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In the office today we had an old Apple iBook G4.  The computer had been sitting around in a cabinet for longer than I’ve been working here.  Someone decided they wanted to use it to learn their way around a Mac (the office being primarily windows).  Seemed like a perfect use for the older laptop.  I booted up the laptop and tried to log into the admin account, no luck.  The only account I could access was a limited account that wouldn’t let you do much of anything.  So now I have the problem of figuring out how to get on the computer, without using the install disks (which had been long gone).  The solution was surprisingly easy.

1. Boot computer and hold the ‘apple’ key (command key) and the ‘s’ key
2. Wait for the terminal to show
3. Release keys
4. Type (without the quotes): ‘/sbin/mount -uaw’
5. Press enter
6. Type (without the quotes): ‘rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
7. Press enter
8. Type (without the quotes): ‘reboot’
9. Press enter

When the computer boots back up again, it acts like you just booted up for the first time.  It lets you create an admin account and password for the computer (this time I made the password simple enough to remember).  The best part though, is that nothing is deleted from before.  All the extra software we had on the computer is still installed.  Nothing got deleted, all that was done was creating a new admin account.  Its a neat trick for older laptops.  I haven’t tried this on new computers or OS’s.  If you have any luck, leave it in the comments.

Henry Ford

Charles Bukowski

I’ve had the Blackberry Storm since it first came out.  It was my second Blackberry (had the Curve prior) and I wasn’t a big fan of the touch screen.  The phone has grown on me though, and I’m starting to find myself doing more on my phone than on my actual laptop.  Here is a highlight of some of the apps that make that possible.  These apps are all gears towards generic day to day/social media tasks on the phone.

As an added bonus, these are also all free application.

Facebook – A little ashamed to admit it, but I do use this app on a daily basis.  Facebook really has developed quite the application though.  I never have to go to the actual website.  Everything can now be down just through my phone, any app that can do that is great in my book.

UberTwitter – Simply the most complete twitter application out there for Blackberry, or any other mobile phone that I’ve seen.  The program is still in Beta, but it is already a very complete program.  I have yet to run into any problems.

Viigo – This app really does more that it has to.  If you want, you can do almost any internet related thing on it.  What I really like though is the weather, sports, and travel sections.  The entire app is easy to use and customize, add in some clear navigation and all the features really don’t seem to get over-crowded.  You can customize each menu and get only the information you want.  You aren’t bombarded by useless information.  This app seems to be able to do multiple things better than most apps do one thing, very impressive.

Pandora – Who needs an iPod? Give me a Blackberry and Pandora any day.  I use Pandora pretty much everywhere now.  I’ve stopped buying/downloading music for the most part.  The free account lets you listen to 40 hours of music for free, if you go over they either shut you down or you can pay $0.99 for the rest of the month (very reasonable).  And I use it at work, home, and when traveling, anywhere there’s a connection.

Heath Ledger

It doesn’t get much worse than this from a big bad corporation stand point.   Companies that sell software to help parents monitor a child’s activity online have been repackaging the data collected as market research and selling it to other companies.  The Associated Press released an article on the subject the other day.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

“This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology,” said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. “You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”

This goes to show just how much of a grey area Internet laws really are.  Being able to monitor a child’s activity is pretty low.  Although by the parents agreeing to these ‘terms’ in the Terms of Service of the software, the companies are most likely in the clear of any legal punishments.  Take it as a warning to be carful what software you rely on for personal information.

Barack Obama

I’ve been using Google Calendar for quite some time now.  If you don’t use it already, you should start.  And they’ve added another feature that makes it even better.  You can now add your favorite sports teams schedule to your calendar.  What I enjoyed even more was how many teams they have available.  They could have gotten away with just having Football or Baseball, but they went above and beyond by adding Rugby and Soccer.  Meaning I can add my favorite EPL and Seria A teams.  Check out the new features for yourself on your own Google Calendar.  The new calendars can be found in the Settings -> Calendars -> Browse Interesting Calendars.