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I don’t get around to saying nice things about Microsoft very often, which I’ll admit isn’t very fair.  They’ve been good to Iris over the years, and we’ve sold our share of Microsoft licenses, too. To give them credit, they are always working on interesting things, and occasionally really interesting work comes out of Redmond. The subject of this blog entry, Pivot, is one of those interesting things. More »

Many companies today have a need to share resources like calendars and contacts across multiple people within the organization.  There might be a need for a CEO to share a personal calendar with an assistant, a public calendar that everyone needs to see or possibly a company-wide group of business contacts.

As an IT consultant, when I’m out in the field many customers ask me about using MobileMe to sync all of their companies contacts and calendars.  For a small business office of one or two people, this might be a viable solution, however, for companies that need more control over their resources, a server based solution is probably a better way to go. More »

Last week, we got the announcement about the new iPad, and the pundits have been working the Hyperbolic Chamber to capacity. So much has been said, written, and parodied about the thing in the last few days, and while most of it is typical ‘net noise, a few good, solid nuggets of info have emerged from the din.

One of the more significant issue surrounding the iPad is the question about support for Flash. Some see a lack of Flash as a huge negative and a deal-breaker for them, but for others (including myself), it doesn’t bother me that much. In fact, after having waded through hundreds of websites full of bad flash, it’ll be nice to take a break from it. More »

In keeping with my current trend of posting ridiculously easy tips and solutions, I thought I’d post a story about a recent client experience where we used an off-the-shelf solution that’s not always thought of as either cheap or easy. Here’s the situation: my client has videos that he needs to share with his clients in a far away land (LA), and he’d like to do this on his MobileMe website. Ideally, he’d like to have a webpage setup for each of his clients so that they could choose their clip by clicking on a thumbnail of the video, and each page should be limited to just those clips that a particular client would need to see. In other words, the same basic web-based client review process that just about every other creative pro would like to have. More »

Font management software is a utility that allows multiple users to manage font files. More »

Apple Mail is the best email client available. That’s a controversial statement (as controversial as a discussion about a mail client can be), but I’ve never found another client that is as fast, easy, and uncluttered as Apple Mail. That said, like any email client, it has it’s own share of irritating problems. I’m going to show you how to solve a very common one. More »

Leveraging iLife, some cheap software, a funky cable, and some earbuds

This is a departure from the usual fare on the blog, but I was describing this workflow to a friend and they suggested that I share it here. It’s one of those things that is so obvious that it’s not really going to surprise anybody. But what really struck me was the fact that there was nothing like this around when I was growing up. Back then, I had to practice my instruments uphill both ways, through the snow… More »