Instead of posting my list of podcasts on twitter, I might as well post them here and point folks to this list. The list changes from time to time and there are a few old selections in here, which I probably should re-visit. It includes a mix of tech, development, humor and good-for-running selections.

Diggnation, The Digital Home podcast from CNET, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, HBR IdeaCast, Hivelogic Radio, Lullabot Podcast, MackBreak Weekly, Manager Tools, The Maniacal Rage Podcast, The Merlin Show, net@night, One Phat DJ Podcast, Podcasts at Penn State – ETS Talk, Podrunner, Rails Envy Podcast, RedMonk Podcasts (itmanagement), The Rissington Podcast, Ruby on Rails podcast, Security Now!, The Talk Show, This American Life, This Week in Photography, This Week in Tech, Venture Voice, Windows Weekly, WNYC’s Radio Lab

update: decided to update the post with links to the actual pages where one can subscribe to the shows.

I finally took some time this weekend to do a couple of technology upgrades around the house. Saturday afternoon I upgraded the operating system in my Powerbook from Panther (10.3) to Tiger (10.4) and I am well aware of the fact that I am over a year late to this party. However, until recently I really never had the need to make the upgrade despite having the disk sitting in my cabinet for a few months now. What changed? well, I have noticed more and more applications required 10.4 as the host operating system and I also wanted the benefits of Safari 2 and the new Mail.app.

The upgrade went without a problem and I chose to do a simple upgrade over my current OS despite recommendations to follow the archive & installation method. I never had any problems with the previous version so I chose to use the simplest method to upgrade and things appear to be working just fine.

I also changed the wireless router for our home network since my parent’s gave me a new one for my birthday. We are moving up the wireless spectrum and have made the change to a 802.11g/b router from Linksys, the WRTSL54GS to be more specific. My powerbook can now benefit from the higher speeds available on the 802.11g mode, while still supporting our older laptop and the tivo through the 802.11b mode.

The best part about this router is the ability to share USB-attached storage throughout the network. So we can finally have a shared-folder without having to share it through a specific PC. I will have to write more this feature later on since I didn’t have a spare hard-drive to connect to the router. I am planning on moving our iTunes library and photo collections to this drive so we can access them all of our computers around the house.

I actually spent time away from the pc over the weekend in case you were wondering. We were invited to dinner by our neighbors upstairs and we had a great evening with them, specially after three bottles of red wine!. Today, we made the best of the cool weather and went hiking around Pinnacle Peak park but not before having a great breakfast at home which was a great surprise to wake up to.

We went to Circuit City after doing some research and price comparison finally ready to make a commitment and hopefully bringing home a new tv. Our current tv’s (living room and bedroom) are from our days in college so you can only imagine we were a few generations behind and ready to join the HD generation. We left circuit city after an associate was not very helpful and they didn’t have the model we had in mind in stock.

Then over dinner and with the help of some margaritas, we started talking about it again. We were already there maybe we should go back and take a look at some of the other displays they had in stock. This time around, Steve was extremely approachable and helpful. Instead of a sales pitch, we had a conversation, sort of like a conversation you would have with your other geeky friend. So we went over several factors when trying to choose between a 720p/1080i (the one we got) and a 1080p display. It was a very helpful and without any pressure we believe we got the best option for our current needs.(customer reviews

A little note about the LN-S4051D, every site lists the width of the display to be 39″. In reality it is 39 AND 1/4″ wide and this quarter of an inch is killing me! We have a built-in entertainment center and the opening is exactly 39 inches. I wanted to stay with a 40″ display (to avoid going to 37″) and meant we only had a certain number of models to choose from. The fact we found the Samsung to be only 39″, it seemed like it was a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, we the space is quater on an inch too small so we had to set the tv in an angle for the time being. Solutions are currently under consideration and if you have any experience with sanding 1/8″ off sheet-rock let me know your thoughts.

I still have to arrange for all of the remote controls (tivo, sound & tv) to work together and upgrade our cable package for HD programming. However, we watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith over the weekend on the new tv and it was a great experience.

Apple TV looks great from an entertainment point of view, the perfect companion for your Tivo or preferred DVR. Apple TV provides the interface to your own digital library. All those photos from your last vacation or your music library will now be easily available within your entertainment center with the ease of a few clicks.

Airport Extreme this is probably the one piece of hardware that that has received the least amount of attention, yet it is a great improvement over its previous version. Some will see it as a high-priced wireless router, I am not sure that I would run out to get it today, but it provides a high-speed router with a great visual design and the ease of use that only Apples seems to come up these days. Probably the feature that I find the most interesting, is the ability to simply plugin an external hard-drive or printer (or both using a USB hub) and share it within your network. Great for that central location you need for your music library, your computer backups and anything else that needs to be accessed by multiple machines within your home network.

iPhone this is probably the one product that will be discussed the most over the next few days and yet the one that we know the least about. I love the features presented during the keynote but I cannot see myself spending that much money for a gadget. I know that if you combine the price of an iPod plus a smart phone, the price gap is not that much but I just can’t see myself standing in line for one of these devices. I wish you could buy the device sans the phone features and the 2 year contract from Cingular. Also, given the historical battery performance for the iPods I would like to see some figures before jumping on board.

However, although I might not be the first one to own the iPhone among my friends, I will be the first one recognize the risk Apple is taking with the new touch-based interface and context-aware user interface. A risk that is very much worth taking since most user interfaces used in today’s phones tend to fall short when you jump from application to application. By moving toward a more dynamic UI, Apple has the flexibility to provide the best interface for each individual application and motion sensors provide further information about how the user is utilizing the device. Combine these two features and you can start providing an improved experience for your user.

• Highlight the range of cells to format.
• Choose Conditional Formatting from the Format drop down menu
• Select Formula Is from the first drop-down list box, and enter =MOD(ROW(),2)=0 in the second box.
• Click the Format button, select the Patterns tab and specify a color for the shaded rows.
• Use the other tabs to make any other modifications
• Click OK twice to return to your worksheet.

By using a formula, the formatting is dynamic and can handle deleting rows without affecting the other rows formating.

Why change the logon screen? we have two XP machines connected to a KVM switch and each serves a different function. I need to let the user identify the proper machine before they log on and this provides an easy way to do so.

I asked a couple of colleagues who are deeply involved with managing Windows systems for a solution to this problem. There has to be a way to invoke the control panel applications, or any part of the Windows operating system, with the appropriate permissions — just like if I was logged in with the appropriate account. Of course there is a solution, after all I am not the only doing this kind of thing.

The solution is the runas command which allows you to invoke a program or process using the credentials of a different account. I attempted to run the control panel from the command line runas /u:admin_account "control" however that did not work as I expected it, I could not launch the control panel this way.

Shortly there after, I received another email from one of our tech guys who is also a MS MVP and he had the solution to my problem. I have to launch a command line window with the admin rights first, then I can use this console to launch the appropriate control panel applet. To launch the console window with admin rights I execute this command: runas /u:admin_account cmd and enter the appropriate password when prompted. I can execute the control applets under the admin account.

Here is an entry from the MS knowledgebase which describes some more of the control applets and their filenames. Now, we don’t have to do the whole log off – log on dance every time we need to make a configuration change to these machines. Thanks guys for the help.

However, I recently found a referece to Launchy and my search has ended. Lauchy is not 100% like Quicksilver, there are many features missing but it meets my needs at the moment. I was looking for a solution that would allow me to quickly launch a program or folder with only a few keystrokes and certainly without much of a time delay.

Launchy by default will index your computer looking for shortcuts (.lnk files) but you can easily add more files types through the program’s options. You can also specify which locations within your machine should Launchy be looking for files to index, this was key to my desire to keep Launchy installed.

When working on a specific project, I usually keep going back to one folder within my machine or I need to access one of the network shares that I have acess to but I don’t recall the drive letter it was assigned. To help Launchy meet my needs, I created a folder Launchy Locations within the My Documents folder, I added this location to Launchy’s menu to make sure it is indexed. In the launchy locations folder, I place shortcuts to the folders that I need quick access to from launchy. I also rename these shortcuts with the names that I want to use within the launcher.

Download Launchy!

The answer to my problem was already installed on my computer in the form of Adobe Acrobat Professional. Similar to other Adobe products, Acrobat allows you to create Batch Sequences which can then be applied to one or several PDF documents.

A task that I thought was going to take hours to get complete was handled in a matter of minutes and even better without any costs. Let this be a reminder to check your toolbox before you make a decision to buy software you really don’t need. Although, it would’ve been fun to check out the Acrobat SDK to see what I could’ve come up.