Visual Quickstart Guide XML (Second Edition) – Review


XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has become the medium to move data in efficient and predictable ways. Derived from a similar markup language, SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), XML is structured, but not as highly as SGML. Structure is what it’s all about. The very loosely structured HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is also derived from SGML. Even the XML markup looks amazingly like HTML, except, as the author explains, HTML defines how information will look, while XML defines how the information is formatted.

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Internet Security Barrier X5 Antispam Edition DP – Review


There are only a very few commercial anti-virus programs available for the Mac: Norton AntiVirus and Intego’s Internet Security Barrier X5. There’s also one major freeware product, ClamXav. Today, however, we’re going to talk about the Intego Internet Security Barrier X5 Dual Protection product.

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RAIDBank4 – Review


Briefly described, the RAIDBank4 is a 4.85 x 6.5 x 9.1 inch box which holds four SATA hard drives (in this case, there were four decent quality Western Digital 500 GB drives). Micronet bills this unit as the "world’s smallest RAID". While I don’t know this to be true, I don’t think it could get much smaller.

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The Ultimate HTML Reference – Book Review


This book replaced Taylor’s Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages book as my primary HTML reference at home and at the office. It’s well worth the 45 dollar price-tag. I can only find fault with the fact that it doesn’t have enough chunks of sample HTML and illustrations of how the HTML will render.

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MacFamily Tree 5
Review


Most of you probably have at least one person in your extended families trying to find out more about their ancestors so they can share that information with the rest of their family, and if they are doing their work on the Macintosh, MacFamilyTree could be just the product for them.

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Newer Technology miniStack NAS
Review


After my disappointing experience with a NAS I tested a few weeks ago, I was really looking forward to evaluating this unit. To recap, a network attached storage (NAS) device is a shared disk drive that uses your internal network, or in some cases the internet to share data with multiple computers. It’s a great place to store backups, large media files (such as for home theater systems), archived multimedia projects, or anything else that requires larger than average amounts of storage space.

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Fantom Drives GForce MegaDisk NAS
Review


The idea is that a NAS device securely sits out on your network and makes itself available to anyone authorized to use the network. Typical applications for a NAS include a central backup system, iTunes server, movie server, shared file server, and so on. This is a file server (and more) for the rest of us…or is it? Keep reading.

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Octava 4×1 HDMI Switch with 4×1 Optical Audio
Review


I had a problem (I’m sure my brother, Guy Serle, would put that statement into the present tense…). I started putting together a home theater system with a 1.67 GHz Core Duo Mac mini at its heart. That’s when I discovered I was short some inputs.

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Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages
Review


Not only does this book go into the basics, but also gives excellent detail on HTML tagging, with most of the important modifiers needed for text formatting, as well as special-case features, and they all still work on today’s browsers (except maybe the old Netscape “blink” tag).

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Data Backup 3.0
Review


Everyone hates doing backups. I know I do. Like most utility software packages, products like this are ignored until it is too late, and your precious data is gone. It’s funny how diligent I was at work (I suppose my job being at stake had something to do with it…), yet I almost never backed up anything at home. I’ve been playing the odds for a lot of years, and have so far been pretty lucky.

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Intego Internet Security Barrier X4 Antispam Edition DP
Review


When John Nemo asked me to review this product, I wound up having to buy a copy of Parallels for my Intel Core Duo Mac mini. I had put it off for a while, but in hindsight, I’m glad I did it. As I reported previously, the Parallels and Windows XP Pro installations went extremely smoothly, as did all the zillions of Windows security patches that had to be installed. Read the full review here

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