Whether or not you are willing to admit it most of us have the occasional Windows application that they like to run. On a Power PC Mac you cannot install windows natively like you can on the new Intel based machines. Yesterday I found out that it is possible to run windows on a PPC Mac. You just have to install Virtual PC (a Microsoft product) which is an emulator that emulates a P2 and allows you to run Windows as a Virtual OS.

If you do any web design work for the web it is crucial that you be able to view how a site will look in Internet Explorer as well as browsers on the Mac such as Safari, FireFox, Flock, Camino, etc. You could use BrowserShots (www.browsershots.org) but that takes time. It can take anywhere from 1 minute to 4 hours for a screen shot to be captured with BrowserShots so you can see the issue there.

Today I installed Windows XP Professional on my Virtual PC and I also installed the additional tools so that my mouse could interact with both Windows and OS X without having to command-tab to get out of Virtual PC. I have a dual display setup now so I have VPC on my secondary display running in full screen. It’s pretty cool to have OS X on one screen and Windows XP on the other.

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This morning i was browsing around the net and I came across FireBug a plugin for FireFox. This plugin will help web developers a great deal. It allows you to debug the HTML, JS, CSS on a website. What’s so special about FireBug? Well while you are debugging you may wonder what would it look like if i made this change? With FireBug you can make experimental changes and FireBug will highlight them yellow, it will also render it in the browser.

The part I like the most about FireBug is the Network tab. When you view the network tab you are able to see how fast each element on your site is loading. It also shows how much came from the browser cache. This is a very handy tool. I used it on this site and found that with the Kontera Advertising the main page was taking upwards of 6 seconds to fully load. When I removed the Kontera it brought the load time down to around 2 seconds. It really shows how much external content can slow your site down.

For the Flock users out there, do not forget about the extension converter

Head over to the website and try it out yourself.

While learning to first use the Mac I have come across several nice little shortcuts. However my favorite is the screen capture utility built into OS X. On windows if I wanted to take a screen shot I either had to download a 3rd party application or I had to use the print screen button. The 3rd party application could accomplish what I needed, however print screen could not. If I used print screen I would have to edit the photo to get the exact thing I wanted.

When using Mac OS X there is a simple keystroke you hit Command-Shift-4 which will give you a cross-hair cursor. All you have to do at this point is click and drag over whatever it is you want to capture. When you have what you want highlighted simply let go of the mouse button. You will hear a sound like that of a camera and you will find your image on your desktop named Picture X. The X is a number so if you do multiple screen shots you will have Picture 1.png, Picture 2.png, etc.

Well some of you may be saying well that’s nice but it’s not the fastest method to get a screen shot of an entire application window. You’re right and Apple has a cure for that as well. If you want to do a screen shot of an entire application window simply issue the command Command-Shift-4 but do not click and drag, instead hit the space bar, it will turn your screen blue. If you want to capture the current winodw click the mouse otherwise hit the spacebar again to return to the cross hairs so you can select an area to capture. Also if you started a capture and want to stop you can do so by hitting the exc key.

In my previous post I was in search of the best batteries to use with the Wireless Mighty Mouse, I think I found some that will work great. After charging the Radio Shack 2200-mAh batteries the most I could get out of them were 4 bars in the system preferences panel. They also died really quickly (within a few days). Last night I went to K-Mart and I picked up some Energizer batteries that are 2500-mAh. I am waiting for these to take on a full charge (I forgot to plug them in last night) but on only a few hours they are showing 4 bars. I am hoping that these batteries will hit the 5 bar mark and actually last more than just a few days.

I am not sure why the 2200-mAh batteries would show no more than 4 bars in system preferences, maybe they have the mouse reporting the mAh of the batteries as they start to die and system preferences is programmed to work best with Lithium. I am not sure what the differences are between the batteries. All I know is which is working best for me.

I am going to let the Energizer batteries take on a full charge and then use them until they are in need of a recharge. Once that happens I will update you guys on how long they lasted.

When I purchased the Wireless Mighty Mouse I was amazed at how long the batteries lasted. They finally died after about 2 months of everyday use. When I say everyday use I mean M-Sat. 8AM – 6PM I am constantly using the mouse.

When the batteries finally died I ran out to Radio Shack and bought the best rechargeable batteries they had, however I am not sure they are the best. In fact I think they are horrible at least when used with the Mighty Mouse. The batteries I bought are the Radio Shack brand. They are green 1.2v 2100-mAh Nickel-Metal Hydride rechargeable batteries. They were like $20 for 4 of them. This price also included the charger. I will fully charge them for a day until the light on the charger is green. When I first insert them into the Mighty Mouse and check the power in system preferences it only has 3 out of the 5 bars lit up green. At first I thought there was something wrong with system preferences however when the batteries were dead after 3 days I knew it was the batteries.

The question is: What are the best batteries you have found to use with your Wireless Mighty Mouse? Please leave a comment and let me know I am willing to try anything. I would prefer rechargeable batteries but would be open to suggestion.

If you are out looking for a decent battery for your Wireless Mighty Mouse I highly suggest you stay away from these batteries. I am not quite sure what to suggest you use however i will keep you updated as I try different brands.

A while back I was looking for a website where I could do some bartering for other’s services or products. I ran across SwapThing.com. I registered for the website so that I could check out how it was setup and possibly find someone that I could barter with. I have had the account setup for a few months and I have posted my services as a trade in exchange for a Mac G4 or higher laptop. I have not heard anything from any of the users on the site.

I also went back to the site today to list 2 loaded PC’s for trade in exchange for a Macbook Pro, however I was unable to complete the process. I would submit the form with all of the correct information. The site just started complaining about an ISBN not being supplied. I was a bit surprised, since when does a Macbook have an ISBN?

When I first registered for the service I remember having issues like this as well when trying to list my first item. After a few attempts it went through. This time I tried 5 times and could not get it to go through. Maybe there is just not enough demand for the service to make the site administrator fix the issues who knows. They seem to be the most used site when it comes to bartering so I thought it was fairly odd that they would be having issues like this.

I know that if SwapThing fixed their programming issues they would have a good service to offer people. The layout of the website is very nice, it is easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. I would love to see them fix the programming issues they are having and see what the site really has to offer.

This morning I was browsing the web to try to find some cool new things out of sheer boredom. I actually did find something that I find really cool. Have you ever been looking at a magazine or brochure and wondered what font they used for certain text? Using What The Font now you can find out. Simply scan the item (or save the image if it is already in digital format) and upload it to WTF. WTF will scan the text in the image and compare it to it’s database of fonts to find the best matches for you. It is not 100% flawless so you may not get the correct font. However they state that if you cannot find the font using the WTF engine you can always post it in the forums where font enthusiasts will give you help.

Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using our WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database. If WhatTheFont can’t figure it out, you can submit your image to the WhatTheFont Forum where cloak-draped font enthusiasts around the world will help you out!

I tried this service with GoDaddy’s logo however it did not work too well since they have more text than just the logo. I am sure the .com image was getting in the way also. However the results that it did return were pretty good.

I think this is a great idea and I have to give props to the developers of the site. It’s a pretty cool trick when you can analyze the text on an image character by character.