International

Mac e internet inalámbrico con Prodigy Móvil en Mexico

redaccion — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 07:45:40 -0500

Según varios informes, los usuarios de Mac de Mexico que utilizan la conexión inalámbrica de Prodigy Móvil, se han encontrado con el problema de que constantemente se le desconectaba la conexión.
Esto se ha solucionado con la actualización de Apple: AirPort Extreme Driver Update 2005-001.
Según la nota de la actualización: "esta actualización mejora la compatibilidad con algunos puntos de acceso de terceros."

Según usuarios que han probado dicha actualización aseguran que han podido mantener sus conexiones estables, incluso con routers inalámbricos viejos como la mayoría de los Sanborns.

Cortesía de MigMac

Fuente: Alt1040.com

Aspyr ya envia LEGO Star Wars

redaccion — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:27:37 -0400

Aspyr Media ha comenzado a distribuir el vídeo juego LEGO Star Wars.
Este juego permite a los usuarios recrear escenas memorables de la trilogía Star Wars pero como personajes LEGO. Por primera vez en la historia una de las trilogías cinematográficas más importantes se une a uno de los juguetes favoritos del mundo.

LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game contiene personajes construidos a partir de bloques virtuales de LEGO, y permite a los jugadores recrear toda la historia del Episodio I, II y III. Pueden escoger entre más de 30 personajes distintos, jugar 18 niveles, y experimentar toda la trama de la saga Star Wars.

LEGO Star Wars cuesta 30 dólares.

Fuente: macnn

Robert Peake: mac user and programmer from U.S.A.

Koon — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:55:47 -0400

Consultant specializing in web-based applications like content management, e-commerce, and online training systems. Robert Peake also taught "UNIX For Programmers" at the University of California, Berkeley. These days he is a freelance web designer, programmer, and web technology consultant.

Hello Robert, how are you? Let´s talk about you a little first, please: Where are you from? Where do you live?
I was born and raised in the small desert farming town of El Centro, California, on the border of Mexico. My friends and I used to joke that it was "el centro" (the center) of nowhere, since there was very little to do there besides play with computers and get in trouble. From there I went to Berkeley.

At first I thought I would work with the Center For New Music And Audio Technology (CNMAT) at Berkeley, but my music skills were not good enough at the time. I started working for the self-paced computer science center, a unique program designed to teach new programming languages to student programmers. I learned and taught a variety of languages. "Learning how to learn" came very naturally to me, and I enjoyed the challenge of finding new ways to teach computer science concepts to students. I ended up earning my degree in poetry, not programming, since I found out that I could further my education in computer science through books and practical experience - which I am still doing all the time. The opportunity at that time to talk about great literature with great professors, however, was priceless.

After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles, and worked my way up to a position managing an Information Technology department before deciding to start my own company. I just got back from a honeymoon spent traveling the California coast, and it was inspiring to revisit San Francisco and Berkeley, where many of my first ideas about computers and creativity first started to take root. Some of these ideas are still available on my web site.

When did you begin to use mac computers? Which macs have you used? Which apple products do you actually use?
Growing up, my father was the principal (director) of a local school, so I had access to the computers at his school. The first Macintosh I used was the 512K Enhanced, with 512K of RAM and a 3.5" floppy drive (no hard drive). From there I got my hands on just about every Mac that followed - from the SE to the Performa, on up to my first Mac laptop, a Powerbook 5300 - which I took with me to Berkeley.

Robert de niño con un apple IIe

There was a brief period when I was managing IT that I was administrating an almost entirely Windows-based organization. I couldn't stand it. Coming from a UNIX background into an organization running an IIS web server that had to be rebooted four times a week was pathetic. We soon replaced it with a Linux solution that has been running reliably for years.

Part of my decision to start my own company was the opportunity to run the company on the systems I know and love - which means Macintosh. I do most of my best work these days on a 15" Powerbook G4. I keep it on a stand at eye level with an external keyboard and wireless mouse, so I can keep good posture while typing away at 80-100 words per minute.

I use a wide variety of Apple and non-Apple products. For design work, I mostly use Macromedia's suite of tools (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash). For coding, I use BBEdit and Dreamweaver. One of my favorite Apple products is actually Safari. To me, it is even better than Mozilla's Firefox (the open source alternative) because it "feels" like it belongs on a Mac desktop.

But to be honest, my favorite Mac tools don't belong to Apple. They belong to the open source community. I use vi to edit documents when I need to make lots of substitutions, as well as grep, sed, awk, and perl to match and replace complex patterns. The rich set of UNIX tools available for OS X make my job easier and give me a competitive advantage when I am writing code by the hour.

I think a lot of Mac users still don't realize how easy it is to get UNIX-based software on their Mac. Go to:http://fink.sourceforge.net/ and get a copy of Fink, a product that uses the Debian apt-get tool to automatically install ported versions of hundreds of UNIX software products on your Mac. You can select only the tools you need, and take advantage of a lot of hard work by a lot of smart people.

Another misconception is that UNIX tools are command-line only, but OS X comes with a built in X11 environment so you can run X-Windows based tools as well. Some of my favorites include xnmap and etheral for network management, amaya for w3c compatible web design, and openoffice for word processing.

You worked as an assistant systems administrator and on value-added-reseller applications for HP and Apple products, performed troubleshooting and software instalattion on Unix-based system..etc. Tell us about your experiences, please.
I worked for a small Internet service provider in Berkeley when DSL was first becoming available in the USA. The company wanted to provide DSL service to the local community but couldn't because US laws would not allow the company to own the telephone cables to transmit DSL unless they were a licensed telecommunications company.

They fought against this ridiculous law, gathering considerable media attention, but eventually gave in and became a telecommunications company themselves. This was my first introduction to the politics of computing. A lot of people find the actions of big software companies like Microsoft and even smaller companies like SCO alarming, but with the continuing popularity of the Internet I think telecommunications companies need to be watched more closely than ever. Ultimately, it's the companies that control the physical media - copper cable and fiber optics - that have the most power. And we all know power can corrupt.

Talking about mac news, what do you think about new products showed at last keynote by Jobs and about 20th anniversary celebration?
I think what Apple's relationship with the PowerPC chip is finally paying off with the G5. I don't think iTunes is ultimately anything more than a way to make people wake up and notice that Apple is still bold, brave and innovating in ways other companies only dream about. But with a high-powered 64-bit chip and a BSD-style operating system underneath OS X, I think Apple could do more than just startle the Windows/Intel world with the G5, I think they could actually start pulling away some market share, starting (of course) with educational and creative markets.

You are a freelance consultant specializing in web-based applications like content management,e-commerce, and online training systems too actually. Everything on mac, isn´t it? can you explain on your experiences on this area? can you show us any example?
I think the best place you can begin to get a taste of the kind of work I do is from my portfolio,
I have always considered a computer nothing more than a very powerful tool. The question for me was always, "what can I make with it?" The second question was always, "who can use what I have made?" Designing for the Internet makes sense for me, because I am creating systems for the widest possible audience.
My first ever programming project was "automated Haiku." While only humans can create real meaning from what they read, computers can help structure information to allow humans to give different interpretations of what they see. The interpretation is the art, not what the machine produces. After generating over a thousand semi-random "haiku" using this program, I did end up with one or two poems that seemed to make sense. What was most strange was having an emotional reaction to words selected by a machine. The source code for the project is still available in a somewhat obscure language called Lisp.

After that I turned my attention to interactivity and wrote a small suite of scripts to facilitate online learning:Dialogs.
Interestingly enough, I still find myself very much involved with projects that promote education, collaboration, and the arts. One recent project is an online training system:

http://epitomedvd.net

that is designed to have a completely customizable look and feel. If you go to the site and take a test without a pin number you will get one look-and-feel, but if you enter the code '1234' you will get a totally different layout, color scheme, fonts - everything. Using templates, the possibilities are endless. It was a fun and interesting challenge.

As a result, I got to thinking about how to make this process (sometimes called "skinning") more available to developers, and founded the Simple Tags project: I believe that by actively supporting open source projects, everybody wins. Obviously, Apple understood this when they embraced BSD as the basis of OS X. In an open source model, it is technology itself that advances - not just one company. As a result, opportunities and new markets are created, jobs are created, whole industries are created. That is why I never fear sharing my good (and bad) ideas - because often if an idea gets popular, companies want to know the origin, and then they come back to me and my company to take that idea to an even greater level with proper funding. And, even if they don't, I trust in my own creative process - there are always new ideas just around the corner.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference... will you go? (anything you want to tell us about WWDC)
I must admit that I have not and probably will not make the pilgrimage to Cupertino. Most of my Apple-related news I get through a custom-designed RSS feed I built, which I track through NetNewsWire, my preferred RSS reader. While no web-based service can replace all the buzz and eye-candy of a live conference, I find that it is just so much easier to have my news brought to me in the comfort of my own home.

You also teach about programming, can you explain us a little your pedagogic activities, tutorials published and on-line classes?
I discovered early that one of the best ways to keep learning is to teach. I have gotten as much satisfaction showing someone in an online forum how to optimize their code as I have from people who appreciate open source software I have released for them to use.

I was recently given a regular column to write for International PPHP Magazine, where I will be discussing a variety of topics related to PHP - the fastest growing web-based programming language.

I have always enjoyed creating solutions for educators. This is probably because both of my parents were teachers. In fact, the way I got the job that lead to a management position was by volunteering to create a web-based interface to IRC (a chat network on the Internet) so they could conduct online classes. From there I went on to help them create a world-class live streaming infrastructure, also for educational purposes. I think I have always sought out projects where both the challenge and the reward are high. In education, the reward of seeing a student really understand, or knowing that hundreds of students all over the world appreciate being able to tune in to a webcast from their home or office - well, that makes it all worthwhile.

Robert Peake used to teach programming languages at Berkeley before he got his degree in poetry. Another activities or hobbies you develope on mac too, please? (tell us about the project "poetry o the windows" too, please)
One of my favorite hobbies I used to do on a Mac was to write MIDI music. That was what got me thinking seriously about CNMAT and, actually, about computers as well. To be able to actually start expressing music without all the formal training made me realize the computer was an extremely powerful tool for artists. Now, with garageband, it looks like Apple is making what I discovered several years ago with MIDI a reality for many, many people.

I'm wearing a shirt right now that says, "code poet." It's a phrase that means "expert programmer" but in my case, it has another layer of meaning because I also write and study poetry as one of my great loves. To me, there is a very similar kind of elegance and power that happens when a few lines of code become a powerful algorithm as when a few lines of poetry bring the reader a compelling experience of humanity - whether that is beauty, sadness, or hope.

One of my favorite experiences was winning a first place in the, "Poetry In The Windows" competition. This was a wonderful event sponsored by the "Arroyo Arts Collective" and funded by the NEA (National Endowment For The Arts) where a group of winning poets got their poems printed - both in English and one other language - and displayed in the shop windows of a somewhat poor but artistic neighborhood here in Los Angeles. The result was an opportunity for the poets to have their work displayed, and an opportunity for the community to read some great poetry every day on their way to the local shops. Since the poem I wrote was an homage to Neruda, and because I grew up near Mexico and therefore speak some Spanish, I had a friend of mine help me translate my poem into Spanish. The process was fascinating, because in some ways I still like the Spanish version of my poem slightly better.

Click par ampliar

All of this has nothing to do with Apple, except if you consider what they did with the Macintosh in 1984 and then again with OS X in this century a kind of poetry. I do. To me great innovation in art, in science, and in technology always shares some fundamental elements, the most important of which is that they are celebrations of the human spirit and of creativity.

Here, in Spain, we congratulate the "Book´s World-wide day and the copyright of author" on April, 23th, the date when Shakespeare´s, Cervantes and Garcilaso de la Vega perhaps died . Actually with the computers appeared the e-books on line. What do you think about this way for publishing literature?
I think copyright laws are as important now as ever. The Internet has made it possible to duplicate and distribute any piece of writing very quickly. With it, however, the perceived quality of the writing has changed.
I still seek to publish most of my poetry on paper. While I do offer some of my work online, I distribute it as a PDF because it preserves the "experience" of a book better than HTML. It changes the way you relate to a work to know you can just copy and paste it into an email to a friend.
I am also still a fan of paper because I am a fan of the experience it gives you. It's easy to curl up in bed with a cup of tea and a good book. But a laptop? Or even a tablet PC? It's a different experience. So I think publication in physical form will always have a place.
Copyright will always have a place as well, because intellectual property represents real work. I believe artists and engineers should be compensated fairly for their work, unless they consciously choose to give it away for free.
I think we still have to be very vigilant about censorship as well. The same barbaric mentality that was with humanity when we were tying traveling printers to their presses and setting them on fire is still with us. The same mentality that wants to restrict others' expression because they are intimidated by it is still here. Often, that restriction comes veiled in the form of copyright. We are seeing that now with SCO's attack on Linux. It's a very complicated issue, but that's what it ultimately comes down to: abusing copyright laws designed to protect people to instead try to stop innovation.

There is a lot more I could say on this subject. If I spent time, I could probably write a small book about it. But I'm getting ready for a poetry reading this evening, so I'll need to leave it at that for now.

Any suggestion for the developers that you want to add...
I think it takes a certain amount of positive hubris (pride) to choose a Mac and stay with it. It is a conscious decision to trust your instincts, to trust your own experience instead of looking to others for validation. Most great innovation seems to come with a flash of inspiration, then a long journey of believing in yourself and your vision to bring it to life. So, I wish you and your readers the continued wisdom and courage to trust your instincts whether you are designing software, using software, or writing a poem.

Thank you for your time for faq-mac.com. Best wishes.
Thanks for interviewing me. All the best to you and your staff.

More about Robert Peake: http://www.robertpeake.com/

Robert's Poetry: http://www.peakepoems.com/

Robert's Web Design Company: http://www.peakepro.com/

Women and Mac: Medicine: Annick Bigeault, lives in France. She is a macuser and she´s webmaster of two really funny sites

redaccion — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 05:23:59 -0500

Enjoy yourself reading Annick and watching “Bastian, le nouvel iBébé” and “Khina Private Editions”

Hello Annick, how are you? Where do you live? How old are you? Which is your professional activitie?
Hello . I’m fine, thank you. I hope you are, too, because I’m a very talkative woman ¡ I’m 29, I live in the south suburbs of Paris and I’m a nurse.

Let´s talk first about you mac affairs, please. When did you begin to use mac?
In 1997. I was at the nursing school and we had to write a study, which was supposed to be typed and good-looking. I’ve always been crazy about keyboards (writing machine and piano since the age of 5), so I took the opportunity to decide I needed a computer. I went to a store with my parents and a good mac commercial guy was there, fortunately. Furthermore, my mother found the “apple” kind of cute. Thank you, mum!

Which Macs have you used? Which ones do you have now?

This first one was a Performa 5400/160. I was so impressed by the many more things it did than what I had bought it for… I discovered the internet (at that time that meant hours waiting), internet friends taught me how to improve my machine and thanks to them I went to the Apple Expo, where I found my Romeo… another mac user.

Together we then bought a green iMac

(because two macmongers can’t live on a single Mac), then an iBook first generation for me, a Titanium for him, and the last was a present to me, the Alubook 17”.

Now we’re both too acustomed to portable machines to come back to desktop ones.
Surfing the internet wireless in bed is a must!

Tell us about your job. Have you used the Mac computer for working anytime or only like a hobby?
I’m working as a nurse in a very new hospital (it opened in 2000) where we do everything on computers. Doctors write their prescriptions down on the network, we read them on portables while distributing pills for example. It’s kind of fun… when it works.

Bugs and slowdowns are a plague. Unfortunately we work on Pcs and the physical network has been underestimated from the start. All good reasons for daily problems. I was one of the few “computer users” among the medical staff and I could have become a “computer referent” from the start but I wasn’t interested. I love using computers, but only when they work!

What is “Khina Private Editions” about? When did you begin this website?
It’s about an old dream of mine, becoming a free lance illustrator. I began the website when it turned out I had enough drawings to show a few of them. The worst part of the job was the “other languages” part. So many links to correct and it's still buggy I'm afraid.
Since the iBébé arrived, I kind of left it as it was... and my career dreams have been slightly postponed.

Click Para ampliar

Men in trouble… you have helped a man or two surely … but lets talk about men with computer troubles… do you remember a little history to tell us? (like a little joke )
My boyfriend’s brother bought an iBook and wanted to save his data to transfer it from his dying iMac. Though my home geek told him over the phone to wait for explanations because it was difficult to extract the HD and put it in the firewire case he had, his brother decided to give it a try on his own. So he took the HD out and found it easier than expected. He tought the operation could not be finished already, so he opened the HD box ¡!! Seeing the HD inside, juste like the “norton disk” icon, didn’t seem awkward to him… he then honestly and loudly wondered why the HD had become unreadable.

It wasn’t funny for him though, but it’s so typical of the newbie creativity we witness everyday…

The “Khina Private Editions” includes the geek corner section for Macmaniaqueries… a very funny space. Tell us, please, are you member of any Macintosh User Group?

Not anymore, by lack of time. Raising a child impones major cuts in the free time dealing. But I was a MacSoup reader… well, in fact I still am, but now I’m more on “fr.misc.enfants.bebes” than on “fr.comp.sys.mac”. I’m less of a typical example of the “macuserness” than I used to be, though I still spend, well… too much time on my Mac everyday. Now I’m more a lurker, and I lost interest in the “Mac kitchen side”. My boyfriend is in charge of that side, and only gives me the news when they have direct practical consequences (like updates, new software…). But we keep a lot of very good friends we met only thanks to the Mac. That’s a very nice community.

What software do you use?
I launch Safari, Mail, Ircle everyday (joining a small macuser channel where many friends keep connected all day long, including my boyfriend at work). For drawing I’m staying with Painter, for “web designing” I”m now using Golive. Appleworks for most desk jobs. iCal to store appointments and working days (which are kind of chaotic in my job). But also iPhoto (efficient but a little slow).

“Le nouvel iBébé” : iTete, iCaca, iPipi, iDodo… do you like iLife? :) how was born this funny “iStorie”?
I prepared this website in the last month before the actual iBébé’s birth. It seemed to be a funny way to introduce a newborn, and the only good one for geeks like us. It was a lot of fun doing it, because it gave that “outside look” feeling you can’t actually have, dealing with your first child. And it reflected all the internet research I had done during pregnancy, and the few good links I considered useful.

In fact, I’m preparing an update of this website for the iBébé’s 2nd birthday.

Links:
Annick Bigeault / Khina
iBebe
http://www.teaser.fr/~abigeault/khinaprivateditions.html
New iBebé website http://www.teaser.fr/~abigeault/imac/

Femmes et Mac: Médecine: Annick Bigeault vit en France. Elle est macuser et webmaster de deux sites très amusants

redaccion — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 05:22:10 -0500

Visitez “Khina Private Editions” et “Bastian, le nouvel iBébé”.

Bonjour Annick, comment allez-vous? Où habitez-vous? Quel âge avez-vous? Quel métier exercez-vous?
Bonjour. Je vais bien merci, et j’espère que vous aussi, parce que je risque d’être bavarde ¡ J’ai 29 ans, je vis en proche banlieue sud de Paris, et je suis infirmière.

Parlons d’abord de vos histoires de Mac, si vous le voulez bien. Quand avec-vous commencé à utiliser un mac?
En 1997. J’étais à l’école d’infirmière et nous devions rédiger un mémoire, qui devait être dactylographié et joliment mis en page. J’ai toujours été fana de claviers (machine à écrire et piano depuis mes 5 ans), alors j’ai bondi sur le prétexte pour justifier de m’équiper. J’ai été dans un magasin avec mes parents et heureusement, il s’y trouvait un bon commercial Apple. En plus, ma mère trouvait que la “pomme” était mignonne. Merci maman!

Quels macs avez-vous utilisés? Et lequel actuellement?
Le tout premier était donc un Performa 5400/160. J’étais étourdie par toutes les choses dont il était capable et pour lesquelles je ne l’avais même pas acheté… J’ai découvert internet (à cette époque, cela impliquait des heures de patience), des internautes m’ont appris à optimiser ma machine et grâce à certains d’entre eux, j’ai été à l’Apple Expo, où j’ai trouvé l’homme de ma vie… un autre macuser.

Ensemble nous avons acheté un iMac vert

(car deux macmaniaques sur une seule machine, c’est invivable), puis un iBook première génération pour moi, un Titanium pour lui, et le dernier venu il me l’a offert, un alubook 17”.
Maintenant nous sommes tous deux trop habitués aux portables pour revenir à une machine de bureau. Surfer au lit sans fil c’est le paradis!

Parlez-nous de votre travail. Le mac vous a-t-il été utile ou est-ce seulement un loisir?
Je travaille comme infirmière dans un hôpital tout neuf (ouvert en 2000), où tout est informatisé. Les médecins prescrivent tout sur informatique en réseau, et nous distribuons les médicaments, par exemple, en vérifiant les prescriptions sur des portables. C’est plutôt chouette, enfin, quand ça marche.

Les plantages et les lenteurs sont un calvaire. Malheureusement nous travaillons sur des PC, et le réseau physique a été sous-estimé au départ. Tout ce qu’il faut pour qu’on ait chaque jour des raisons de pester. J’étais une des rares utilisatrices d’informatique lors de l’ouverture et j’aurais pu devenir une référente mais j’ai décliné l’offre. J’adore l’informatique, mais seulement quand ça marche!

De quoi parle “Khina Private Editions”? Quand avez-vous commencé ce site?
C’est parti d’un vieux rêve, devenir illustratrice free-lance. J’ai débuté le site lorsque j’ai eu accumulé assez de dessins pour pouvoir en montrer quelques-uns. La partie la plus pénible du site a été les “other languages”. Il y avait tant de liens à corriger ¡ et je crains qu’il ne reste des bugs.

Depuis l’arrivée de l’iBébé, je l’ai laissé en l’état… et mes plans de carrière ont été légèrement repoussés.

Click Para ampliar

Hommes en difficultés… parlons des hommes avec des problèmes d’ordinateur… vous avez une anecdote?
Le frère de mon petit ami avait acheté un iBook et voulait y transférer les données de son iMac agonisant. Mon geek domestique lui avait dit au téléphone d’attendre ses explications parce qu’il était difficile d’extraire le disque dur avant de le mettre dans son boîtier firewire externe, mais son frère décida de tenter l’aventure. Il réussit à sortir le disque dur sans peine, à tel point qu’il se dit que ça ne pouvait pas être déjà fini, et il poursuivit en ouvrant le disque dur ¡ après tout, le disque dur ouvert ressemble à l’icône de Norton, ce n’était pas si choquant… après, il fut honnêtement scandalisé de voir que son disque était illisible!

Ce n’était pas très drôle pour lui en fait, mais c’est tellement typique de cette redoutable créativité des débutants…

The “Khina Private Editions” includes the geek corner section for Macmaniaqueries… a very funny space. Tell us, please, are you member of any Macintosh User Group?

Plus maintenant, par manque de temps. Elever un enfant impose des coupes sombres dans l’emploi du temps. Mais j’étais une grande lectrice de news sur MacSoup… je le suis encore en fait, mais je lurke plus sur “fr.misc.enfants.bebes” que sur “fr.comp.sys.mac”. Je ne suis plus l’exemple typique de la macmaniaquerie d’antan, bien que je passe encore, ma foi… trop de temps chaque jour sur mon Mac.

Maintenant je me contente de survoler, et j’ai perdu le goût des échos de cuisine d’Apple. Mon petit ami s’en charge pour moi, et il ne me tient plus au courant que des choses pratiques, comme les mises à jour à faire, les nouveaux logiciels… Mais nous avons gardé plein de très bons amis que le Mac nous a fait rencontrer. C’est une communauté très sympathique.

Quels logiciels utilisez-vous?
Je lance quotidiennement Safari, Mail et Ircle (pour rejoindre un petit channel de macusers qui se trouvent pour certains connectés en permanence, même au boulot, et où je retrouve même mon petit ami). Pour dessiner, je reste une inconditionnelle de Painter, pour les sites web j’utilise depuis peu Golive. Appleworks pour la plupart des travaux de bureau. ICal pour stocker les rendez-vous et plannings de jours travaillés (qui sont très variables dans ma branche). Mais aussi iPhoto (efficace bien qu’un peu lent).

“Le nouvel iBébé” : iTete, iCaca, iPipi, iDodo… Vous aimez iLife? :-) Comment est né ce drôle "iStorie"?
J'ai préparé ce site Web le mois dernier avant la naissance du bébé Il a semblé être un drôle de façon pour présenter un nouveau-né et l´unique façon de le faire pour des geeks comme nous. C'était amusant, parce qu'il a donné l´image des sentiments qu´on a avec le premier enfant. Il a reflété toute la recherche d'Internet que j'avais faite pendant la grossesse, et quelques bons liaisons j'ai considérés utile.

Maintenant je prépare une mise à jour de ce site Web pour le 2ème anniversaire du bébé.

Links:
Annick Bigeault / Khina
iBebe
http://www.teaser.fr/~abigeault/khinaprivateditions.html
Neuve iBebé website: http://www.teaser.fr/~abigeault/imac/

Marc Moini, a Mac developer talks to us about his software:A-N-I-M-A-L-S "From Letters and Sounds to Reading!", by Koon

redaccion — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 08:01:51 -0500

A-N-I-M-A-L-S is an educational game to help children learn to read.

Marc, when and how did you begin to use mac computers?
When the Mac was announced in 1984 I was using Apple's previous computer, the Apple ][. For me it was a natural step to move on to the Mac, except that I was still a teenager at the time and couldn't afford one. All the money from my summer jobs had gone into the Apple ][, so I had to wait a few years before I finally got my first Mac. The first one I actually got to play with was an Apple Lisa, the Mac's predecessor. I had it at home for almost a month during the summer of 1985, on loan from a local company so that I could write some custom software for them. The Lisa was a great computer, with a relatively large screen and an incredibly comfortable keyboard. That keyboard made a strong impression on me because each of its keys had not one but two pressure thresholds, so you could type very easily with quick light touches, and then when you wanted to autorepeat some key there wasn’t any delay, you’d just press it some more to get past the second spring. When you spend a lot of time typing, these little things become really important!

Which macs have you used? Which macintosh computer do you currently use?

The macs I've used: a Mac II bought in 1987. It got a IIfx logic board upgrade in 1990, I still use it! In 1991 I added a Mac IIci as a testing machine. In 1996 I had to get a Mac with the new PowerPC chip, so I bought a friend’s 6100. In 1997 I bought a 7500, which later had its processor card upgraded to a G3. Finally in 2000 I bought a 400MHz G4, and that’s what I use now. It'd be great to get a 2GHz G5 next, 2000 times faster than that Apple ][ back in 1983!

Let me ask a personal question: do you have children? Perhaps they are Mac users too?
My daughter just turned five, and her brother is three years old. Both of them spend a fair amount of time on the family iMac, playing various games and drawing. We have a Wacom tablet (the excellent Graphire), so drawing on the screen is much easier than with a mouse, and then they can stretch shapes, duplicate them, etc., things that you can't really do on paper. The games they're playing these days are "Cro-Mag Rally" and "Frozen Bubble". Cro-Mag Rally is my son's current favorite, he must have been playing it at least 2 hours every day for the last couple of months. Needless to say, he’s gotten very good at it, and although I can still finish in front of him in a race, I expect that won’t be the case much longer!

You developed A-N-I-M-A-L-S to help children learn to read as easily and as naturally as they learn to speak. It's an educational game. Do you think computers are a good way for learning through playing?
Yes, because children learn a number of important things when they interact with computers. First, just by playing video games, they develop their timing and coordination. These are important skills that will help them later on to learn to ride a bicycle, or drive a car through traffic as safely as possible. The second thing happening when children play computer games is that they learn their way around the machine. We've all noticed how quickly children achieve this and how they even become more knowledgeable about computers than many grown-ups. Certainly this also help them learn how to get what they want from machines in general, not just computers. Finally, because they're usually free to learn at their own speed and pursue their own interests while playing with computers, anything they do learn contributes positively to their self-image. Not only because they've succeeded in learning it, but also because they've done so by themselves. Obviously this motivates them to keep at it, it's a "virtuous circle". Contrast this with the opposite situation where children are pressured to learn something that they have little interest in--usually because there's other stuff they'd need to know first, to be able to understand why they would want to learn that something--and you can see that learning through playing, with or without computers, is a very good way to learn.

When was A-N-I-M-A-L-S born?
When my daughter started wanting to draw her name, I went looking for ways of helping her understand how writing “works” and how it can be used to remember and share thoughts. She was being read stories every day, lots of Dr. Seuss books with rhymes, she had foam letters to play with while taking her bath, etc., but I wanted to make it even easier for her so she could take her first steps towards reading all by herself. I had been reading a number of books on the subject (the list is on my site), and based on these ideas I figured I might be able to build some kind of “reading simulator” that she could use to explore for herself the relationships between the shapes and sounds of letters and words. It worked beautifully, she learned faster than I could write the software! Even though she only got to play with half-working prototypes, I believe the few sessions she had were enough to provide her with some of the insights she needed to put the pieces together. Again, it's not all from the software because she also played a lot of other reading+writing games (such as writing her own grocery list, asking us to spell the words), but it definitely helped. Now it's her brother's turn: even though he's 18 months younger, he still wants to do everything his sister does, so he looks over her shoulder and "reads" too. He can already recognize most letters, and he knows their name and their sounds! I added the "intermediate" level of the game when I saw that he wasn't interested in the beginner level anymore, and he did like it better. It's been a while since he last played with it, I suppose it means that he's ready for the "advanced" level now!

Click to zoom

Actually it´s on 1.3 version, what does the latest version add?
It adds more voice feedback. So now when you're typing the a in giraffe, you hear the sound 'ah' and then you hear 'gira-'. In addition to making the game more lively, this helps children check their progress as they type a word. It also provides them with more clues for understanding how words are built. Currently this feature is only available in English and Spanish because it relies on Apple's text-to-speech engine, but I'm working on adding support for more languages. The French version is mostly done.

A-N-I-M-A-L-S is based on years of research in developmental psychology and education. What was your work method making this software? (hard, soft, utilities, human, etc)
Did you have any collaborations for this product?
Yes, this is a collective work because of all the translating and recording that was required. In order to provide children with enough variety, the game includes over 600 names of animals, plants, toys, etc. Translating these words in each language, recording them, editing, it all has to be done in cooperation with native speakers if the goal is to make a quality product. A lot of time and money went into this project. The most straightforward part was writing the code, because I could do that alone. Coming up with the specs was relatively easy also: outstanding innovators such as Seymour Papert, O.K. Moore or Ragnhild Söderbergh have spent decades refining all the important ideas. My job came down to building a program based on (my interpretation of) their work.

A-N-I-M-A-L-S is available in spanish, french, german… that´s great. Where has it been more distributed?
In absolute numbers the current version is more successful with English speakers. This is what you would expect based on the number of Mac users in each country. However there's also a lot of interest from French speakers, so I suppose if I spent more time marketing the game many more people from all over the planet would hear about it and try it with their kids. Finnish and Italian "language packs" are ready and will be released with the next version. The Dutch version will be complete as soon as I find someone to translate the web site.

Do you have A-N-I-M-A-L-S for Mac OS X too?
It should appear in 2004. I only started running Mac OS X earlier this year, so I've been busy trying to find my way around it. Initially my plan was to make a single Java version for both Mac OS X and other platforms. However after becoming familiar with Cocoa (Apple's application environment based on the Objective-C language and the work at NeXT), I realized that it would let me improve the game beyond what I had imagined at first. This would be done by now, if I didn't have to work on shorter term projects in order to pay the bills.

You are the developer of Smart Scroll, Startup Doubler, Clean-Install Assistant, etc. too. Can you tell us a little about your soft, please? Which do you think is the “best” and which is the most popular?
They’ve all been fairly popular, as each program really does offer actual benefits. But these other titles were specifically designed to improve the Mac OS 7-9 experience, and nowadays people are switching to Mac OS X so that's where I'm focusing my work. I've released two Mac OS X utilities so far, Aqua For Command-Line Tools and Smart Scroll X. It will take a while before they evolve to match users' expectations, but after that I expect these programs to be popular too.

How do you begin to research a new product developing: By external necessities or thinking yourself what should be interesting?
If enough people email me with the same idea, that can become a product. But more often, as a user myself I grow increasingly frustrated with some aspect of some software, until some day I wake up with an idea for improving it. It's really as simple as that. The difficult part is discarding all the half-baked ideas I wake up with :-)

Which do you find more difficult, developing software for children, or software for adults?
I’d say the issues are different. Personally I feel developing software for children carries a higher responsibility, because you’re taking part in shaping a child’s world-view. Even though this part is small, it's still an important issue for me. Like any parent I'd like to make the world a better place for our children, and I believe a good way to work towards this goal is to help children develop open minds. Therefore the first thing I look for in children's software is whether it drills down the same old prejudices, or if it promotes free thinking.

Where can we download A-N-I-M-A-L-S in spanish?
You can download a demo from www.marcmoini.com. The demo doesn't really do justice to the complete program because it only includes some of the data for the first two letters of the alphabet, and as a result doesn't have enough breadth to be playable by children. Unfortunately it would cost me too much in web hosting fees to make the whole set of over 800 photographs and 2000 digitized sounds available for free trial. Still, the demo lets adults get a glimpse of what the program does.

Thank you for your time for faq-mac.com
Best wishes

Links:
http://www.marcmoini.com/

Interview by Koon

Interview with Mr. Ghassan Bendali

redaccion — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:17:02 -0500

Product Department Manager Apple Middle East, while in GITEX, Dubai.
Hello Mr. Bendali, thank you for volunteering to share your views with faq-mac.com, the most famous mac news network in the Spanish language.
My pleasure.

Click to enlarge

So what exactly do you do at Apple?
Well I work for Arab Business Machines, Apple's branch here in the Middle East, as the Product Department Manager.

How would you say Apple is doing in this region right now?
Well, we are doing quite fine, I mean if you took some shots out in the stand you would see that we have quite a lot of people, a nice crowd for this type of event, with lots of people exhibiting our products. We are really strong in some areas, such as the video market, which is one of our growing and strongest markets at the moment.

Is Apple ME doing any type of advertising in order to make people switch to this amazing and more powerful platform?
Well, we adopted a seminar-centric kind of approach. We do a lot of seminars, a lot of activities directly with our clientele and we also do some small advertising in specific magazines but never in a general form such as it’s done in the US, for example we promote DVD Studio Pro in digital video magazines.

By advertising we always try to target people that we focus on in general.

How about education, because as we all know in the United States there is a big market share coming from that specific market and it seems to be extremely important for Apple, is that happening in the Middle East as well?
Yeah actually we are quite strong in the Middle East in the education market, we are getting stronger every day, we are very satisfied with our market share in the higher education fields, we also have very good share among the private sector here in Dubai, as well as school and universities but not that strong in the public and government sector. We are trying to push as much as possible in the public.

Click to enlarge

Is the recent introduction of the PowerMac G5 going to change things in any way?
We are glad now that we have one of the most powerful machines in the world, so we hope this is going to change things, yes definitely.

Have you received a lot of orders from individuals in this region?
We actually have quite a few orders already done for personal purposes, we even got an order for a Dual G5 with a 23 inch Cinema Display from one of the universities in town so we are quite proud of that, but for individuals we just started getting these orders, we've only shipped a few mainly because of all the machines we had reserved for the show so we managed to ship all the ones that were available to our power customers.

Click to enlarge

Are businesses adopting Apple's technology since it is got UNIX already built in to the operating system plus other tons of extras that come with Mac OS X Server?
Yeah, our server market we can say that it grew a lot, it went from almost inexistent to something that we can start talking about. Our sales are growing each quarter, again we sold XServes to the areas we are good at such as publishing houses and education, however what we are now more concerned about is to gain more market share on those markets where they don’t usually buy Apple as a server, yet still they might be interested in the UNIX capabilities of this particular server system.

Alright, thanks a lot from the whole faq-mac.com team, we really appreciate it.
You are most welcome.

Interview by Mike
More videos of GITEX here

Voy a despegar ("je vais décoller"), une vidéo a ne pas rater.

mjab — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 10:44:22 -0400

Faq-Mac à le plaisir, a l'occasion de la CampusMac 2k3 (deuxième grande
réunion des utilisateurs Mac d'Espagne), de vous présenter une des
premières productions multimédia effectuées pendant celle ci: Voy a despegar ("je vais décoller")
Il s'agit de la malheureuse histoire d'un PC, recueilli entre des
utilisateurs Macintosh. Tendresse, drame, suspense, amour,
violence... Une vidéo a ne pas rater!!!

Sous la production de Numan, Phyneas, Kanas, Coco, la capable direction d'Albacete et l'admirable musique cédée gentiment par Aviador Dro, ceci donc pourrait bien être un austère hommage à l'Orange Mécanique de Kubrik et
au Duel de Steven Spielberg.

Le vidéo Voy a despegar ("je vais décoller") il est disponible ici. (20 mb Quicktime Mp4 En Espagnol).

PD: Depuis Faq-Mac nous voulons souligner que ceci il s'agit d'une
simple plaisanterie et que nous ne voulons pas que personne se sente identifié ou victime. Nous faisons appel en conscience à votre sens de l'humeur.

La lettre de la mélodie:

Voy a despegar

Otro día como ayer
y sigo el horario sin mas
ya no encontarás mi número inscrito
en la seguridad social
estoy harto de tus bromas
sobre mi forma de actuar
nunca te creíste nada
y ahora voy a despegar

Y voy a despegar
ah ah
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
oh si
ahora voy a despegar

El himno de la nación
sono por última vez para mí
tus miradas perdidas
ya no serán recuerdo de tí
un cuarenta y cinco en el bolsillo
y una calle que cruzar
los chicos amables del banco
todo el dinero fácil me dan

Y voy a despegar
ah ah
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
oh si
ahora voy a despegar

Me acerco al aeropuerto
de la antigua ciudad
burlo policía, vigilancia
y zona de seguridad
cuando alguien me pregunta
yo le contesto, voy a despegar
los controles brillan ante mi
y ahora si voy a despegar

Y voy a despegar
ah ah
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
oh si
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
ah ah
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
oh si
nena voy a despegar

Y voy a despegar
oh si
ahora voy a despegar
y voy a despegar
si, si, si
ahora voy a despegar

Faq-Mac and SecondhandMac join forces against Mac thieves

Alf — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:59:56 -0400

This new international list of stolen Macs will make it more difficult to resell them.
If your Mac has been stolen, fill out a simple form (with certain identifying information) to indicate you're the legal owner of the machine.

If you're buying a used Mac and something seems strange, check the list first. You may be the one who helps recover someone else's prized machine!

This free service is new to the Spanish and Latin American market and is available through faq-mac and SecondhandMac.

You can visit this service (or use it if you need it) at http://www.faq-mac.com/mt/Stfaq.html

Sopa caliente: Lo que yo te digo no es incorrecto

redaccion — Thu, 03 Jul 2003 07:01:14 -0400

Hemos tenido que esperar mucho para que llegara, pero una vez lo ha hecho, IBM ha entregado la mercancía según lo esperado. El G5 es una especie de estación de trabajo disfrazada de una manera tan sutil que lo hace parecer un PC de sobremesa.
Bueno, puede que no sea tan sutil cuando cuesta 2000 dólares el más bajo de la gama. No obstante, si queremos buscar un equivalente a esta máquina en Dell, podríamos encontrar un modelo más o menos igual por 2200 dólares y aun le faltaría Bluetooth, Firewire 800 o el protocolo 802.11g. Tampoco está tan mal, pero aquellos que tengan la billetera sensible pueden ahorrarse 200 pavos más sustituyendo la superdrive del G5 (por una unidad Combo).

En lo más alto de la gama, nada puede compararse con el G5. Podríamos equipararlo con las estaciones de trabajo de Sun o SGI que cuestan la friolera de veinte mil dólares, así que no hay color. Estamos ante una estación Unix de 64 bits fuera de serie, que deja a cualquier otra máquina, ya tenga uno o dos procesadores, hecha puré.

Quizá hayas oido otras cosas. Puede que hayas oido que Apple se inventó números, amañó las pruebas de rendimiento, que los Pentium siguen siendo más rápidos y que Steve Jobs nos mintió a todos.

Yo estoy aquí para deciros que estamos ante una patética leyenda urbana, repetida por un previsible coro de geeks, formado por imbéciles y mentirosos, en un pánico ciego a que Apple ofrezca productos más rápidos que los de Alienware (nota del traductor: Alienware es una compañía que se dedica a fabricar PC´s a medida para Gamers con lo último en tarjetas gráficas y procesadores x86.) y repetida por todos aquellos con una extensa agenda contra Apple y por aquellos que siguen comprando lentitud con los anticuados procesadores x86.

La idea de un Mac con más caballos que una estación de trabajo Alpha era demasiado insoportable para un triste y pequeño troll, que deliberadamente se dedicó a falsificar el documento de VeriTest, acusó a Apple de tramposa, y se las apañó para que le publicaran esa maloliente propaganda de tres al cuarto en la página principal de Slashdot, la central neurálgica de todos los geeks, donde no le costó mucho encontrar oidos amigables.

Podemos olvidar a "spl", puesto que no es periodista profesional, disculpándolo por ser tan estúpido como para no entender el documento y tan vago como para no preguntar a nadie con un poco de idea, que es como darle una patada a un cachorro por mearse en la alfombra.

Pero ahora parece que Mark Hachman de Extreme Tech se dedica a plagiar el artículo del ridículo troll de "spl". Pretende hacernos creer que su extraordinario descubrimiento es únicamente suyo, independientemente verificado por "spl"... como si el resto del universo no leyera Slashdot y no fuera consciente de lo que ocurría el dia anterior a que el odioso trabajo de la pequeña hacha (nota del traductor: Ironía que viene de su apellido Hachman) viera la luz del día. ¿A quién cree que está engañando?

Desde que mamara de la idiotez de spl, y lo magnificara en la mundialmente leida publicación online en la que escribe, Mark va a tener que soportar lo peor de mi cólera por ser tan estúpido de no entender el documento, y tan vago de no preguntar a nadie con un poco de idea. Un comportamiento despreciable en un columnista profesional. Obviamente forma parte de la escuela de periodismo de Jayson Blair (nota del traductor: Ex-periodista del New York Times acusado de plagiar e inventar sus artículos), sólo que sin la capacidad de escribir.

En primer lugar, desactivar el hyperthreading aumenta el rendimiento del Pentium en los test de SPEC, especialmente en SPECrate, de acuerdo a datos de Dell. Mark también exhibe que Apple desactivó software especialmente preparado para el G5, maximizando el número de flujos disponibles para el procesador utilizados por programas de un solo hilo. Me pregunto si se da cuenta de que el hyperthreading es un método de software especialmente diseñado para los Pentium 4, y que desactivándolo maximiza el número de flujos disponibles para tareas de un sólo hilo. Evidentemente no. Por lo tanto, en esencia, está quejándose de que Apple desactivara el hyperthreading del Pentium 4 para amañar el resultado [favoreciendo al Pentium 4] y despues desactivó el hyperthreading del G5 para conseguir ampliar la desigualdad. Dios mío, es brillante.

También existe cierta confusión acerca de una librería extra que Apple compiló en contra. Bien, de acuerdo con Apple, lstmalloc (nota del traductor: Multi-Cast Adress Allocation, un algoritmo de almacenamiento específico) será implementado en la versión de MacOS X que se distribuirá junto con el G5, y formará parte de las renovadas herramientas de desarrollo de la próxima actualización del sistema de Apple, Panther. No se trata de ningún "spoiler" extra usado para hacer trampas en los tests, y que es probablemente un requerimiento para que el G5 funcione en la horrible chapuza de la versión para desarrolladores de MacOS X (se rumorea que se conoce como "Smeagol" en la casa -nota del traductor: Smeagol, personaje del Señor de los Anillos, también conocido como Gollum, era un hobbit al que la maldad del anillo modifico de aspecto y le genero doble personalidad-). Podrías pensar que un columnista profesional sería capaz de coger el teléfono y preguntar a Apple para confirmar o clarificar estos aspectos pero...

El concurso se realizó entre sistemas del mundo real, utilizando programas y sistemas operativos del mundo real... básicamente, sólo el sistema de ventanas y el de impresión en ambos sistemas fue desactivado. Así pues, la elección del compilador GCC fue totalmente justa. Sí, podrían haber obtenido mejores resultados con el compilador de Intel, el cual esta diseñado específicamente para los test de rendimiento, pero entonces Apple tendría que haber usado el compilador de IBM, que hace lo mismo.

De acuerdo con este artículo (pdf), IBM es capaz de producir resultados en SPEC mejores que aquellos publicados por Intel para Itanium y el P4, en un único sistema CPU PPC970 corriendo a velocidades de reloj inferiores a los del nuevo G5. Probablemente usaron mucha de la misma metodología que Dell utilizó para sus resultados oficiales: eliminar elementos y personalizar trucando los sistemas operativos y compiladores.

El chip 970 con mayor velocidad de reloj en el G5 podría simplemente haber destruido a los chips de Intel si VeriTest hubiera hecho correr los dos compiladores uno contra otro. (Asumo que el G5, al menos al principio, esta "overclockeado" como los sistemas G4- lo cual podría explicar las discrepancias en la disipación del calor entre las especificaciones del 970 de IBM y el G5 de Apple.)

Pero aun hay más, parece estar descontento con que Apple pueda aportar herramientas de rendimiento extra que te ayudan a elegir el compilador óptimo... No existe nada parecido en el lado PC, especialmente en el mundo Linux/Unix. No solo es justo, ya que no se realizaron cambios en el código de los test de rendimiento, y se realizaron cambios a mano en el lado del PC, sino que es una clara indicación de por qué el desarrollo en Mac es una experiencia superior para aquellos que requieren rapidez.

Y finalmente, SSE2, la ridícula y triste respuesta a la unidad VMX/Altivec/Velocity Engine SIMD en el PowerPC, fue activada para el test. En GCC 3.3, el SSE cubre ambos SSE y SSE2, y activándolo aumenta drásticamente los resultados del procesamiento de enteros del sistema.

Quién estará haciendo trampa...

Apple no compiló con Altivec activado... ello hubiera requerido que el altivec y el force_cpusubtype_all hubieran sido activados... supongo que porque eso no habría ayudado en sus resultados puesto que SPEC no está codificado con las extensiones de AltiVec. Esto significa que o bien SSE2 fue diseñado para artificialmente inflar los resultados de SPECint, o bien SPECint fue diseñado para dejar que SS2 inflara artificialmente los resultados de Intel. De cualquier forma, esto desprende un ligero olorcillo a pescado podrido. Pero les daremos el beneficio de la duda, y la de las de los enteros puros del sistema (nota del traductor: raw integers), pues (al contrario que las protestas de "spl") casi nadie depende de los procesos enteros del sistema hoy en día. Todo está en la matemática de la coma flotante y el rendimiento de vectores SIMD... dos áreas donde el G5 es intocable.

Por lo tanto no sólo los test de rendimiento SPEC fueron justos, sino que parece que han dado un poco más de ventaja al lado de los Pentium. Aunque no les haya ayudado.

Hasta hoy, los test SPEC son universalmente conocidos como inútiles (siendo bondadosos) y erróneos por cualquiera que esté seriamente interesado en comparar diferentes plataformas. No muestran un rendimiento real, ni tampoco son un buen criterio para valorar el rendimiento total del sistema. Intel siempre intenta obtener resultados cerca del máximo, pero nunca lo pensarías comparando un Dell Dimension con un SGI Fuel haciendo cualquier trabajo real con aplicaciones reales.

En las aplicaciones del mundo real donde el VMX pueda utilizarse, el rendimiento del G5 es para dejar sin aliento a cualquiera. El énfasis que han puesto en esta súper-máquina es líder en la industria; 1ghz de bus frontal, ranuras PCI-X para un rendimiento increible de los periféricos, Serial ATA, que provee de velocidad SCSI a un precio de ATA, Firewire 800, USB 2.0, 802.11g, Gigabit ethernet -todo incorporado, en vez de añadido. Esta caja esta diseñada para mover bits más rápido que cualquier cosa que el mercado haya visto antes. Un conjunto completo, y una buena oportunidad para reírnos de aquellos que se lo merecen. Una pena lo de las opciones en tarjetas de vídeo, pero ya me he quejado acerca de eso antes.

Traducido por iMag para www.faq-mac.com
Original en MacEdition