks to get the job done.

If you have a Mac and you need to share what’s on your screen (and/or if you have a blog where you posed that question and still are looking for a suggestion), I’d suggest checking this out.

Oh yeah, its free. My favorite price.

Now that I have the gold version of Notes installed on my Mac I find that I do things to try to run into some of the same issues I did during the beta. As you can see, I haven’t had much to report here on that front – which means they’ve done a really good job of cleaning things up.

With one exception (so far): Synchronizing your address book (from your mail file).

Now, I hate that I have to ever do this, but since iNotes/DWA uses it and GOOD (software) uses it, I’m forced to do this manual little task once in a while to keep everything in sync (as opposed to keeping it N*Sync, I guess).

Here’s the process:
1. Open your mail file
2. Go to Actions\Synchronize Address Book
3. Wait a few seconds and you’ll get a report of what’s been updated

The result is a populated list in your webmail (iNotes/DWA) and, for me, an updated contact list on my handheld of choice (which happens to be the Nokia e61 at the moment, more on that later).

While I “get” why they can’t really automate this easily, there should be a way, ’cause its kinda a pain. Its even MORE of a pain on a Mac. When you go to run it, Notes asks where your names.nsf is located.

Recap: Notes is already open (thus USING your names.nsf) and it asks you where it is.

Now, in all fairness, this could be a handy feature. If I had a separate address book that I wanted to sync to my iNotes/Good-phone, this would be really handy. In my case, I don’t, so its just one more extra step.

Oh well, I’ll deal.