Everything and the kitchen sync

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 9:41 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Tips

Blog buddy and 43 Folders proprietor Merlin Mann has issued…a throwdown, asking his users: how do you keep your two (or more) Macs in sync? Now, we sincerely believe that Merlin does not intend to use this for merely his own personal gratification, and are convinced that he wants to unearth this sacred knowledge for the good of all mankind. Merlin’s looking for something a little more than just .Mac: a robust solution that will intelligently sync application settings, make backups easy, and provide offline access. I suspect this solution does exist, but it’s likely been hammered into a wooden crate and left in a warehouse somewhere near the Ark.

Seriously, it’s an excellent question, and one that I’ve been wrestling with lately. I own two Macs: my MacBook, which is my primary machine, and an aging PowerMac, which serves as my vault. I keep my photos, music, and a huge backlog of documents on the PowerMac, which is backed up to an external HD, and try to keep as little non-redundant data on the MacBook as possible. Most of my documents live on my iDisk, which gives me essentially three copies, one on Apple’s server, and one on each computer. But lately, I’ve been using the PowerMac less and less, and I find it annoying to have to boot it up to sync my iPod with my full library, or access some pictures. It occurs to me that I need something more like a centralized storage solution to keep my iTunes and iPhoto data, so that I could access it from multiple computers if need be. I think the answer in my case is some sort of Network Attached Storage (NAS) with a RAID, but I haven’t investigated all the possibilities yet.

Anyway, if you’ve got a solution for Merlin (and me!), head over to 43 Folders and let fly.

Keynote, er, Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 9:03 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Apple » People

Oh, Al Gore. What a life you live! Apple board member; Oscar winner; former United States Vice President; and now, Nobel laureate. Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for their work on publicizing climate change. Gore has said he’ll donate his half of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection. Next up: Jonathan Ive will win a Nobel Prize for Awesomeness, due to his fantastic industrial designs.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Gore, it’s this: if I ever want to win a Nobel Peace Prize, or win $1.5 million, I’m seriously going to have to start learning to use Keynote. Because nobody wins a Nobel Peace Prize when their PowerPoint presentation quits half way through because Windows has committed an illegal operation. Just ask Emmett J. Hopenschaller, who in 1998 concocted a foolproof plan to implement world peace when his PC crashed at the opening slide of his slideshow, leaving only the tantalizing title: “Candy and Unicorns.” Hopenschaller never recovered from his shame, and set about on a self-directed mission to completely obliterate all record of himself from the face of the planet.

This WireTap doesn’t require a court order

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 8:15 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Software

Ambrosia’s original WireTap was a free program whose ability to record audio from anywhere on your Mac was a useful addition to my Mac utility Swiss army knife, but when that app was discontinued in favor of the commercial WireTap Pro, I didn’t bother to upgrade; it wasn’t something that I used enough to spend the money on it. WireTap Pro has now bit the dust in turn, replaced by Ambrosia’s latest offering: WireTap Studio.

The Studio version incorporates the same ability to record any audio produced by hardware or software on your Mac and adds a suite of simple editing tools. WireTap Studio creates a lossless master of your recordings, allowing you to try different codecs and bitrates with the LivePreview function. And there’s a facility for scheduling recordings, too, along with integration with Griffin’s RadioShark for timeshifting AM/FM radio programming. There are also a variety of export options built in, such as uploading to a server, email, or even transferring the file to a cell phone.

WireTap Studio will naturally invite comparisons with another lossless editor released last year: Rogue Amoeba’s Fission. Fission, however, doesn’t include WireTap Studio’s recording capabilities built-in (you’ll find those in RA’s venerable Audio Hijack Pro, which you can get bundled with Fission for just $50). Ambrosia is acknowledging its competition by offering a $30 upgrade price for users of Fission, as well as WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro.

[via Macworld]

Apple tells us how to baby MagSafe

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 7:33 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Tips

You have to admit. There’s something funny about Apple dedicating an entire knowledge base entry to good ways to disconnect MagSafe. It was designed to help save your laptop from having its power adapter roughly pulled.

To save wear and tear on the adapter, there are four ways to disconnect it: up, down, left, and right. Just to make sure you understand those four directions, pictures are supplied. And remember that the biggest no-no is pulling using the cord. Be nice to MagSafe. It’s being nice to you.

EasyFind 4.0 makes finding… easy

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 6:30 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Software » Updates

You’ll be shocked to know that not all people are completely in love with Mac OS X’s Spotlight search. And by not completely in love, I mean they loath it. It seems to fail at the most inopportune times. The live searching, while something I like, frustrates many people (because that searching seems to grab all the attention, ignoring additional input).

Devon Technology released version 4 of its freeware, lightweight, and powerful search utility, EasyFind. I typically stay out of the Finder and seem to search even less (unless you count LaunchBar use as searching). I took a few moments play with EasyFind and there is a lot to like about it. For one thing, it doesn’t make a show out of searching. The interface is straight forward. You can also control the way you’re searching, rather than relying on hacks to force Spotlight to do what you want.

If you do a lot of searching and find Spotlight lacking, definitely check out EasyFind (it’s free!).

Getting Transmit’d

Posted on Oct. 12, ’07, 5:22 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Software

A big part of a commercial software product’s branding is its icon. It stares you in the face from its place in the dock. For better or worse, users associate that image with the application and its functionality. Perhaps due to the ease with which images can get passed around on the internet, these icons are stolen regularly. The classic example is Panic’s Transmit. They’ve collected all the unauthorized uses of the program’s icon into a single gallery of hilarity.

Friend o’ the blog, Dan Jalkut, just found out MarsEdit’s icon has snuck into a Linux distribution. Dan is not what I’d call a confrontational guy, but he wanted to assert his ownership of the icon. He decided to contact the developer, but no electronic means of contact seemed available except for IRC, so he hopped on the project’s channel and asked how he might go about getting the icon removed.

Dan gives an account of his interaction and one of the channel participants posted a transcript to the distribution’s forums. It’s true that these guys aren’t representative of the project itself, but it speaks to their userbase. Hmmm, I seem to remember saying yesterday that Linux has passionate users just like Apple. Case in point. It’s clear that the icon is MarsEdit’s. It’s always been MarsEdit’s ever since it was created by Bryan Bell.

Anyway, the developer has been notified and seems happy to change the icon out. Good guys win. And Dan no longer has to listen to the suggestion that “sharing is nice”.

Up, down, up, down, up, down…steady

Posted on Oct. 11, ’07, 2:11 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Business

Watching Apple’s stock today was like watching someone jump off a tall building and onto a trampoline. Here’s hoping a coworker didn’t ask you to take his graveyard shift while you viewed the price graph — he might’ve thought you were nodding yes.

Apple’s share price rose today as a result of several positive analyst reports…then plummeted dramatically. Then started climbing up again. Then dipped. Then climbed a little more. Yahoo! Finance reports the stock’s range for day was $153.21 to $171.88. That’s $18.67. In one day. Up and down. And Apple didn’t even make any major announcement (this doesn’t count).

It’s just…I don’t…jeezus. Talk about highs and lows. A psychiatrist would want to prescribe Apple’s stock medication for bipolar disorder. Any shareholders out there suffer a heart-attack from the dramatic adjustments?

(Disclaimer: Dan Pourhadi recently sold his Apple stock, but really, really wishes he hadn’t.)

Big…open…Spaces…

Posted on Oct. 11, ’07, 1:24 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Software

Apple says Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is supposed to be released sometime this month. That usually means the very last day of the month (in this case, the 31st). But regardless of the specific date, it’s coming…soon. So perhaps it’s time to re-familiarize ourselves with some of the shiny new features, eh?

Since I obviously don’t have a copy of Leopard (you think I’m paying $500 for pre-release seeds? Well I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you), I can’t say anything more than what’s on Apple’s Leopard preview site. But Apple-“To Hell With NDA”-Insider gets their grubby little paws on everything, and is more than willing to share its opinion on the near-finished OS X increment.

Today, in their second “Road to Mac OS X Leopard” article (the first was about the new Dock), they tackle one of the originally-less-thrilling features of Leopard, Spaces. If you’ll recall (or if you won’t), Spaces is a virtual-desktop app built right into OS X. It’s basically like having multiple displays connected to your computer — but instead moving your head from one screen to the next, you hit a key combo to switch to the next desktop on a single display. The idea, essentially, is to set up multiple work environments — one for web browsing, one for email, etc. — to keep your screen free of clutter (and distraction).

Virtual desktops are nothing new. I remember using them on Linux years ago — and they were around way before even then. But because of tediousness, effort required, and the need to adapt yourself to this new way of dealing with windows, they were never really picked up by the mainstream. When Spaces was first talked about at WWDC ‘06, I remember giving VirtueDesktops — a virtual-desktops app for OS X — a try. It was fun for a few days, but the novelty wore off and I just sort of forgot about it.

AppleInsider, though, seems to think Apple may have done what it does best: take a relatively unimpressive tool and make it useful. They claim it takes a “new and different” approach to virtual desktops, and mentions “how well Leopard’s Spaces actually works in practice.”

The article is three pages long and takes a look at the history of VDs, some inherent problems with them, and some cool things Apple did to make them helpful. And be sure to check out Macworld’s more to-the-point first look at Spaces, as well as Apple’s Spaces preview site, where you can watch a demo video of the clutter-cutter in action.

Soldiers in Iraq to use iPods for translation

Posted on Oct. 11, ’07, 11:00 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar

Category | iPod

An Orlando-based company, Vcom3D, is about to deploy the first iPod-based military-grade translation software for 160 iPods along with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq — that’s pretty neat, given that a lot of soldiers probably already carry iPods with them anyway and are familiar with the interface.

The software contains audio that can be played over a small speaker for simple commands like: “We need to search your vehicle.” It also includes written text, and animated gestures to help comprehension.

For now, the company is releasing Iraqi-Arabic and Kurdish languages, but says that the Pashto and Dari dialects will be available for use in Afghanistan in November 2007.

VCom3D is also working on a version for the new flash-based iPod nano, which no doubt will hold up much better in a war zone.

[via TUAW]

How to set up a free VPN in two minutes

Posted on Oct. 11, ’07, 10:00 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar

Category | Security

Most of us know that it’s generally good practice to connect to a WiFi hotspot via a VPN so that those baddies can’t packet sniff. However, unless you’re willing to pony up some cash ($40+ per year), or your company provides you with one, it can be a bit tricky.

But Macworld points out that there’s a free VPN option out there that I was previously unaware of:

AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield—is free. After downloading and installing the software, you simply choose Connect from the Hotspot Shield menu and wait a few seconds for a connection message to appear in Safari. Thereafter, all your wireless traffic will be encrypted.

I just tried it out, and it works as advertised — the only thing is that each time you open up a new browser window, it create a new little bar, not unlike a banner ad, reminding you that you’re using Hotspot Shield. If only there was a GreaseMonkey script that would remove that, Still, that’s a small price to pay for a VPN, hrm?

The fiery PowerBook of doom incident

Posted on Oct. 11, ’07, 9:09 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Hardware

Jimm Lasser left his PowerBook on the floor overnight, and when he woke up in the morning, found that it was, literally, on fire. Well, smoking more than anything else, but serious enough that he had to call the fire department, and was left with the twisted metal husk of the machine he’d once loved. Fortunately, upon being called, it seems that Apple customer service did right by him.

I got Geoff what he wanted. The fire report. My serial number (from the dealer I bought it from). The machine itself.

And then, a few days later, I got the very Mac Book Pro I am typing on.

The funny thing is, a Mac almost killed me, and I came out of the whole experience feeling more strongly about Apple as a company.

It is like we had a fight, with knives and foreign objects and the authorities involved, but in the end, right before the credits roll, right before we look at each other covered in dirt and blood and soot and ripped clothes, we see eye to eye, human to human, me and the brand, and we shrug it off, make it even, manage a hug and keep walking together.

Hey, you know, that’s great. I’m glad things worked out for Jimm. But I have just a little teeny-weeny addendum I’d like to direct to all computer manufacturers—not just Apple: hey, can we stop making computers that catch on fire? That’d be great. Thanks.

[via The Consumerist]