Colophon
Khurt Williams
Islands in the Net is a novel written in 1988 by science fiction author, Bruce Sterling. It is a story of “data pirates, mercenaries, nanotechnology, weaponry, and post-millennial voodoo”. It represents a future where individuals can use the Internet to topple governments, change lives and make history. I love science fiction especially cyberpunk and Japanese animation and super hero graphic novels. I like that technology empowers human beings to do the most incredible things but hate it when it is used to enslave or limit.
I graduated from the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School with a degree in Electrical Engineering. For a while I worked in the multimedia lab at Sarnoff Corporation. From 2000 through 2003 I was the principal of a web development and information systems consulting practice called Williams Interactive, Inc. In that role I applied my knowledge of software engineering techniques in web application development. I’ve done web development on Linux and UNIX using open source languages and software. I’m a fan of object-oriented programming, dynamic languages, and client side applications.
In 2003 I took a full time position with a former client (a large pharmaceutical firm located in the Princeton, NJ area) in their information security department as an information security manager. I spend most of my time advising information management about security risk and help set security strategy (cloud computing).
In the past I have been a heavy Linux user but recently have found myself in love with OS X. It was the UNIX nature of OS X that made me curious. I have my UNIX and a beautiful and well designed user interface.
I spend most of my free time increasing my knowledge of photography with my Nikon D40 and learning about social media.
I love hefe-weisse ales (Schneider & Sohn Weisse is my favorite) and African coffees, especially Ethipian Harrar. I get my coffee locally from Rocky Hill Buy the Cup and I am often found sipping an ice cold latte from Thomas Sweet.
Using journaling in iPhoto for iOS
What excited me most about the Apple press event today was not the 2048×1536 pixel retina display1, or the quad-core A5X CPU, or the 5MP digital camera. What excited me was the introduction of iPhoto. Now iPhoto is not as feature rich as iPhoto for OS X but it gets the jobs done. The feature list is impressive2 but the two features that caught my eye are the social sharing features and journaling. First of all what I’ve written below is not meant to be a review. I’m sure you’ll soon find well written reviews all over the web in a few...
read moreRead Later for Mac OS X
Instapaper, Read It Later, Readability are web based services allow you to save long web pages to read later, when you have time, on your computer, iPhone, iPad, or Kindle. These web based services have native iOS that have become popular on mobile devices but desktop operating systems have gone without. On the Mac, the only option has been using the web based version Instapaper or Read It Later. Read Later is free app that was recently released in the app store that offers a native OS solution. What is Read Later? Read Later gives you...
read moreOS X Mountain Lion
The word is out, Apple will release a new version of OS X this summer. I got news of this from a friend who is a Mac developer. The interesting thing he pointed out to me was that Apple dropped the word “Mac” from the OS. It’s just OS X Mountain Lion. After looking over the previewed feature list I can understand why. OS X Mountain Lion is meant to be a complement to the iPad and iPhone. iCloud When Apple realeased iOS last year, it also introduced iCloud. iCloud allows seamless sync of contact, calendar, mail, photos, and...
read moreAirPort Utility 6.0 Released
UPDATE: A writeup on TUAW suggest that certain features are missing from the update. Last night Apple released version 6.0 of the Apple AirPort Utility for the Mac as well as Time Capsule Firmware Update 7.6.1. The new release does not appear to have gained any new features or fix any bugs. However AirPort Utility 6.0 has been given a facelift. The new user interface (UI) looks just like the iOS version of the utility. The user is presented with a network diagram of how the network devices (Apple only) are connected together and to the...
read moreSync Yahoo Contacts, Calendar, and Mail to your Mac
{EAV_BLOG_VER:58ff1b81f38fa2c9} I’m a big Google Services user but some of my friends and colleagues prefer Yahoo! I’ve written about how to integrate Google Services with my Mac, iPhone and iPad but I’ve remiss in writing anything about Yahoo! Enabling Yahoo! Services on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) is fairly straight forward. System Preferences The direct method for setting up Google services on OS X Lion is via the System Preferences. OS X Lion System Preferences has a new option called Mail, Contacts & Calendars under the Internet...
read moreiOS 5 Secure Mail
One of the least mentioned features of the new Mail app in iOS 5 is encrypted email. iOS 5 allows the user to send digitally signed or encrypted email to protect your electronic communications. I’ve written about digital certificates before on this blog. The idea is to use a special key — a digital certificate — to sign and encode your email so that only the intended recipient can read it. I’ve wanted this feature in iOS for awhile. Encrypted email is a great way to send confidential information — passwords, social security numbers...
read moreiCloud’s PhotoStream
iOS 5 was released this week with a large list of improvements and new features. One new feature that I’ve come to love immediately — I have used the iOS 5 developer beta — is the PhotoStream feature of the update Photo app. Smartphones have grown in popularity and so along with the resolution and sensitivity of the cameras in those devices. My iPhone 4 has a five megapixel (MP) camera and the newly announced iPhone 4S will have an 8MP camera. When you consider how lightweight and compact smartphones are and that we have them with us...
read moreSetup Mail, Address Book and iCal to use Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts on OS X Lion
I’m a big Google services user. I’ve had a Gmail account since the day the service launched and Gmail has been my default email address since. When Google launched the Calendar service I integrated that into my daily life. Google Talk hasn’t taken over the instant messaging world but it quickly became my preferred client. With each iteration of the OS since Leopard, Apple has made it easier to integrate these Google Services, including Address Book into my Mac life. Apple’s latest Mac operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion, has been...
read moreHow to setup Mail, Contacts and Calendar on OS X Lion to use an Exchange 2007 account
With each iteration of the OS since Leopard, Apple has made it easier to integrate Exchange Messaging Services with OS X native productivity applications — Mail, iCal and Address Book. Apple’s latest Mac operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion, has been out for some time and Apple has made significant changes to some of the native apps including Mail and iCal that make setup and use of Google services even easier. Last year I wrote about how to do this under Snow Leopard. Let me show you how to do this under Lion. System Preferences The...
read moreHow to create photo albums on an iPad using iTunes
A good photographer friend of mine is quite frustrated — rightfully so — with the native Photos app on the iPad. He’s been importing photos into his iPad using the iPad Camera Connection Kit and was hoping to create photo albums from his shoot to show to his clients. Of course the Photos apps is not really designed for photo professionals. It is designed around the needs of the point-n-shoot camera family photographer — the ones who only bring out the camera for family events but leave the images on the camera for months. Even if...
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