Category: Mac

FlyGesture Now Free

FlyGesture from Flyingmeat has now released their gesture program for free download a use by anyone. This a nice little program that allows you to use your mouse of trackpad to draw a gesture on the screen to launch an application, load a web page or other actions within OSX. Head on over and download you free copy.

Links
FlyGesture Home Page

iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Anyone out there looking to buy me a present well here is cool little item. I have an iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) like many of you out there and like most of you have found it is kinda annoying having your earphones getting all tanged up. I like you also like drinking beer so this cool combination of an iPod case / beer top opener is a great idea.

Links
Bevy iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Google Desktop for Mac Available

Google Desktop is now available for the Mac. Although in my opinion it is not as good as using my all time favourite program Quicksilver it is still pretty useful for finding files on your computer. Best of all it contains the Google Updater so that you can make sure that all your google applications are installed and up to date on your mac. It is a free download but please be warned when you first install Google Desktop it does a complete scan of your hard disk for indexing purposes which will take quite some time to complete. I therefore recommend doing the install just before you go to bed so that it can index over night.

Links
Google Desktop For Mac
Quicksilver

Lithium Network Monitoring Platform

Lithium is a cross platform network monitoring tool that can monitor your network components, servers and other appliances. It supports both linux, Mac OSX and Windows, with its core server components running on either OSX or Linux. It is possible to access the core server to access the various graphs and monitoring information either through the Windows and OSX console application or through its web-based user interface. There are also incident management capabilities built-in to provide support when one of the components in the network suffers a break in service.

Links
Lithium Corp Home page

OmniGraffle Stencil for FFBD

After looking around the Internet for an OmniGraffle stencil for creating Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBD) without any luck I decided to just create my own, which you can download from here. This stencil contains all the major components of a Functional Flow Block Diagram which is used to outline the control of flow between functions within a functional architecture. FFBD are extremely helpful to try and describe the behavior of a system while being solution agnostic.

Links
Download Functional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) Stencil
OmniGraffle Home Page

Google Calendar and Apple iSync/iCal Synchronisation

A new application is currently in development called SpanningSync, which will allow two-way synchronisation between Google Calendars and Apple's iSync. This means that all you Apple Calendar Synchronisation applications including Microsoft Entourage, Apple iCal, iSync Compatible Mobile Phones and iSync Compatible PDAs can all be synchronised with Google Calendars. There is a video demonstration of the application being used on the application's blog.

Links
SpanningSync Home page

Adobe Labs and Eclipse RCP

Today I found the Adobe Labs site, which is where Adobe releases all of its beta preview software for testing and trials. There are also some developer tools such as the XML Toolkit, which allows for metadata to be stored within files. Currently XMP supports these file formats: JPEG, PSD, TIFF, AVI, WAV, MPEG, MP3, MOV. Also of interest on this site is the new Flex Builder application. What is interesting about this application is not so much that it is a new application for building Flex applications but rather than it has been developed using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) framework. This is following a general trend for more and more applications to utilise the power of the RCP framework. For a list of some of the already developed RCP applications have a look at this page.

Links
Adobe Labs Site
XMP Toolkit
Eclipse Rich Client Platform
Adobe Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh

Midnight Inbox: Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done (GTD) is the name of a personal time management book that describes a series of actions around the concept of creating lists to get things done. This has been picked up by the Mac community and there seems to be an almost cult following with GTD. We are now starting to see OSX applications that support the GTD principles. One of the better applications that has almost made the 1.0 version milestone is Midnight Inbox. This has to be one of the nicest designed applications that I have seen for a while, with close attention placed on typography.

Links
Wikipedia Article on Getting Things Done
Midnight Inbox Home Page

Cool OSX Apps Site

I have been subscribed to the RSS feed from the Cool OSX Apps site for quite some time now. It is a great little site that points out all the well developed OSX applications for the mac. In addition the site is well designed and has regular updates. The archive is also something else as it provides a live view of the articles against a timeline.

Links
CoolOSXapps.net

Graffletopia

I love OmniGraffle, which is made by OmniGroup. My work colleagues can attest to my love of this application. One of its features is to install templates that contain widgets that you can use in your diagrams. For example there are templates for UML diagrams, network diagrams, family trees, etc. Well to keep up with the spirit of templates there is website called Graffletopia that contains a collection of templates available for OmniGraffle.

Links
OmniGraffle Home Page
Graffletopia

Skype For Mac WITH VIDEO

YYAAAAAYY, Skype has finally been released for mac with video support. Video has been available on the windows version for ages, but now you can download a BETA version of this popular Voice over IP (VoIP) application that also supports video.

Links
Skype with Video for Mac Preview

Sofa Control: Another Apple Remote Application

Seems like more an more people have been wanting to use Apple's Remote for more than just Front Row. Recently I blogged the Remote Buddy software, which is pretty impressive, well now there is another contender called Sofa Control. I still believe that Remote Buddy is a much cleaner produced application; however, Sofa Control has good AppleScript support allowing it to control other applications easier. Sofa Control also allows the user to add new applications and script up the actions they would like performed. In my mind open applications that allow the users to extend it's functionality is always a winner. The downloadable version allows you to operate for a full 30 minutes before ceasing to work, plenty of time to try it out.

Links
Sofa Control
Remote Buddy

Eclipse on Mac Intel

Ok so I haven't been using Eclipse on my mac for a while, actually since I upgraded to the new intel-based MacBook Pro. To my disappointment the 3.1.2 release of Eclipse that I was using crashes when trying to start it. After digging around I have found out that this is because that version of Eclipse does not support mac intel; however, the 3.2 release candidates after RC5 do. Therefore if you wanting to use Eclipse on one of the new intel-based macs then you are going to have to start using the 3.2 stream of eclipse even though it has not finished production. I hope that this will not screw up any plugins that you rely on.

Links
Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan
Eclipse Home Page

Removing iSight from MacBook Pro

I work for a company that does not allow the use of camera's in mobile phones or laptop computers. Therefore when the Apple MacBook Pro and MacBook were released with in-built cameras I was VERY disappointed. I also use a big mix of both windows and mac applications therefore the intel-based mac laptops would be perfect for my work. I have been trying to chase up through my Australian Apple contacts to find a solution to remove the camera or have a laptop built to order without the camera in the first place. I still have not had a confirming reply to my questions. However today I once again went trawling through the forums and found a tidbit of information from a site called ifixit.com. This site contains a visual manual on how to replace the logic board of a MacBook Pro. One of the steps is to remove the laptop screen and as part of this process you disconnect the built-in iSight camera and there are pictures of this. This means that you can physically disconnect the camera to render it useless. However this does not meet my companies guidelines to the letter because the camera is still present it just does not work, it is a step in the right direction though.

Links
ifixit.com Remove Display Page
Apple Support Forum Thread on Removing Camera

Remote Buddy: Enhanced Front Row Remote Functionality

Remote Buddy is a great little mac application that extends the capabilities of the Apple remote that comes with the new Front Row enabled macs. Remote Buddy provides features to control more applications with the remote and even to control the mouse. It uses a very clean and easy to use interface to lead users through the use of the additional functionality creating a pleasant experience for the user. The site has a good video of it being used so for all those who do not have a remote can dream about that new mac they want to buy :) .

Links
Remote Buddy

Apple Mail in Widescreen

I have a widescreen Apple Macbook Pro which is sweet and I also use Apple's Mail program for my home email. Well when I found the Letterbox plugin for Apple Mail I did not even hesitate to install it and what do you know, it works without any pain whatsoever. If you too have a high resolution widescreen monitor then and use Apple Mail then don't think just click on the link below to get your own version of Letterbox running.

Links
Letterbox

MacTF-EPG Currently Not Working

As I am a Topfield PVR and Mac owner I really like the software produced by Nathan Oates to support both platforms. My favourite program of his is the MacTF-EPG program that allows you to easily download an electronic program guide from the Internet and upload it to the EPG. The program works great (although intel version is buggy) except in the last couple of days it has stopped working. I have contacted Nathan and it seems that there is some problem with the EPG feed that is being downloaded, and hopefully it will be fixed in the next couple of days. Lets all hope because I really miss the complete EPG on my Topfield.

Keep up the great work Nathan.

Links
MacTF-EPG Home

Topfield Australia

BEEP Networking

I was looking at the Mac application SubEthaEdit today due to an article about MacZot.com and noticed that SubEthaEdit was using something called BEEP to collaborate with other users using SubEthaEdit. This reference to BEEP peaked my interest as it was a technology/software/gadget/thing that I did not know about and therefore I had to know about it (I am bad with things like this).

After a quick search on my good friend Google I found the BEEP home page and after reading about it have found out that BEEP is a low level library for making it easier to create your own networking protocol. BEEP provides all the common functionality that most applications have to recreate whenever they need to implement their own communication protocol. BEEP makes this easier and even provides a number of predefine profiles for common protocols like TCP or even SOAP. The best way to understand BEEP is to read the article in the links section below as the Beep home pages is a little thin on information.

Links
Beep Home Page
Article describing Beep

EasyEclipse: The easy way to develop using eclipse

Are you interested in developing using Eclipse but have found there are too many different plugins and you are not sure what you need? Well the folks at EasyEclipse are trying to make your life that one little bit easier by including all the plugins in an easy to install version of eclipse or readily packaged plugin bundles. Although you can actually do this all yourself I am all for making things a little easier and quicker to use so go and check it out.

Links
EasyEclipse Home Page

Boot Camp Resource Centre

Versiontracker has created a resource page for all those mac users who have recently installed WinXP on their macs using the Apple Boot Camp program. This is a good start page for all the shareware and free software for windows that you will need to work in windows land. Of vital importance are the virus and spyware programs to keep your windows operating system free from malicious software.

Links
Boot Camp Resource Centre

I love Firefox

Ok so I am a complete convert and am using firefox for everything (home and work) and have also converted both my wife and mum (sort of). Well this is a great little video that summarises the browsers war for me.

Links
Wheee! Video

Mac Mini (intel): My First Experience

My work has just purchased a Mac Mini (intel). One of the reasons for the purchase is to test out all out software so that we can test it will run fine on an intel based mac prior to purchasing more expensive machines. We bought a 1.6Ghz Core Duo Mac mini with 512Mb RAM. The first think that I noticed was that running programs took longer to start up. I put this down to the fact that all of my other systems are running a minimum of 1Gig of RAM and the Mac Mini only has 512Mb. With a quick review of the RAM utilization I did notice that there was absolutely no spare RAM. Therefore the first thing that I would recommend is putting in at least 1Gig of RAM (preferably as a single module so that you can expand later if required). The other potential slow down was because many of the applications that I was trying are not yet universal binaries and therefore there is a hit as Rosetta automatically compiles up the code to the Intel native instructions set. However, once the programs were running they responded quickly.

The next item for me to play with was Front Row, as this is the first computer that I have had a chance to play with. On first inspection I really liked the remote. It was very small without being too small, which meant that I could put it in my pocket and not notice it there but still not lose it. One thing that disappointed me was the level of responsiveness when using the remote. When starting up Front Row by clicking on the menu button there are numerous occasions when it seems to take forever to Front Row to start. Also when entering a slide show in the pictures section it would take quite some time. Some occasions it was long enough for me to start wondering if the mac had crashed so i would start hitting more buttons (always a bad thing to do). The end result is that my Front Row experience is mixed, when it does respond I absolutely love it but the occasions when it does not respond and seems to hang really taints my opinion of the software.

Next to test was the new Apple Bootcamp. This has got to be one of the easiest things to do. Simply install the Bootcamp assistant like any other program and then just follow the prompts, there really was not much to do. One thing though is do make sure you have an Windows XP install CD that contains Service Pack 2 as it is an absolute pain to try and install it at a later stage. Without SP2 windows still loads and works but you do not get any network and the display drivers do not work. In addition the drivers CD from apple that is created by the Bootcamp Assistant does not work as it requires some SP2 files. Other than the Service Pack 2 issue, which is my fault, Bootcamp works with no problems at all.

After seeing the speed of running windows straight on the mac hardware I was very keen to try the beta of Parallels. The software installed with no problems and run straight out of the box. Installing windows was a breeze and once I had installed the VM addition tools into the WIndows VM the mouse worked more smoothly and could move between the VM window and the OSX desktop. The beta version does not support full screen but I still found it extremely useful. The speed of windows in the VM environment was extremely good and without doing any benchmarks I would say that it was almost as fast as running windows straight on hardware through Bootcamp; although much less memory was available.

So the end result is that both Bootcamp and Parallels ran windows extremely well with very little fuss to setup. Front Row worked but seemed a little sluggish. Running programs in generally seemed to take a little longer to startup. My final comment is get as much RAM as you can afford as with using Rosetta, VMs and everything else you will really really need it.

Intel releases development tools for Intel-based Macs

Intel has released a number of tools for Mac developers to optimise their code to run on the Intel Core Duo processors. The products available are:

• Fortran Compiler
• C++ Compiler
• Math Kernel Library for Mac OS
• Integrated Performance Primitives
• Supporting documentation

Links
Development Support for Intel-based Macs

Windows Virtualisation on Mac OSX on Intel

I have been wanting to run windows applications within OSX for quite some time. Up until now the only option has been Virtual PC, which runs really slowly. With the introduction of macs using the intel processor the realisation of windows on macs became a little closer as windows only runs on x86 based processors. Then came the dual booting programs that allowed intel macs to boot both windows and OSX but this is not really what you want because it means rebooting to move back and forth between the operating systems and lets face it, windows sucks and OSX is just gorgeous to use. So what we really need is either a virtualisation layer within OSX to install windows into, similar to Virtual PC but for intel. A company called Parallels has created a product called Parallels Workstation which is now available as a beta for 30 day trial. Unfortunately I do not have an intel mac to test this out just yet but watch this space.

Although Parallels Workstation is still not the optimal situation as you still need to run a full copy of windows within the virtualisation environment within OSX. What I would prefer to see is a software abstraction layer that allows windows applications to run from directly within OSX and think that they are running within the windows environment, similar to Wine on the Linux operating system. You never know we may see this also in the near future, until then Parallels Workstation seems like a very promising product.

Links
Parallels Workstation Beta Download Page
Wine Home Page

Apple Releases Dual Boot Application

In a weird twist of events Apple has released a new program called Boot Camp as a Public Beta that allows you to easily install and boot Microsoft Windows on an Intel based Apple Mac. This gets around some of the more painful processes that were required to use the other dual boot procedures and gives an easy to use apple-esque interface into the world of dual booting.

Links
Boot Camp Public Beta

Virtue: Virtual Desktop Manager

I have recently changed my virtual desktop manager to Virtue and I have been very impressed. Virtue is an open source developed program available on Sourceforge, which is also being regularly updated (using Sparkle developer plugin, previous blog article). It is quite complete with the ability to bind applications to different virtual screens, use multiple visualizations for screen changes and even has a popup pager that shows all the desktops in a glance with the different applications running on each. Overall it is a very clean and well put together software package.

Links
Virtue Sourceforge Home page

Broken Hard Disk?

Do you have a hard drive that is broken and no longer wants to mount or you believe that you have lost your files? You have tried Fdisk and it can not see the partitions anymore and now you are at a loss because you really want to get the files back. This is the situation that one of my friends was in but then found a nice program called TestDisk, which allows you to recover data off drives even when they no longer can be read by other programs and operating systems. TestDisk is available for a number of operating systems and can understand lots and lots of different file systems so if you have a broken disk and not sure what to do then give this program a go. The same developers have also created another program called PhotoRec, which has been developed for recovering photos off memory cards that are used in digital cameras. PhotoRec comes with the download of TestDisk so you might as well keep it too.

Please Note: Both TestDisk and PhotoRec are command line applications so they are not meant for the basic user.

Links
TestDisk Home Page
PhotoRec Home Page

Q: Windows on Mac Emulator

Q is an emulator to allow OSX users to run other operating systems on their Mac within a virtual machine environment. Q is a Cocoa port of the QEMU system. The system even allows you to emulate other hardware platforms other than x86 (PCs) such as ARM or even PPC. There is even an intel universal binary version although this is still being developed and is buggy. For those who have previously used Virtual PC then you can import the virtual machine images. Overall it is not too bad but the wonderful price of FREE you can not really go wrong. This project is definitely one to watch as it develops.

Links
Q Home Page
Q Downloads
QEMU Home Page

Cocoa Developer Handbook

If you are interested in developing applications for Apple's OSX operating system but do not know where to start then this is a good place. It is a free handbook to Cocoa development.

Links
Become and Xcoder Book

Dateline: Simple Calendar on your Desktop

Here is a great simple little OSX application that displays the current month's calendar on the desktop in a simple and unobtrusive manner. It is free to download so give it a go and see if you like it.

Links
Dateline Application

Dual Boot (OSX and Windows) on Intel Mac

It looks like we are able to dual boot a new Intel Mac with both Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows. However the solution is involved and does require a great deal of computer background knowledge and another PC. The additional PC is used to create the installation CD ready for installing it onto the intel mac therefore you can always just borrow a PC to complete these steps.

Links
OSX and Windows Dual Boot Article
Dual Booting Wiki on osx86project Site
Download Dual Boot Instructions

Sony DRM Packager and HID Editor

I own a Sony Ericsson K700 mobile phone on the Vodafone network and have wanted to set an MP3 as my ringtone, but it has never worked and I did not know why. Well I have just found out that Vodafone disable the ability for MP3 files to be set as ringtones unless they have DRM information. Vodafone do this to force you purchase ringtones from their Vodafone Live service. Well now sony has released a development kit that allows you to add your own DRM information to MP3 files so they can be uploaded to the phone and actually set as your ringtone. The application is simple to use and on a mac where you can use the bluetooth file browser to upload the DRM'ed MP3 file the whole process is extremely easy.

The other Development tool sony has released for the mac is an HID editor. The HID are definitions for the Bluetooth remote control feature that Sony has on a number of their phones that allows users to connect their mobile phone to a mac and control different applications.

Both the DRM Packager and HID editor are available from the Sony Ericsson Developer site (see below)

Links
Sony Ericsson Developer Site

Apple Address Book contact on Gmail

So you are a mac fan and you want to move all your Address contacts over to Gmail so that you can use it there. Well the wonderful people at google have allowed their web based email to upload files in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. Ben Borofka has create a small little application that downloads all your contacts and creates a singe CSV file to quickly and easily move all your contacts over to Gmail. Give it a go for yourself.

Links
A to G Homepage

Intel Mac Mini Released

I am sure if you are a mac fan you have already read all the rumour sites and the announcements for the new Intel-based mac mini that was released today. If this is news to you then you are in for a treat, because amazingly a new mac mini has been released, YAY. To add to the excitement this new version also supports the Apple Front Row software and comes with the cute little remote making this the perfect addition to any home theatre setup and truly fulfilling Apple's vision of having the Apple computers and iPods as the centre of your home media world. The new computer comes in both a single and dual core and can support up to 2gig of RAM, making this a serious contender for a desktop machine for nearly anyone.

Links
Apple Intel Mac Mini Page

OSx86 Project

With the release of the new Apple computer running on the Intel processors a number of sites are starting to pop up in order to run operating systems other than OSX on these machines. OSx86 project is a nicely laid out site that is trying to keep tabs on any developments. It is already reporting the progress people are making with getting Knoppix 4 running on the Apple Intel hardware (commonly known as Macintel). What I really keen to see is the ability to run windows programs within OSX without too much of a noticeable speed slowdown. This would allow me to run the IBM software that I use for work within the elegant Apple OSX operating system. There is an opensource project called Darwine, which is trying to achieve just this and there has also been noise from Microsoft that they will update their Virtual PC software to run on Macintel; however, I will not hold my breath for that one as I would most likely go blue in the face (I expect end of 2006 or early 2007 for Virtual PC to be released).

Links
OSx86 Project
Darwine Homepage

Mac Backup Article Updated

My friend Matthew Phillips has updated his great article on backing up your mac using RsyncX that I host on my website for him. The latest version is available via the link below

Links
How To Backup a Mac Using Rsync Article
RsyncX (via VersionTracker)

Ruby on Rails with AJAX support

One of my friends and collegues has started using Ruby on Rails and has now become a complete convert, so much so that everything can be done with Rails (short name). Rails is a complete web development stack for creating dynamic web applications with very little fuss and painful configuration that is synonymous with other web development stacks, such as J2EE. I was also pointed in the direction of script.aculo.us that provides AJAX support to Rails by using the Prototype JavaScript Library. Some of the examples at script.aculo.us are drag and drop shopping carts, auto-completing text boxes and pretty JavaScript animations.

Rails is built around using the Ruby programming language, which is easy to learn and quick to develop with. Doing things quickly is the moral of the story when developing with RAILS. By adding Prototype enabled scripts on the client end greater interactivity is created and by using AJAX pages no longer need to be fully reloaded speeding up the response times as only the data is sent through the AJAX bindings. One issue with adding all this JavaScript to the client web pages is that the HTML code can become littered with <script> tags; however, this can be solved by attaching the JavaScript events by using CSS selectors. For a description and example of this approach have a look at the Behaviour web page.

Rails and supporting scripts can all be downloaded from the links below. If you are developing on a mac you can download pre-compiled binaries from here. For Windows users a quick install can be downloaded from here.

Links
Ruby on Rails Homepage
script.aculo.us Homepage
Prototype JavaScript Library Home Page
Behaviour Page
Agile Web Development with Rails Book
Programming with Ruby Book
Rico Homepage (Addition JavaScript Libraries using Prototype)

New iSight

I was given a nice new Apple iSight for christmas and was wondering how I could use this to chat with people who are not on macs. Well it seems like this is possible and for an in-depth discussion on this have a read of this article. While browsing on the net I also found an interesting piece of software called iGlasses that manipulates the image the iSight camera grabs and enhances it so that less light is required to get a good picture. From the same company that creates iGlasses are the following programs to do with your isight:

PowerBoost: Allows any mac to host multi-party conferences (even if not powerful enough according to Apple specs)
Conference Recorder: Records your iChat video conferences into a quicktime file.
iChatUSBCam: Allows any USB camera to work with iChat so you do not need to have an iSight.

Links
Video Conferencing with Windows users from Apple iChat
iGlasses
ecamm Programs

iRoster: Bonjour services made easy

I have lots of macs running on the office and have recently found this little application called iRoster that allows you to register applescripts as Bonjour services. In addition the application can display other available services and quickly launch them. This allows me to expose an applescript to start a VNC server that I can then launch remotely via Bonjour.

Links
iRoster

Mac OSX GPS Software

I have a Garmin Venture GPS and am I am looking around for OSX software for mapping and uploading of waypoints. While searching around the Internet I found this great site that has a good list of commercial and in development OSX GPS software.

Links
OSX GPS Software List

Mac-Mac Sync Without .Mac

If you are anything like me you will have lots of macs and you want to have the same calendar information and address book on them all. Well if they are all on the same network you can use a little program called MySync. Get it while it is still in Beta as it is Free (yes still my favourite word) but it will become shareware in the future. MySync uses the Apple sync framework to achieve the syncing which means as more programs support this framework then MySync will automatically work with those new programs, wonderful. This is the second program I have seen recently that is using the Apple sync framework as I have just recently installed the MarkSpace Palm Missing Sync Software Version 5 that now uses the sync framework and provides a much enhanced capability to synchronise my Palm organiser.

Links
MySync
MarkSpace Missing Sync for Palm

Apple Front Row for Mac Mini

When Apple released the new iMac G5 with Front Row I was very surprised to not see the software also available in the Mac Mini as this machine would have been the more likely machine to connect to your TV and use this type of software. Well someone has started an online petition for trying to get the Front Row software available for the mac mini as well (see links below). However I still believe that Front Row is lacking one more thing, TV. If Front Row was available on a mac mini and worked with the various Mac Digital TV solutions out there then I would buy it in a snap as that would be the perfect home theatre solution.

Links:
Online Petiition

Monket Calendar

Ok I already know about phpiCalendar which is a great web application that quickly and easily displays calendars, but that is all it does, display. Monket Calendar does the displaying but also allows for calendars to be edited. Monket still uses the ICS (Internet Calendaring System) calendaring format for the storing calendars but provides great client side editing which includes drag and drop capabilities.

Links
Monket Webpage

RoundCube: Web-based IMAP email client

Like my previous post RoundCube is a web application project that is using the AJAX communication model to allow the browser based interface to communicate with the server without having to refresh the whole page. What this application provides ontop of Webnote is also the ability to use drag and drop like a normal desktop application. RoundCube is a web-based IMAP email client probably one of the best I have seen so far.

Links:
RoundCube Website

Webnote - Online Post-it Notes

Here is an cure little web application that allows you to place notes on a web page. The software can be run on your own website or even on you local machine for personal notes. The web-based interface allows you to drag around the notes and even resize the notes right from within the browser. As an added bonus it uses the increasingly common AJAX communication model to save changes back to the web server.

Links
Webnote Site

VideoCasts: The next craze

So we have PodCasts, which has not become mainstream with the introduction of iTunes' inbuilt podcasting feature which makes it extremely easy to subscribe, download and transfer PodCasts to your iPod. The next craze are VideoCasts, which instead of MP3 files the RSS feeds contain videos. This allows people to subscribe to a VideoCast RSS feed and download videos. There are some people out there calling this Internet TV where you are essentially watching video on demand over the Internet, in some ways this is true.

If you are using a Mac, and I know most of the people who read my blog do, then you can download an open source program called DTV. DTV allows you to quickly and easily subscribe to VideoCast feeds, download and play the video files. The software is still Beta and they have warnings all over the application but I have not had any problems using the application. Give it a go and be one of the first in the VideoCast craze.

Links
Download DTV

No more Java Apple Applications!

It looks like Apple is dropping the Java-Cocoa bridge that allows developers to use Java to develop OSX applications. I personally am not surprised at this as it is a large effort for Apple to maintain both Java and Cocoa APIs. This is effort better directed to other cool applications and hardware.

Links
Cocoa-Java Integration Guide (with note about ongoing support)

Mac Sudoku

A few of my friends absolutely love trying to work out the sudoku puzzles. If you are unfamiliar with this puzzle it is essentially a grid with 3x3 squares and each of these squares contains another grid of 3x3 squares. in each of the small squares is a number and the puzzle starts with only a few of these completed. The idea is to fill in every square with a number with the following constraints:

• A row or column must contain on one instance of each number from 1 to 9.
• Each of the large 9 squares must have one instance of each number from 1 to 9.

Well now you can play these games on your mac with MacSudoku. I personally can not see the fascination in the game but I know lots of people love it, some are even creating their own programs to solve them automatically.

Links
MacSudoku Home Page

NicePlayer: Good, small, free OSX Video Player

Like always I was trawling through some of the my favourite download sites to see what cool programs developers have been busy created when I came across NicePlayer. With the recent release of Quicktime Player 7.0.1 that no longer accepts my previous Quicktime Pro serial number I now can no longer play Quicktime movies in full screen. With NicePlayer, which is free, you can once again play movies in full screen. This player also has a number of other great features like smooth fading screen controls the ability to support all Quicktime Codecs installed in your system, playlists and borderless display. Go on give it a go, you will love it.

Links
NicePlayer Homepage

Samsung to Create 100Mb Solid State HDD

In a quick article at AppleInsider there is mention that Apple may in the future use Samsung developed solid state (flash memory) hard drives in their laptops. The benefit of using flash based storage devices is that they are lighter, consume less power, less prone to damage from vibration or shocks and are faster to access data. Samsung currently can create 16Gb versions of these drives but hope to have 100Gb drives in the near future.

Links
AppleInsider Article

Modify Apple Tiger Mail Buttons

Do you hate the new buttons in OSX Tiger Mail application? If so then download Mail Stamps that allows you change the image to looks more like the old buttons.

Links
Mail Stamps 1.1

Desktop Manager in Tiger

Well I have a copy of OSX Tiger and I am pretty happy with it. All my programs ran with no problems except Desktop Manager, although I knew prior to updating that this was a problem. There is a fix though, as there is a beta version that works in tiger and can be downloaded here.

Links
Desktop Manager Home Page

Delicious Library 1.5 Announced

Delicious Library 1.5 will be released at the same time as Apple's new operating system OSX Tiger (10.4). This new version will leverage upon some of the new technologies available in OSX Tiger, including Spotlight and Dashboard. For a quick movie of a component in Delicious Library click the links below.

Links
Delicious Library 1.5 Article
Delicious Library Home Page

Sidenote

Here is another great little mac utility that allows you to store and quickly access notes. One the biggest problems that I have with the Apple Sticky notes is that they are all over the place and get in the way. Sidenote is much better as it stores all your notes in a nice drawer that hides itself at the side of the screen. This is one slick application and well work a try. Skip down to the download link and give it a go yourself. If you can not even wait to download the application here is a screenshot.

Links
Download Sidenote

Apple OSX Tiger Release Date Announced

Apple has announced the release date of April 29th for its latest operating system.

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 released: DVD encoding made easy

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 has been released. If you are unaware of Handbrake it is an excellent program for Mac OSX that allows you to rip and encode DVDs with an easy to user interface. This has got to be one of the easiest to use DVD Ripper/encoding programs available on both PC or Mac. To use simply select the title from the dvd, the encoding type and then click to encode button to start, it is just that simple.

Links
Handbrake Download Page

CenterStage Alpha Released

One of the Mac media projects has finally released an Alpha (actually been a very quick development cycle). This alpha only supports the display of movies in your movies folder of your home directory but does give and indication of where it is going. The menu is built as a 3D set of icons that rotate around. This release is definitely an alpha release as the menu is a little jumpy and there is no text display of what each icon means but does give a good example of what will be possible. Keep up the good work and I can not wait to see the next release.

Links
CenterStage Download
CenterStage Homepage

Multiple Computers – Single Keyboard and Mouse

At work and at home I have the annoying problem of multiple computers and little desk space for multiple keyboards and mice, well no longer. Introducing Synergy. Synergy allows you to run a service on one machine and clients on all other machines. With a little configuration it is then possible to move the mouse from one monitor to another like using multiple displays on a single machine. The software works seamlessly and it also shares your clipboard, all you need is multiple computers and a TCP/IP network connecting them together. But wait there is more, Synergy supports Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Yes that is right you can seamlessly use one keyboard and mouse between all machine types. The OSX client and server is not as advanced as the windows version but still works very well. All that it is missing are some of the “nice to have” features. This software is up there with usefulness of QuickSilver, one of my other all time favorite programs. Download it now if you are using multiple computers, you will love it.

Links
Synergy Home Page
QuickSilver Home Page

Where Did My CD Go?

Wonder where you CD goes when you insert it into your mac? Well now you can see it with Disctop Pro. Disctop pro listens to you computer as to when CDs are inserted or ejected and accordingly displays an animation of the CD entering and leaving the computer in the correct location on the screen. This obviously works the best for iMacs where the CD drive is behind the screen but is still a good for all other macs too. The best yet, it is FREE, yes my favorite word for software. If you did not think that this was good enough it also downloads the CD image from Amazon and pastes this to the image of the CD. But wait there's more, if it is a audio CD it can also display small play buttons to play the music. Download it now from here.

Links
Disctop Pro

Apple Mail: winmail.dat

I have been receiving a few emails lately that contained an attachment called winmail.dat that could not be opened with any application that I had. After a bit of digging around I have found that these attachments are a wonderful (read idiotic) idea of Microsoft to attach files to emails from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange. In Apple Mail the attachment appears as a winmail.dat file that is of the mime type “application/ms-tnef”. Luckily Josh Jacob has made a program that allows you to extract the files out of this TNEF file. You can download TNEF's Enough from here or here.

Links
Josh Jacob's TNEF Home Page
MacUpdate Page for TNEF's Enough

Powermac G5 Case Mod

This is not one of your normal case mods; instead of completely changing the the look and shape of the case, this mod just adds an extra feature, a digital clock. The image to the right shows the finished product. Although all the instructions in the article are not english, there are plenty of images to follow what is happening. This article is also appearing all over the Net so I am sure it will not be long before someone creates and english version.

Links
Apple G5 LED Clock Mod

Another example of XUL

Conor Dowling has sent me a link to another application called 325 Factlog implemented using Mozilla's XUL interface definition language. This application uses RDF to store its database of facts and shows us another way of creating applications. The goal of the “325 Project” is to comprehensively document the year 325 when the west became Christian.

Have a play at http://www.the325project.org

If you are interested in the technical background or knowledge of some of the issues that have been encountered creating this XUL application then have a look at the technical blog.

Links
The 325 Project home page
Technical Blog
Direct Link to the XUL Application (requires either Mozilla or Firefox)

Growl 0.6 Released

Growl 0.6 has been released with a whole load of new notification styles. Growl is developer notification system that allows any OSX developer to use a system wide notification rather than having all the developer produce a million crappy notification widgets. By having a single notification system allows for messages to cooperate rather than conflict and potentially overlap and get in the way. There are already quite a few applications that support growl (see growl site for complete list).

Links
Growl Home Page
Application List supporting Growl

Mac Media Projects

Since the release of the Apple Mac Mini there have been a large mac community wanting to use their new Mac Minis as the central hub to their multimedia home centre. Two notable projects are CenterStage and iTheater. Both projects are planning on creating a product that will allow you to connect a mac up to your TV and watch TV, videos, photos, DVDs, etc. all from an easy to use interface. I have subscribed to the RSS feeds from both and will be watching them very closely. Both seem to be developed along the same timelines. iTheatre is hoping to release a first version in a week or so (good luck to them). No downloads available yet ... stay tuned.

Links
CenterStage Home Page
iTheater Home Page

Mac: Two Finger Scrolling

The new powerbooks recently released by Apple have a new feature, trackpad scrolling. This is great but all us who have a powerbook pre 2005 this feature is out of reach... or is it. Here is an article that describes how to apply the same driver to pre 2005 powerbooks. I have applied this to my powerbook that was purchased late 2004 running 10.3.8 with no problems whatsoever. This patch will not work on all laptops, to check enter the following into your terminal application:

    ioreg -l | grep “W Enhanced Trackpad”

The output of this command should be '“W Enhanced Trackpad” = 1'. If you do not get this it means that your trackpad is not compatible or you are running the SideTrack utility.

If you do get the right output then go to this this page and download the altered driver and follow the simple instructions.

To install the driver once downloaded you use the following commands to change the ownership on the driver, unload the existing driver and then load the new driver:

    sudo chown -R root:wheel ./AppleADBMouse.kext
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleADBMouse && \
    sudo kextload ./AppleADBMouse.kext

I must warn you that you are using terminal to modify the state of the mouse driver so please be careful and follow the instructions carefully.

UPDATE - There is an installer now and is called iScroll2

Links
Two Finger Scrolling with pre-2005 Powerbooks and iBooks

Remote Growl

I have already created a small article that showed off a little application called Growl that allowed for a managed notification system for all Mac applications. Andreas Åkre Solberg has extended the Growl application to allow users and developers to send Growl notifications between machines rather than just on the same machine the growl is running on. Andreas' application is called Remote Growl and can be found here. To allow Remote Growl to work you will require the GrowlNotify application and Bindings for Growl, both can be downloaded from the Growl Home page here.

Links

Growl Homepage
Remote Growl Homepage
Previous Growl Article

The Mac Lounge

Are you one of those either using a laptop on a lounge or wishing to be more comfortable while using your computer? Welcome to Bluebroc, the iMac inspired lounge setup that integrates an Apple iMac so that you can use the computer in comfort on your specially designed lounge.

Links
Bluebroc Site

Backing up your Mac using RSync

Matthew Phillips has given me a small HOW TO article on using rsync to backup you mac. I have hosted this article and you can find it here or download it from here.

Links
Goto Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Download Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Rsync Home Page

iPod Mini Time Zone for Eastern Australian States

Short Version: For Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra use the Magadan time zone.

Long Version: I recently have acquired a new iPod Mini. I have already have an ageing iPod 1st generation and I have really noticed how apple have updated the software from the 1st generation to the current 4th generation. There are lots of little things that make the latest iPods really work, items like not having to reboot when disconnecting from the computer or even the ability to show the current time in the title area. It is these little upgrades that have really impressed me with the iPod Mini. The only thing that I do not like about the iPod Mini is its support for Time Zones. Apple has made the iPods contain time zone settings so that when calendar information is transferred to the iPod from iCal all the time zone information is understood and enforced. However, to set the Time Zone you need to know all the other cities in your time zone as it does not use the time difference from UTC but rather the name of cities in the time zone. This works well if you know all the cities but for me, who lives on the east coast of Australia (+10 UTC), none of the Australian cities are listed. After searching on the Internet I finally could confirm that the russian city Magadan has the same time zone as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. So if you live in an eastern Australian City (except Brisbane that uses different time zone information and is contained in the iPod time zone list) use Magadan as your time zone.

No Aqua Version of OpenOffice

OpenOffice has posted an update about their Mac port of the open source office suite OpenOffice. According to the update no new development has happened since the middle of 2003 so instead of working on an Aqua version (native mac application) they will only continue work on supporting X11. This is a bit of a blow to the mac community as this will most likely mean that OpenOffice will never produce a native mac version of their software.

Links

OpenOffice Mac Port Timeline

Mac Frenzy

Ok there has been a complete frenzy to release new macs and mac-related items. Here is a quick roundup.

iPod Shuffle - Flash based MP3 Player

Mac Mini - Very small Mac with no monitor

iLife'05 - iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iTunes 4.7

iWork'05 - Pages, Keynote 2

And then from Griffin Technology ...

Firewave - Surround Sound for the Mac

BlueTrip - Bluetooth audio for iPod

AirClick - Remote Control for Mac, PC, iPod and iPod Mini

XpressStand - Desktop stand for Apple Airport Express

SmartDeck - Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod

UPDATE - More Mac Goodness from Griffin Technology

Label Mic - Multipurpose Microphone

Dock800 - Firewire 800 Cable for iPod

TuneJuice - Battery Backup for iPod and iPod mini

RocketFM - USB TFM Transmitted for Mac and PC

Stuffit Expander Takes a Long Time to Start

I have noticed that over the last couple of days Stuffit Expander takes a VERY long time to start. After a bit of searching on the Internet I found this article on the MacFixIt site. The error occurs because the developer Aladdin has been taken over by Allume and the domain name of the servers has changed. On start up all their applications check for updates but timeout because of the server name change. To fix this you can run the following command from the Terminal application, which will stop version checking:

defaults write com.stuffit.Expander allowVersionChecking -bool NO

Links
MacFixIt Article

iPod Flash Rumor Getting Out of Hand

Ok it seems that the rumor about Apple releasing a new flash based iPod early in 2005 is getting kinda out of hand. I have seen numerous articles on the web with people talking about this so called iPod Micro. iPodLounge even have a gallery of mockup designs created by Apple fans.

I am very interested to know if Apple does bring out something like this as I would along with others be very interested in purchasing such a device. I am especially interested in the mockup designs that use SD cards for memory, which would allow you to expand the memory capacity and create different selections of music on different SD cards.

Links
iPodLounge iPod Micro Photo Gallery

Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions

With the recent 1.0 release of both Firefox and Thunderbird many new extensions are being created for both applications. You can always access these extensions from the Mozilla site but the Extensions Mirror site has the same extensions plus many more in a more user friendly site design. You can even subscribe to their RSS feed to be notified when new extensions are created or existing ones updated.

Links
Extensions Mirror Site
RSS Feed Page
Mozilla Extensions Site

Where is IBM WebSphere for OSX?

I have been using Apple Macs for the past three years since OSX operating system was first released. Since my switch from PC to Mac I have been very happy. My day to day work mainly involves the use of email and office-based applications, however my other part of work is the development of middleware solutions using enterprise-grade application servers. The problem that I have is that many application servers available run on windows, linux or Solaris (plus other mainframe environments) but not OSX which makes it very painful for me to try out ideas, especially while traveling and using an Apple Powerbook.

Currently I am using IBM WebSphere on a windows platform and it made me start to think about IBM and the way it is marketing its products. IBM is the manufacturer of the G5 PowerPC chips as used in G5 PowerMac and in G5 XServes. IBM also develops the WebSphere application server. You would think that if it wants to sell more G5 processors it would allow its premier application server software to also run on their own hardware (namely Apple XServes). I realise that IBM makes its own server class machines (zSeries) and in the latest version of WebSphere 6.0 also contains support for a new processor on the zSeries machines to run WebSphere even faster, but why miss the XServe market. I would love to be able to move my development environment over to OSX so that I could use either Eclipse or IBM's development IDE and run WebSphere all on my Powerbook or on an XServe (for deployment). I have even queried local Apple representatives about this and had no reply.

So why doesn't IBM provide an OSX version of its application server as this will truly boost Apple's profile to create an enterprise grade application server. I hear you say that Apple does support JBoss, but this application server is not really recognised in corporate and government circles. It makes sense to me for this fusion as Apple wins by having a truly enterprise class application server, IBM wins by selling more of their PowerPC processors and application server products and mac developers out there also win by not having to mix their development environment with those evil windows machines.

Advanced Configuration in Firefox

Want to be able to configure everything in Firefox 1.0? Well from reading the Wikipedia page on Firefox I have found that if you go to the page “about:config” a special configuration page is displayed. This page contains all the variables used within firefox and filter text box so you can easily find the variable you need to change.

An example use of this configuration page is to change the Firefox behaviour to display an alert box and display an error page, similar to that used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. First open the “about:config” page by typing the text (without quotes) into the address text box at the top of your browse and type enter. This will display the configuration page. Next type error in the filter text box, this will automatically filter the list to only display the “browser.xul.error_pages.enabled” preference. Double click the value to change it to “true” and that is it. You can test it by opening another window and entering a bogus address, an error page should be displayed rather than the common alert box.

Links
Firefox Wikipedia Page
Firefox Home Page

Modifying OSX Applications using Apple Developer Tools

Ever wanted to add a button or move something in a already built OSX application. Well you can using Interface Builder that comes for free in Apple's OSX Developer tools that are freely downloaded. The best way to understand how to do this is have a read of the article at MacDev Center here.

Links
Modifying Stickies Article

Yellow Dog Linux 4 Torrents Available

Four ISOs of Yellow Dog Linux 4 are available via BitTorrent from http://cvs.terraplex.com/~owen/ydl4_torrents. Yellow Dog Linux is a version of linux built to run on the PowerPC based CPUs as used in all Apple Macs.

Links
Yellow Dog Linux Site
Yellow Dog Torrents

Adding AppleScript to Cocoa Applications

Here is an article documenting the method to enable AppleScript for the Cocoa applications that you may be developing.

Links
MacDevCenter: Making Cocoa-Java Apps Scripting Article

Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver

I have been using Objective Development's LaunchBar software for quite some time to quickly launch applications on my Macs. LaunchBar is a brilliant piece of software, but today one of my friends told me about Quicksilver that provides a very similar capability but for free (really it is donateware). For the price do not think that this is a shoddy piece of software as it is not this at all, in fact it is much better than some software you can pay quite a lot for. Quicksilver also has the concept of plugins that allows for additional modules to be added so as new application are developed and people want to search through files in these applications or connect to the application's internal database these plugins can be used. Already quite a number of plugins are available including ones to connect to iChat, Apple Address Book, Firefox, iPhoto, Sherlock, Entourage and many more. In comparison Quicksilver is much faster to use than LaunchBar and the ability to extend quicksilver means it will be more capable over time and support many more applications than LaunchBar could hope for.

Links
LaunchBar Site
Quicksilver Site
Quicksilver Plugins

External Firewire RAID drive

I use external firewire and USB hard drive solutions all the time to more data around or backup data on my systems. Here is a new Firewire enclosure that provides RAID solution in a very G5 Mac looking case with excellent cooling capabilities. The drive uses Firewire 800 to provide the high speed data access to the drive. The drive is being marketed for video and audio professionals but is also perfect for any geeks out there who want the best hardware money can buy, you know who you are!

Links
G-Raid Site

Scrolling on Mac Trackpads

While browsing through the new software on MacUpdate I found SideTrack, which I have seen before but this is the newest and latest version. SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Mac trackpads on all Apple laptops that provides some of the more advanced features that the PC users take for granted. One of my favourite features is ability to use the side of the trackpad for scrolling. SideTrack also has corner tapping, which allows you to select an action to occur when you tap the trackpads corner area. It is very flexible and allows you to customise the speed of scrolling and even the size of the special areas. If you are using a Apple laptop I would extremely recommend giving this a go.

Links
SideTrack Home Site
MacUpdate Site

Prettier Form Widgets in Firefox on Mac

Firefoxy 1.1 has just been released that allows you to easily change the widgets used on the mac firefox to the a much prettier set. The new widgets look like this:

And are easily applied by dragging your firefox application onto the firefoxy application. To undo you simply follow the same dragging process. I have also noticed that these same new widgets are already installed in the G5 Optimised build that I blogged earlier.

Links
Download Firefoxy
G5 Optimised Build Blog

Kevin Gerich Widgets

Apple Bundle Powerbook with Airport Extreme

Ok I have a interesting tid bit of information from my local Mac Reseller here in Canberra, Australia. Apple seems to have deal on at the moment only available from Apple stores (not online) that allows people to buy a powerbook and get a FREE, yes free Airport Express. This is a great deal as I have been wanting a new Airport Express and as part of a recent acquisition of a new powerbook to replace the one stolen from me recently I also gained a new Airport Express. The promotion only last to very early in December and I am not sure how widespread the offer is, Canberra only, Australia only or all Apple stores. So if you were thinking about buying a new powerbook now would be the time.

Links
Apple Airport Express
Apple Powerbook

Firefox Mac Optimised Builds

Do you have a G4 or G5 mac and use Firefox? If you do then you will like the following links. Neil Lee has created a build of Firefox 1.0 that has been optimised for use on the G5. Users have reported that there is noticable difference to the original version. I will have to wait to monday as my G5 is at work, but my powerbook uses the G4 chipset and there is also a version created by Kai Rune optimised for the G4. Got to love geeks and the pursuit for ever faster processing.

Links
G4 Optimised Firefox Link
G5 Optimised Firefox Link

Delicious Library Released

Ok this has got to be one of the most gorgeous software packages to be released for the mac. Delicious Library by Delicious Monster is a Book/CD/DVD/Games library that allows you to categorise and manage your collections. The key features of this application are:

• Gorgeous user interface
• Connects to Amazon to get the cover images of items and description details
• Can use your iSight or Bluetooth scanner to read the bar codes of items when importing
• Allows you to manage others who borrow items from your library

For a very good (and lengthy) article about Delicious Library head over to Ars Technica and for you visual people out there it has screenshots.

Links
Ars Technical Review
Delicious Library Site
Download Applications

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Full Version has been released. This is the final 1.0 release of firefox ready for primetime.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0
Firefox Home Page

Clipboard Sharing (OSX and Windows)

That have been numerous occasions where I have needed to share small amounts of text or images between multiple computers that are running different operating systems. I have just found a cool little program by Porchdog Software called Spike. Spike allows you to copy anything to share areas so that any other user also running spike on your network can access these shared items. All items are encrypted and are shared automatically. The discovery of other Spike users happens automatically via the use of Zeroconf, otherwise known as Rendezvous. Spike is available for OSX and Windows and can be downloaded here.

Links
Spike Homepage
Spike Download

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on their FTP server. The developers believe they have fixed the bugs with the software update feature and are requesting users to test heavily the site authentication features and extension installs from update.mozilla.org. Download it today and support Firefox's spread around the Internet and overthrow the badly implemented Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0 RC2
Firefox Home Page

Interested in OSX Tiger's Spotlight Feature?

Apple has released a quick article that descries the new Spotlight feature that will be available in the new OSX Tiger operating system to be released early in 2005. This is not an article for the general user but is intended for all you OSX developers out there who are curious about how spotlight will work and how to develop programs to make use of its capabilities. If you are not a developer but are still a complete mac geek and want to know everything about the mac then it is still a good read.

Links
Apple Spotlight Developer Overview Article

OSX Tiger to have Burnable Folders and Smart Folders

AppleInsider is announcing that the latest beta of OSX Tiger released to developers has one new feature and a revised feature. The revised feature was present in earlier beta releases, this was to create smart folders that are now integrated with OSX Tiger's Spotlight searching capabilities. This allows users to create folders that can automatically fill themselves with the files that meet the smart folders capabilities. The second new feature is a Burnable folders. These allow for files to be dropped in a burnable flagged folder that creates a link to the original file rather than copying (or moving) the original file. By only creating a link to the original means that if the original contents change then when you initiate the burn the updated contents will be used. This feature will allow me to create release CDs for software that I build and then I can just update the original files and whenever I burn the CD I will always get the latest versions.

These are two of the new features in a long list of amazing capabilities to be seen in the future version of Apple's OSX operating system. I do not know about you but I can not wait for this next major release, I am already thinking of the cool ways that I can use some of these features.

Links
AppleInsider Article

Google Desktop for Mac!

Google has announced plans to release it s Google Desktop software for the mac, although no date has currently been set. Google Desktop allows users to search through their emails, files, documents, chat messages on their home computers much like good searches through the Internets content. This is essentially bringing the power of search engines to your desktop. Currently Google Desktop is only available for windows machines as it needs to hook into the operating system to search for the required files and to bring this capability to the Mac will required a complete overhaul to Google Desktop.

It is very curious why Google is going to provide Google Desktop for the mac as Apple's new operating system codenamed Tiger, due early 2005, contains a similar technology called Spotlight. So if the mac is going to already have a powerful searching capability built right into the operating system why is Google going to go ahead and still provide their own tool? Maybe Google has a much bigger plan to bring more and more of their Internet based tools like news, GMail, Image searches to the desktop so that your complete working environment is actually Google Desktop. For now though you can only download Google Desktop for windows but stay tuned for more interesting developments.

Links
REUTERS Article
Google Desktop
Apple's Spotlight

iPod Photo

Well amazingly enough the rumours about an iPod with a colour screen were actually true. Apple has today released the new iPod Photo that contains a colour screen and can display photos. To help get the photos onto the new iPod Apple has also released version 4.7 of iTunes that understands the iPod photo so that you can transfer your photos from iPhoto to you iPod Photo. A new Dock is included and contains cables to connect it up to your TV so that you can display your photos on your TV. When playing music it will display the album art as stored in iTunes. And now you can play the built-in solitaire card game in colour. All this with an amazing 12 hour battery life, way to go Apple.

Links
iPod Photo Page
iTunes 4.7 Page

Gmail Address Import from Apple Address Book

Want to import your Apple Address book into Google's Gmail service? Here is a great blog article that contains a simple Perl script that converts VCard files (what Address book exports) into a CSV list with the name and email of your contacts. It is extremely easy to use:

1. Download the script from here.
2. Open Apple Address Book.
3. Select all your contacts.
4. Drag contacts to your desktop. This will create a file called “vCards.vcf”.
5. Open the Apple Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities directory).
6. Change the directory to your desktop (“cd Desktop”).
7. Type “perl parsevcf ./vCards.vcf ./gmail.csv” (this assumes that the script you downloaded in step 1 and the Address Book vCards file are in the same directory).
8. This will create a new file called gmail.csv on your Desktop that you can now upload to Gmail.

Links
Gmail Perl Script Conversion Blog

Tiger Start Kit for Developers

Apple has released information about the Tiger Start Kit for Developers that is providing a years subscription to the ADC Select Member and access to preview versions of OSX Tiger before it is released next year. This is great for all those OSX developers out there. Anyone interested in buying me a copy?

Links
Apple Tiger Start Kit for Developers
OSX Tiger Developer Overview Page

CherryOS May Not Be What it Claims

Wired has an interesting article about the new CherryOS that I blogged about previously. According to the Wired article a number of people have accused the CherryOS developers for stealing code from PearPC (open source emulator) that provides very similar functionality. The CherryOS makers claim that they have not done anything of the sort. One of the reasons why the CherryOS site has been down a number of times is because of crackers breaking into the site and maliciously damaging or disrupting the site. The true test to see if CherryOS is unique or not will be clear once it has been officially released and source code is provided to the PearPC developers to check, which will occur in a few days time. From my point of view I do not really care as PearPC has been released as open source under the GPL license that does not preclude the use of code for commercial products, but does retain a few restrictions. What I really worry about is wether CherryOS works better than PearPC and is easier to install and use and therefore worth spending the money on.

Links
Wired Article about CherryOS

MS Office 2004 Service Pack 1 Released

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for its Office 2004 software. This is the first major update to the Office 2004 software and it installed with no problems although it take quite sometime to search the hard drive while installing. If you are installing on a mac that contains multiple LARGE hard drives then be ready for a long wait as the installer searches all these drives to find the location of all Microsoft Apps that are installed so it can update them.

Links
Download Office 2004 Service Pack 1

Mac OSX on PC

If you own a PC but really want a Mac then a cheaper way of doing this is to use an emulator on the PC that emulates the PowerPC architecture so that you can run Mac OSX in the emulation environment. PearPC is one such emulation environment that has been around for a while but is still not quite there and has that OpenSource feel to it, otherwise known as hard to install and get working. Another option available is CherryOS that provides a similar emulation environment. I went to the CherryOS website earlier today and I was able to look at a few demonstration videos and screenshots of the emulation environment in action, however I just had a look again and the site seems to be missing all its contents. I can say that it looked quite impressive and looked quite easy to install and get running so might be quite a good option for all those PC users who envy the Mac community (you know who you are). I am guessing that they are just updating their site so have a look for yourself in a couple of days.

Links
CherryOS Website
PearPC Website

Colour iPod Rumors Grow

I have seen a rumor growing that Apple is to release a new iPod with a 60gig hard drive and a brand spanking new colour screen. The rumors also identify that it can link up with iPhoto so that it can display photos on its colour screen. As to whether this is true of not is still to be seen, but it will be an interesting item to see. I normally do not blog these types of rumors and leave it up to the rumor sites but I have seen this rumor on too many different sites and RSS feeds to not take notice.

Links
Google Search on “color ipod”
MacRumour Site

BluePhoneElite: OSX Bluetooth Phone App

I have used a number of different bluetooth applications that can connect to my Ericsson T39 mobile phone but BluePhoneElite is one of the best for connecting with a mobile phone. BluePhoneElite will automatically connect to you mobile phone and unlike other similar programs can actually display your phone signal strength and battery levels. It also contains a very good SMS management interface that can display the actual contents of your phone (both the phone and SIM card). This SMS management interface allows you to manipulate the SMS messages saved on the phone. This is great for me as the Ericsson's T39 phone interface is very slow and cumbersome so using this software I can quickly view or delete messages stored in the phone. If you want to see screenshots of the application running then continue reading.

BluePhoneElite Menu

BluePhoneElite SMS Manager

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - General

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Phones

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Calls

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - SMS

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Proximity

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Customise

Links
BluePhoneElite Website
VersionTracker Site for BluePhoneElite

GMail and OSX

Are you using GMail and Apple OSX well then this is for you. GMailStatus is a little program that appears in your menu bar and checks your GMail account for new messages and displays the unread amount. To make it even better GMailStatus also supports Growl notifications, which I blogged about earlier. Now for the best stuff, screenshots:

GMailStatus Menu Item

GMailStatus Preferences

GMailStatus Preferences

Australian Maps and Directions in Apple Address Book

Stephen Withers has released a couple of scripts on VersionTracker that allows Australians to display the mapping location of Australian addresses from directly data contained in Address Book linked to whereis.com.au. There are also scripts for connecting Microsoft Entourage with Whereis. This is a great little script filling a gap for Australians using Address Book, good work. There are two versions of the scripts, one for displaying the map of the selected location and the other to display the directions to the location. The directions script uses your own personal address card to determine the starting location. Check it outside for yourself with the links below.

To install just copy the scripts into your [home directory]/library/Address Book Plug-ins/ and then restart Address Book.

Links
Version Tracker Site
Stephen Withers Script Site

Nvu Mozilla-based HTML Editor

Mozilla is not just a great browser/email/news client but it also provides a good application development platform. For example Firefox has been developed using the Mozilla platform and Gecko layout engine. Another great application is Nvu, which is a graphical web page editor to rival programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. Even though Nvu is only up to version 0.50 (due out this week) it already provides quite some capability and it will be interesting to see this program grow. The current version of Nvu is quite yet good enough for me to throw away Dreamweaver but it is definitely on the right track.

Screenshot of Nvu Editing My Home Page

Links
Nvu Home Page
Macromedia Dreamweaver Page

The Big Debate: Are macs faster than PCs

I love it when people start discussing which are better, macs or PCs, but here is another article that discusses which is better based on performance. Overall I believe that there is not much difference between the two platforms and it really comes down to personal preference and what you feel more comfortable with. However trying to find out what you are more comfortable with is hard if you have not used both platforms to make a true comparison. The biggest deciding factor most of the time is what software you currently own and if the applications that you use all the time are also available on the mac (or a good equivalent). Have a read of a previous article that I wrote about the differences.

Links
Article about Mac vs PC performance
Previous article on Mac vs PC

NewsTicker: RSS Feed Ticker

NewsTicker is a great little program that displays you RSS feeds in a ticker at the top of the screen (see the screenshot to the right - click for larger version). It is a pretty simple program, which I like. Some of the great features it has are:

• Change the ticker font.
• Choose the colour for the font and background.
• Change the speed of the ticker's scroll speed.
• Can change the level of display (above/below other windows or as a normal window).

There are a few features that I would like to see in future versions:

• Ability to remove RSS feeds once they are clicked (read) or using a modifier key to mark as read without opening the page.
• Display the contents of the article (from the RSS feed) when you mouse over an entry. This could be displayed in a popup window so that it does not get in the way.
• Ability to customise the colour of the link once read rather than just using a darker colour.
• Drag RSS feed URLs to the ticker to add new feeds.
• Have the ticker disappear when there is no news to display.

So now you must think that I hate this program, not correct. I believe that this is quite a good program and I am surprised that we have not seen other ticker style RSS feeds with the minor additions identified above I believe that this will be a great program to monitor news and other feed-based information.

Links
NewsTicker Home Page
VersionTracker NewsTicker Page

Stop wasting those keystrokes with typeit4me

I am always looking for ways to speed up how I use my computer and I have just stumbled across typeit4me. typeit4me allows for shortcut text to be entered into any mac application and have it automatically replaced with the complete text. For instance all the instances of the “ typeit4me ” text was entered using typeit4me and the shortcut text of “t4me”. My initial impressions of this program is that it is very easy to use but I am not quite sure how often I will use it. I think that it would be great for people who often write the same text over an over again or use it in instant messaging clients. Give it a go yourself and let me know what you think and the novel ways that you use it (use the comments below).

Links
Typeit4me Web Site

iPod Rumors: Flash based capability and built-in radio

A couple of rumors have just been placed onto the Internet about Apple's very popular iPod. The first is about the potential that a new version of the iPod line using Solid State flash memory version could be released by December. If they did have a solid state iPod it would allow the Apple designers to create a player that was much smaller in physical size and have a longer battery life but a smaller music storage capacity.

The second rumor is that a future iPod version may contain a radio. This second rumor is based on a recent job advert from the Apple iPod division for a RF Engineer. As the source of this rumor is a little more sketch I would say that this could also mean that a wireless remote or WIFI support could also be inferred by this job advert.

It will be interesting to see where apple goes with the iPod in the future.

Links
Flash-based iPod Rumor
iPod Radio Rumor

Using VPN on OSX

I have just been playing around with trying to get a VPN connection working and here are my findings. To start with I had problems just trying to get the VPN connection to authenticate. I ended up find out that what was required was for my home network router to have RIP turned on to allow the network to connect correctly. Well that was the first hassle, the next was that now I was connected it would take down my normal Internet access whenever I connected the VPN. Doing some searching around the internet I found this thread on MacSlash talking about this very problem. The problem is that the default behavior is that when you set up the connection all the data will then be routed over this network connection, not correct if you are using a broadband Internet connection and do not want to go through the VPN connection. Therefore what you need to do is change the default data route. What I ended up using is this set of instructions.

Open a terminal window
cd /usr/sbin
sudo cp pppd pppd.orig

Then create a new file in that same directory called pppd with the following contents:

#!/usr/bin/perl
my @args = @ARGV;
s/^defaultroute/nodefaultroute/ for @args;
exec “/usr/sbin/pppd.orig”, @args;

Save that file and do a:
sudo chmod 755 pppd

Basically what this does is that whenever OS X calls PPPD (the VPN daemon for PPPTP), it'll force the “nodefaultroute” option to be appended to the call.

This MAY cause problems if you use PPP for dialup connections.

To switch back to the original method, just
sudo cp pppd.orig pppd

These instructions work well and I now have a working Internet connection and VPN connection. I hope this helps everyone out there who wants to do the same thing.

Links
MacSlash Article on VPN and Default Routing

Opensource Virus Scanner for OSX

VersionTracker has a interesting program in its newly release software list, ClamXav. ClamXav is GUI interface for an opensource command line virus scanner called ClamAV. To make it easy ClamXav includes a version of ClamAV so you do not need to install the two programs separately. Below is a screenshot of the application, as you can see it is not the most appealing of interfaces but it does what it needs to, scan files. In the current version there is no way to set up automatic scans or scan files downloaded from the Internet (maybe in future versions). ClamAV does allow you to easily download new virus definitions but again this can not be automated.

To install open the disk image that contains a couple of files including the application file and a script to install the scanner utility. First double click on the install file to run the installer. Next drag the application ClamXav application to your application folder, you virus scanner is now installed.

Overall I believe that ClamXav has a lot of potential but requires some work in automating scanning tasks, allowing to save scans so they can be run again at a later time and provide a more "aquafied" user interface.

Links
Mark Allan's ClamXav GUI Interface Site
ClamAV website

Growl - Application Notifications on OSX

Ecto (my blog editor) now supports Growl. If you are wondering what growl is then you are not alone as I also had never heard of this little program. A little closer look I have found out that Growl is system wide application notification system that allows any application of Apple Script to display notification messages. Ecto uses this notification system to display messages when activities (like posting) are complete. Growl was developed by James Cox and he even provides an API for application developers to use so that more applications can be created that utilise the Growl notification system. If you are an OSX developer then I strongly recommend having a look at Growl.

Links
Growl Website
Ecto Website

WeatherDock 1.0

WeatherDock 1.0 has been released and it is FREE, yes these are my favorite words as well. WeatherDock uses The Weather Channel's website XML feeds to get weather information and can display the weather details for almost anywhere in the world. The software allows you to choose a single location and will display the current weather information in the dock icon and will also display a 5 day forecast in a new window if you click on the dock icon. Another nice feature is that it uses OSX's built-in speech facilities to speak the weather automatically (timed interval) or manually. Download it for yourself and see what you think.

Links
WeatherDock website
The Weather Channel website

Alternatives
WeatherPop
Konfabulator Mini Weather Widget (requires Konfabulator)
Meteorologist (VERY GOOD)

Logitech MX900 on Mac

I just bought myself one of the Logitech MX900 bluetooth mice that are being sold for around $150AUD. Officially Logitech is not supporting OSX although as Apple supports the bluetooth profile for using mice it is a piece of cake to use with OSX and the built-in bluetooth capability. When testing I also tried the mouse with the bluetooth dongle that I have from D-Link and found the mouse extremely jerky and unusable. However using the built-in bluetooth in my Powerbook G4 it worked perfectly without a problem. One reason it might not work with my bluetooth dongle is that it is quite old as I bought it when apple was first supporting bluetooth so the newer bluetooth dongles may work just fine. Also you can use the provided cradle that contains a bluetooth receiver that also works with the mac. The provided cradle will charge the mouse when not in use so that your mouse will be fully charged whenever you need it.

To set up the mouse is a very simple process when using the Apple Bluetooth capability:

1. Load System Preferences and click on the bluetooth link to display the bluetooth preference pane.
2. Click on the “Setup New Device” button which will displays this screen:
3. 
4. Select the mouse radio button and then click next to display this screen:
5. 
6. This screen will start searching for bluetooth devices. At this point in time you need to push the “connect” button on the bottom of the mouse. After clicking the connect button on the mouse the computer fill find the mouse and get its name. Click the “Continue” button.
7. 
8. The computer will then pair itself with the mouse.
9. 
10. Finally it will display the end screen:
11. 
    Your MX900 Bluetooth mouse is now setup and installed.

If you want to install the mouse using the cradle instead of the Apple internal bluetooth capability all you need to do is plug the USB cable of the cradle into the mac and click the connect button on the cradle followed by the connect button on the mouse. Pressing the two connect buttons will pair the two devices together and will appear to OSX as a standard USB mouse.

Once your mouse is installed you can then set each of the buttons to different expose actions. If you are not sure which button is which I have created an image that identifies the button numbers (see image at the start of this article). As Logitech does not support OSX it means that there is no software provided by logitech to map all the buttons on the mouse to different functionality. Although it is possible to use Game Pad Companion to provide this mapping capability.

I really like the whole Logitech MX series of mice (both cordless and wired) and this mouse continues my high regard for these mice. They are the most comfortable and smooth mice available on the market. They are more expensive than other mice but you will not get a more precise and well designed mouse than the Logitech MX series mice.

iPodDownload iTunes Plugin: Apple vs Inspiration

A great little plugin for iTunes called iPodDownload has been created that allows users to easily download music from their iPod into iTunes directly from within iTunes. However this program is no longer available from the developers own site as Apple has accused the developer that the program is violation of something (not identified by Apple directly) and was requested to be removed from the Internet. This is most likely due to the Digital Rights Management software apple has incorporated into iTunes and the iPod to stop users from easily sharing music files illegally, however if you are like me where you use multiple machines being apple to use the iPod to move you music between machines is very useful. If you are now reading this thinking that you have missed out then because of the wonderful Internet community it is already being hosted by others here.

Links
iPodDownload web site
iPodDownload mirror site

Paper Mac

New iPod Case

Unlike many of the other iPod cases that I have seen on the Internet this one stands out for me because of the amount of thought that has been put into its design. The Prie Podwallet contains a number of really cool features like:
- storing credit cards
- storing notes and coins
- room for headphones
- special holder to wrap cables around and also acts as a strengthener to to the wallet's spine
- holder for an additional battery that can power the iPod for extended periods
- oh and room to store your iPod safely with a window so that the iPod controls can be accessed externally.

There is a nice gallery of the features on the website.

New Apple iMac released - “where is the computer”

Apple has done it again with the new apple iMac, which you can see on the Apple iMac site. The new iMac now has the G5 processor and the whole computer is hidden behind the screen, quite impressive that they could fit everything into the small case size. I can not wait until my local mac store receives a demo model so that I can play with it.

The Best Mac OSX News Reader has turned 1.5

Panic the company that has brought you great applications like Transmit (FTP client), Audion (MP3 Player) and CandyBar (icon customisation utility) has released a new version of Unison probably THE BEST OSX news reader available. The best way to see all the features of Unison is to download a trial copy and give it a go. One of the great features of Unison is the ability to cleanly and easily browse news posts by the content (eg images, files, music) rather than just viewing the messages like the more traditional email client type view, which is also possible.

Links
Panic Home Page
Unison Home Page

Tiger Tracker

TigerTracker is a website that has been built purely to track articles released on the Internet about the future release of Apple's new OS version codenamed Tiger. So far Apple has released a fair amount of information tidbits that describe some of the new advanced features to be incorporated in Tiger and many other sites have screenshots of the operating system from versions of Tiger that are released to a limited number of developers. I am very interested in Tiger as I use Apple computers both at work and at home. Have a look at the site if you are interested in Apple products and want to take all the hard work out of finding information about Apple's Tiger operating system.

Links
Tiger Tracker Website
Apple's Sneak Peek at Tiger Site

The 3rd Dock

Here is a great article on the Apple-X website about the third hidden dock in OSX Jaguar (10.3). This first is the traditional dock introduced in the first version of OSX. The second dock is the finder toolbar on the left side of finder windows that was introduced in Jaguar. The third dock concept is using the finder toolbar at the top of the finder window next to the search text area. Have a read through the article (includes images) of how to use this.

Mac: Tabbed browsing for all your Desktop Applications

Do you like the use of tabs in your browsers like Firefox and Safari? Sticky Windows is a new application by Donelleschi that allows you to dock windows to tabs displayed at the side of your display. The best way to understand is to go to the Stick Windows website that has a quick animation showing Sticky Windows in operation.

Links
Sticky Windows Website

Oracle on Mac OSX

I was very interested when Oracle first announced that it would be releasing its Oracle 10g Database for OSX. Well now OSX is officially supported by OSX and if you want to install it for yourself here is a helpful guide.

Australian iTunes Store Rumoured

The new Internet ISP called Unwired has hinted that its newly forged relationship with Apple means that an iTunes music store will open up in Australia. Unwired is a new type of ISP that has started deploying a completely wireless Internet access for users in Sydney (to start with). As part of this wireless rollout Unwired is offering special deals on the Apple Airport Express hub. Unwired plans for more than 100,000 customers in Sydney by August next year. Further wireless network deployments are planned for Melbourne and Brisbane in the near future.

Links
Apple Airport Express
News.com.au Article - Unwired aims for 100,000 in a year
Unwired hints at iTunes link
Unwired Website

Apple Recalls 15“ Powerbook Batteries

Apple is recalling all batteries sold worldwide from January 2004 through August 2004 for the 15“ Powerbook (aluminum) laptops. The reason given is that these batteries are flawed and have the potential to overheat creating a fire risk. For more details see the Apple site (https://depot.info.apple.com/batteryexchange/).

Links
Apple Website
Battery Replacement Site

Motorola and Apple join to bring iTunes to a mobile phone near you

Apple and Motorola are working together to develop a new generation of Motorola phones that will support the transfer of music between iTunes on both mac and PC and you phone via USB and Bluetooth. This partnership completes the monopoly that apple has in the music device arena with their Internet music store, iTunes music software, iPod portal player and now with ubiquitous mobile phones. Apple has been likened to Microsoft with their windows operating system to Apple in the music industry, although unlike Microsoft the apple implementation work and work well.

The new Motorola phones are not to be delivered until early 2005 but will provide a new level of capability and connection for the complete Apple platform. One thing I do hope to happen from this partnership is that Motorola learns to develop easier and more elegant user interface designs, an area that Motorola has been notoriously poor in the past.

Links
Apple Press Release
Motorola Press Release

Apple Releases 4th Generation iPod

Apple has released its 4th Generation iPod which has gone back to the style of the 2nd generation user interface with the wheel design and a physical center button, all design changes that I am glad to see. The new iPod is sporting the larger capacity drives (up to 40gig) and has dropped in price. Also available are the on the fly playlist creation and a larger battery life. For a good review of the iPod have a read of the Time.com article or go to the apple ipod page.

Links
Time.com Article on iPod
Apple iPod page

Apple Spotlight

For all you developers out there who are looking at the new Apple Spotlight searching capability that was announced at the recent WWDC I have found a quick blog article. The article outlines the basic structure of Spotlight and how it will be used from a developer perspective rather than the user perspective (which Apple advertises).

Links
Daring Fireball Spotlight on Spotlight blog
Apple Spotlight Technologies Page
Main Apple Spotlight Page

Virtual Desktops on Mac

Over the years I have used many different virtual desktop managers on both PC and Mac, but now I have found Desktop Manager by Richard Wareham. For those who do know know what a virtual desktop applications are, this type of application allow you computer to have multiple virtual screens, even if you only have one monitor. These virtual desktops allow you to organise applications on your screen but not just one screen as you can do this for all the virtual desktops that you have. Richard Wareham's Desktop Manager is a very well built application (even if it is still only beta). The application works seamlessly and very fast, even on my 600Mhz iBook. To top is all off it is FREE, well not quite as the developer does ask to donate money if you really like his application.

Links
Desktop Manager Home Page
Download Desktop Manager

Mac or PC - The BIG Question

I just read an article on MacDailyNews about choosing either a Mac or a PC. This argument comes up quite often as I am one of those people who uses both Macs and PCs for home and work. What is the answer? In this blog I go through how I use Macs at work and home while identifying what I like and hate about both platforms.

At work I have a multitude of computers including; 4 Dual Xeon and 2 Intel PCs and on the mac side I have 1 powerbook, 1 G5 and access to 2 G4 macs. Also at home I have an iBook and an AMD Athlon PC, so as you can see I am surrounded by both Mac and PC hardware and operating systems.

My work requires me to operate in a number of roles including; software developer, systems architect, web developer, graphics artist and project management. To support this work I use a very wide variety of applications from Java Development to project management and document creation. At work it is about 99.9% windows so I have to work in their environment with all my macs. I currently use Apple Mail that connects up to the Microsoft Exchange 5.5 servers using IMAP (I have also had it connected by SMTP before). I especially like to use IMAP as it allows me to access my inbox “live” from both the powerbook, G5 and any of the windows computers using outlook. For calendar functions I use Apple's iCal program and have a WebDAV server (Apache) running on the G5. With the WebDAV server I can publish my iCal calendars to the G5 and then use PHP iCalendar to display the calendars as a website. By using PHP iCalendar I can then access all of my calendars from anywhere on the work network or allow others to view my calendars. For address book functions I store all my contacts in Apple Address book, then connect it to the exchange server via the LDAP connection built into Apple Address book. The LDAP connection allows me to find email addresses from the exchange global address book.

Ok so now that I have explained all the ways that I have integrated all my macs into the windows centric world at work, I should also describe the parts that do not work. Calendar integration with exchange is nonexistent which makes it very difficult to integrate with the windows users when they invite you to meetings or you need to access a shared calendar. The way that I get around this is that I either use a Citrix client or use Microsoft's Remote Desktop to connect to another windows box and use the normal exchange client, not the optimal solution I know. At work we have just moved the whole Microsoft Network to Active Directory, OSX is supposed to support Active Directory and actually has an Active Directory plugin for their Directory Access but we have failed to connect any of the Macs to the Active Directory network. From reading the forums on the macwindows.com website I am not the only person who has had this problem. The only other problem is that there are still some programs (or equivalents) not available on the mac, most notably is Altova's XML Spy and Microsoft Project.

Now that we have the gripes out of the way you are probably wondering why I put myself through the pain of using Macs in a windows environment. The reasons are many, the most important is the OSX operating system. OSX is arguably the best operating system on the market today, it is robust, stable, flexible, easy to use, and to top is off is absolutely gorgeous to look and use. However looks are not everything, OSX has been designed with the user in mind which means that everything is just easy. The best way to explain this is to actually use my mum as an example. My mum used to have a PC and hated to use it, she would loath having to use it for anything. About 1 1/2 years ago I convinced her to replace her PC with a new iMac and she has not looked back. My mum now has actually bought her own Multifunctional printer/scanner/fax, digital camera and uses it for everything, she has even found out that she can dial people using her address book as it connected to the telephone line. Now she uses her mac for email, internet, scanning, photos, creating documents to help her run the small business that she owns. To top it all off is that she no longer rings me up complaining that everything has crashed and she does not know what to do as she has taught herself everything (well with some help from me).

As a mac and windows users I much prefer using macs for the following reasons:

• Applications developed to the Apple are generally much easier to use with a clean easy to understand interface
• Apple is working hard to integrate the applications and provide operating system wide services to allow application developers to integrate with the apple applications and other OSX applications
• Installing and removing applications is much easier in OSX (Drag and Drop or a simple installer package). Compared to windows installing and removing applications is an absolute dream.
• Networking is much simpler and easier to set up, for instance to share an internet connection on one mac all you have to do is check a checkbox in the sharing preference pane (windows is a very lengthy and time involved process to achieve the same results, that is if it works the first time).
• Apple provides a free set of Development tools to create applications (called Xcode), you have to buy the Microsoft Development Tools
• As the operating system is based on UNIX you can run all the normal UNIX applications (eg, grep, locate, tcsh, etc.) or you can download and compile opensource unix software (for instance I have compiled and use ht-dig to provide search functions on my work websites). It is also possible to compile and run any X11-based graphical applications as Apple provides an X11 implementation so you can run applications like GIMP
• There are many productivity enhancements to the operating system including exposé, fast user switching, multiple views of files in finder and many more coming in Tiger.
• Easy setup of wireless networking
• Integration with windows networks (with support getting better with ever OSX release)
• Many required applications come with the operating system (mail, internet browser, document editor, music player, chat, photo manager, movies, DVD, music development (Garageband)), some of these are provides in the Apple iLife bundle which now comes with new macs. Many more applications can be download for free of the Internet.
• Microsoft Office is available on the Mac or if you prefer a free option OpenOffice is being actively developed although a native version is not complete (current version requires X11 graphical component).
• To top is off OSX is a clean well designed operating system from every way you look at it, system, user interface, applications, connectivity or design.

Most people after I have explained all these reasons why I like using my macs then retort saying that Macs are more expensive, well it depends on how you look at this. When comparing anything you should always compare items that are equivalent and it is no different when comparing computer systems. Therefore this price argument must use two or more systems that are equivalent so it does not make any sense to compare a home built PC box with an Apple box as this is not a fair comparison. The best way to compare is to take systems from major PC manufacturers like Dell, Sony or Compaq and then compare their products with an Apple Mac. During the comparison you also need to take into account what you plan to use the computer for and how well the hardware and software provided by each system compares. From my studies into this I have found that Apple systems are very competitive on price especially for the laptops Apple produces. In the desktop line I believe that PCs are cheaper and I have found it very difficult to compare the iMac and eMac product lines as there are not many similar PC products.

So which is it PC or Mac? Well I choose Mac it is easier, gives me less frustrations and allows me to use the saying “it just works!”. If you really like to bang your head against the wall and live with badly designed and unfriendly applications then by all means use a PC. However if you are like me and want an elegant operating system that allows you to easily set up and use applications while still retaining the power to delve deep into the depths of the operating system then use a mac.

Signed and Encrypted Mail on a Mac

One of my friends from LabF pointed me to a great article that identifies how to install an X.509 certificate so that I can send and receive emails that use the S/MIME and X.509 encryption and signing capability.

Go to Article

The article describes using Mozilla or Firefox to actually get the certificate from Thawte but it is also possible to use the latest version of Safari to download the certificate. The benefit of using Safari is that it will also automatically download and load the certificate into your keychain where Apple Mail will automatically pick the details up. The process is pretty simple and only took me 30 minutes from start to finish, although I am pretty familiar with email encryption and the use of keys so it may take a general users about 1 hour to install and read the documentation (there is plenty of it).

To compare a competing technology is PGP or the open source version is GPG. If you would like to install GPG on your mac go to http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/. The integration of GPG with Apple Mail is not as good as the X.509 integration but is still pretty good. I also know that GPG/PGP is more common (well at least with my other email contacts) than X.509. The different between GPG/PGP and X.509 is that X.509 depends on an issuing certificate authority like Thawte to provide the certificate while PGP/GPG rely upon a web of trust that is built up by the users accepting certificates from others.

I believe that the X.509 integration with Apple Mail is much better than PGP/GPG but that is most likely because Apple built X.509 support directly into the application. GPG was a little more involved to installed and takes a little more know how to get it working but is still fairly straight forward. The biggest benefit with GPG is that you do not need to rely on a third party for your certificates.

Quick Poll
I am very interested to know what are the numbers of who uses what so please provide a comment on this blog about you choice in email signing and encryption choice X.509 or PGP/GPG,

New Apple software and hardware

Once again Apple has released information about their new operating system and hardware. The new operating system codenamed Tiger is planned to be released in the middle of 2005. The new features in the operating system are:

• Operating System level searching functionality called Spotlight - more information
• New version of iChat AV - more information
• RSS syndication feed reader in Safari Internet Browser - more information
• New widget capability called Dashboard, this is a clone of the Konfabulator application - more information
• Automator, a new program to do batch processing of files - more infromation
• Enhanced ability to use voice and audio to control and interact with your mac called VoiceOver - more information
• New Sync capabilities, includes developer support to use the new sync services - more information
• Enhance UNIX capabilities - more information
• New version of XCode Development IDE - more information

Apple has also released a new set of LCD displays but instead of using the standard Apple ADC connectors these new monitors now using the standard DVI connector. In addition Apple is now offering the absolutely huge 30“ cinema display, please take note that this new display also requires a specific card to drive the monitor because of the high resolution it natively runs at. To top it all off the new displays are clad in aluminum like the G5 desktops.

Blog Editing Client

I have tried a few different clients that allow me to edit my blogs but have not been impressed, until I met ecto. Blog clients allow the blog writer to edit and create blog entries using a standard desktop application rather than using the web-based interface. This allows for entries to be created while not connected to the internet or if you have a slow Internet connection it removes the painful waiting for each page to load.

ecto is a simple client for Mac OSX that provides full capabilities for editing and adding blogs. I use MoveableType of the blog system on the net and when I first started ecto is led me through a VERY easy wizard to set up the client, it even guessed correctly what blog system I was using. Once set up you are able to download a list of current entries so that you can edit them. As the editor in ecto is using the standard OSX text components spell checking is automatically provided (extremely useful for me!). The complete list of features are:

• View and edit existing entries
• Supports multiple blogs from one or more sites
• Support categories
• Preview of entries before saving
• Upload of files
• Full editing of entries (main text, extended text, summary, keywords, trackbacks, pings, date settings)
• Integrated with iTunes and iPhoto
• Advanced photo upload facility

ecto and other blog clients work by using the XML-RPC interface provided by the different blog systems. This simply allows clients to connect to the blog system by sending and receiving XML documents over HTTP requests. This is not the same as SOAP as it does not wrap these XML messages in SOAP messages.

From using ecto for a while I can not find any problems and would recommend it to any OSX blog user. You can download ecto from their home page which allows you to use the software for 2 weeks in the demo period before you have to purchase the software.

BluePhoneMenu: Bluetooth Phone Application

I have a bluetooth phone and a mac also with bluetooth, using the Apple Address Book I can pair my phone up with my mac and allow Address Book display callers when they ring or send SMS messages and that is about it. If you would like more functionality like keep a log of SMS messages and calls (like email) then have a look at BluePhoneMenu. BluePhoneMenu has all these additional features:

• Show signal strength
• Show phone battery status
• Advanced caller ID to monitor incoming calls
• Run Applescript when receiving calls (eg. to mute iTunes)
• Dial or SMS missed calls

For more information go to the BluePhoneMenu web page.

iTunes 4.6 Released

iTunes 4.6 has been released by Apple. This new version contained support for the Airtunes capability discussed in my earlier blog about the Airport Express WiFi access point / music connector.

You can download iTunes either from the website or through Software Update.

Apple Releases New Power Mac G5

Apple has released new versions of the Power Mac G5. The new versions are faster and there is a top of line is now housing a 2.5Ghz G5 processor on a 1.25Ghz Front Side Bus (FSB) and cooled by a unique water cooling system (a first for Apple). Also now the three versions of the Power Mac G5s are all dual systems. Have a look for yourself at http://www.apple.com/powermac/. Anyone out there want to buy one of these for me????

Airport Express with Airtunes

Just released but not announced widely is the new Apple Airport Express wireless hub. This looks like a great piece of kit. Like it big brother Airport Express provides a 802.11b/g wireless hub allowing for computers to connect at 54Mb/s. What separates Airport Express though is the new iTunes extension called AirTunes. Using Airtunes you can connect the Airport Extreme directly up to you stereo (using the audio out on the Airport Express) and then control what is output using the AirTunes extension in iTunes.

Categories in Apple Address Book

Apple Address book is great. It is flexible, can be expanded, accessed by external applications and you can categorise your contacts. One gripe many people have is being able to know which category a contact is already in. Well there is even a way to find this out. If you highlight a contact and then hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard you will see the categories the contact can be found in highlighted. This is just another one of the nice features that the clean apple interfaces provide.

Cool stuff for mac fans

Over the last couple of days there have been a few very interesting updates to hardware and software that any mac fan will like. These include:

New Apple Powerbook G4 laptops
Apple has speed bumped all their powerbooks, added more video memory, expanded the amount of memory allowed (up to 2gig) and you can now purchase a 15“ version with a backlit keyboard (previously only available on the 17” model).

New versions of the Apple iBook laptops
Updated versions with faster processor speeds.

New Version of Konfabulator
New version of Konfabulator released which contains an updated Javascript engine, speed improvements, animated GIF support, bug fixes and better support for Exposé. Konfabulator is a cool little program that allows you to run mini applications to do anything from display the weather to display RSS feeds.