Finally... an alternative browser to do the job !

Dear Diary,

Yesterday while I was stumbling through some mac-related websites, I came across an application called "Stainless".

So, what's so special about it?

As far as I know is the only web browser that supports session-aware bookmarks and parallel sessions. Practically, this means that you can actually have multiple tabs for the same service using different credentials (for example, you can have 2-3, or as many gmail boxes you wish, open at the same time, each one for a different e-mail account). As for bookmarks, you can have for example a bookmark pointing to your facebook and another one pointing to your girlfriend's facebook (of course in logged-in mode), if you use the same machine.

For me, it's a lifesaver because it means that I don't have to log out anymore from my personal gmail account just to check my work's info_something@gmail.com one.

Furthermore, it's free and very very light and responsive.

Definitely worth having it on your mac.

You can download it here

QuickTips - iCal Tip #1

Dear Diary,

A couple of days ago while reading my RSS feeds I found something interesting...

If you double-click an event in the 10.5 version of iCal, you get a little pop-up window with some details and Edit and Done buttons, as you probably already know. This window might look worthless for editing, but even if you don't press the Edit button, if you drag and drop some text onto this pop-up window, the text will be added to the notes field of the displayed event. 

I did this by accident and was surprised it happened, so I tried a few more things. Drag and drop a file, and it is added as an attachment. Drag and drop a person from Address Book, and they are added as an attendee. You can also drag multiple people, or an existing group, to have them all added as attendees. Drag a URL, and its added as a clickable URL. So despite appearances, you can actually do some basic editing in the event info pop-up window. 

[robg adds: If the event has an existing URL, it will be replaced with what you drag into the window. You can also add to an existing attendee list when dropping contacts. However, if the event has an existing Note, you won't be able to drag and drop text onto this window -- it will just 'bounce back' when dropped.]

Source: www.macosxhints.com

Unicode Madness

Dear Diary,

I have spent almost an hour this morning, trying to receive data from an Excel file, in order to print labels on another program (the program is called "Mail Factory" and believe me is the best one out there for doing the job), so that I could mail Christmas cards to customers.

What I found out is that when I tried to import the data, all text was corrupted. What I didn't know was that Excel actually does not export UTF-8 text (since my customers are actually Greek I obviously need to get unicode text).

So, I managed to find a solution and maybe I can help others to avoid this problem (I forgot to say that I work on Macintosh).

The solution is pretty simple: Open your Excel file in NeoOffice (free opensource suite. You can download it here --> www.neooffice.org) and export it as .CSV file (comma separated values). Then the application finally lets you choose your preferred encoding, so you set it on Unicode UTF-8 and all your text will appear properly.