address

No more typos

Autotyping and autocorrecting applications can be a huge time-saver, sparing you from having to retype frequently used words and phrases (and even paragraphs and pictures), and they can instantly clean up your most common typos. Plus, if they work system-wide like Typinator does, they can provide you with functionality that might otherwise be limited to your word processor.

Typinator is a best-in-class example of this kind of app, with an easy-to-manage interface, above-average stability, exceptional speed (keeping up with even extremely fast typists using large abbreviation sets, even those whose keystrokes can overlap), and the ability to handle multiple languages (… Read more

Easy IP

Every computer, router, server, and other device that's connected to a computer network has an Internet Protocol (IP) address, a unique sequence of numbers used to distinguish network participants. Every now and then it's nice to know the name lurking behind the number, whether you're trying to identify the sender of a shady e-mail, a visitor to your Web site, or someone else. IPNetInfo is an easy-to-use tool that quickly delivers all available information about a given IP address. It's nothing fancy, but it's good at what it does.

Using IPNetInfo is quite simple. Users … Read more

Contact's photo not editable in Address Book

When you open a contact's vCard in Address Book and click the "Edit" button, you should be able to edit the user's photo by double-clicking on it and either use the computer's webcam to snap a shot or choose a picture file and then perform some simple zooming and cropping on the photo. Some people are having problems where this behavior will not work, either on some or all of their cards.… Read more

Google ups its TV bet, invests in Invidi

Google, which is still trying to figure out how to crack the TV business, has invested in a tech firm trying to do the same thing.

The search giant is leading a $23 million series D round in Invidi Technologies, a New York City company that works on "addressable" TV ads. Addressable ads are supposed to target specific viewers, using data from set-top boxes, in the same way that Internet ads sniff out specific Web surfers.

You can see why Google would be interested in that stuff, particularly as it tries to integrate its Android platform into TVs. … Read more

Report: Global Net speeds keep bumping up

The fastest are getting faster.

Eight of the top 10 countries or regions in terms of Internet speed saw a boost in the final quarter of 2009, according to Akamai's "State of the Internet Report" released Tuesday.

Among those top areas, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan grabbed the best Internet performance globally, averaging connection speeds higher than 7.5 megabits per second (Mbps) in the fourth quarter. Although South Korea actually was hit by a 29 percent decline in performance year over year, it still snagged the No. 1 spot at 11.7 Mbps.

The United … Read more

MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature where we answer questions e-mailed to us by readers. This week, we have questions about powering off versus unplugging peripherals when upgrading, entry fields not working in Address Book, and how to tackle a stubborn iWork demo installation that keeps asking for the serial number after installing a retail copy.… Read more

Contact sorts

E-mail is the business world's lifeblood. The downside of instantaneous, 24-7 contact is an impersonality and distance that doesn't foster relationships. EfficientSoftware's Address Book Free is a contact and customer information management utility that anyone can use to keep their address books and contact information up to date and in sync, but where it shines is in its business-oriented customer contact features. It will remind you when birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events approach so you're ready with the personal touch that can make all the difference in business and personal relationships. You can also prioritize … Read more

Repetition reducer

If you work in any kind of environment that requires the regular use of a computer, more than likely you find yourself typing the same things over and over again. Quotes, invoices, reports, letters, e-mails can all get pretty repetitive, not to mention time-consuming. If your computer tasks have you feeling like a broken record, try Perfect Keyboard Professional. This simple program allows users to record text and macros in a variety of ways, saving you the time and effort of typing the same stuff out yet again.

The program's interface is plain but well-designed and intuitive. The first … Read more

Port-a-ping

Nirsoft's PingInfoView2 is a small and handy utility that network managers, Web site administrators, developers, and even regular folks can use to ping multiple host names and IP addresses and display all the results in one table. You can specify the time interval between pings in increments down to seconds. PingInfoView displays each successful and failed ping as well as the average ping time. Results can be saved as text, HTML, or XML files, or pasted to the clipboard for use in other apps.

This is a compact piece of software that downloads as a ZIP file but requires … Read more

Hidden iPhone keyboard symbols and more

The iPhone and iPod Touch keyboard is very versatile, and many of its keys offer access to lists of special symbols or more, while tapping and holding one of the following keys for at least one second:

.com when entering Web addresses in Mobile Safari to bring up options for .net, .edu and .org. . (period) when entering e-mail addresses in Mobile Mail to bring up the options for .net, .edu, .org and .com. " (double) or ' (single) quotes in the number and symbol keyboard to access alternative quotation characters. $ in the number and symbol keyboard to display alternative currency symbols. … Read more