My Apple iCarry & the weird world of web apps

One of the jobs that we Realtors® face is desk duty at the office.  Our office has a Dell desktop with a 15" flat panel. I am pretty good at switching over for some basic needs, but the Dell is not what I want to use for a whole afternoon or morning.

So I need to take my MacBook to work with me, or I won't get much done.

I have a great black ballistic nylon Brenthaven Bag Metro bag for my MacBook.  I am also addicted to the Griffin iCurve which appears to have been replaced by their Elevator product.

Fortunately for me, I have two iCurves, one at each home. The iCurve has turned into a great iCarry which is perfect for my full size Levenger Zip  Letter size folio, my Apple keyboard, and Microsoft scrolling portable mouse. I have the Brenthaven on one shoulder and I grasp my iCarry just above the keyboard.  It actually works great for carrying everything from the house to the car and from the car to the real estate duty desk.

This way I am the model of efficiency for a cross-platform real estate agent except I never know what I am going to find when I log into one of my blogs to compose a new post.  I am a Firefox user and have written before about being worried what would happen if Firefox no longer provided me the tools that I need with Typepad or Blogger my main blogging platforms.

This morning I logged into my Blogger account with my Intel MacBook to do a post using Firefox and found that my tools were gone.  I immediately logged in using Camino and found that my editing tools were still there.  Out of curiosity I tried Safari and found that almost everything was gone, but that is nothing new.  I just checked at work and everything is fine in Firefox on Windows and IE7 on Windows.

What is even stranger is that I checked on my Dual G5 and Firefox works with Blogger fine.  However, I just got a software update notice for Java so I installed that.  After the update Blogger is still fine on my Dual G5 but does not have the tools after the Java update on my Intel MacBook.

I think this one is way beyond me solving it.

While I absolutely love the convenience of web tools, it is a little scary that some functionality can just disappear with no explanation.  I will dig around in the blogger user forums tonight when I have more time, but at this point I am just glad that Camino works great.

This type of thing is the plug and play of this century.  We need operating system companies and organizations that do software to be just as worried about web services and updates as they are about making sure that peripherals work with their products.

I spend too much time and effort building sites and writing material on blogs to worry about waking up some morning and not being able to use my Mac with blogging software.

Fortunately there is some really nice website software for the Mac which could replace my blogs to a certain degree.  The blogging template on Rapidweaver is pretty good.  I just brought up my latest normal website which is for restaurants in Coastal North Carolina, and I was pleased with it. 

Rapid Weaver is good software but there are still some quirky things which keep me falling back to Dreamweaver when I need access to everything like in my Beaufort, NC travel guide.

I am hoping to discuss several website tools that I use in my next post, from Shutterbug and Rapidweaver to Dreamweaver and Freeway Pro.  I have used them all and still haven't found the perfect product, but it is nice to have choice and still be on the Mac platform.

Comments

[Stephen]

Brenthaven totally rocks. Believe mine is a "Titanium II" bag which I got in the fall of 91, and still use today. I've been through at least 3 Powerbooks (currently a Core2Duo) since then, but the Brenthaven bag is virtually indestructible. I also have their Pro 17 Video Backpack which they apparently no longer make. It is the huge pack which has room for video cameras, still cameras, and SATCOM kit. Believe it was designed for the embedded reporters in the Iraq war. Doesn't appear to be listed anymore at Brenhaven's site, but it is a great bag for a full load of kit.