Monthly Archives: May 2008

OS X: SuperDuper – heroic system recovery for mere mortals

One of the first things I sought out for my new computer was a reliable backup software. After a lot of online and print research there seemed to be a lot of fanfare for SuperDuper. In fact, MacWorld rated it very highly as one of the best choices in backing up Mac.

One of the things that first surprised me about SuperDuper was its overall ease of use. When you start the software, you are actually walked through the backup process step-by-step. Every task choice comes complete with an explanation of what the software is going to do. Even a complete novice would have no difficulty performing their first backup.



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OS X: 10.5.3 update dropped – fixes ISA proxy issues

Apple finally released the long anticipated update 10.5.3:

Mac OS X 10.5.3 Combo Update [536 MB] — updates from any version of Mac OS X 10.5.x
Mac OS X 10.5.3 Delta Update [420MB] — only updates from Mac OS X 10.5.2

I have been waiting for this, since Safari used to frequently crash when connecting to our ISA Proxy servers at work. Some of the highlights below (relevant to my work):

* Improves Active Directory binding and login.
* Improves Safari reliability when connecting to the Internet through a Microsoft ISA proxy.
* Improves 802.1X behavior and reliability.
* Addresses reliability issues with screen sharing.
* Addresses stability issues that may be encountered when dragging large attachments into an email message.
* Resolves certain issues when backing up a portable Mac that is on battery power.
* Updates Time Machine to reliably restore attachments and messages in Mail.



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OS X: Delicious Library

Another cool application for us Apple-fans: Have you ever loaned a book or DVD or an expensive gadget to a friend, and forgotten which friend? And then bought another? With Delicious Library you just drag any item onto any friend from your Address Book, and it’ll remember the loan for you — and even put an entry in iCal reminding you when it’s due.

Or maybe you have something lying around you don’t use, like an out-of-print book, that’s worth serious bucks and you don’t know it? Because with Delicious Library 2 you always know the current value of your things, and can put your used items up for sale with three clicks. Or maybe you just want to publish your library to the web and share it with your friends.

It may be the most anticipated app of the year, and it is finally here. Delicious Library 2 catalogs all your stuff: even more than just your books, movies, and CDs. You can also catalog just about anything with a barcode on it, including tools, toys, software, gadgets, and apparel.

Delicious Library allows you to import, browse, and share all your books, movies, music and video games with Delicious Library.

A scan of a barcode is all Delicious Library needs to add an item to your digital shelves, downloading tons of info from the internet like the author, release date, current value, description, and even a high-resolution picture of the cover. Import your entire library using the full-speed iSight video barcode scanner. Once you have all of your items in your Mac, you can browse though your digital shelves, check stuff out to friends using Apple’s built-in Address Book and calendar, and find new items to read, watch, and play using Library’s recommendations.

Quickly importing your stuff into Delicious Library doesn’t require a dedicated barcode scanner – you can use any QuickTime®-supported digital video camera, like your Apple iSight. Just hold the barcode on the back of any book, movie, CD, or video game in front of the camera and your item magically shows up on your digital shelf seconds later.

Using the same technology found in $800 industrial-strength CCD barcode scanners, Delicious Library reads every single frame of digital video; seeking out, targeting, and instantly decoding any visible barcodes. This results in a seamless process of scanning that lets you import about 750 items an hour (assuming you can move your arms that fast). At that rate the staff of the new downtown Seattle Central Library could work together to import all of their 1.4 million books into Delicious Library in just over 5 hours.

Not believing it’s capabilities, I tried it on my PS3 collection and was able to scan in 18 PS3 titles short of a minute. While DL2 goes off in the background to fetch the relevant information, you can continue scanning. Once DL2 finds an item it will actually verbally provide details such as “Army of Two by Electronic Arts” – awesome.

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OS X: VMWare Fusion

I used Parallels for a while but I was never able to leave it on without it eating up my CPU for no reason. I gave VMWare a shot just for fun and what I found was a much more stable experience…so much so that I can usually leave it on all the time without noticing a decrease in performance on the mac side:

I have just upgraded to VMWare Fusion and truly enjoy some of the new cool features:

Unite: Seamlessly run Windows applications alongside Mac applications with the Unity features in VMware Fusion. Find and launch Windows applications quickly with the VMware Fusion launcher. Switch between Windows and Mac applications quickly with Exposé. Minimize Windows applications to the Mac OS X Dock.

Play: Play Windows games on your Mac. Create powerful multi-core virtual machines and run 32- and 64-bit operating systems with ease. Use your iSight camera in Windows and gain access to Windows-only USB 2.0 devices.

Bootcamp: VMware Fusion makes it easy to install Windows as a virtual machine on your Intel-based Mac, and makes a perfect complement to Apple Boot Camp. Use your existing Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine, or use the built-in Windows Easy Install to install a fresh copy of Windows on a new virtual machine.

Snapshots: Use Snapshots to save the state of your virtual machine, and revert back to that state if your PC crashes or becomes corrupted.

VMWare Fusion 2.0 (currently in beta, but a free upgrade for Fusion 1.x users) includes even more:
* True Multiple Display Support
* support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2
* Import Parallels and Virtual PC for Mac Virtual Machines, or Even Your Boot Camp Partition
* seamlessly print from your VMWare Windows partition to your OS X printers
* Faster USB Storage performance
* Improved performance when using NAT networking

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OS X: MacBook Air – multi-touch trackpad

The MacBook Air includes an oversize trackpad with multi-touch technology. You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image:

The new gestures work in existing Apple applications such as Finder, iPhoto and Safari, but carry slightly different functionality in each application. For example you can use the “swipe” gesture to drill down and up different folder levels in Finder.

You can double-tap and move the whole window, not just the cursor. When you’re in a large photo you can pan around with two fingers. When you want to rotate a photo, just rotate your fingers. If you want to go between photos, pan right, pan left — if you want to zoom, pinch in and out. All of those settings can be switched on via the System Preferences:

Another “secret” feature is the zoom-function: Hold down CTRL and then use two-finger swipe on the trackpad to zoom in/out of content.

And there is nothing cooler to show your Windows-friends how you can rotate pictures or PDF’s in OS X by just rotating two fingers on the touchpad – smile.

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The Friday Picture: Super Hero

The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:

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OS X: GPS software for your Mac

Here is the deal: You have this fancy GPS device but all the software is for Windows. Not so with Garmin GPS devices – their software is fully functional on Mac OS X. I have been able to upgrade the firmware on my Nuvi 710 as well as install updated maps to it.

Project: Bobcat
Bobcat allows you to search for points of interest (POIs), create and organize waypoints, routes and tracks, and easily send them to your Garmin GPS. Bobcat is the Windows equivalent to MapRoute – just a lot prettier.

MapInstall
Allows you to install maps on your Garmin GPS device.

POI Loader
POI Loader is free software for your Mac that helps you upload customized points of interest (POIs) to your compatible Garmin GPS — add the latest restaurants, safety camera locations, tourist destinations and more. You can find the South African POI data here.

WebUpdater
Make sure you’re making the most of your GPS by running our latest software. Check the WebUpdater for the latest firmware release.

Remember to download MapConverter for Windows to convert your unlocked PC maps for use on your Mac

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OS X: Smile – screenshot short-cuts

Taking screenshots in OS X (Leopard) is really cool (and easy) – if you know the relevant short-cut keys:

Press Cmd + Shift + 3: Take a picture of the whole screen

Press Cmd + Shift + 4: Take a picture of a chosen part of the screen. You then get a crosshair cursor. With the crosshair cursor select a rectangular area of the screen that you want to take a picture of.

Press Cmd + Shift + 4 + Spacebar: Take a picture of a menu or a dialogbox or a window. You get a camera-cursor which you can move from window to window or to an open menu (click once to make the menu hang on screen and not just temporarily show). When your camera is hovering over a window or menu or such, it gets selected with your regular selection color. When you click, the selected window or menu has its picture taken.

Press Cmd + Shift + 3 + Ctrl: Take a picture of the whole screen to the Clipboard

Press Cmd + Shift + 4 + Ctrl: Take a picture of a chosen part of the screen to the Clipboard. You then get a crosshair cursor. With the crosshair cursor select a rectangular area of the screen that you want to take a picture of.

Press Cmd + Shift + 4 + Spacebar + Ctrl: Take a picture of a menu, a dialogbox or a window to the Clipboard. You get a camera-cursor which you can move from window to window or to an open menu (click once to make the menu hang on screen and not just temporarily show). When your camera is hovering over a window or menu or such, it gets selected with your regular selection color. When you click, the selected window or menu has its picture taken.

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MacBook Air: The missing short-cuts

Took me a bit of research, but the Leopard Expose short-cuts are available as follows (press the Shift-key to add a cool slow-motion effect to it):

Fn + F8 : show spaces
Fn + F9 : show all windows
Fn + F10: show all windows for active app
Fn + F11: hide all windows
Fn + F12: show dashboard gadgets

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Ultimate Control: Logitech Harmony 895

My home-entertainment system consisting of a 46″ 100Hz Sony Bravia, a Yamaha YSP-4000 soundbar, a Yamaha YSP-150 subwoofer, a PS3, a Nintendo Wii and PVR made me a 4-remote collector. A simple task such as watching a BlueRay movie turned into the ordeal of switching on the PS3, soundbar, subwoofer and TV. Then having to select the correct input on the soundbar and the TV and we are good to go. The same applies when wanting to watch a movie on the PVR – instead of enjoying a movie, I have become the master in remote-control juggling.

Until I found the Logitech Harmony 895:

The Harmony is a (pricey) universal remote control which comes with a charge cradle and a number of remote-blasters (for people who have their equipment in closed cabinets). The remote control has a color display, 8 activity/quick-launch buttons (left and right of the display) and the usual remote control features such as mute, volume, PVR-controls. A cool feature is the built in tilt-sensor which recognizes when the remote is picked up and then automatically illuminates all buttons and switches the display on.

I am not sure how the Harmony software functions on Windows, but the OS X version seems to be browser-based and is painful to work with, if you experience slow internet speeds. What really makes Logitech’s Harmony range tick though is the included software. This provides access to a huge range of control codes for devices. You tell the software what equipment you have, which means getting down and dirty with the precise model numbers, and it then pulls the information from its extensive database. You then plug the remote in via USB and the data is transferred over to the remote. The good news is the database is very extensive and you’d be hard pressed to actually own something that isn’t on there – and of course grows over time. It certainly had no problems with any of my kit – the hardest trick is knowing which category to search in.

The setup was easy, but time-consuming but after 4 hours I reached the level of perfection on the remote:
- Configured 6 activities: Watch PVR, Watch Blue-ray, Play PS3, Play Wii, Listen to radio, Listen to Music
- Assigned 20 graphical icons to my favorite TV-channels (such as M-Net, MTV etc)
Continue reading “Ultimate Control: Logitech Harmony 895” »

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