addresses

After installing an OS update, migrating your system, or otherwise performing a major change to your Mac, you may experience a problem where the system will no longer connect to the network, and upon checking your network settings it will show the system has a "self-assigned IP address." This may be the case even though other devices on the same network are working just fine. Additionally, while it may happen to some Macs, it may not happen to others that appear to be set up identically.

In attempting to fix this problem, people may try repairing permissions, booting … Read more

Forget being limited to .com, .net, and .org.

The Internet's overseers today approved a plan to dramatically expand the number "generic top-level domains," or GTLDs, as soon as the end of 2012. There are only 22 such GTLDs today--others include .edu, .mil, and .biz--but the expansion could add dozens or potentially even hundreds more.

Among other implications, that means new opportunities and new complications for trademark holders.

"It opens up [what's] the right of the dot," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, speaking at … Read more

Recently some OS X users have experienced problems in which their contact lists end up getting a number of No Name vCard entries. When this problem happens, these entries seem to accumulate over time to the point where thousands will fill the Address Book. In addition, the entries also show up on iOS devices that are being synced to the Mac.

One user on the Apple Discussion Communities suggested the issue may be from a MobileMe server error, as he was informed of by MobileMe support, so if you are experiencing this issue you might try contacting Apple's support … Read more

Phone Amego is a clever little menu-bar app that integrates your iPhone--or other Bluetooth phone--with your Mac and with the Google Voice service. At its most basic, Phone Amego provides onscreen caller ID (a small window on your Mac displays incoming callers, and you close the window to send the call to voice mail, or you can program it with AppleScript to respond when you speak the name) and enables you to call contacts from your Address Book with just a couple of clicks. There are also basics like a call log, timer, and a hot key for answering calls. … Read more

Google keeps the news ball rolling, dropping two new Chromebook laptops and an enterprise-ready Chromebox. Plus, of course, they make Chrome OS official. Oh, and how could we bury the lead? Angry Birds is now available in the Chrome App Store! For free! Plus, it turns out 100,000 Facebook apps were accidentally leaking your data, Apple and Google hit the privacy hot sheet, and a dude jumps out of a helicopter with a rocket pack strapped to his back. We won't spoil the ending for you. --Molly

Efficient Address Book Free Portable is a name that nicely sums up this application, a portable freeware version of an efficient standalone e-mail contacts manager. It's a full-featured address book that you can carry around with you on a USB keychain drive or other portable storage media or device and access from any Windows PC. It can also run at start-up and in multiple instances, too.

We extracted the compressed download and saved it to our portable apps folder. Efficient Address Book Free Portable will run from anywhere in Windows and from pretty much anything Windows can access, too, … Read more

One common issue that has affected OS X systems is when network interfaces are issued a self-assigned IP address, even though the system is connected to a network with a properly configured DHCP server. When this happens, other systems on the same network (often including similarly configured Macs) will be working just fine, indicating the problem lies with the Mac's configuration and is not a compatibility issue with the networking hardware.

Often when I encounter this issue, I find that people have recently made a relatively major configuration change to their systems, either by updating their OS version, performing … Read more

One of the best things, in my opinion, about Apple software is that when you learn something in one program, like iTunes, it can often carry over to other applications, like Address Book. Since iTunes has been around for so long and is more or less required to run iPods, iPhones, and iPads, many people have discovered some of its niftier features, such as Smart Playlists that keep music organized based on filters.

If you're not familiar with Smart Playlists, you likely have them in iTunes and just didn't know it. If you see "Recently Added" … Read more

This review has been updated throughout, now that I have had hands-on experience with the Plaxo Personal Assistant product.

Some time after its launch back in 2002, contact list management app Plaxo lost its way. Leadership at the company saw social networking as a bandwagon it had to get on and made Plaxo into a personal social hub--which nobody really needed. It was the second bad mistake Plaxo had made with its service, the first being its habit of sending requests for updated information to users' contacts that were often taken for spam. Nobody liked Plaxo's users, even though … Read more