If you have been wanting to add additional search engines to Safari's search field, AcidSearch is your software. This has to be my new favorite piece of software (right behind Quicksilver). To add a new search channel:

1. Go to a website that you would like to add and search for something
2. While on that page, go to AcidSearch and click "Edit Search Channels"
3. Click "New Channel"

AcidSearch automatically adds the correct search syntax to the URL field. Feel free to change the name of the Channel and its location on the list.

CK convinced me to set up a personal certificate and signature from Thawte on Mac OS X. Apple's Mail.app integrates these certificates as you can see here:



If you're interested in getting your own certificate and signature, check out this tutorial. They offer a good step-by-step explanation with screen shots. If you want another opinion, have a look at this thread at macosxhints as well.

CK was kind enough to send me an invitation for a gmail account. I've been using it on an Windoze box for the past few weeks and while I like it a lot, it hasn't been entirely trouble free. I found out (at 1:30am) that .zip files did not decompress correctly. The file had to be resent (closer to 2:00am) before I could confirm it would open and leave (closer to 3:00am).

Also, some recipients couldn't open excel files sent from the account. I haven't used it with Safari yet, but I'll start putting it though the paces...The Google team got back to me immediately on both problems and I have been troubleshooting with them. (It's still clear that this is a beta account.)

"Sony today announced the June opening of its European Connect Internet music store, where consumers can buy songs from 0.99 euros apiece and download them on their computer before exporting them to Sony minisdisc players and walkmans."

I just *love* pricing policies in various currencies. .Mac costs $99 in the US and 99 Euros in Europe. That translates to a $125, or 25% more expensive in Europe.

I knew before any downloading services were released that the price point would, once again, be 99 cents (Euro cents) per song. And I'd almost be willing to bet 99p in the UK (could be 79p, but I doubt it).

So, what does this mean? Well, if you live in Europe, it means you'll pay 25% extra for the same thing you get in New York for 99¢. If you are lucky enough to live in London, you might be paying 82% more (if they price it at 99p) or 45% more if they're nice enough to price it at 79p.

Market theory says these price differences should be eliminated through arbitrage. However, thanks to the DRM built into the songs, it's difficult to transfer the songs after buying low (in the US) and selling high (in the UK).

There is, perhaps, a way to get the lowest price, regardless of where you live. Londoners might be able to purchase iTunes gift certificates for themselves at the US store (paying the $.99 price) and using that from the comfort of their home on Abbey Road to download songs from the American iTunes store.

I'll give the gift certificate trick a try when I can and report back with the findings....because if I buy one song at 99 cents from the US, it's only really costing me only 54p, which is less then the Evening Standard. Now *that's* a fair price for music.

I use Marketcircle's DayLite PIM/CRM (Personal Information Manager/Customer Relationship Manager) application on a daily basis for scheduling, task lists, contacts, etc. Also, because it's a CRM, I track sales processes and have access to a client's entire history as well as can manage Projects on an ongoing basis- all from within one well-designed Cocoa application (for Mac OS X).

I do some beta testing for Marketcircle and found there was a bug causing data loss in one of the latest builds. I reported the bug, reverted to a backup and got on with life. Since then, I have been working out of the latest publicly available build- following the previous beta- when the same data loss issue struck. Lack of data integrity is an absolute must in a PIM/CRM and this was no longer a beta build.

I shot off a mail to one of the user mailing lists complaining that the data loss issue had not been resolved, and that one year of work was now missing. Within a few hours (Marketcircle is in Canada, I live in Spain) one of the top guys wrote telling me it was an issue with Apple's latest build of Mac OS X, 10.2.6, and how I could restore my files. He even offered to personally re-construct the file if I could not recover the lost information.

Now, it's quite impressive that they offered to re-construct my file, especially when the problem was really with Apple's Mac OS X, but they didn't stop there. A few hours more and I received a second mail saying they would give me a complementary upgrade to the Business Edition (I was using a Personal Edition file) which was a more robust version of their software- running on an SQL database- in order to avoid any data loss issues in the future.

I was very, very impressed. One of the golden rules you learn in expensive MBA marketing courses is to EXCEED your customers' expectations. Most executives sleep through that class. Marketcircle had three coffees beforehand.

I expected Daylite to fix the problem with their application. Period. Offering to reconstruct my file was a very nice touch, but offering me a complementary upgrade to the business edition? That's five-star exceed-your-customer's-expectations customer service.

The cost of the upgrade for Marketcircle was minimal to non-existent, only the lost "sale" of a Business Upgrade (I was thinking about upgrading within the next year), but their return is priceless: a very satisfied customer.

And in addition, because it's the Macintosh community, they have more than a satisfied customer, they have an evangelist. So, congratulations to Marketcircle for exemplary Customer Service, and if you use Mac OS X, download DayLite right now and give it a try.