Some bits and pieces:

If (for whatever reason) you prefer to use Safari on your Mac rather than Firefox, check out PimpMySafari.com - a resource for Safari addons. Of particular utility is Saft: a "Safari plugin to add features like draggable tabs, full-screen browsing, searchable bookmarks and history, URL shortcuts, kiosk mode and more". Saft is worth the $12 to me if for nothing else than it adds the ability to automatically save open browser windows at exit and restore them at startup.

On a humorous note, Sensei George provided me with a link to this article discussing new evidence that a lot of those people out there who seem to be talking on their cell phones actually aren't. I'll be watching for this now, and I'm sure you will too once you read this article.

A pinched nerve has interrupted any extensive recreational typing recently, but here's a few interesting items:

I've been using Skype on my PowerBook for IP telephony for a while now with great success, having given up on seeing either Ventrilo or Teamspeak anytime in the next few months or years. I have to say, Skype just works really really well. Sure it has some limitations (like a maximum of 5 people on a conference call), but the sound is amazing and the product itself is slick and professional. Do yourself a favour if you decide to use Skype: buy a headset with microphone. They aren't particularly expensive ($30-$50 usually) and make a world of difference. Make sure, too, that you get one that's confortable.

It seems (continuing down the telephony line), that Microsoft is wanting to move in on RIM's Blackberry business with a new version of Windows Mobile. Here's a clue for Microsoft: you need to make sure that these things work as phones. I've yet to see a Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition actually work reliably. Especially for things like making phone calls which, you'd think, you'd want to do ... on a phone. Some of the typical problems, like not being able to reacquire a signal after moving out of and then back into coverage have continued to appear on new units. After two or more years of these things, you'd think that the people writing the drivers and radio stacks would be able to get it right. But it appears not.

One of the really outstanding things about Blackberries, whether you like them or not, is how rock solid they are. This is due not only to the single-source hardware and software development but to the fact that extensive testing is done both by RIM and by each carrier before the units become available. The multiple source development of MS units, however, means that all of the parties who've had a hand in developing each new unit blame each other for the problems, leaving the consumer with a piece of hardware that they've paid a big chunk of money for but which they can't count on to work when they need it. Just ask T-Mobile about this.

I really enjoy the trackpad two finger scrolling on my 2005 PowerBook. Until it goes wrong, that is.

Most annoying is the (default) behaviour of Firefox. Instead of responding to the two-finger horizontal scrolling by, say, horizontally scrolling, it moves back and forth in the history list. What ends up happening here is the you dare not use two finger vertical scrolling because, if you're not slavishly precise in your finger movements, you'll end up navigating back to some previous page. There's an easy fix to this though, courtesy of MacOSXHints:

In Firefox, type about:config into the address bar and hit return. This gives you a list of all possible configuration options. The ones we want are those that start with mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey. Make the following changes by double-clicking the appropriate option in the list:

• mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action => 0
• mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines => true

This successfully changes Firefox so that trackpad horizontal scrolling actually performs horizontal scrolling of the current page.

The other less frequent and somewhat less annoying problem is that the trackpad sometimes exhibits strange behaviour when waking from sleep. Most often, after a wakeup, one-finger trackpad movement (i.e. moving the cursor) seems to act as two finger movement (i.e. scrolling). This problem seems to go away after a few (say 15 to 20) seconds - but reappears on the next wake up from sleep

Apple has provided a help document that discusses this, which involves making sure you're using one finger (duh) or reseting the trackpad by "placing your entire palm directly on the whole trackpad for 3 to 4 seconds, then removing it in one smooth motion". I'm trying the latter to see if it makes a difference. One other interesting thing to note is that this problem (for me) only started showing up recently