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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish! Site News
Dear Macosxhints readers...

Since launching macosxhints.com in November of 2000, I've always tried to keep the focus here clear and simple: it's about the hints. As such, I tend to (for the most part) keep my opinions out of the hints. For instance, if I think "Geez, it's stupid that we need this hint because OS X doesn't do such and such, which would make it irrelevant," I tend not to say such things. Instead, I let the hint (and ensuing comments) stand on its own, as it should. That's what this site is for: hints.

However, I do have opinions on many of the things we cover here, as well as on computing in general -- after nearly five years, 7,000+ hints, and who knows how many hours of OS X usage, opinions are kind of a side effect of the job! As an outlet for my thoughts, I have at times considered adding an "Editorial" category, just to see what others might have to say about my opinions. In the end, though, I have always decided such content would detract from the site's primary mission. "It's about the hints, stupid!," I would keep telling myself.

So instead of diluting the primary site's focus, I've decided to launched a separate blog site, just so I can drill down into the Mac- and technology-related subjects I find interesting. For lack of any creativity in naming, I'm calling it simply The Robservatory. As an example of the kinds of things I'll be writing about, ten things I like about Tiger and what I don't like about Spotlight are two of the first articles. In the future, I'm going to discuss the (in)consistency in application interfaces, things I don't like about OS X, and much more. There are no ads on The Robservatory, as it's not intended to be a revenue-generating site -- it's just my blog. Also, anonymous comments to articles are welcomed, so no registration is required (though it is enabled).

For those who may be thinking this post is the beginning of a shameless series of self-promotion between the two sites, please relax. I won't be using macosxhints as a platform for my blog site, so you don't need to worry -- this announcement is the basically the extent of the link between the two sites. Things here on macosxhints will continue as normal, and my primary focus is and always will be on macosxhints.com. The Robservatory will simply allow me to discuss some the Mac and technology subjects I find most interesting.

WEEKEND UPDATE #2: 10 more hints added, for a total of 25 for the weekend. There may be one more batch on Sunday evening, depending on how the day goes...

WEEKEND UPDATE: 15 new hints published! so far; more will be coming later on Sunday...

-rob.
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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish! | 20 comments | Create New Account
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The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: ubrgeek on May 13, '05 08:53:08PM

Consider me subscribed :) Looking forward to the content!



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: MichaelBuckley on May 13, '05 10:02:41PM

Wow, I know I'll be subscribing. Great stuff so far. Have you considered implementing a trackback system?



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: robg on May 14, '05 11:01:17AM

As far as I know, trackbacks should be working (I'm a *very* inexperienced blog person, though) -- when viewing an article, the sidebar has a "trackback" link. Is there more to it that I'm missing (feel free to email me directly to get this out of the comments :) ).

-rob.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: taylott on May 13, '05 10:17:37PM

Thank you SO much for your decision to keep the two seperate.
We do love you, but sometimes there needs to be a little seperation. :D



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: Jwink3101 on May 14, '05 12:28:41AM

Man was i scared when i first started reading this. I thought you were ending it all or something. Well, now that my heart has started beating agian, i think it is cool and look forward to hearing you opinions

As i said in a forum post, i think there should be some type of Mac related Podcast from you. Either the site or the opinions. Myabe just a segment and ask another podcaster to include it (I vote the MacCast)



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: diamondsw on May 14, '05 01:40:12AM

Love the blog - too bad the RSS feed is empty and doesn't work. :(



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: Dale Mox on May 14, '05 02:26:27AM

yes, please rob, make the rss functional.
Thanks, Dale



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: robg on May 14, '05 02:36:43AM

Bummer, it should be working. I'll take a look at it this weekend!

regards;
-rob.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: diamondsw on May 14, '05 02:41:26AM

Just an FYI, the comments feed works, but the posts feed does not.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: robg on May 14, '05 10:58:15AM

It should be all better now -- there was a bug in WordPress 1.5.1, for which I've now applied a patch.

-rob.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: echo on May 14, '05 04:56:38AM

Whoo Hoo! That's a great blog name, Rob.
Bookmarked + RSSed when that gets settled.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: bjast on May 14, '05 10:10:15AM

Rob: You may be doing yourself an injustice, and your readers an unintended disservice, if you don't, even in some small way, reference your blog from the home page of Mac OS X Hints. After all, you are the creator and continuing author of this sight. And I for one think your overview of Mac OS X, since it's inception, is valuable to the Mac community.

Go ahead, make my day! Put a link on the home page. You're worth it.

Bill J.



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: Zee on May 14, '05 03:04:46PM

Hey Rob - Definitely include a link to and from both sites - they're your sites and you should reference one from the other - there is no reason not too. Keep up the good work!



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: dan55304 on May 15, '05 10:30:47AM

Rob, I applaud your ethics to keep hints free from the typical author opinion page. However, I agree with others that there is no harm, no foul with a sidebar link to your blog. After all, who's going to remember both URLs and it helps your Google ranking =)



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: barrysharp on May 15, '05 11:30:08AM

RobG:

Rob you're doing a very fine job. I think cross-linking Hints and your Blog will knit/glue the Hint community tighter.

You must have started macosxhints.com before Nov 2000 surely because how come my profile says "Member since Tue, Nov 30 '99 at 12:00AM".

Hmmm - where's the ref in my profile to the article written way back at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184&query=swap+page+memory+RAM which people still ask me about or even ref it in their reply to me without realizing I wrote it.

Keep up the good work - much appreciated from my desk.

---
Regards... Barry Sharp



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Read more ramblings from Rob ... if you wish!
Authored by: robg on May 15, '05 11:44:26AM
Actually, that date is a leftover bug from one of the Geeklog upgrades. The first versions of Geeklog I used didn't even record date registered for users -- the first 22,000+ users here (yours truly included) have reg dates of "0000-00-00 00:00:00." As a point of historical note, the first user with a registration date is "powerbark," who registered on February 16th, 2003, at 8:10pm.

For whatever reason, Geeklog parses that into November 30, 1999 in the profile page. The site went live on November 4th of 2000.

-rob.

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Put a Link
Authored by: daybrother on May 15, '05 06:29:18PM

I think it is a great idea but put a big link on the hints page. Don't hide.



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Put a Link
Authored by: robg on May 16, '05 01:12:28AM

OK, you convinced me ... and in the process, I removed a graphic from the homepage, so that should reduce page loading times (by some miniscule amount!).

I took the "Hints in Print" block and turned it into an Editor's Corner. I'll put relevant links in there from time to time, and I've started with the blog, the book, a new iWork training video I made with DMTS, and a search linking to all my articles at Macworld...

Thanks for the support and the great comments thus far on robservatory -- it's been going better than I had expected, and I've already learned a bunch from everyone!

-rob.



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Spotlight's Privacy Tab in Preferences
Authored by: deepkid on May 15, '05 11:41:35PM

As I mentioned on here when Tiger first came out, I can't believe that Apple shipped Spotlight with such loose security in the privacy tab in preferences. Consider that if content you wish to be excluded from its search is highly-sensitive, it's just sitting there in the open for anyone else using the machine to see. Spotlight's privacy tab should be password protected at the very least.



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Spotlight's Privacy Tab in Preferences
Authored by: deepkid on May 15, '05 11:43:49PM

woops. now how did that end up *here*?



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