Author Biography
Joe Kissell joined the TidBITS staff in 2006 as Senior Editor and currently lives in Paris. He has written more than a dozen Take Control ebooks, including the best- selling Take Control of Mac OS X Backups. He's also the author of numerous print books about Mac OS X and a frequent contributor to Macworld magazine. Joe runs a business called alt concepts, which publishes such Web sites as Interesting Thing of the Day and Truffles for Breakfast. (September 2007)
Most Popular Articles
- Prune Your Time Machine Backups Selectively (01 May 2008)
- Reluctantly Switching from Eudora to Apple Mail (13 Apr 2008)
- Hand Coding HTML Is Still in Vogue (25 Apr 2008)
- Iridium-Capable iPhone Not Entirely Laughable (13 Apr 2008)
Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions
- OmniFocus: the interface is weak but the project is willing (11 messages)
- Anyone tried the Online Passport application system? (20 messages)
- Phone Message Software Recommendation please (8 messages)
- auto-filing of read mail in Apple Mail (7 messages)
Shopping for a new digital camera? In "Take Control of Buying a Digital Camera," pro photographer Larry Chen helps you pick out the right camera and accessories for your needs and budget. This book is loaded with tips on using your camera, pointers to the best review sites, and more!
Joe Kissell
Senior Editor
How to Pronounce Myanmar
Recently I've heard the name Myanmar pronounced several different ways on news broadcasts, and I was curious to know what the officially correct pronunciation was...Read more...
First Look: The Linux-Based Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite
A new Mac data recovery utility is actually not Mac software at all, but a bootable Linux CD. That's an odd concept for most Mac users, but even excusing the unfamiliar exterior, is this software a useful problem-solving tool?Read more...
Solve More Word 2008 Problems with AppleScript
A pair of articles I wrote for Macworld provide several AppleScripts that address common complaints in Word 2008.Read more...
A Trio of Articles about iCal Collaboration
If you want more than one person to be able to access and edit iCal calendars, a collection of articles I wrote for Macworld may give you the guidance you need.Read more...
Instant Messaging for Introverts
Can your personality type affect your willingness to use certain modes of communication? In particular, do introverts have a harder time with technologies like instant messaging and Twitter than extroverts?Read more...
Web Browser Reviews at Macworld
An article I wrote for Macworld provides an overview of the ten leading Web browsers for Mac OS X.Read more...
Updated Paste Plain Text AppleScript for Word 2008
A new and improved version of Joe's Paste Plain Text AppleScript is shorter, more elegant, and less likely to result in the wrong font being used.Read more...
SmartSleep Solves Safe Sleep Situation
If you're unhappy with the way your Mac laptop handles sleep mode, you no longer need a command-line script to change it. This new preference pane makes it easy to tailor sleep settings to your liking.Read more...
CheckUp 1.0: A Beautiful but Unripe Maintenance Utility
A new maintenance utility looks fantastic and does a few things well, but has some serious bugs, missing features, and other problems.Read more...
A Pair of Time Machine Articles
I have a couple of new articles posted at Macworld.com about Time Machine. Both have been generating lots of comments. If you're using Time Machine, or thinking about it, check these out. Is Time Machine all you need? looks at cases in which Time Machine might be adequate as a sole backup mechanism and cases where you'll want to supplement it with something else - or even skip it altogether...Read more...
SuperDuper 2.5 Released with Leopard Compatibility
The latest version of the popular disk cloning utility is not only compatible with Leopard, it has some fancy tricks up its sleeve - such as making copies of Time Machine archives.Read more...
VMware Fusion. The most seamless way to run Windows on your Mac.Backed by nearly a decade of proven virtualization technology.
Try VMware Fusion today for free, or order online for only $79.
Visit: <http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/vmware-fusion.html>
Using iChat Theater for Remote Presentations
Leopard's iChat Theater feature makes remote video presentations far easier and more flexible than before. But the experience doesn't always match up with the elegant effect of Apple's demos.Read more...
Microsoft Relaxes Licensing for Virtualized Vista
Microsoft has changed its mind once again, and now permits Vista Home editions to be run as guest operating systems using virtualization software.Read more...
Word 2008 and the Paste Plain Text Dance
Pasting plain text in Word 2008 turned out to be weirdly complicated. I found one way of doing it, though, that doesn't rely on third-party utilities, and there may be others.Read more...
More Ways to Pep Up a Slow Mac
Last week Macworld posted my article Fix Mac slowdowns, in which I take inspiration from Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac to discuss numerous potential ways to deal with a Mac that's become more sluggish over timeRead more...
Scanning My Way to a Paperless Office
A few months ago I wrote an article for Macworld titled The Real Paperless Office, and it received tons of positive feedback. Basically I explained how to scan documents in such a way that you end up with a PDF containing both a high-res image of the original and searchable text (PDF+text), meaning that in many cases you can ditch the original documentsRead more...
NTFS Options for Mac Expand
A new tool called NTFS for Mac OS X enables you to read and write to NTFS volumes (such as a Boot Camp partition) seamlessly and with better performance than previously available options.Read more...
Boot Camp and Tiger: One Last Warning
If you're still using the beta version of Boot Camp under Tiger, you'd better upgrade to Leopard (or uninstall Windows) before the end of the year.Read more...
Evaluating the Leopard Installation Process
The Leopard installer is even better than the Tiger installer was. That's good news, but some oddities and frustrations remain. Perhaps I can interest you in a little book I wrote on the subject.Read more...
Time Machine: The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Leopard's new backup feature finally brings easy backups to the masses. But is it really all that? And when is that backups book of Joe's going to be updated, anyway?Read more...
Next 20 articles for Joe Kissell...
READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Michael Sciascia, Henrik Munster,
Mark Rothstein, and Ian Campbell for their generous support!


