New TiVo "Feature"

Last night, when I turned on the TV attached to my DIRECTV TiVo, the picture looked very wrong. I changed the channel and saw the same thing there. The TiVo had started grabbing the widescreen feed and was trying to show it on the old 4:3 TV screen. I checked the settings and found that the video was set for 16:9. I remembered I had set it when we bought the widescreen TV several months ago, but, then, it appeared to have no effect on the output. Apparently, DIRECTV sent out an update yesterday that activated the feature. I did find an extra item in the settings menu for the display that had not been there before. It allows you to set the output to letterbox or pan-and-scan when showing a widescreen picture on a 4:3 screen.

Another Cool Feature on the iPod Touch

This feature may have been there from the beginning, but I just noticed it last night. I assume it works the same way on the iPhone. If you've scrolled far down a Webpage or a list in an app, you can quickly return to the top by tapping the bar at the top of the screen, the one where you see the time and the battery. I've seen it work in Safari, in the Facebook app, and in the Settings app. I found it very useful with Twitter.

iTunes 9 Observation

I've noticed a cool little new feature in iTunes 9, or, at least, I've never noticed it before. The little blue dots that appear to the left of the title of a podcast now show if it's been partially listened to. It's almost like a phases of the moon graphic to show your progress on the podcast. As before, the dot completely disappears if you've listened all the way through. Cool.

Snow Leopard-Reactions

So far, the only problem I've seen with Snow Leopard is a really odd one. Since the upgrade, certain email messages received in my mail.com account appear as a jumbled, unreadable mess. These messages include updates from Facebook and emails from DIRECTV. On other computers, including the old PowerBook, also using Safari, these messages are perfectly legible. Also, if I forward them to my gmail account, they're as clear as they should be.

Snow Leopard, part 5

I kept thinking about it all morning, but when it came time to do the upgrade, I forgot to jot down the available space on my HD so that I'd know how much, if any, space that Snow Leopard recovered for me. From memory, it seems to be about 6.5 GB. The upgrade's now done, and I can't see much of a difference. Safari may have started more quickly than before.

Snow Leopard, part 4

Snow Leopard has arrived. While the MacBook is backing up to the new external HD in preparation for the clean install, I am working on the old Pismo PowerBook. I also got iLife '09 since I haven't upgraded it since I bought the MacBook three years ago. These two upgrades should make the MacBook seem like a new machine. Once the installs are done, the PowerBook gets a full backup.

Snow Leopard, part 3

I'm still waiting for Snow Leopard to arrive. I've heard some good and some not so good things about it. Tom Merritt and Cali Lewis both recovered considerable hard disk space with it, but Roger Chang said his didn't change much. Roger has the same model MacBook I have.