lotusinthemud

some of my iphone apps

Contacting others

Facebook

TweetDeck for Twitter (or I hear Tweetie is good - I use Tweetie on my PowerBook)

Skype

BeejiveIM (instant messaging)

Productivity/Time management/Weather/Finding info/Travel

Things (to-do lists) which will sync with Things on your Apple laptop/desktop - you may be able to use it on a PC too

Simplenote which syncs with several other apps on computer - I use JustNote

Dropbox...and get this for your computer - can put documents ‘in the cloud’ so you can access them anywhere

Occasions (for birthdays etc)

Alarm Clock

CoPilot UK as a satnav - not cheap but better than TomTom

AroundMe for coffeeshops, banks, hospitals, parking, supermarkets etc

TubeMap

Google

iWiki

Fizz Weather

Radio/News

RadioBox

TVGuide

Guardian

Quick News

Huff Post

YouTube

Music

Moodagent...will decide on the mood of any music you play on the ipod app and sellect other music of same type from your ipod to make an automatic playlist

USTREAM recorder, Viewer and Broadcaster

AudioBoo

Buddhist

Oxford dictionary of Buddhism

Buddha Box

Dhammapada

Mahayana

Pretty and/or Fun

iBonsai

Emergence

Galactica

GoSkimming

Bejeweled 2
Chuzzle

Bookworm

Trism

Bubblewrap

Others

iFirstAid

Convertbot

IKEA UK

you've got to find what you love

Inspirational words from Steve Jobs:

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

::continue reading here

hi-tech criminals target twitter, myspace and facebook

Micro blogging site Twitter is the latest target of cyber criminals who are increasingly finding fertile ground on social networks.

A fake Twitter profile with a malicious payload has been spotted by security firm Kaspersky.

It purports to link to a pornographic video but downloads a fake version of Adobe Flash which installs programs capable of stealing data.

The attack is believed to be the first to target Twitter.....

It comes as Kaspersky also releases details about two worms that target social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. More variants of these worms are also starting to turn up.....

Only those using Microsoft Windows are vulnerable to infection from these malicious programs.

::link
::original

Change to Apple, people! 

apple mac sales soar

Some encouraging news for Apple (AAPL) ahead of its March quarter earnings next week: Mac sales continue to grow much faster than the overall PC market, according to stats from research firms Gartner and IDC.

::link

windows virus - warning

Security experts are warning about a stealthy Windows virus that steals login details for online bank accounts. In the last month, the malicious program has racked up about 5,000 victims - most of whom are in Europe. Many are falling victim via booby-trapped websites that use vulnerabilities in Microsoft's browser to install the attack code.

::read more Glad i usually use a Mac!

marsedit and apple leopard timemachine - transforming my computer usage

....thanks to the amazing Apple Leopard's Time Machine, but, also thanks to my lovely son Simon (who spent Saturday backing up the contents of my PowerBook onto an external hard drive and installing Leopard - and gave me the below as part of my Christmas present along with the wonderful IT Crowd), I'm now uploading to the blogging universe using MarsEdit. I love Apple!

not only am i a timelord...

....thanks to the amazing Leopard's Time Machine, but, also thanks to lovely Simon (who gave me the below as part of my Christmas present along with the wonderful IT Crowd), I'm now uploading to the blogging universe using MarsEdit. So I have plenty to smile about.

leopard on the prowl

All thanks to my son for setting up Leopard on my Powerbook

and relax

It feels strange to be listening to myself. I hold guided 'Meditation For Relaxation' sessions at the university for the Welfare staff - caring for the carers - and the students. And I've just changed what I offer here at my centre - so, more 'Meditation For Relaxation' here on Monday evenings and Pureland services on Tuesdays.

While I was at The Buddhist House ten days ago I borrowed Dharmavidya's Sony digital dictating machine and sat in my bedroom, crooning the meditation into the microphone. I've made a master CD from this and just loaded it onto iTunes so I can copy onto more CDs and distribute to people who have asked for a copy they can use at home.

So now my Powerbook is playing it to me. The sound quality, which is my reason for listening, sounds good - much better than a tape I made a couple of years ago. I'm concentrating on checking that out, and trying not to react with embarrassed squiggliness to the sound of recorded me.

Giving Talks 3

Ah, well, somehow or other (and I'm glad I'm reading this on the Powerbook), I've found two answers to my own question, at least as regards presentation style - and keeping it simple - here

and here

and there's no doubt which style is more appropriate and more effective

How impressive is Steve Jobs?