DVD copy

While I still have to finish my HOW-TO on duplicating DVDs (hmm), this product struck my attention: Fast DVD Copy.

An all-in-one-one-click commercial app that duplicates your personal DVDs - and commercial ones for that matter - switched them to region free (and presumably disables Macrovision).

For USD 99, version 2 allows you to select the bonus you want - or don't want for that matter. The previous version duplicated the lot, limiting to a maximum of 97 minutes the movies it could copy. Apparently, this has been addressed in the latest version.

Beware of the licensing scheme - install it on the computer that will be used to duplicate:

Your license is valid for one computer only. If you want to install Fast DVD Copy on a second Mac, you need to buy a second license.In addition, your Fast DVD Copy license is computer-specific. Your serial number will only work on the Mac that you licensed it for.

HFS+ Fragmentation

Remember the days when we use to defrag our disks with Norton SpeedDisk? When was the last time you defragged under Mac OS X? No need to thanks to Mac OS X built-in measures against fragmentation?

Learn more about the topic by reading Amit Singh's "Fragmentation on HFS+ Volumes" on kernelthread.com.

Defragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation.

It is risky to defragment anyway: What if there's a power glitch? What if the system crashes? What if the defragmenting tool has a bug? What if you inadvertently reboot? In some cases, you could make the situation worse by defragmenting.

Mail.app Junk Mail Filter

O'Reilly's part two gives interesting information on what Junk Mail Filter is, and isn't. A good read for anyone using Mail.app

The Fight Against Spam, Part 2

Interestingly enough, the technology that underlies the Junk Mail filter began its life as an information retrieval system, developed in the Apple labs to help users who managed thousands or millions of large documents find the one they were looking for easily. In order to do that, this technology had to allow users to perform a search by topic.

iChat TV

Simon Thornton presents an interesting idea on his weblog ("a mutual misunderstanding"): connect a DV input device to your Mac and make iChat believe it's a firewire cam ..

Sending Live Television Via iChat

In other, shorter, easier, words: you can use your converter box to stream live video from something - oooh, let's just say your Sky Digibox for example - to someone else using iChat anywhere else in the world. If you happened to have one of the outputs of your Sky box (it has two) connected up to the inputs of your converter box, you might see how this could work.

iSight power drain

There really is a power drain problem with Apple's superb iSight camera.

I switched to a larger external firewire drive earlier this year, and after my loyal 6Gb VST (SmartDisk now), 20Gb iPod (G2), 20Gb LaCie 'DataBank', I'm walking around with a 40Gb LaCie 'by F.A. Porsche' .

I use it mainly for synchronising my e-mail, bookmarks, preferences, and current work between my desktop and PowerBook, so the amount of data that is transferred each time is now tremendous as I sync twice a day. Nevertheless, I've been copying large files (7Gb+) recently which all caused my desktop Mac to lockup. It wasn't a crash per se, but a number of warnings and errors started to appear in the system logs which lead to the freeze of the GUI with a kernel load of 99.9%. This situation occurred each time I tried to copy those large files, or loads of small ones (20'000+).

My first thought was to incriminate the system, as the external drive worked fine on my other desktop Mac and PowerBook. I explored all sorts of solutions, ending up by a complete OS reinstall. But to no avail - the problem didn't disappear - until I realised that my iSight and the LaCie drive were both plugged into the motherboard Firewire connectors - which was the only difference between that Mac and the two others.

Unplugging the drive during a freeze resolved the problem. The load drops, the system generates an error, but you regain control of your Mac. Apparently, the iSight drains power on both ports, leaving the second one underpowered.

At least for the 'F.A. Porsche' LaCie. I never had that problem with the 'DataBank' (which only offers one firewire connector, against two for the 'F.A. Porsche' - which was what decided me for the model over the 40Gb 'DataBank'.

This problem is evoked on Apple Discussions in various threads. I should have known.

So, I sorted that mess out by adding a Belkin Firewire PCI card to my desktop Mac. Everyone is happy. Everyone is powered.

Downgrading to Airport 3.3.1

If you're experiencing problems after upgrading to Airport 3.4, typically loss of signal strength and disconnection, you'll find instructions on how to downgrade at,

http://homepage.mac.com/fishsun/articles/uninstall_airport34.htm

More info and discussions on,

• Slashdot
• Apple discussion board
• MacFixIt

I didn't manage to upgrade to Airport 3.3.1 after reinstalling 3.1. xlr8yourmac has several workarounds. The first one worked for me.

MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen)

Well, believe it or not, this afternoon at 16:15 CET Intego publishes a press release announcing the launch of a Mac OS X Trojan Horse, just after my copy of VirusBarrier popped up with this alert around 15:50 CET:

My definitions were updated this morning by NetUpdate adding the ability to detect MP3 Concept.

I immediately checked the net for more in fo, but was unable to find anything before this evening. But when I write these lines, the CIAC, McAfee, Sophos or Symantec don't mention it. Even Google didn't turn up anything..

MacNN and Slashdot have a post, but the info remains sparse and unconfirmed.

The alert was triggered when I launched BBEdit, and was reproducable once eventhough I clicked 'Repair' on the VirusBarrier alert dialog box. No MP3 files in my case..

Here's a copy of the e-mail alert:

Date: 04/08/2004 15:50:35 Europe/Zurich +0200
File: /.vol/234881033/2656577
Virus: MP3Virus.Gen

Date: 04/08/2004 15:50:52 Europe/Zurich +0200
File: /.vol/234881033/930750
Virus: MP3Virus.Gen

It's actually the first time I've seen it work
:/

April 9 update:

MacNN has an full update on the matter, and a Usenet thread sheds more light on this matter.

0x2a posted an interesting comment which I fully share.

April 11 update:

More info and comments from MacFixIt, Wired, and a clarification from Intego.

Likewise, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira said the company was investigating. "We are aware of the potential issue identified by Intego and are working proactively to investigate it," she said.

Boost Mail.app's junk mail filtering

The other discovery of the day: JunkMatcher

A set of scripts that can be added to Mail.app rules. It uses various effective techniques such as IP-based filtering, and flexible regular expressions to identify junk mails, and comes with a GUI front end which enables you to analyse what's going on and tweak it efficency. You can even report spam to SpamCop.net directly from the log window.

There's a clip on the product's website that shows it in action.

Horizontal scroll built in Mac OS X

Have you tried the latest Microsoft Wireless Optical mouse ? What interested me to try was the new scroll wheel, which gives you the smoothest scroll I have ever experienced, and the possibility to scroll horizontally by tilting the scroll wheel to the left or right.

The scroll experience is awesome, unfortunately the ergonomic design of the mouse gaves me cramps in the wrist, and the horizontal scroll required the Microsoft driver to be installed.
:(

But I discovered quite by accident this morning that horizontal scrolling is built in Mac OS X. (for as long as you own a scroll wheel mouse)

Hold the shift key down while using your scroll wheel, and the content scrolls horizontally.

This is not new. MacOSXHints published this hint back in October 2003 - but I was quite pleased to stumble upon it by accident!

Safari not supported by GMail

Google's new free e-mail service, GMail, doesn't support Safari (yet). You get 1Gb free storage with Google's search engine (Don't sort, search).

Among the notable features, you'll find,

• Select a message and all relate message are highlighted (threads, replies)
• Customisable spam filter
• No popups, no ads - but relevant text-ads à la Google ..

The service is still in beta, and widely available, and English is the only language available at the time of writing.

What should we think about this new service? After indexing the web, usenet, weblogs (Blogger), Google will track our e-mail content..
:/

PS: noticed today's cool date? 04-04-04

Lol

Can't stop laughing..

I won’t spare the niceties: what Doug Bowman and Stopdesign have done is disgraceful and unprofessional.

For a so-called “Design Consultancy” to rip off the work of another for its own site shows a total lack of regard for others in the profession, and undermines — no, cheapens — the industry as a whole.

What makes this particularly heinous is that not two weeks ago, Mr. Bowman had the audacity to talk about CSS Theft in front of a packed conference room at SXSW2004. In one ear, out the other…?

A sad day for those of us working on the web. Please feel free to go over to Stopdesign and make some noise in protest.

Mezzoblue or Stop Design or Mezzoblue or ..

ADC Reference Library

Apple has reorganised their developer's documentation and technotes into a new ADC Reference Library.

I like the way the information is organised. It reminds me a little of the support forum. The hierarchy feels logic (well, it suits my logic anyway). The topics are clearly outlined, with informative sidebar links to relevant internal or external resources. The search engine is a powerful way of finding what you're looking for. This reference will stand in good place in my reference bookmarks.

A comprehensive collection of Apple technical resources, including Documentation, Technical Notes, Sample Code, Technical Q&As, and Release Notes. Each of the links below leads to the resources for a specific topic. Key resources also include Getting Started documents, API references, and cross-references for related topics.

iPhoto Printing

Photo and Album Printing have been activated in iPhoto for (most) European users.

These features allows you to print your pictures and photo albums. I'll let you know how good they are as soon as I received my prints and albums.

The price in Switzerland is quite competitive (CHF 0.55 for a 10x15cm) - let's wait to evaluate the delivery times and quality.

iTMS where are you ..?

3 candles for Mac OS X

Mac OS 10.0 turns 3 today. It was launched on March, 24 2001, remember ? Seems ages ago, no?

After four major releases, Mac OS X has become as part of my every day life as Mac OS 9 was (and 8, and 7, and 6, ..). Moreover, this month sees the back of the last Classic application I couldn't do without (MacPay). Its final Cocoa version is due out on March 26. I must admit that my 9 icon has been bouncing less and less in my Dock for the last 18 months now.

Wink: Emma turned 3 too in March ;)

040326 update; ArsTechnica has a nice post on this event capturing the essentials of the last 3 years.

Asynchronous cron jobs

You are probably all aware that your Mac runs daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts to check the integrity of your system and clean it up.

The Unix subsystems on Mac OS X were originally written for machines that were typically never shut off. Mac OS X inherits this assumption in version 1.x, and has many system maintenance tasks that are scheduled to run between 3 am and 5 am. In addition, there are scripts designed to run weekly on weekends, and once a month in the middle of the night.
Orig. MacJanitor

Utilities such as MacJanitor or Cocktail solved this problem by allowing you to run them manually. But you still had to think of doing it. Another solution is to change the time and day at which they are supposed to run, hoping that your computer would powered on then. Utilities such as CronniX help you do right that and more -- you can also edit the cron table by hand.

Downloading the latest version of DéjàVu, I fell on a reference to Anacron:

Anacron is a periodic command scheduler. It executes commands at intervals specified in days. Unlike cron, it does not assume that the system is running continuously. It can therefore be used to control the execution of daily, weekly and monthly jobs (or anything with a period of n days), on systems that don't run 24 hours a day. When installed and configured properly, Anacron will make sure that the commands are run at the specified intervals as closely as machine-uptime permits.
[snip]
It isn't a full-time daemon. It has to be executed from boot scripts, from cron-jobs, or explicitly.

Now this is just what I've been looking for for my AlPB which is seldom powered on at 3:00a. I changed the execution time of the maintenance scripts, but that doesn't help if the Mac is sleeping or off.. I'l give it a try and let you know.

Address Book Map function in Europe

The default map function of the Address Book is a cool trick, but isn't very useful to users living out of the USA. But there's a new plugin on the block: Mappy Address Book

A neat Address Book plugin which enables the Address Book to hook into the online Mappy services. You can map an address or route it. Works like a charm.

48 points 48 hours later

Matthew Thomas posted an article on his first 48h hours enduring Mac OS X

"The quality of Apple’s human interface has declined and continues to decline. That other current platforms, both Free and non-Free, continue to be even worse does not make this situation any more satisfying."

Matthew Thomas is a usability critic and former Mac OS 9 user. Recommended reading - BTW, I agree with most of his points.

Software Update Glitch

I got bitten by a strange bug yesterday while running Software Update on my Server: a bunch of updates where available, so I accepted to install them and went back to my desktop. After a while, I was ready to click the "restart" button when I noticed that a red exclamation mark was next to all the updates instead of the green checkmark, and a dialog box was displaying the following

"None of the checked updates could be installed. Make sure you have permission to write to /tmp/501/TemporaryItems/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate, then try again."

Hmm. I was running as administrator. Anyway, it was a while since I'd repaired the permissions on this machine, so I launched Disk Utility, repaired and rebooted, just to be on the safe side. But to no avail, the same symptom occurred again. I used Fast Switching to login as root and tried again - no luck. I checked the permissions and they where fine 700 and 755. I decided to 777 the whole tree just to see if that changed anything - nope.

It seemed time to check the net for similar problems. In case like this, I usually start with Apple's Discussions. Checking the Server forum didn't help. Searching the 10.3 one yielded several pertinent threads.

First, I wasn't the only one with this problem. Many had tried what I did, and were just as unsuccessful as me.

• Software Update permissions problem
• Security Update won't install
• Software Update Woes

But a thread attracted my attention more than the others because it mentionned that Apple Remote Desktop was installed on those computers displaying the problem. I had installed ARD earlier in January to test how well I could drive my server from home (not very well actually, but that is another topic). I had never uninstalled it.

• Permissions problems updating to 10.3.2

One of the fixes suggested was related to XCode, or rather uninstalling XCode than removed essential apps from the system (tar, zip, unzip, etc.) and prevents many operation from completing successfully - including Software Update.

I had never installed nor uninstalled XCode from my server, so I decided to install them to give it a try. My server runs on a B&W G3 with a 8Gb primary partition. Just over 2Gb were free, so I had to be cautious in my installation. The fulls XCode package installs over 1.9Gb of software .. I didn't want to replace one problem by another. Using custom install, I avoided the installation of documentation, various SDK, etc. - and Bob's my uncle! It solved the problem!

Now what was wrong, I don't know. I shall uninstall ARD and other unused software to save space, and check those threads to see if someone puts his finger on the problem. A worrying one if you ask me.

PS: funnily enough, just after that episode, I received the new version of XCode in the ADC February mailing.

Font management doc

I don't know about you, but fonts problems or font related problems have caused havoc more than once since I permanently switched to Mac OS X back in the 1.1 days.

A MacOSXHint thread points on a very informative document that explains - and clarifies - a lot of potential font issues and how to solve them, where to store them, what format to use, etc. The document is Jaguar (10.2) centered, but a lot of the info still applies to Panther.

The Apple article is located at,

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75494> (direct link to PDF document)

Unfortunately, FontBook still remains poorly documented ..

iBook logic board problem recognised

Apple has finally recognised the problem with the iBook's logic board by publishing an extended exchange program and offering to reimburse previous costs of repair to eligible customers (iBook purchased in the last 3 years). Reuters comments the problem an article "Failing Apple Hardware".

I fell on this piece of information while reading an interesting commentary "Having Bitten the Forbidden Fruit, it Bit Me Back. Six Times" on OSDir.com on a Linux user feeling guilty of using Mac OS X instead of Linux, and all the trouble he had with his iBook logic board.

Check it out if you are an iBook user - or not - you might be entitle to the logic board exchange.

ecto 1 point oh!

The best blogging tool on the block has just final: ecto has reached 1.0.

Previous donors have been granted a generous discount on the public price which remains very reasonable. So, if you need a client application to talk to MovableType, TypePad, Blogger or whatever, give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

French localisation available, Window version in the pipe.

Threaded Trash

Who would have guessed that the "Empty Trash..." task was threaded ?

Yes, I ctrl-clicked the Trash while it was emptying .. and don't ask me why. I guess that the number of items was so large, and having issued the command earlier on - like 15" - I forgot until the window pop-up from under another.

Just a Monday curiosity.

 

The Mac turns 20

Happy Birthday Macintosh!

A few links picked up on the net (orig. MacMinute)

• First Macintosh Press Release - MacDailyNews
• Steve Jobs on the Mac's 20th anniversary - Macworld
• Celebrating 20 Years of the Mac - NPR
• The Mac that roared - San Jose Mercury News
• Looking Back on the Mac - Macworld
• We're All Mac Users Now - Wired
• 20 crazy years later, a new direction for Apple - CBS Marketwatch
• Apple's core: The Mac turns 20 - CNN
• The machine that changed the world - San Francisco Chronicle
• The Mac Turns 20 - PC World
• Apple bytes: The Mac at 20 - Silicon.com
• Apple's groundbreaking computer marks 20th anniversary - Seattle Times

iTMS RSS Feed Generator

Apple is offering a cool service to generate your own RSS feed based on their new releases. Select your favourite type of music among the 25 genre proposed. The page generates an URL that can be copy & pasted into your favourite news aggregator (such as NetNewsWire e.g.).
Cool.

Orig. MacDailyNews

1Tb for 5Kg

There we are.

You can actually have 1 terabyte (1000 Gb) on your desktop.

LaCie has just released the Bigger Disk. It offers Firewire 400 (6 or 4 pins a.k.a. iLink), Firewire 800 and USB 1.1/2.0 interface.

 

European ITMS Q2 2004

Jobs announced that iPhoto's print services will be available in Europe sometime in March 2004, but he didn't mentionned anything regarding iTunes Music Store.

According to an article in MacWorld UK,

Music industry insiders expect Apple, Napster and other major digital music services to launch in Europe as soon as the second quarter 2004.

While Apple remains tight-lipped about plans to introduce its service in Europe, Universal Music's eLabs president Larry Kenswil told Macworld: "By the second or third quarter there will be a number of major services in Europe, and I expect one of these will be Apple's iTunes Music Store."

Sounds cool, no ?

Stream video from your Mac to your TV via WiFi

Anyone using one of these? Ultimate Wireless.

Sounds cool. You can stream video and stereo audio from your Mac (or PC) to your TV wirelessly. Just need a CRT port (VGA) and a composite input on your TV.

But the design isn't as cool as my favourite MP3 streamer: Squeezebox of Slim Devices.

USD 179 / user manual / info

What is Mac OS X ?

Amit Singh's kernelthread.com publishes a milestone article on "What is Mac OS X" targeted at those members of the technical community who are not familiar with it, notably the Linux User's Group at his work.

A low level article - quite technical by moments, which complements all the higher level ones you can find on the net. A milestone.

There's a thread on Slashdot on this article.

Your 20 Macs

Wired has a paper on the 20 Macs that mattered most. Time to reflect. One generation melting into the next, you quickly forget the fun and frustrations of one generation over the next.

I've managed to keep the most significant Macs I was lucky to work on (with?), with in mind to reinstall a System 6 (or 5, or 1?) one of these days. What is your Mac ? The one which enlightened you - or infuriated you ? I believe it was the Mac II for me. It felt like a giant leap at the time. I never did had the cash to buy a Mac mid-eighties, buy my lab owned a Mac II, IIx, then a Mac IIfx.

That was the time when I really dived into the Mac, experienced frame grabbing (GENLock remember?), Object Oriented programming, ResEdit and MacBugs. Magical times, when I had the time to explore, discover and experiment - night after day after night.

ecto public beta

The new desktop blogging client ecto was released for public beta testing (expire end of January, 2004).

The current version is very stable, and offers all of Kung-Log's features and more. It is setup in a matter of seconds, and the new user interface is strait-forward for anyone who's used Kung Log or MovableType's post form.

I'm using it with MovableType and TypePad without any problem.

iLife 04 translations

You probably watched yesterday's Keynote, so I won't comment on it or the new products/ services that were announced until I start to use them. Nevertheless, I was amused to discover how badly some product tag lines can be translated into French. The PowerBook 12"/17" «Small is Big..» one was terrible in French - meaningless actually. The iLife 04 is worse: it vehicles the wrong message:

The French translation found on Apple Switzerland's website was removed and replaced by the English text earlier this morning. They must have warned that computer translated texts should be reviewed by a human being..

The translation roughly goes like «As from now on, it's for life between Microsoft Office and you»

14:46 CET Update: here's the new version that has appeared on Apple France.

«The Microsoft Office for your creative .. life»

Will 2004 be like 1984 ?

It's 20 years since the original Mac was first presented to the public (I bet you remember the commercial during the Super Bowl broadcast).

How do you think is MWSF going to celebrate that ?

Check the Apple Computer History Weblog for more information or a previous Macinlog post.

Moreover, the Mac OS epoch hit a 100 years yesterday.. (Slashdot)

Best wishes for '04

With 2004 only 121 minutes away, it's time for me to wish you all a very very very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Thanks for reading and reacting, and see you the other side.

Macinblog's best of 03

Just in time for my list of favourite software of the year:

1. Mac OS 10.3: the latest version of the Macintosh operating system
2. Kung-Log: post and manage your weblog entries
3. BBEdit (*): high-performance text and HTML editor
4. iViewMedia Pro: media management software
5. OmniGraffle Professional (*): lets you create your best graphs, diagrams, flow charts, etc.
6. NetNewsWire Lite: RSS news reader for web sites
7. Safari: Apple's web browser
8. DiskWarrior: repair Mac OS X native directory and save your day
9. xScope: powerful set of tools for measuring, aligning and inspecting online graphics
10. Movable Type: weblog (or website) publishing software
11. Interarchy: my SFTP alter ego

(*) present in last year's favs

Hmm, but why these ? What are my criterias ? Completely emotional - and practical. Basically, most of them are applications I use on a daily basis, which I've used and abused, most of them since their early versions (some beta), applications I couldn't do without, and finally, most of which live in my Dock. Some are not new, some have just been released, some I have just discovered. Oh, and most of the download links point to MacUpdate. I still can't make my mind up between VersionTracker and MacUpdate (which service do you favour ?)

1. Mac OS 10.3: okay, this one isn't really an application per se (that's why there's 11 favs this year), but it had to figure in this list as Mac OS X gets better and better at each release. I'm not going to into details on this one, others have done it much better - but applications like Mail, iSync, FontBook or Address Book are part of my daily grind - and new features such as Expose is really tooooo cool..
2. Kung-Log: I discovered this little jem about a year ago (it was still an AppleScript Studio app back then). This product has since evolved into a Cocoa application full of features and has become an indispensable tool to anybody who hosts a weblog. You can manage your entries, post, draft, edit, delete, upload images or files, preview your post (uses Safari's WebKit), send notifications by e-mail, etc.
   
   And what's more, the next version is on it's way! It's called ecto and is currently undergoing private beta testing. Don't miss the public beta when it's released - it really rocks! (this post was edited using ecto beta release 1).
3. BBEdit (*): no need to present BBEdit anymore. This application loads early in one of my typical day's work. The latest release offers WebKit Preview. That means that while you're tweaking css code (or xhtml), you can preview in realtime how it renders with Safari's engine (Kung-Log/ecto offer the same functionality). This is invaluable to test layouts and html code in general. I still haven't tested the CVS feature since it's release last year, but intend to get my teeth into it this year.
4. iViewMedia Pro: I've tried several media management software these last few years for managing my images, starting with Canto Cumulus, but gave it up when the Mac OS X standalone version never showed up, Extensis PortFolio, but never got used to it's interface, Apple's iPhoto until it choked on my 3'000+ photos and really got too slow (not to mention its file management limitations), until I discovered iViewMedia Pro. The latest release really suits me down to the ground. You can manage large libraries of images, it's fast, offers numerous way of assigning categories, keywords, and other attributes to sort your media files just the way you want. It is user-friendly and it use very intuitive, yet its features remain powerful. The file management is a breeze. It reads and downloads your images directly from your digital camera, imports files from your HD at lightening speed. I haven't explored in details its export options or slideshow features, but they seem quite satisfying. Hopefully, I won't have to change in the near future.
5. OmniGraffle Professional (*): a gem you don't get tired of. I'm been using OmniGraffle more and more frequently these last 12 months, and keep discovering new ways of getting my work done more efficiently. Clean and neat.
6. NetNewsWire Lite: what better way to get abreast with your favourite weblogs ? It's simple, sports a clean interface and it's free. I never really gave it's big brother a try being a fan of Kung-Log, but I'm sure it is a brilliant application too.
7. Safari: Apple's web browser and my favourite browser. I was running Chimera last year, and slowly switched to Safari. Fast, clean, does the job just right. Gets better at each release. but you know all that already, no ?
8. DiskWarrior: since the release of version 3, it's saved my day at least two times, resurrecting drive catalogs that other apps declared good as dead. What more to say ? If you job relies on using a Mac - or taking care of Macs - on a daily basis, buy it.
9. xScope: I only recently discovered this little application. Like all others from IconFactory/Panic Software, it is very well polished. It proved itself invaluable during the tweaking of the css style sheet I was working on, while trying to address the different inconsistencies of IE. Only took two hours before I purchased it.
10. Movable Type: Okay. It's not a application as such, well not a user app anyway. But it's a wonderful server application to publish websites in general and weblogs in particular. Throughout this last year, I haven't ceased to discover it's power and flexibility (and extensibility). It's amazing what you can achieve with it. Until recently Macinblog was hosted run by MT. I must admit that Movable Type is my discovery of the year.
11. Interarchy: another old friend. I been using this application so long that I only realize how much I depend on it when I'm on a Mac without it. I guess Interarchy is what one could call "an acquired taste". I rely quite a bit on SFTP in my daily tasks, and sometime on several different severs at the same time. Interarchy makes file transfer as simple as using another window in the Finder. It's full of other interesting features, but I must admit that I've never really taken the time to evaluate them properly. I just thought this one would round up my list nicely.

There, that's done. Time to go and see what the rest of my little family are up to .. Happy New Year to you all ;)

Macinblog moved to TypePad

Some of you might have noticed that Macinblog has moved from MT to TypePad.

This is not a move away from MT, but rather an opportunity to test TP in a production environment. Macinblog might move back to MT in a near future - who knows.

The move was smooth. I exported all records from MT, edited the file with BBEdit to correct the image paths and imported it into TP directly. All records were correctly imported, categories and comments included. After all, TP does run on MT.

The only glitch was the images. I had to upload them one by one .. Then I wondered if I could have uploaded an archive file of all images in the same manner you can do with a TP photo album (?) Thinking of it, I don't know if there's a way of dowloading all images if ever I move back to MT in a few months..
:/

Macinblog doesn't rely on a specific plugin, it had a little php here and there, but it can live without it. The plugin I will miss is MTBlackList - but it might appear in a future release of TP.

Currently, it's running with standard templates, and styles. I'll convert them to advanced template next week, and see how far you can go that way.

Anyone know if php is supported ? Guess not.

The next step is to support all the old URLs as TP uses a different archiving scheme than Macinblog did. I have a few leads, and will let you know how I worked that one out.

Redirecting your MT permalinks to TP

Good idea, but it from what I understand, the redirection code would need to be inserted in an alternative individual archive. Unfortunately, I haven't found the way to create additional individual archives. Advanced templates lets you create index pages and modules, but not archive templates.. This solution is fine as long as (1) you don't use TP domain mapping, and (2) you haven't closed down your previous account.

I guess I could upload individual .html files with the redirect code in them. I'll try to generate them from my MT system.

16:42: it seems to work fine. The only drag is that you have to upload every file manually through TP file upload dlog box. I tried to archive all files and upload it, but now I have an 'archive.zip' sitting on my server and found no way to delete it. Is there some way to perform basic file management tasks on TP?

Unofficial TypePad Resources

News and tips from TP users for TP users

Official TypePad Resources Weblog

The official Six Apart weblog is a place for development news, tips and tricks, links to TypePad-related and weblogging resources and general information for the TypePad user

Use .htaccess to domain map TP

This is the way to go to rewrite an URL to another, with a fixed path+filename. But this isn't my case. I need to regenerate the filename based on the MTEntryID. I guess I could specify individual rules for each file, but that defeats the whole principle, doesn't it!?

Favicons appear in NetNewsWire{Lite}

After Safari, here come the favicons in NetNewsWire. The application searches for the favicon file (favicon.ico) in the same directory than the RSS feed. It doesn't read the x-icon meta tag (yet).

So if you want your icon to show up, make sure it's located at the root of the feed, or add it to your ~/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Favicons/ folder (name it: site_domain_tld.ico as in www_macinblog_com.ico).

Display of title attribute fixed in 10.3.2

Anyone noticed that Safari correctly displays the title attribute in little 'tool tips' text boxes ? (like all the other browsers).

Video iPod

Remember the job opening on Apple's website for engineer to develop iTunes for Windows ? Well, here's one that is looking for,

Title: Playback Firmware Engineer
Req. ID: 2075781
Location: Santa Clara Valley, California
Country: United States

Seeking a highly motivated engineer to develop next generation iPod product. Must have experience in overall system design of audio and video products.

Courtesy MacMinute.

The next generation is on its way..

iFlex

MacMice have done it again. When I received my iSight back in July, I ordered a SightClip for my Studio Display (who actually stuck Apple's stand on their monitor?). Months later, they released the SightFlex, a cool flexible stand for your favourite cam, enabling you to position it exactly where you want, including next to your iChat window!

Now they've announced iFlex, the same model, but for iBook/PowerBook owners. Scheduled for release on Jan 8th, just in time for MWSF.

Enrique, if you're reading this, I wouldn't mind one of these..
;)

Hibernation

Dear Macinblog reader,

You might have noticed that this weblog has been rather quiet lately. I've been rather busy with the launch of two major projects late November and early December. But most of all, I've been thinkg about the reorganisation (reunification?) of my different weblogs under a common structure.

Macinblog turned 1 on Dec 3rd, and attracts a fair amount of regular followers which entices me to continue this low bandwidth newsletter. 2004 will see a new Macinblog integrated under my corporate website. My personal weblogs need to be unified too. I currently run www.davo39.org, and the former www.checkbox.org (MT) and wild.blogs.com (TypePad - check the mobile pix section), and have photo galleries on .Mac (www.roessli.net).

TypePad is a wonderful tool, and I recommended to anyone who doesn't want to be bothered with the installation of MovableType. MT on the other hand is my favourite weblog management system (WMS ?). It's extensibility is unique. I'll talk more about MT's uses on my new weblog next year.

All this to let you know that I haven't given up on you, but just stepped back to give all this a think, in order to address the future more efficently.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and send you all my best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Thanks for reading.

Keynote's XML

An interesting introduction to Apple XML syntax (APXL) and its possibilities. Something to dive into on a rainy afternoon.

Too cool ? Not really..

A G5 Cube ? That would be almost too sweet ..

xScope: measure, align and inspect

A little gem from our friends of the Iconfactory: xScope

I've been spending the last few days tweaking CSS, trying to overcome the current browser's discrepancies in order to follow the W3C recommendations as closely as possible. But as you know, it's not a piece of cake..

I used Snapz Pro to capture screen areas, and Photoshop to measure the pixels separating one rendering from another. Until I discovered xScope (thanks Enrique). I wasn't using for an hour, that I logged onto their site to purchase it. It's not only a set of rulers, you can place guides, frames, change your cursor into a crosshair, magnify selected areas of your screen or easily see the usable real estate for any screen size, browser, for Mac or Windows - a dream.

If you design, need to measure, align and inspect on-screen graphics and layouts, xScope is today's answer.

Panther: archiving in ZIP format

Anybody noticed this one ? I usually use StuffIt's CM to archive (stuff or zip) a file/folder, but I gave the Finder's CM "Create an Archive of [name]" a try and discovered that it was in ZIP format.

John Siracusa reviews Panther

There's a nice in depth (as always) review of Panther by John Siracusa of Ars Technica,

Starting with Developer Preview 2, Ars Technica's Apple Technology Specialist John Siracusa has been following the steady progress of OS X from beta through Jaguar. Now Panther has hit the street, and John has undertaken his now-annual exercise of taking Apple's latest OS out for a long test drive.

Panther: Mail.app add-ons

MailEnhancer: extends the functionality of mail with several cool features:

• Show activity viewer when doing a manual mail check
• Display a status dialog after doing a manual mail check
• Dock icon count shows all unread instead of just inbox unread
• Automatically update signature to match sending address

The last one is by far the coolest. Invaluable if you have several e-mail accounts

MailPriority: provides a simple interface to set priorities for outgoing messages and request read receipts (when available on the receipient's server).

MailPicture: allows you to have your image show up in your mail message when you send it to a user that has MailPictures installed.

They are all freeware and Panther compatible and come as Bundles that install in your~/Library/Mail/Bundles directory.

Xbox switches to PowerPC

Guess what: Microsoft is switching to IBM's PowerPC chip (yes, the same you find in Apple's Macs) to power its playstation, the Xbox. (source WIRED).

There's quite a bit of irony here, he [Richard Doherty of IBM] added, referring to the fact that it has always been assumed that Apple would move to Intel, rather than Microsoft moving to the PowerPC, a chip technology co-developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola.

• Microsoft's press release
• IBM's press release

Panther: FireWire data corruption resolved

Apparently, Apple has narrowed the problem with Firewire 800 corruption down to an Oxford 922 chipset used by some external firewire enclosures (source EETimes, and Apple's official press release).

Other World Computing is offering a FireWire 800 firmware update for their Mercury Elite FW800 external drives.

While Oxford Semiconductor and Apple Computer disagree over what has led to this issue (there is absolutely no issue under any circumstance with OS 10.2.8 and earlier), Apple has confirmed that the issue is limited to firmware v1.02 and prior.

The patch is also available through VersionTracker.

LaCie has also published a announcement on their website regarding their FW800 external drives.

WiebeTech follows suit for their Fire800 and MicroGB+800 products with an announcement on their tech support page, and offers an firmware updater.

Doug Bowman is back on Mac

In a post call "SwitchBack", Douglas Bowman, the well-known designer of Stopdesign, explains how he has come back to using a Mac after a having given it up in favour of Windows (see "Confessions of a Designer" for the whole story).

Welcome back Doug.

MT-Blacklist is installed

I've just installed Jay's mt-blacklist module, and it works like a charm! Thanks a million Jay!

To you MT administrators out there: don't forget to donate something via PayPal - this by far the easiest and most useful plug-in I now of (link from MT-Blacklist home page).

Remote Tunes - a followup

I posted an entry on Ovolab's RemoteTunes the other day. Since, I've purchased a license as it fullfills exactly my needs.

The only aspect I found annoying was the time it takes to update the playlist and track info at each connection. That's when I noticed there was another way of building RemoteTune's database file: "Asking for a RemoteTunes database file".

I didn't figure out what that meant immediately for two reasons: first, the RemoteTunes mislead me in thinking instinctively that it was a remote iTune library as that found in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes 4 Music Library. In fact it's what it name implies: a RemoteTunes (the application) database (aka file). I'd tried connecting to a remote iTune Library without success, and made a mental note to try it again later. It's only 5 minutes ago that I actually read the dialog box correctly, and checked to see if there was a "Save" item in the File menu. There is. Save the playlist and track info, and point your connection settings towards that file - not some other remote file that has nothing to do with it.

That leads me to the second reason: not managing to make the option work, I quite naturally turned to Ovolab's website which is well designed, but lacks documentation. A small Read Me First or something equivalent online would help getting you started.

Now, this wouldn't have happened if I would have read the box correctly, and took the time to figure it out the first time around. But someone else might give up, and rely solely on the first methos, which can take time depending on the size of the remote iTunes Library (mine exceeds 35Gb).

That excepted, it's a fabulous little application if you have the need of it.

Thought I'd let you know.

Roar on Oct 24

Here we are,

Place your order for Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” today and be among the first to receive your copy the evening of October 24, 2003. Building on the rock-solid foundation of Mac OS X, Panther delivers over 150 features and innovations. Exposé gives you instant direct access to any open window or file on your desktop. The brand-new Finder gets you to your favorite files and folders in one click. iChat AV puts built-in personal audio and video conferencing at your fingertips.* Enhanced Mail and Windows compatibility improve communication with the world. And the list goes on. It’s like having an all-new Mac.

A single copy of Panther costs only $129, and the five-license Family Pack costs only $199. Place your order today and leave the rest of the world even further behind.

orig News@InsideApple.apple.com

Search your (Safari) bookmarks

I found a link to a cool Safari hack on Kirk Samuelson's blog: HetimaSafariHackEX

It enables you t