Jul

4

A Quick Review of Syrinx – A Native OS X Twitter Client

Filed Under Computers & Tech on July 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I recently moved to a new machine (a hand-me-down G5 20″ iMac), and when it came to installing my new apps I decided I’d had enough of Adobe AIR and the whole idea of web apps pretending (poorly) to be native apps. I like OS X, and I want the full power of OS X in my apps. I also like how OS X apps all look and work similarly to each other. You just don’t get that with AIR apps like Twhirl (which had been my Twitter client up to that point). Not long before I got my new Mac listener Scott had contributed a short review of Syrinx to the NosillaCast, so I decided to give it a go.

I took and instant liking to the app because it’s a proper OS X app, because it uses the OS X keychain to securely save my password, and because it has Growl support. The fact that it’s free also helps of course! I’ve been using it for a month or so at this stage, and I’m still happy enough with it to keep it as my current client on all three of my Macs. It’s also under very active development at the moment with updates coming out regularly, so I have high hopes for this app’s future.

Read more

Tagged with: • • • • • •

Feb

1

Twittering on the Mac – First Impressions

Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 1, 2008 | 7 Comments

I’ve heard Leo Laporte prattling on about twitter for what seems like years on TwIT and have been actively avoiding it for ages. However, a few weeks ago I finally caved in and decided to give this whole Twittering thing a go. My overall impressions are that it’s a great idea, just poorly implemented. The service is about as stable as a pencil balancing on its point! I’ve only been twittering for two weeks and already I’ve experienced two Twitter outages, there’s no word for that other than poor. Then we come to their website. What an ugly and clunky mess! Yea, it works, but not that well and it’s far from a joy to use. Then we come to the main thrust of this post, Twitter clients on the Mac, overall I’m not really that impressed. I’ve settled on a client that’s good enough, but that’s the highest praise I’ll give it.

[tags]Twitter, OS X, Titterific, Spaz, TwitterPod, TwitterPost[/tags]

Read more

Tagged with: • • • • •

Jun

8

Yahoo Messagenger – JUST DON’T!

Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 8, 2007 | 2 Comments

Unless you are sure you want your system infested with useless bloat for ever more don’t install Yahoo Messenger! I did yesterday and now I’m really regretting it. For a start it wedges itself in everywhere. It runs a process to harass you into setting yahoo as your home page and as your default search. It wedges it’s tool bars into all your browsers and generally just puts itself everywhere it can. As a Mac user I’m not used to this kind of carry-on so it annoys me. However, my annoyance has only just begun. I had to install it to test something in work. My tests being over I went to un-install it today. I went to control panel->add remove programs and found it. Clicked uninstall. It warned me it would need a reboot to complete the uninstall and asked me if I was OK with that. I gave my consent and on it went. It took disturbingly little time and then my machine rebooted. Three guesses what started up on reboot all by itself without my ever asking it to. You got it, Yahoo Messenger! To make things worse, it is now gone from the control panel, and there is no uninstaller for it in it’s start menu folder. The uninstaller un-installed itself but not the program. Windows users need to stand up to this kind of rubbish software and stop using it. TBH I think this behavior would be classed as spy-ware and is probably illegal in the US. I hope someone takes these muppets to court. Enough is enough!

[tags]Yahoo Messenger, Spy-ware[/tags]

Update: It gets even worse! Fresh off the presses of US-CERT we have news of a publicly available exploit for the buggering thing. Just what I need, some randomers executing arbitrary code on my machine via an app I can’t un-install!

Tagged with: •