I recently added an Airport Express Base Station to my wireless network at home, with the primary aim of streaming music to the Hi-Fi in the kitchen, but I experienced mixed results.
My set-up comprises the following: Mac Mini and a Linksys WRT54GC
The initial set-up was complicated by the inclusion of an install cd and instruction booklet which as it turned out was only required by windows users. Instead of reading the instructions (as I did), all I needed to do was plug it in and activate multiple speakers in iTunes! Once this step was completed the Mac took over and automatically set-up AirTunes. I was able to hear immediate results and I was impressed by the sound quality.
However, music playback would stutter repeatedly to the point that I was beginning to think I had made a mistake in purchasing the router. I resorted to google. A quick search posed more questions and quickly pointed me to advanced settings in the airport utility where I was able to manually configure the router.
While the problem eased it wasn’t resolved, further investigation returned many users complaining about something called IPV6. This post: solved all of my problems using the following steps.
1. Open System Preferences
2. Open Network pane
3. Select Airport in the left list
4. Click the Advanced button
5. Go to the TCP/IP tab
6. Set the “Configure IPv6″ field to Off.
7. Click “OK”
8. Click “Apply”
9. Let iTunes connect to you’re Airtunes speakers
During the process of trial and error I came across a wifi utility called inSSider. This programme (windows only) scans your locality for other wifi users and provides detailed information like which channel they are using and if it’s likely they are causing interference on your network. I found another network using the same channel as me (6) so I therefore switched channels (11).
AirTunes is now working flawlessly and I am able to listen to my iTunes library throughout my house.
As a google fanboy and a Mac user it’s frustrating that Chrome for OS X is still very much an alpha version. For those who forget what Chrome is, here’s the official blurb:
Chrome is a web browser that runs web pages and applications with lightning speed.
Speed: Fast to launch, fast to load web pages Simplicity: Designed for efficiency and ease of use Style: Themes to add colour and delight to your browser
Firefox has been my browser of choice for many years now and with version 3.5 Mozilla have made significant progress in terms of speed, but Chrome is still faster. As someone who users gmail and other google apps it would make sense to use Chrome with these services. However, on the Mac at least, they cause Chrome to crash, gmail not to load and generally perform like a dog!
Am I done with Chrome? Not yet and I’m actually optimistic about a future Mac release. General browsing is very slick and with HTML5 support you can see the direction the browser is taking. When google iron out the problems, this browser will become the tool of choice for all my google apps.
Today the technology world was rocked by the news that IE 7 is vulnerable to attacks. Oh wait, most of us already new this and switched browsers long ago! While this isn’t really big news, it does highlight how important it is for the average internet user to make sure they are vigil while surfing the net. Microsoft have said that the vulnerability is present in all version of IE, but state that moving to another browser is risky in itself.
While most users will not switch, experts are indicating that now is a good time to experiment with alternatives. Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are not vulnerable to the IE threat, but each browser does have their own flaws. One thing is for sure, most browser attacks are aimed at IE. This is because IE users (are generally) less sophisticated surfers and are therefore more suseptible to viruses. I would therefore recommend users to “upgrade” to an alternative browser. I use firefox myself and find it great.
As a mac user, I should be using safari, but firefox’s pluggins make it a more useful browser, if not a tad slower. I would live to try Chrome, but google have not released a mac version yet.
Last years hot gadget was the Asus Eee PC, an ultra portable laptop designed to get users online with little fuss. Dubbed the ‘netbook’ and reported to have in excess of 100 million users already this Market is maturing rapidly.
So the question remains, do you get one?
A netbook is essentially a laptop, but will take on a smaller form and provide less power and will inevitably have a 7 – 10 inch screen.
These devices will be useful for those who travel a lot, children or those who just want a fun tool to access the net.
Typically you should expect these to come with Linux or windows xp operating systems, Bluetooth and wifi connectivity, USB ports and a solid state hard drive. Battery life will be around the 5 hour mark. Webcams will be integrated thus allowing you to get the most out of voip applications such as skype.
What else do you get?
It’s not all fun and games with these machines (although games are inlcuded as standard) open office comes bundled which allows you to edit and create documents on the go.
An Internet browser, an email client, instant messenger, office software, photo manipulation software, games, calendar, music and video are all included, so what else do you need?
If all this sounds too good to be true, then you’re almost correct. While these netbooks are ultra portable, this makes them small, and probably hard to work from. They usually have a small hard drive, therefore you won’t have access to a big media library.
But probably the biggest bug bear will be the lack of processing power, which will make these devices relatively slow.
So these are not a desktop replacement. But hang on a minute, who said they were? Did I?
These are a fun device which are fully functioning pc’s, big deal if they lack raw processing power or a big hard drive. Get one of these and you will have a great time surfing the web and staying in touch with friends.
As previously stated, I’m using twitter now and I’m finding it very useful. However, a little app that I’ve found has increased my twitter use no end, as it integrates twitter into firefox. Twitterfox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets and also has a small text input field to update your tweets. In firefox it’s located in the bottom right hand side of firefox in the status bar:
