Media-Convert: Web-based converter for most everything - Download Squad

Good resource: Media-Convert: Web-based converter for most everything - Download Squad

Carbonite (XP only): Online backup goes mainstream

I came across this via The Atlantic's print edition, not via any of the many blogs I track. Odd.

Carbonite Online Backup is XP only, but the price is right. $50 a year for "unlimited" (really?) backup.

If it were OS X as well I'd have signed up by now, but no matter -- the $50 price point is the key. At long last, online backup is going mainstream. It's the only way to go, but expect restores to be unbelievably slow and tedious for sometime. It can't be the only backup solution, but it's a good companion to backup to an onsite external hard drive.

iMac G5: fans running more often

My 20" iMac fans run often nowadays - a load that was tolerated before drives fans up. No idea why. In the past Canon's crummy printer drivers caused this kind of problem with a bad print job (printing is an OS X weakness), but Activity Monitor (show all) has no bad news.

CPU temp is about 168 by Thermograph measures. High, but unfortunately not too high by the low standards of the "30% failure rate" 20" G5 iMac.

iMac G5 constant fan noise - Mac Forums has some hints. I'll try those and update here. Cleaning out the air ducts sounds harmless enough.

I wonder too if Apple, knowing the problems with the design of this machine, has tweaked the temperature response curve to lower the threshold for high speed fans.

PS. I'm posting this using Firefox 2 RC-2. I love the inline spelling check!

Update 10/8/06: Seems better. Here's what I did:

1. Checked Activity Monitor for any hung processes (none found, be sure to view ALL processes)
   
2. Reset the SMU (System Management Unit)
3. Opened up the iMac and blew out clouds of dust from vents, etc.
4. Changed performance to Highest (this is odd, but it came from MacOS X Hints).
   

I'll see it it stays better. Hard to say what worked, I didn't have time to mess with this so I did everything that seemed reasonable.

Update 1/24/2010: Four years later I noticed this again. I reset the SMU and it improved. Thanks to Google custom search I found this old post and new what to do.

Camino: Command-click to select table cells

In Camino, my current OS X Gecko web browser, you can command click to select table cells and copy and paste them. Surprisingly useful. I think this is probably true of Firefox too.

Gordon's Tech: Google's splog mislabeling continues

Google's splog (spam blog) identification process reminds me of our incompetent FBI's No-Fly list. In the last few weeks I've twice gotten the "captcha of doom" requirement on posting. The good news is that if you respond rapidly Google seems to remove their sanction pending review. There's no sign anything has happened though, if you enter the magic URL: h
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?blogID=123454 where you replace the 123454 with the Blogger blog ID.

Google spreadsheets: Lord this is buggy

I've been using Google Spreadsheets for some collaborative projects. Good Lord, this is buggy stuff. Slow too. Google has a reputation for calling release-quality products "beta", but in this case alpha is the right label.

It's a great idea, but there's a lot of work left to do.

Adobe Contribute for OS X

Adobe - Contribute - a curious application which sounds vaguely like a modern equivalent of Microsoft's old FrontPage, but for OS X. Free trial, cost $150. Not obvious how well it works with Blogger.

I am likely to give it a try, but probably in the new year after the bugs get worked a bit.

Disappearing Aperture Libraries: very nasty bug

A very nasty bug. To recover you need to switch to an earlier version! Affects people who named a project using an initial "." character. That was legal in the old version, illegal in the new. See Aperture: Folders or Projects missing after 1.5 update installed.

From other kb articles it sounds like a patch for Aperture is on the way soon. I'll be waiting until they finally fix the non-functional date metadata.

Mac Windows integration: avoid special characters

The advice from this specific kb article is probably applicable to any mixed Windows/Mac environment. Anything that's "named" should stick to the old "non-special" ascii character set, including usernames and passwords ...

Mac OS X 10.4: Can't print to a printer shared by Microsoft Windows

...

* The printer's shared name contains a space or special character (see below).
* The name of the computer sharing the printer contains a space or special character.
* The Windows user's name or user's password contains a space or special character.

What's a 'special character?' It's a typed character other than A-Z, 0-9, !, $, *, (, ), _, , -, ' . .

The following are not special characters and are OK to use in the printer name, Windows computer name, Windows user name, and Windows user password:

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 . ! $ * ( ) _ - '"

By the time we all support UTF-8, we'll need to move to a character set that supports non-human languages ....

Google groups

Google Groups has been revampled including integration of Google Page Creator. Groups have RSS feeds. When they add Google Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Writely and Google Blogger to Google Groups this will be a sensational resource for small organizations, like my cub scout troop.

Even now one can tie those things together independently, but as a kit they'll be worth much more.

Subversive: build google gadgets into your web page

Sneaky. Very sneaky. You can now put a Google gadget on a web page. Will they work with Safari? I suspect not. Another nail in Safari's coffin -- Long-live Safari/Gecko.

Is it my imagination, or has Google made a sudden dramatic shift away from a 'portal' strategy to more of an 'cloud' strategy? Diffuse functionality everywhere...

Insidious.

Drive spindown in OS X: pmset and other methods

macosxhints.com - Set minutes until hard drive spins down. I'll see if I can use this to make my external firewire drive spin down very quickly ...

iTunes 7: can't select multiple playlists

iTunes 7 no longer allows shift-click selection of multiple playlists for either playing or moving into folders.

One of several highly annoying "features" of this "update".

Mac OS X 10.3.9: failed connection to WPA2 WLAN after Airport security update

Mac OS X 10.4.8: AirPort does not auto-connect to existing networks after restart or wake from sleep is NOT the bug I just had after installing the recent AirPort sercurity patches.

I couldn't connect with my 10.3.9 802.11b iBook to my WLAN. The connect icon was black, but all tcp/ip services were unavailable. Shut down / restart didn't fix anything.

I had to switch from non-Admin to an Admin account and get the 'keychain updated dialog'. Then I switched back to my regular account and this time it showed the 'keychain updated' dialog. Then it worked.

A relatively minor bug with this update, but it would have flummoxed most users.

What's better: Bloglines or the New Google Reader?

I was surprised to read that Matt Cutts, a senior Google developer, is a longtime Bloglines user. Like me, he thought Google's Reader was fairly lame.

Now he compares Bloglines to the new Google Reader and calls it a draw. Since he's a Google employee, he'll switch.

That's fair enough! I'll stay with Bloglines since I'm not a Google employee, but I'll try running Google reader in parallel on occasion. Note Matt Cutts pays attention to "Lock-In", while also advocating the Google vision of cloud-based personal data. I'd like to see him reconcile the two concerns ...

For most people the choices now are Bloglines or Google's Reader, and Bloglines has been good for much longer ...