ByMike Moffit

Dear Friends,

I think I like the 4th of July falling on a Wednesday. It breaks up the holiday week nicely. There were storms in the forecast and I was a little apprehensive as I jumped on board the electric motorcycle. We finished the bike on Tuesday night and I drove it from Steve Miracle’s shop in Montpelier to Small Dog in Waitsfield. It is a bit underpowered right now, but we are working on solutions to that. (It was plenty fast for the parade which rolls at a snail’s pace anyway.)

I don’t know if the bike garnered that much attention, though—only the most observant could look past Hammerhead in the sidecar to notice the huge bank of batteries and lack of sound from the motorcycle. As I was leaving the parade, I had to use my horn to let people know I was behind them as the bike is so quiet I can sneak up on them!

The Warren 4th of July parade was awesome again and we had a bunch of friends drop by for strawberry daiquiris and mountain croquet afterwards. The rain held off and we ended up just getting some showers after dark. Other parts of Vermont were harder hit by storms, though.

We had a successful eWaste Recycling Event down in Rutland last Saturday with almost 500 cars dropping off waste. It was great to talk to customers from Vermont’s 2nd largest city. I want to thank the town’s leaders for all of their help and of course, Apple, for providing the recycling services. Don’t forget that you can always drop off your ewaste free of charge throughout the year at any of our three stores as well!

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  • My daughter Autumn, who teaches 4th Grade up in the Burlington School system, had been juggling that with raising three kids and drumming and dancing in the Jeh Kulu dance company plus going to school to earn her Masters! She graduates from Bennington College on Saturday and proud mom and dad will be riding down to southern Vermont on their motorcycles to watch her receive her diploma.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
    _Don, Kali, Dawn and Mike_

  • MAC TREAT #184: Create Ultra-Compatible Mail Signatures

    Recently my husband became aware of a minor quirk related to Apple Mail and how its sent messages may render in other programs (such as Microsoft Outlook).

    For business emails, many of us utilize Signatures in Mail to give us a professional signature at the bottom. However, he discovered (via a recipient of one of his emails) that his signature didn’t look quite as he intended on the other end: the fonts rendered much larger and thus, didn’t have the professional feel he was going for.

    It turns out that Apple uses “*WebKit*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit in Mail that Outlook for Windows doesn’t seem to like, and thus, enlarges the font dramatically.

    If you use Mail for business email and you send to largely PC-based clients, you may want to consider this solution:

    * Make a signature in Mail and save
    * Close Mail
    * In Finder, under the Go menu, press Option and navigate to [Your User Library] > Mail > V2 > Mail Data > Signatures*
    * Open webarchive signature file in Text Edit (or HTML editor)
    * Make it how you want it and save (you will be asked if you want to overwrite–say yes)

    Then open Mail again and your ultra-compatible signature will be intact. (If you have a willing test recipient using Outlook on a PC, send it out and verify that it looks the way you intended.) Note that a drawback of this is that you won’t be able to use an image in your signature.

    __*As Don mentions also in his article below, you can temporarily show your user Library by pressing the Option key; keep reading for a permanent option as well!__

  • SPECIAL: $5 off Any In-Stock Book!

    Extra, Extra…read it here first: *save $5 off of any in-stock book.* “*Browse our book selection here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Books_and_Videos/Books/ and enter coupon code *book$5off* when checking out.

  • Looking Into The Future

    There has been a lot of buzz surrounding Google’s Project Glass. This project is developing an augmented reality head-mounted display. They intend to include web browsing ability, natural language controls (think Siri), a built-in camera, as well as a variety of other features. Their current feature set was demonstrated with dramatic flair last week. Skydivers wearing the glasses jumped out of a blimp 6000 feet over San Francisco and landed on the roof of the Moscone Center. The video taken by the devices was streamed live to conference attendees inside the building.

    Apple is also in the head-worn display business. This week Apple was granted a patent based on an application filed on October 13, 2006. The application describes an “apparatus…for projecting a source image in a head-mounted display.” These glasses would allow for true three-dimensional viewing as well as overlaying information over the user’s field of vision.

    The most interesting element to the design is the amount of thought that has gone into the issue of peripheral vision. As a very near-sighted person who doesn’t tolerate contact lenses well, I have had to live without my peripheral vision. However, I still see a blob around my glasses that changes as my viewing angle changes. One problem with other head-worn displays has been motion sickness caused by the moving image image on the display and the static peripheral vision of reality confusing a person’s sense of balance. The Apple glasses have a system built-in to generate a diffuse light source in the peripheral vision that is based on the screen image in order to minimize the sensory discomfort and reduce the “tunnel effect”.

    As soon as Apple releases this product (I am guessing this will be several years out), we will have them available for sale. Stay subscribed for news as it breaks.