Pajama Entrepreneur

Macworld begins on Monday, 14 January 2008. That means for the past few weeks, people have been speculating and spreading rumors: a new 13″ ultra-light Mac Book, an iPhone-like tablet and WiMAX in Mac Books. Since the demise of Think Secret, everyone’s favorite Mac rumor site, the rumor mill has never been the same. If you are dying to find out what Apple may be up to, you’ll have to go to www.macrumors.com.

Since everyone is making a list at the end of the year, I decided to create one, too. Here’s my top 10 most useful applications — things I couldn’t live without in 2007. Some are online apps, others are software that you download to your computer. I have a Mac Book Pro running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.1).

(1) Gmail: Google’s online mail application has reduced the amount of spam I receive to nearly zero. The mobile client is stable and fast. You can use Gmail to send and receive emails from other email addresses. Since your email is stored online, even if you lose your laptop or the hard drive dies, you always have access to it.

(2) Google Docs and Spreadsheets: perfect for sharing documents and spreadsheets. Like Gmail, you never worry again about your hard drive dying or losing your data.

(3) Backpack: create to-do lists, keep reminders (that send SMS or emails to you so you never forget anything) and keep an online calendar that syncs with Apple iCal. Backpack is one of the excellent online applications developed by the wonderful 37 Signals. They are known for Basecamp, the project management and collaboration application. There’s a free and a paid version.

(4) Transmit: fast, easy-to-use FTP software for the Mac. I’ve tried others, but this one is the fastest and most intuitive.

(5) Wordpress: the best blogging software around, with a huge community of developers of plug-ins, themes, widgets, etc. Wordpress powers this blog and other blogs I have set up in the past. Wordpress also has a hosted service, called Wordpress.com, for those who can’t be bothered to set up, host and maintain their own blog. Created by Matt Mullenweg, it is used by thousands of bloggers and big media companies.

(6) Netnewswire: RSS news reader. I don’t like online RSS readers because it takes forever to load the feeds. I like Netnewswire’s clean interface.

(7) Skype: this application has saved me thousands of Euros in phone calls. I can’t imagine life without Skype. I have no more long distance phone bills and since most of my contacts are on Skype anyway, it’s much easier to reach people or IM them.

(8) Gizmo Project: like Skype, Gizmo Project allows you to call people for free (if they are also Gizmo Project users) or to call landlines and mobile phones for low rates. Most of my contacts are on Skype so I use Gizmo Project primarily for calling landlines and mobile phones. I use it also on my mobile phone because unlike Skype, Gizmo Project has software for the Nokia phones. So when I am abroad and in the vicinity of a Wi-Fi network, I avoid roaming charges by using Gizmo Project on my mobile phone via Wi-Fi. I buy $10 units and it takes me months before I use it up. Another true money saver!

(9) Ad Block Plus plugin for Firefox browser: This plugin blocks obnoxious advertising on web sites. No more miserable flashing banners, video ads that suddenly play and blast out your ears, nasty advertising animations. My web surfing experience has improved dramatically since I installed Ad Block Plus.

(10) Super Duper: this is the best backup software. It is easy to use and fast so there is absolutely no excuse anymore not to back up your hard drive every night. Tech support is very good. I emailed their support team and got a response within 24 hours (they solved my problem — which had nothing to do with the Super Duper software but with errors on my hard drive).

Here’s a little tip I’d like to share with you. If you live in a city and use Wi-Fi at home, you will probably encounter interference from a lot of neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. The intereference can have a significant effect on the performance of your network, slowing down the speeds at which you send files around (internally among various devices in your house or office), or download/upload files on the Internet.

If you upgrade your Wi-Fi access point to one that uses 802.11n and upgrade your computer and other devices to ones that have 802.11n (or at least get an 802.11n adapter card for older devices), then set your new 802.11n base station to use the 5GHz frequency, you will find that your network’s performance will improve because there’s very little interference on that frequency. Most people do not have 802.11n yet.

My setup: I bought an Apple Airport Extreme base station (with 802.11n) two weeks ago. The Mac Book Pro that I bought last June already has 802.11n built in, so all I had to do was to set the base station to send and receive at 5GHz. The network is now very fast because there’s no interference from my neighbors who are all using 2.4 GHz.

Glenn Fleishman, who wrote the book Take Control of your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network, says he is still waiting for inexpensive 802.11n adapters for the older devices (laptops, etc.) in his house so he can have all of them use 5GHz. I’m waiting, too.

Think Secret, the popular Apple rumor site that once ruined Steve Jobs Mac Mini surprise, is shutting down after coming to a settlement with the company. Apple claims Think Secret violated Apple’s trade secrets by leaking out news of upcoming products and sadly, a judge agreed with Apple two years ago when the ompany sued Nick Ciarelli, who runs Think Secret. Ciarelli says that under the settlement, *at least* he does not have to divulge his sources. At least. Yeah, at least he isn’t in prison getting his fingernails pulled out.

Apparently, bloggers like Ciarelli are not entitled to the same protection that journalists have under the California reporter’s shield law (which says journalists do not have to divulge their sources).

What does this mean for bloggers who do investigative reporting on corporate fraud or dangerous materials in the things that corporations sell, the environmental damage they do?

It’s a tragic day for freedom of the press and investigative reporting, but will anyone in Mac-obsessed Silicon Valley even notice?

Stats: iPhone has 0.09 percent of Web usage — yes, that’s a lot: In this post Valleywag points out that iPhone users tend to use the Web more than non-iPhone users. Excerpt:

Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research’s Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.

My take is that it has everything to do with the user interface and how easy it is to visit sites, check maps, look for information online. A lot of phones are clunky (terrible design) with the typical phone dialing pads or have ugly, impossibly small screens. Who would want to browse a website on that?

Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s tech columnist, did quite a bit of research and showed that Macs are indeed cheaper than PCs. Moreover, their eBay resale value is higher:

Even for computers, brand matters. This week I compared prices of several machines from Dell, Gateway and other PC vendors against Apple’s lineup of Macs. In most cases comparable Macs sold for within $100 more than the PCs. But the Apples had something extra: that logo, the design, the history . . .

I switched to the Mac in 2002 and I don’t understand why people still use Windows PCs.