Logitech MX900 on Mac

I just bought myself one of the Logitech MX900 bluetooth mice that are being sold for around $150AUD. Officially Logitech is not supporting OSX although as Apple supports the bluetooth profile for using mice it is a piece of cake to use with OSX and the built-in bluetooth capability. When testing I also tried the mouse with the bluetooth dongle that I have from D-Link and found the mouse extremely jerky and unusable. However using the built-in bluetooth in my Powerbook G4 it worked perfectly without a problem. One reason it might not work with my bluetooth dongle is that it is quite old as I bought it when apple was first supporting bluetooth so the newer bluetooth dongles may work just fine. Also you can use the provided cradle that contains a bluetooth receiver that also works with the mac. The provided cradle will charge the mouse when not in use so that your mouse will be fully charged whenever you need it.

To set up the mouse is a very simple process when using the Apple Bluetooth capability:

1. Load System Preferences and click on the bluetooth link to display the bluetooth preference pane.
2. Click on the “Setup New Device” button which will displays this screen:
3. 
4. Select the mouse radio button and then click next to display this screen:
5. 
6. This screen will start searching for bluetooth devices. At this point in time you need to push the “connect” button on the bottom of the mouse. After clicking the connect button on the mouse the computer fill find the mouse and get its name. Click the “Continue” button.
7. 
8. The computer will then pair itself with the mouse.
9. 
10. Finally it will display the end screen:
11. 
    Your MX900 Bluetooth mouse is now setup and installed.

If you want to install the mouse using the cradle instead of the Apple internal bluetooth capability all you need to do is plug the USB cable of the cradle into the mac and click the connect button on the cradle followed by the connect button on the mouse. Pressing the two connect buttons will pair the two devices together and will appear to OSX as a standard USB mouse.

Once your mouse is installed you can then set each of the buttons to different expose actions. If you are not sure which button is which I have created an image that identifies the button numbers (see image at the start of this article). As Logitech does not support OSX it means that there is no software provided by logitech to map all the buttons on the mouse to different functionality. Although it is possible to use Game Pad Companion to provide this mapping capability.

I really like the whole Logitech MX series of mice (both cordless and wired) and this mouse continues my high regard for these mice. They are the most comfortable and smooth mice available on the market. They are more expensive than other mice but you will not get a more precise and well designed mouse than the Logitech MX series mice.

Lamp that reacts to your presence

The Funferde blog has an article about a lamp that reacts to whether you are in the room or not. While you are around it will turn itself on and stand upright but as soon as you leave it will droop over and turn itself off. The is only at concept stage but it a really interesting idea of having funishings that actually move and react to your presence.

Links
Funferde Lamp Article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

Wonderful Squares Flash Game

Here is another one of those really addictive flash games. For this one you have to try and get the black squares and miss the orange squares (well I think they are orange as I am colourblind). Have a go for yourself.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/squares2.php

Posted by Egon Kuster at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2004

ESRI embraces J2EE in ArcGIS 9

The recently released ESRI ArcGIS 9 includes support for the Sun Java Application Server which is the Sun Microsystems own J2EE server. By integrating ArcGIS with the Sun J2EE server it has allowed ESRI developers and users of their software to leverage upon the power of web services to seamlessly integrate geographic data with existing applications and business processes.

This is a profound step forward and can be leveraged upon in the recently started DSTO work on the Joint Command Support Environment (JCSE) that is ramping up support to the Geospatial and Imagery projects run under the Command Support Systems Branch of DMO. This DSTO work involves the development of a complete enterprise architecture for exposing and disseminating Geospatial and Imagery data within the ADF allowing such agencies as DIGO, DIO and DSD to share their products (normally distributed as individual files or hard copies) as digital products. This new architecture and use of integration technologies will allow the ADF to more seamlessly integrate Geospatial and Imagery data directly into existing and new applications and allow for a quicker and easier mechanism to distribute information. These advanced integration architectures will also allow for tighter control on the use of the data and more traceable security capabilities impossible with the current implementation methods.

Links
Sun Press Release
ESRI ArcGIS Product Page

Posted by Egon Kuster at 01:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Ski Trip Photos

Now that I have the template created for JAlbum I have been able to create my online photo albums much quicker so I now can announce that I have my recent Ski Trip photos up online also.

Posted by Egon Kuster at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)

My Europe Photos

I have finally gotten off my bum and actually put my photos from the Europe Holiday that I had a year ago. As there were so many photos I ended up using JAlbum to help resize and create all the HTML pages required. JAlbum works by using a set of templates (I created a new one for my site) and then applies this template to a directory of images to create the end site. To see the outcome from my template and to view my Europe holiday photos go here.

Links
My Europe Holiday Photos
My Photo Galleries
JAlbum Home Page

Posted by Egon Kuster at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)

iPodDownload iTunes Plugin: Apple vs Inspiration

A great little plugin for iTunes called iPodDownload has been created that allows users to easily download music from their iPod into iTunes directly from within iTunes. However this program is no longer available from the developers own site as Apple has accused the developer that the program is violation of something (not identified by Apple directly) and was requested to be removed from the Internet. This is most likely due to the Digital Rights Management software apple has incorporated into iTunes and the iPod to stop users from easily sharing music files illegally, however if you are like me where you use multiple machines being apple to use the iPod to move you music between machines is very useful. If you are now reading this thinking that you have missed out then because of the wonderful Internet community it is already being hosted by others here.

Links
iPodDownload web site
iPodDownload mirror site

Posted by Egon Kuster at 12:43 AM

September 17, 2004

Detailed map of Springfield

For all those Simpsons fans out there here is a great map of Springfield developed from the many shows. When I first saw this I was amazed at actually how much there was in this map and the creators must be applauded for all the hard work that they have put in. It is great fun to browse through the map and see all the different areas and remember the episodes where the item was first introduced.

Links
Map of Springfield

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

Deviant Art Website

One of my friends showed me this great site called Deviant Art that contains a multitude of artworks created by people all around the Internet. Unlike similar sites this site contains work of a very high quality and also contains work not just pictures but also interface designs, screen shots, poetry, cell phone art and many other categories. I highly recommend having a look around the site and you can even purchase posters of some of the artwork. (thanks Holger for the link)

Links
Deviant Art website

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2004

Internet Chat with the Internet Explorer Development Team

On the Mozilla ezine was a quick little article about a recent Internet chat with the development team from Microsoft working on the Internet Explorer browser. Posted in this blog are the chat logs so that you can read for yourself the questions and answers written in the chat session. Unfortunately the chat session did not reveal any amazing tidbits of information although does identify that work is under way for a new version of IE to be released in the future (no dates were given).

One question that I have that was not answered was when Internet explorer will be using the same DOM as other browsers so that the same JavaScript can be developed and used in ANY browser. The day that this happens I will be a very happy boy.

Links
Internet Explorer Chat Blog
Text Version of Chat Log
Rich Text Version of Chat Log

Posted by Egon Kuster at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

100 Posts

YAY! I have reached the 100 posts milestone and still going strong. Probably have more posts than about 80% of other blogs on the Internet because the users have given up by this stage or realised that you actually have to put in effort to maintain a site like this with .... GASP .... content.

Posted by Egon Kuster at 03:28 PM | Comments (1)

September 09, 2004

FOAF: Friend Of A Friend Vocabulary

The Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) project is aiming at creating a language that uses both XML and RDF to define a language that can describe the relationships between people and resources in a machine readable format. This works by individuals defining their own FOAF definitions and the exposing the URL of this FOAF file so that others can access and use the data. Exposing the FOAF files allows for a FOAF aggregator to consume multiple FOAF files from multiple individuals and by merging the data can define a complete community of interest.

For a basic description of how FOAF works have a read of Edd Dumbill's article on the IBM DeveloperWorks site. For more detail go to the FOAF home page.

Links:
FOAF home page
DeveloperWorks Introduction to FOAF article

Posted by Egon Kuster at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2004

Ecto 2 Beta Released

The initial beta release of Ecto 2 has been posted. Ecto is a blog client that alllows blog owners to easily create blog entries and post them to their online blog. This latest release sports a brand new graphical editor that allows the user to quickly create a blog using a familiar WYSIWYG editor. This first beta release seems pretty stable other than a few formatting errors in the editor and preview windows. The addition of the graphical editor is a major change from the previous version and will be great once the initial bugs are fixed and a full public release is made.

PS. This blog entry was created using the new Ecto 2 beta version.

Links:
Ecto Website

Posted by Egon Kuster at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2004

Paper Mac

Want a iMac G4 but can not afford it well why not consider a paper version that just looks like the real thing. Links Wired Paper iMac Blog

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2004

Installing Baldur's Gate II on OSX 10.3.5

I have had Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn for quite some time and just decided to install it on my new Powerbook G4 17“ running OSX 10.3.5 and found that the installer would crash with an error that you do not have the correct permissions. This is happening because at some stage Apple has locked down the permisions on the root directory of your hard drive which is where Baldur's Gate wishes to install itself. This is how you fix the problem so the installed once again works:

1. Open the Terminal Application (found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder)
2. In Terminal type the following (each line is a command and must be followed by pressing ENTER):

cd / sudo mkdir ”BGII - SoA“ [enter your password] sudo chown [username] ”BGII - SoA“

1. You will need to enter your short username (same as your home directory name). This will have created a directory that Baldur's Gate can be installed into.
2. Install Baldur's Gate like normal.

This will create the directory required and set the right permissions on the directory so that Baldur's Gate can installed correctly into the folder. You might also want to download the latest patch for the software also.

Links
MacPlay Home Page - makers of mac version of Baldur's Gate II
Patch Download

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2004

Server-side RSS Feed Aggregator

While going through the logs of this site I noticed that someone is connecting up to the RSS feeds produced by a client called FeedOnFeeds. Not knowing this client I decided to find out what it was, to my surprise I found out that it was a RSS reader that ran as a piece of server software rather than a desktop application. The idea behind having a server-side application is that you can use a single RSS reader even if you use multiple computers or work in different locations. By only having one client means that you know exactly which feeds you have and have not read, an idea that has great appeal for me. I have not yet installed the software so I can not comment on the use of the software and how well it works but once I have it up and running I will put up another blog.

Links
FeedOnFeeds RSS Server-side Aggregator Website

Posted by Egon Kuster at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2004

New iPod Case

Unlike many of the other iPod cases that I have seen on the Internet this one stands out for me because of the amount of thought that has been put into its design. The Prie Podwallet contains a number of really cool features like:
- storing credit cards
- storing notes and coins
- room for headphones
- special holder to wrap cables around and also acts as a strengthener to to the wallet's spine
- holder for an additional battery that can power the iPod for extended periods
- oh and room to store your iPod safely with a window so that the iPod controls can be accessed externally.

There is a nice gallery of the features on the website.

Posted by Egon Kuster at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Stylish Tea Jug

The MocoLoco site has a great new tea pot on review with a few fancy features.
- Strains the tea leaves automatically
- Lid automatically opens when you pour the tea
- Two methods of brewing the tea (with or without tanin)
- Can use as either a strainer or plunger type infusion
- Looks damned sexy.

Have a read of the page, which also has some large close up photos of the tea jug.

Posted by Egon Kuster at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)