The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability

Paul

You’ve got a household full of PC’s and you’ve stopped yourself from getting a Mac because you don’t want to deal with incompatibility headaches. Eight years ago that would’ve been understandable, but today Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network, sharing files and printers, mounting one another’s drives and using the same equipment, like wireless routers and USB drives. If you’re considering a mixed Mac/PC home or office, here’s a primer on how the two systems inter-operate (and the few instances when they don’t.)

A really good article on how to make both the Mac and PC communicate with each other. I think the picture is quite nicely done!!

Give Tech Support and Collaborate Across Platforms with Yuuguu

Paul

Windows/Mac: Freeware application Yuuguu provides instant remote screen sharing through a simple IM-like application. Just install Yuuguu on the computers you’d like to share screens, and then register and login to the Yuuguu chat application. If you decide you want to do a little screen sharing—perfect for friends and family tech support or a little project collaboration—just click “Show” and let the screen sharing begin. The user you’re chatting with can either observe your screen or take control of the keyboard and mouse. Of course, there’s no shortage of screen sharing apps like Yuuguu out there (like CrossLoop, ShowMyPC, LogMeIn, and of course VNC), Yuuguu’s simple cross platform support is a bit of a gem.

Yuuguu [via Web Worker Daily]

This is definitely for the people who are geeks or nerds of the IT field who want to help people out. I thought people would like this!!

Customize the Open and Save Dialog with OpenWide

Paul

Windows only: Get a customized Open and Save dialog box (with details, icons, or lists) with OpenWide, an application that does what Windows does not. You can already customize the views of your individual folders using Folder Options in the Explorer, but unfortunately, your saved view does not extend to dialog boxes. The application is extremely small (72KB) but many might find the default System Tray icon feature unnecessary. Fortunately, the tray icon can be disabled. For those who often save files and need detailed information quickly, this application comes in handy (though Windows itself should really support this without the need of an extra app). OpenWide is a Windows-only freeware application for personal use.

OpenWide [via the How-To Geek]
I’ve not tried this one out but I thought it was quite interesting to post.

Copyright Board of Canada Plans to Tax Legal Music Downloads

Paul

Oh, Canada. You already tax MP3 players and blank CDs. Now you want to tax downloads themselves? The Copyright Board of Canada has given the thumbs-up to a tax of at least 2.1 cents for individual tracks and 1.5 cents per track for whole album purchases from online stores. Even subscription services will have taxes tacked on—5.7 to 6.8 percent of the monthly fee. Better still, the tax would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 1996.

The rationale proffered by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada is that it’ll help replenish artists’ wallets raided by piracy and that “the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD,” according to Electronista. (Our eyes started bleeding halfway through the PDF.) Making legal downloads more expensive probably isn’t going to boost sales—pissing people off with more taxes might even drive them right to The Pirate Bay, where artists will get zero compensation.

What would you guys do if your iTunes purchases started being taxed tomorrow? [Electronista]

This just makes people want to get the music free because there is to much tax as it is. Then above all to back taxes to 1996 wow, I hope you didn’t buy anything to major.

Xbox 360 to get built-in HD DVD drive in late 2008?

Paul

This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard this rumor, but SmartHouse is reporting that Microsoft and Toshiba are working on an updated Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive. If that were all, we wouldn’t bat an eye — it’s gotta happen sometime — but there are some other, crazier aspects to this version of the rumor that set off some red flags: SmartHouse also claims that the new box will be Toshiba-branded and have dual HDTV tuners, electronic program guide capabilities, built-in wireless networking, and sport an “MP3 player” dock, which we’d imagine would be for a Zune. That’s a hell of a box, right there, and while we’ve seen similar devices like Sony’s PSX, they didn’t exactly take the world by storm. Our money is still on a simple bump of the existing 360 to HD DVD, but get ready to hear a lot of about this rumor in the weeks to come.

[Via Joystiq]

Hmm, I was wondering about that. After all PS3 has Blue-ray!! It was going to happen sooner or later.