Who knows why Apple decided not to allow you to export your contacts from the OS X Address Book application? Maybe it’s fear of feature bloat; maybe it’s a sinister attempt to lock you in once you’ve started using their app.

One thing’s for certain: it’s a colossal pain.

(You actually can export individual contacts very easily as vCards. But if what you’re looking for is a handy comma-separated list — a.k.a. CSV, the text-based lingua franca of long lists of contacts — Address Book gives you the brush-off. Funny, because it does allow you to import a CSV file.)

Fortunately, the answer is as close as one of the shortest software downloads you’ll ever experience. AddressBookToCSV is a tiny, 39KB program that does one thing, and one thing only: make a CSV version of your Address Book file.

Because it never writes to your Address Book data, AddressBookToCSV is perfectly safe. And you can use the file it spits out for adding addresses to your GMail account, manipulating data in a spreadsheet, or extending your web of contacts on several social networking platforms. (Or even switching to a different address book.)

One last little trick: developer Ken Ferry (I think that’s his name, judging by his e-mail address) includes a newsfeed for every application he publishes on his web page. So you’ll never need to worry about missing a critical update.

Like many parents, we wrestle with the role that TV plays in our daughter’s life. One of the hardest issues is trying to ensure she gets to see girls in leading roles.

Have a look at the protagonists on children’s TV shows, and you’ll see an endless procession of boys. The exceptions are few and far between: Dora the Explorer, Angelina Ballerina, Madeline, the Mole Sisters, and arguably Max and Ruby.

Even on ensemble shows like the always-wonderful Sesame Street, male characters have pride of place. They’re the only ones to get their own segments (Global Grover, Elmo’s World, Journey to Ernie), and the great majority of the muppets are boys.

Is it that program executives believe boys won’t watch a “girl’s show”, while girls will watch a show pitched to either gender?

After two months of waiting, wrangling and wondering, our WeaKnees hard drive upgrade for our TiVo arrived at the door this afternoon. However, we had no room for it, and told the Canada Post guy to leave it in a manger… wait a sec. Wrong story.

This is the story of the WeaKnees upgrade installation. (Good news: there’s a happy ending.)

Read on…

By way of Beth Kanter at the Net² blog, a cool blog mentoring project from one Katy Pearce:

Interested in developing the worldwide blogosphere? Like working with young people?

We are looking for bloggers from around the world to be a blogging mentor for 1 week sometime in February, March, April or May 2006.

The project, Young Caucasus Women, is a group blog for young women from the Caucasus region (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia). The young women will be given a topic to blog on each week, although they are welcome to blog on any topic throughout the week.

We need bloggers to blog on a specific topic on Sunday, hence inspiring the young women’s blog entries. The topic and week need to be determined at least a month in advance.

Then throughout the week, the adult mentor blogger would need to comment on the young women’s blog postings.

THAT’S IT – simple, yet a project with a lot of impact.

You don’t need any background in the region. Just be culturally sensitive, have a topic that would be of interest to international young women and have a blog. We’d love to have English language bloggers from around the world.

Interested or know someone who is? Contact katy (at) katypearce (dot) org for more information.

It’s shaping up to be a shiny, happy holiday for all the excited girls and boys of the blogospheriverse.

Read on…

Over at James Sherritt’s blog, we learn that the Ridge Theatre will close permanently on December 23. Yeah, that Ridge: fantastic popcorn. Great flicks during the film festival. The best marquee in the Lower Mainland.

Here’s the official announcement.

Update: And yet the Ridge stubbornly insists on doing things like making popcorn and showing movies. The “official announcement” link above now leads to an error page. What’s the scoop? See the comments below.

If that blogging geek in the next cubicle over seems a little more jumpy than usual, it may be because she’s constantly checking to see if WordPress has released version 2.0 of their blogging software.

News has reached the WordPress community that the release is imminent, and could happen as early as Wednesday. At that point, every WordPress blog currently running on version 1.5.x of the software — and there are a lot of them — will suddenly stop working.

Okay. Not quite. Even if you don’t upgrade, your blog will keep ticking along, a gigantic community of fellow users will continue to put their shared knowledge at your disposal, and life will go on. Version 2.0 has lots of snazzy features… most of which your readers will never, ever see.

Which is why most users would be well advised to heed the words of WordPress developer Owen Winkler:

If you have any doubt about performing an upgrade – don’t upgrade! There’s no reason to submit yourself as a guinea pig to test this software, especially if you’re fairly satisfied with what you have already. Granted, WordPress 2.0 is a nice piece of work, but it’s going to be a while before 1.5.2 loses the support of the community at large.Take your time. Learn from the mistakes of the 500,000 other downloaders. After that, take the plunge.

It’s good advice. I just wish I could bring myself to take it…

From the CBC:

RBC Royal Bank is sending refunds of $25 million to 250,000 of its GIC clients because the corporation confused simple with compound interest.

Just imagine for a moment that a Canadian government had done that. Can’t you imagine the procession of pundits — from Terence Corcoran to Michael Walker to Tom D’Aquino — all citing this as proof that the public sector should never, ever be trusted with your money?
(Incidentally, the RBC web site headlines this news item thusly: RBC Royal Bank makes interest adjustment on certain non-registered GICs. Ah, understatement.)