Day: April 21, 2008

Could you be doing oh-so-much more with iPhoto? Are you putting off the installation of Mac OS X Leopard? Are you wondering about investing in an Airport wifi setup?

With a 50% discount on all Take Control and Macworld Superguide instant-download ebooks through April 29, the tech info you need can be yours for as little as $5 of $10 per title.

To celebrate the 18th anniversary of their TidBITS electronic newsletter, the folks over at Take Control are offering a 50% discount on all their ebooks through April 29. The half-off sale includes their newest and most recently updated titles:

• Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac”
• Steve Sande’s “Take Control of iWeb: iLife ’08 Edition”
• Ted Landau’s “Take Control of Your iPhone”
• Brian Tanaka’s “Take Control of Permissions in Leopard”
• Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Easy Backups in Leopard”
• Matt Neuburg’s “Take Control of Customizing Leopard”
• “Macworld Mac OS X Hints Superguide, Leopard Edition”
• “Macworld Total Leopard Superguide”

You’ll also find ebooks on wireless Internet security, switching from PC to Mac, and getting the most out of your iPod. (There are even ebooks on booking a cheap plane ticket and planning and cooking Thanksgiving dinner.)

• Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard
• Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard
• Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard
• Take Control of Fonts in Leopard
• Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac
• Take Control of Mac OS X Backups
• Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon
• Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac
• Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac
• Macworld Mac Basics Superguide
• Take Control of Buying a Mac
• Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac
• Take Control of Switching to the Mac
• iPhoto 08: Visual QuickStart Guide
• Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger
• Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail
• Take Control of .Mac
• Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Network
• Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security
• Take Control of Your iPod: Beyond the Music
• Take Control of Digital TV
• Take Control of Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket
• Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner

Twitter is at its best right now.

An odd and wonderful little web-based application, Twitter allows you to follow your friends and be followed (or not) by others. What you see are the comments of people you want to hear from. And those comments are limited to 140 characters, making it an enviroment that favors the informed, the playful, and the articulate.

While there are Twitter users who want to follow or be followed by hundreds of people for marketing reasons, the majority of Twitter users seem to be viewing fewer than 100 people. In my case, I’m following about 40 friends, another 20 friends of those friends, and a dozen or so people who are either famous or interesting.

Twitter isn’t for everyone, at least not at the moment—and that’s a big part of its current charm. No one is talking about celebrities, few people are trash talking, and when someone complains about have to block “spammers,” all they’re referring to are some thick-skinned over-energetic social networking types who who’ve deluded themselves into thinking people want to hear about some “me-too” app their clients’ have developed.

Currently, Twitter has no ads, no deafening MySpace music clips, and no annoying pop-ups.

It’s all wonderfully reminiscent of the early days of the World Wide Web, and the early days of blogging. And it’s attracting some of the same people.

If this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to check out Twitter now. If you wait, and it jumps the shark, you’ll wonder what on earth the attraction was.