NewsFire – Mac RSS with Style – I haven’t used it, but it looks promising.
Technology
Scientists find way to 'turn off' cancer
From The Guardian: Scientists find way to ‘turn off’ cancer – “Scientists in California have found a way to ‘turn off’ a gene that makes cancerous cells lethal. They eliminated aggressive, incurable liver tumours in laboratory mice in four weeks, they report in an advance paper in Nature today.”
Hot-rodding SideTrack for web browsing
43 Folders: Hot-rodding SideTrack for web browsing – SideTrack looks like a very interesting bit of software for anyone with a Powerbook or iBook.
Podcasts: New Twist on Net Audio
Wired News: Podcasts: New Twist on Net Audio –
“‘It’s aggregating audio content, but it’s taking one extra step, in that it’s putting it on your device,’ said Adam Curry, who built the first podcasting aggregator, known as iPodder. ‘Not only do these devices play it, but you don’t have to put it there yourself. It just happens automatically.'”
Google Print
Google has just announced, via the Google Blog, an interesting new service: Google Print.
> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Since a lot of the world’s information isn’t yet online, we’re helping to get it there. Google Print puts the content of books where you can find it most easily; right in Google search results.
This is an amazing concept that should prove to be immensely helpful to every person who browses the Web.
OS X Annoyances & Solutions
As I make the switch (slowly) to OS X, I keep discovering new and exciting things about the operating system. Occasionally though, I find some annoying aspects that impede my progress, and cause me to question my desire to shift platforms. In addition to the fact that HP hasn’t bothered to write OS 10.3 drivers for our scanner (HP 5370c), which we specifically bought because it was friendly to both platforms, I have run into a problem with using a USB trackball on our fileserver, which runs 10.2.8.
Luckily, in both cases there appear to be independent developers solving the problem.
Scanner Drivers
The TWAIN SANE Interface for Mac OS X makes use of the existing SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project, which was originally developed for LINUX. I haven’t tested it yet, but I have hope.
USB Trackball/Mouse Drivers
According to a thread at macosxhints the trackball problem can be solved with the purchase of a shareware driver called USB Overdrive. The project site provides a great summary of the software’s purpose:
The USB Overdrive X is a driver for Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later (including Panther) that handles any USB mouse, trackball, joystick and gamepad from any manufacturer and lets you configure them either globally or on a per-application basis.
I look forward to trying it out with a Microsoft Trackball Explorer.
I will post the results of both tests soon.