Also on Monday, I laughed out loud when I read about a Nokia strategist talk about how they’ve focused too much on the technology of their smartphones instead of ease of use. Also mentioned was the glacial response to the Apple iPhone, borne of a bit of overconfidence. Anssi Vanjoki, chief strategist and number two…
John Martellaro
John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.
Articles by John Martellaro
Let's Design a Next Generation Desktop E-mail App, Part I
I’m going to start with the assumption that the developer is agenda-free and doesn’t feel a need to entice the user into the Internet data cloud. E-mails sitting on a server in another state, accessed with a Web interface and browser, may be okay for the enterprise, but generally not for individuals who want instant…
3D Snow Globe for iPhone is Cute
I looked at several of the customizable snow globes in iTunes. Snow Globe Maker allows you to design a static, 2D Snow Globe and, say, e-mail it to friends. Other snow globes got iffy reviews because they didn’t work well. Snow Globe Free is free because it’s laden with ads and pitches. However, this app…
The State of Personal E-mail: Frakked
The state of e-mail is not good. When e-mail was the killer app in the 1990s, there were many fine e-mail apps for the Mac. They cost real money and were supported. While fairly simple and limited, they got the job done in an era of dial-up connections. Then, when Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)…
Thunderbird 3 for Mac: Still Not Ready for Prime Time
It was just about a year ago that I reviewed Thunderbird 3 Beta 1. I said that version 3 was becoming a viable alternative to Apple’s Mail.app, and that’s still true. However, it’s one year later, and my personal expectation was that TB3 would not just become a viable alternative, but become the best mail…
More HDTV Gotchas to Know by Black Friday
Audio in HDTV systems can be even more tricky and confusing than video. As Mac (and PC) users, we’re fairly familiar with video, but simple stereo audio is usually relegated to a pair of analog desktop speakers or headphones. However, when you move up to an HDTV system, you’ll be faced with new terminology, perhaps…
What You Need to Know about HDTV & Blu-ray by Black Friday
LCD or Plasma? Manufacturers would have you believe that LCDs, even LED backlit LCD HDTVs are just as good as Plasmas. That turns out not to be the case. In the September 2009 issue of Widescreen Review magazine, Raymond Soneira, Ph.D. in a series of instrumented and calibrated tests reported that a lot of, ah,…
Including, Excluding Virtual Machines from Time Machine
When you install a guest OS on your Mac with Parallels Desktop (PD), VMWare Fusion, a disk image file is created. I won’t discuss VirtualBox from Sun, but I believe it works the same way. With Parallels Desktop, the files are in /Users/username/Documents/Parallels. With VMware Fusion, the files are in /Users/username/Documents/VirtualMachines. These files can become…
The Mac Needs a Two Button Mouse -- Oh Wait!
When one lives on the Internet daily as I do, in the realm of Apple, it’s impossible to avoid the continuing ritual of Switchers who must deal with what seems, at first, to be a single button mouse on the Mac. It’s one of those myths that just won’t go away, as in, “AppleTalk is…
Atlona DP200 DVI to DisplayPort Converter
Connecting the Mini DisplayPort on a new Mac to an older DVI-based display is easy; a small adapter is all that’s needed. However, connecting an older Mac or PC’s DVI output to a modern, Apple DisplayPort monitor is harder. The Atlona DP200 interface makes the connection trivial. If you have a modern Apple MacBook/Pro, Mac…
Scanner 911 for iPhone Accesses Police, Fire, EMS Radio
For the U.S., the app shows the sources by state, their popularity, and whether it’s a police, fire or EMS channel. The app works over Wi-Fi or the AT&T data network. Default Main screen with speaker grill instead of mapTabs underneath show the list of states from which radio source can be selected, the hottest 100,…
Particle Debris (week ending 11/6) Failure IS an Option
So the lesson here is that when you take your prototype in and demo it to the big boys, better have lots of lawyers, an iron clad NDA, a pending patent, and maybe even a video of the session. So much for any illusions about Barnes & Noble innovating against Apple. European regulators are not…
The Mysteries of Rosetta Housekeeping
The first thing you need to know is that Rosetta is a very small piece of code, about 2.1 MB. It’s not at all like the Classic environment of old, so any obsession with eradicating it from your system is unwarranted. It just waits in stand-by mode and is only invoked when a native PPC…
BBEdit's Command Line Functions
Programmers and sysadmins often use BBEdit to write code or scripts. As a result, it’s often handy to have a helpful integration between a GUI text editor and the UNIX shell. That kind of elegant pairing is what makes working with the Mac so much fun. Here are the the three commands that BBEdit can…
SigFx Energy iPhone Case Contains Smart Battery
SigFX Energy in Lewisville, TX sells a full line of cases for the iPhone 3G/3GS (and iPod touch) that have built-in batteries. I have been testing the X-type design which has a 1,200 mAh (milliamp-hour) smart battery. No power is drawn from the iPhone battery until the external battery is depleted. It’s a keeper. Recently,…
Particle Debris (week ending 10/30) Eyes Wide Open (and Shut)
Some claim to have seen this video before, but I never have. Imagine Steve Ballmer, back at the release of Windows 1.0, circa 1985, that’s Windows 1.0!, showing the Microsoft troops how to sell Windows. Warning: no matter how bad you think this is going to be, it’s far worse. Have your finger on the…
Writer's Block Buster is Merely a Cherry Bomb
Almost every writer experiences a time when the essential seed of an idea is lacking, and the author can’t proceed. It’s a time of great frustration. The goal of Writer’s Block Buster is to carry the writer through the process of creating people, places and things and then let the app suggest interactions that might…
Eye-Fi's Wireless SD Card with Geotagging is a Must Have
Have you ever wished you could dispense with cables and just wirelessly upload your photos from an SD card in your camera to a Mac (or PC) — all with geotagging in the EXIF data? Eye-Fi has had this capability for some time in the Explore card for $99.99, but in July this year, the…
Windows 7 Launch is a Dangerous Time for Mac Advocates
I have been involved in some fairly high level technical projects in my career. This was at NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. What I’ve learned along the way is that there are two critical factors that will determine your success as well as the success of…
Science Glossary for iPhone is Not Recommended
One of the things I liked about this app was the glossary of scientific terms. I liked that more than just a collection of random facts because random facts, while seemingly impressive in some circles, don’t really stem from a deep understanding. At least with a glossary, one can dig into specific area of knowledge.…
Surprise: Apple Sells to the Federal Government
Here’s an example of such an article that caught my eye. It’s not that the perception that Apple isn’t widely used in the U.S. government is wrong. Rather, the perspective of the author is bound by ignorance of what Apple is actually doing. Namely, Apple has sales of about US$200M (from my experience) per year…
Texas Instruments BA II Plus Calculator for iPhone
This calculator has a myriad of financial, statistical and a few scientific functions. One has to actually read the User Guide to fully exploit the calculator’s various financial functions. I’ll trust that TI implemented those without error in this quick look review. Instead, I’ll focus on some of the nuances.Settings. Unlike many calculators, the settings…
Setting the Terminal Window Transparency
Terminal PreferencesTry as you might, you won’t find a setting for transparency anywhere until you come here and click on the Background control. That brings up not only a way to set the background color but also set the transparency at the bottom. Terminal background color has opacity controlThat’s all there is to it, but in…
ISS Visibility Shows Passes for International Space Station
Home page shows exact Lat/LonThe app is very easy to use. Basically, it uses location services to identify your location on Earth, and then draws from www.heavens-above.com (with permission) in order to create list of overhead passes during which the ISS will be visible. The author, Simon Vrdoljak, told TMO:Even the charts that I use…