Use a generic cheapo webcam with a Mac - iChatUSBCam

from TUAW:

iChatUSBCam hits version 2.2 - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... atUSBCam, which allows you to plug a USB webcam into your Mac and use it in iChat, ...

Creating google machines: the google code page

Google Code - Google's Developer Network has every API, service and integration feature in one place. There's stuff here for just about every ambition and skill level.

Backpack synchronization: PackRat is 1.0

I'll give this a try and report back on my thoughts.

PackRat goes 1.0 - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... PackRat, the killer syncing and offline Backpack client that does even more than Backpack itself, has reached an official 1.0 status. After more than a year in the oven, developer Rod Schmidt posted an understandably excited announcement on his company's blog, complete with some new features that round out PackRat's abilities. ...."

Keyword Manager for iPhoto

I am very happy with Keyword Assistant (free, but I'd be happy to pay for it). Still, it's nice to know there's an alternative: Keyword Manager 1.1 adds major keyword management features, more - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Run Parallels, get root access

I've been running Windows 2000 in OS X Parallels. I don't use it much, but it's nice when I need it. I have, however discovered a slight dark. The new beta allows me to browse my entire machine. Forget access control, I could browse every folder.

It's worth noting that if you have Parallels installed, that anyone using it can bypass the usual OS X permissions controls. (Sure, physical control of a computer means security is minimal, but this requires no skill at all.

Makes me wonder what kinds of security holes are created by running Parallels.

Robots.txt - an up-to-date tutorial

Google's official blog has a high quality tutorial on using robots.txt to control search engine indexing: Controlling how search engines access and index your website. A reference to keep!

Copilot 2.0 supports Macs - at last, at last, at last

For me, this is bigger than anything announced at MacWorld. Yeah, the iPhone is nice — but that’s months away. There’s nothing else that was announced that I want or need. Copilot is another story …

Copilot 2.0 supports Macs - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

…. Enter Copilot, the Fog Creek online 'assistive service' that allows you to connect to a remote computer using a small app and a website. Copilot 2.0 now supports OS X 10.2, and later, as well as both Safari and Firefox. No configuration is required, and the pricing structure is very interesting. 5 bucks will get you 24 hours of unlimited access, and if you find yourself using Copilot more than that there are subscription plans available that should suit your needs.

You can read more about Copilot at this post on Joel On Software, and to get a glimpse into the Mac dev side of things check out this post on Red Sweater blog. ...

Hallelujah. I wrote to the Copilot folks months ago and they said they were going to look seriously at a Mac version, but, honestly, I didn’t believe it. In the meantime I’ve was very jealous of some colleagues who showed me the free version of LogMeIn – XP only. I watched grinding my teeth in frustration at Apple’s determination not to deliver any kind of affordable remote maintenance solution (rumored, supposedly, for the next OS). Joel’s post on the product is, as usual, funny and informative. Five bucks for 24 hours use.

I’m going to ask my mother to put it in place on her Mac, so I can do support whenever it’s needed.

Now if Apple would only deliver the thin client solution that I’ve been whining about for at least 3 years … Alas, I think Jobs is allergic to it.

Update 1/26/07: I've been testing with two machines at home. It's painfully slow; it's running a variant of TightVNC and it's about as slow as VNC. It's nowhere near as responsive as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol or the free logmein.com active-X service. It works though, I was able to do some basic work. An average window took 5 to 10 seconds to open, typing was slow but not as bad as window work.

There are definite rough edges:

1. Each time the service is used, both "host" (recipient) and "client" (helper, controller) must download and install a new local copy of the Helper and Host widgets.
2. They used .zip for transfer, which increases the risk of Stuffit seizing control. They should have used a compressed .dmg file.
   
3. When downloading with Firefox or Safari the requestor must download the zip, find it, unzip, then run the app. That's about 3 steps too many. When they're done they must find and discard the zip and the Copilot host widget.
4. It's slow, slow, slow. (Maybe the server is straining under the press of the new release?)
   

If there were other options I'd not bother, but this is a class of one. With some finagling it will likely work ...

Update 1/29/07: I sent a support email on this. The reply? They're changing from zip to .dmg.

iSync plugins to support additional mobile phones.

They don’t support USB connections and they don’t do the (hideous) Motrola RAZR V3M, but it’s good to know a company is tackling this:

phone plugins for iSync | Nokia, Motorola, BenQ-Siemens, Sony Ericsson

iSync is Apple’s hot synchronizing software. It eases entering names and numbers into your phone, synchronizing contacts and dates with your Mac.

But Apple does not supported the latest hot mobile phones. This is where nova media jumps in and enables you to use more than 55 additional mobile phones with this exciting technolog ...

OS X: virtualization on cheap PCs is bad security news

Parallels, an Apple hardware XP/Win2K/Linux virtualization engine built by a Russian team (I like it), makes it possible to run OS X on generic Intel hardware:

Parallels and VMware running Mac OS X on XP? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... SWsoft's Beloussov says that this spring, Parallels will upgrade its software further, in a way that by coincidence will make it easier to run Mac OS on a non-Apple computer. He also insists that is not deliberate, but just a consequence of the nature of the technology, especially now that Intel builds virtualization technology into its chips. ...

This is bad news for OS X security. One of the reasons I run my Macs without corrosive antiviral software is that Apple hardware is too costly for non-professional crackers to buy, and the pros haven’t seen revenue options in the OS X world (OS X default security makes it harder to write reliable spambots, businesses don’t run OS X). Virtualization will allow the amateurs to enter the market, and even the pros will start to experiment.

The dumbing down of OS X (and Vista): indirection is too hard

MacOS Classic was built by the gods. They tossed it off to mere mortals and then retired to Olympus. OS X isn't all bad, but it's clearly the work of mortals, not gods.

Witness the decline of indirection, a slippery concept that's probably too hard for mortals to manage. In MacOS Classic "files" (bounded collections of bits perceived by users as entities) had a visible name that could be changed and a system name that was fixed. Hierarchy was separate from identity. You could move the file anywhere and no references broke [2]. Any application that referenced the file would find the file. In OS Classic you could rearrange your applications an utilities at will.

Genius. Simple, but slippery. If you've used OS X for a while, you know things are trickier now. Aliases used to resolve themselves based on the unique file identifier, but in 10.2 the hard-coded path name ruled. Today paths matter, and you rearrange things at your peril [1]. It's hard to find any mention of the indirection that was once the pride of Apple. This is one of the few references I found today (emphasis mine):

File System Overview

... On HFS and HFS+ file systems, each file and folder has a unique, persistent identity. Aliases use this identity along with pathname information to find files and folders on the same volume.

In versions of Mac OS X before 10.2, aliases located a file or folder using its unique identity first and its pathname second. Beginning with Mac OS X 10.2, aliases reversed this search order by using the pathname first and unique identity second. This means that if you move a file and replace it with an identically named file, aliases to the original file now point to the new file. Similarly, if you move a file on the same volume (without replacing it), aliases use the unique identify information to locate the file.

When a file or folder moves, the alias may update either its path information or unique identify information to account for the change. If a file moves somewhere on the same volume, the alias updates its internal record with the new path information for the file. Similarly, if the original file is replaced by a file with the same name, but a different unique identity, the alias updates its internal record with the unique identity of the new file.

Label/identity indirection is so hard to grasp that a current Wikipedia article on file systems never even mentions this as a core feature.

I write about this because my current XP work environment is a complex mass of file references, including about fifty references to Access data sets embedded in other Access datasets. The result is I can't move or rename anything for fear of breaking everything. The file system is now a locked set of interdependent relationships.

So, to organize work, I have to mix full-text search (Yahoo Desktop Search is still the least worst option) and a peculiar alternate ontology. I treat my existing relationships as a fixed structure, and create a new, mobile, information organization structure consisting strictly of folders and aliases. Data lives in the old, locked, ontology (it can grow but never change or shrink), but I can rearrange the folders and aliases as needed. So I have a fixed data store and a dynamic ontology, painfully and manually recreating some of the genius of the original Mac Classic.

We didn't deserve the gifts of the gods. We are only mortals.

[1] XP does something peculiar and, as near as I can tell, almost undocumented to try to avoid breaking 'shortcut/alias' references to files. I think when you move a file it tries to patch up the shortcuts that reference it. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it works, sometimes it does very odd things. When you have a very complex environment XP can bog down trying to fix things. I suspect Vista was supposed to support Mac Classic like indirection, but I gather they abandoned that dream.

[2] Tim Berners-Lee, being a god, thought the web would work like that. The URLs was to be machine-readable reference, not a semantic identifier. There was supposed to be a directory/reference service to resolve location. Hyper-G did the same thing for Gopher and various directory services (LDAP) were also supposed to provide indirection for everything. All rejected thus far. Instead Google models the web in their servers and creates a search world that enables functional correction of links. A bit like what I end up doing in XP with my "alternate ontology".

Netflix cuts out the Mac. iTV is pleased.

Netflix streaming video only works with XP households.

I wrote them about this, and they replied:

From: "Netflix Customer Service"
Date: January 19, 2007 4:29:00 PM CST

Thanks for your inquiry.

I apologize for the frustration this has caused you. As a fellow Mac user, I understand where your coming from. Please be advised that we are looking into releasing a Mac version of our player, but nothing has been determined as of yet.

Note that this is a phased launch, and even customers that meet all the requirements do not have access to this feature as of yet. As a business we decided to release this first on a platform that will effect the broadest range of customers. The majority of our customers use Windows.

This is a feature that is included with your service. There is no additional charge for instantly viewing movies, and we do not guarantee that it will be available for everybody.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

I replied:

I understand Netflix may have had very good business reasons for this decision. Microsoft may have made Netflix an offer that could not be refused, or Apple may have made no offers at all.

It is misleading, however, to say that "There is no additional charge for instantly viewing movies". There may be no separate charge, but there is an enormous cost to providing this service. That cost must be passed on to all of your customers, including those who do not benefit from the service. Mac users, who do not benefit, will be paying the cost -- without the benefits. We won't like this. We'll all be taking another look at Apple's iTV.

If Netflix wants to mitigate this, they would need to offer compensation, such as an extra video rental a month for those who cannot use the download service.

I like Netflix and I'm sympathetic to your situation, but not sympathetic enough to subsidize a service I'll never use. I can wait a few months to see if Netflix can do a deal with Apple, but sooner or later you'll lose a good portion of your Mac households. I assume Netflix knows how large a portion of their customer base this is, though I don't recall ever being asked that question myself.

I didn't pay much attention to Apple's iTV, but now I'm most curious.

Tog on the iPhone - and the iPhone price

Tog (the usability guru) has written an iPhone review -- without ever touching one. It's fun to read while we wait for the inevitably disappointing reality. I particularly enjoyed his comment on price.

The iPhone User Eperience: A First Look

... The industrial design is brilliant. Apple has created another piece of high-tech jewelry. Some fogies of advancing years have suggested the initial price point of $499 is too high. They fail to understand: The “cool” of owning this phone, particularly for the early adopters, is worth an easy $497, bringing the phone itself down to $2 even.

For those who might doubt such a high value of cool, consider the self-winding Rolex, which sports 1/10th the accuracy of a Timex at 1000 times the price. With Rolex, the technology is grossly inferior, and still people will pay thousands to own it. With the iPhone, the technology is clearly superior...

It can't help but be five times better than my $200 Motorola RAZR, meaning it's cheap by comparison.

New Airport Extreme: best thing from MacWorld

Apple recently announced an iPhone (available in June) and an iTV (good only for Apple downloads) -- and a new wireless lan base station. The last is the best. It's almost available, and it's useful:

Macworld: First Look: Up close with AirPort Extreme

...USB printer and hard drive sharing: Both the current Extreme Base Station and AirPort Express Base Station support printer sharing; plug a USB printer into the Base Station’s USB port, and any Bonjour-capable computer (recent OS X machines as well as Windows computers running Apple’s Bonjour for Windows) will automatically detect the presence of the printer on the network and be able to print to it. This capability is carried over to the new version of the Extreme Base Station, but Apple has added an even better feature: AirPort Disk. Connect a USB 2.0 storage drive—in HFS Plus or FAT32 format—to the Base Station’s USB port, and that drive will be accessible to any computer on your local network via both AFP (Personal File Sharing) and SMB (Windows File Sharing) protocols. Hard drives and flash drives will work, but optical drives will not.

... a new AirPort Disk Utility lets you assign file- and folder-level restrictions to the contents of the attached drive, so each user with permission to access the drive can be restricted to particular files and folders. You can even set up drives to auto-mount on your Desktop whenever you connect your Mac to the network—no more having to use the Network browser or Connect To Server dialog to access your NAS-hosted files.

Finally, if you’ve got a USB printer and a USB drive, or more than one of each, you can simply connect a USB hub to the Base Station’s USB port and then connect those devices to the hub. All of the printers and hard drives will be accessible to the local network, and you can use AirPort Disk Utility to configure access to each drive independently.

You know, this is pretty nice. If I didn't already have an Airport Extreme and an Airport Express I'd buy one. I'd like to see what Apple will do now with the AE ...

Zimbra: open source messaging and collaboration

Zimbra offers Open Source email server software and shared calendar for Linux and the Mac. They do Outlook too, but the Linux/Mac support is the big deal. From Macintouch:

Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.5 is a server-based, open-source, email/collaboration suite that provides email, calendars, RSS/Atom feeds, tags, and more. It includes support for iSync, Apple Mail, iCal, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Eudora, Outlook, and others. This release adds aggregation of external POP email accounts, email identities, personal distribution lists, the ability to require more secure passwords, email reading in basic HTML mode, email push support in Zimbra Mobile, and more. Zimbra Open Source Edition is available free for Mac OS X and Linux. An enhanced Network Edition is priced starting at $25 per mailbox per year.

The minimal pricing is $350 or so per year for non-profits. That's an excellent deal for a small group. Zimbra may make sense for a small business or startup esp. with a mixture of Linux, Mac and XP desktops.

Adobe is doomed: Adobe Download Manager

Adobe uses the adobe download manager to install and update its software. It hasn't worked on the last two XP machines I have. It tries to update or download, produces a meaningless error message (server is unavailable, the file has moved etc) and tries again. Eventually I kill it.

I used to be able to get the full installs when updates were needed and by pass this dysfunctional software, but that's no longer possible.

Ok, I think to myself, I'll just download a new version of Adobe Download Manager. Except, you can't.

Adobe has created a loop. A broken install of ADM means you can't update or replace ADM. Despite Adobe's claims that I can remove it, I can't do that. (I suspect our corporate distribution of Adobe Acrobat Pro broke it on both machines.)

Acrobat is a strategic product for Adobe. [1]. If they can't get the updater right they can't get anything right. Adobe is not doing well.

[1] I removed Adobe Reader from my Mac for other reasons -- it was annoying and badly behaved. ADM on the Mac did work, though it had oddities too I believe. Adobe has never been able to figure our permissions on OS X, which does not bode well for Vista.

9/25/08: The solution in a later post might be worth applying in this setting. I haven't missed Adobe Reader/Mac since I removed it, so I can't test. Adobe's OS X software is pretty much an insult.