Did you know that your system beeps when you receive an incoming email or when someone is trying to send you a video invitation through iChat? Only if you could hear the beeps, you would be able to reply in a timely manner.

Fret not, with OS X’s Universal Access, you are now able to “see” system beeps. Your screen will flash anytime there is a system beep and you now can answer or attend to anything in a timely manner!

The screen flash is turned off by default and to turn it on, check out the pictures below:

1. Open System Preferences and click on Universal Access.

2. In Universal Access pane, click on the “Hearing” tab and ensure that the checkbox is checked for “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs.” You can also test you screen flash by hitting the Flash Screen button.

For iChat users, you will find that the Screen Flash to be very annoying when you first turn it on; however, you can fix that by going to iChat’s Preferences and configure the Alert pane. Personally, I configure all Events with “Play sound” unchecked (ie: Buddy Becomes Available, Unavailable, etc…) except for Video Invitation.

Sure, I’m a hard-core Mac user but I’d like to consider myself fair when it comes to debating about Mac and PC. Everybody has their own preferences and reasons.

Here are two interesting articles focusing on development efforts on both machines:

Five Reasons Why Designers Developers are Switching to Mac

Why Web Developers Don’t Need A Mac

Are you a developer? What platform do you use?

I have been using the PC platform (using VMware) for .NET and SQL Server projects. Until recently, I have became a Ruby on Rails developer for it allows me to exclusively use the Mac environment.

Video Answering Machine for iChat was introduced in the earlier Leopard builds but got later removed. It isn’t the first time Apple has removed features prior to a master release — they want to make damn sure that every features they release are in quality condition.

iChat remains to be my daily and primary video communication tool. A video answering machine would definitely “complete” my wish list for iChat. I certainly hope this isn’t just a rumor and another patent leak that never becomes a reality.

Read the AppleInsider article.

Here is the survey provided by NAD as an effort to address captioning concerns:

http://blogs.nad.org/advocacy/2009/03/28/nad-announces-dtv-closed-caption-survey/

While I respect NAD doing everything they can to fight our captioning rights, I may be ignorant here so pardon me if I am, the process/fight seems to be moving like molasses.

I am eager to have the captioning law updated for the new digital age. We’re back to the stone age and our access to digital media are severely lacked. I have offered my assistance to participate in the captioning fight and only to get no response from NAD.

I have replied to the survey. I encourage you all to participate as well.

I hope NAD can come out with a new survey that addresses digital media captioning.

It is evident that I am frustrated and I know you all are too. It is in everybody’s best interest to get the new digital media captaining issue resolved so we can have access to information like the rest of the world.

You would need to opt-in, go to www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin

I’ve opted in and works great running on mac mini, hooked up from DVI-HMDI to my 55 inch TV

Few downsides:

Most importantly - no captioning support - (yet?) and the movies I’ve watched lately has been either PBS/Foreign movies that already had it subtilted to start from, as there was no button/option to click for english subtitles or CC

Need to have an Intel-based mac.

Install sliverlight.

Works great for me, oddly, in Safari - not so great - Firefox much better.

Maybe more deaf people can join in and actually have a voice to request Netflix to set up Captioning on watch instantly.

I do not like Tabs on top, I prefer it to be like Safari 3.0′ tabs below the address bar…

its possible

Fire up terminal - type in the following command (or copy paste)

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

when you are done, quit terminal, quit Safari and relaunch safari.

you should get the old style tabs in 4.0, I LOVE it, I m more happy now.

I also miss the blue loading behind the URL - to set that up

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

I didnt like the auto complete url, so that one turned off for myself too.

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO

The google suggestion irked me too, so I turned that off also - wow I m turning a lot of stuff on/off in this version.

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

you may need to restart safari if its running, when you did the above commands, if you did not have safari running, just start safari and your changes should be done.
Clyde

If you wished for an Apple computer, I hope you get it from Santa. Rudolph did not have an apple-colored nose for no reasons.

Happy Holidays to everybody!

On Tuesday, October 14th, Steve Jobs will conquer the stage (and the world) to give us another reason to drop our jaws as he presents a new line of notebooks. It’s been several years since the aluminum MacBook chassis design and definitely due for a new one.

My current MacBook Pro has been my longest computer I’ve kept (two years and half already) and I’m definitely eyeing on this one.

I personally think that the MagSafe is one of Apple’s best invention for notebooks to date. Do you think there will be more innovative features introduced in the next line and if so, what do you think they might be?