Disco is in beta (Toast replacement)

Macintouch reports Disco - is available as a public beta:

Disco 1.0b3 is the first public beta release of Madebysofa's CD/DVD disc burning utility. The software offers disc spanning, multi-session support, audio burning, support for multiple file systems, VIDEO_TS folder burning, motion sensor support (to guard against possible burn disruption), a variety of disc image options, and more. It also includes Discography, a feature that tracks all files and discs burned and lets you search for burned files to locate the disc they're on. Disco is available at an introductory price of $14.95 for Mac OS X 10.4.

The product comes from a well regarded independent group of engineers. It's been anticipated and I'm looking forward to trying it out. If it's good it will likely displace Toast completely.

Palm crashes and dies .. "Fatal Alert"

So I'm synching my Palm T2. Routine stuff. Abruptly, sync terminates with a well named message "Fatal Alert". The Palm was completely unresponsive -- the standard reset button did nothing.

Impressive! A search on the details (VFSDBCache.c, "found trailing records after dir sync") returned only one one reference and it's not applicable.

I played with a warm reset (push navigator up, while pressing reset) and rocked the navigator up and down with the memory card remove. It finally reset. A resync (outlook overwrite handheld) worked fine.

I suspect a problem with Palm's cruddy connector caused a communications flaw during synchronization. They could have used a reliable USB mini-B like the Tungsten T and Blackberry, but, no, they had delusions of grandeur ....

Check iPhoto for mystery folders

I'm going to see if I have these folders, even though I don't get the error message mentioned here. Via Macintouch.

Unimported photos found in Library when iPhoto is launched

... look in the root level of the iPhoto library folder for a folder named 'Recovered Photos' or a folder named 'Import'. Move this folder to your desktop and try launching iPhoto again.

iMac fans running

The SMC reset directions seem to have changed a bit:

iMac (Late 2006) fans run at full speed after computer turns on:

After plugging in the iMac and turning it on, the fans (blowers) may be noisy and appear to run at full speed. In this event, shutting the iMac off and turning it on again wouldn't fix the issue...

My iMac runs its fans more than it used to. Annoying. Either the CPU is being taxed more, or Apple has changed the fan settings to run cooler, or something's wrong ...

Printer drivers for 10.4

From Apple's kb, a full list of supported printers in OS X 10.4 plus links to CUPS sources for more printers:

Mac OS X 10.4: Included printer drivers and PostScript PPD files:

The Driver Version column contains the PPD file version for PostScript printers or printers using CUPS drivers.
# Drivers that are denoted on the list as a Modern Driver are PPD files or drivers designed for CUPS (printing architecture available in Mac OS X 10.2 and later).
# Drivers that are not denoted as Modern Drivers cannot be selected when adding an IP printer or Windows shared printer.
# The drivers that list 'ESP' as the manufacturer are sample drivers included with CUPS.
# Some HP printer drivers support a series of printer models. To determine if a specific printer model is part of a series, see this website.

Small Dog Electronics: why they're a good place for Mac stuff

Small Dog Electronics speaks out on theft-in-transit, credit card fraud and more - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is in line with what I've read and experienced -- more issues with theft and damage in UPS and USPS shipments. The article also reminded me that SDE should always be on my vendor list when I buy electronic goods and especially Mac stuff.

OS X auto-complete: who knew?

Daring Fireball: Can I Get an "Hallelujah" for Auto-Completion With the Esc Key?. Hit F5, get an auto-complete drop down. Works in Nisus Writer Express. In 10.4 the Esc key does the same thing. Who knew? It raises the old usability question -- how do users learn about these occult features? What happens when one runs out of keyboard bindings (on laptops F5 controls the volume, you have to type Fn-F5 to get this).

Practically speaking auto-complete is extremely important for pen text entry, but it's far less useful for keyboard text entry. As DF notes it might help when one is unsure how to spell a word.

Gmail advanced search operators

These advanced search operators are well worth using: Gmail: Help Center - How do I use Advanced Search?. They're similar to Lookout (for Outlook)'s operators.

Thanks allblue.

Search gone mad - Custom AJAX API search

Google has now combined their custom custom search tool with their AJAX search API. Any geek with a bit of spare time can put together their own personal web 2.0 search utility. It's all a bit rough on those startup companies who've been creating a multitude of special purpose search tools. The barriers to entry have dropped.

The demo page is remarkable.

Google delivers custom search pages

I asked Alta Vista to do this in 1996. Now we have it: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO Review: Custom Search Engine.

There's more there than meets the eye ...

...there’s a bookmarklet (Google Marker) so that if you’re surfing the web and find a site you’d like to add to your search engine, you just click and that site is instantly added to your search engine. And it wouldn’t be based on Google Co-op if you couldn’t choose to allow volunteers to edit your search engine and add new sites if you want.

Wow. This is my custom search page. If it works well it'll be embedded in my web site and blogs. I'll also create another custom search page I use to hold a larger set of sites. Hmm. If they enable site-sets, one could create ontologies of sites to search, and create a very sophisticated set of custom searches ...

The collaborative aspect is very noteworthy.

OS X: The OS without backup software

I can't figure out how to link to the Daring Fireball post that sent me to rentzsch.com: Hole in the Umbrella: Backup 3 but it was a good one.

Wow. This is bad.

Rentzsch suggests using Retrospect. Uhhh, no. Retrospect was acquired by EMC, a mega-corp with zero interest in the home market and even worse support than Dantz (which is saying a lot). It was a creaky and ailing software package before EMC bought it, it's now a zombie. [I use an old version of Retrospect Pro for Windows, I'll use it as long as it works.]

There are some small distribution backup solutions for OS X, but they're hardly home user friendly.

Backup is in bad shape under Windows, but it's in even worse shape in OS X.

A handy tutorial on passwords

How To Spot A Psychopath :: Nonsense passwords :: October :: 2006. He likes nonsense words, and uses KeePass to measure entropy. 70 bits sounds like a useful metric.

The OS X keychain utility has a similar built in password generator and metric. GRC has a web accessible random string generator. I'd like to see GRC add a 4th option limited to characters that are clearly distinguishable when printed, thus avoiding i and j, 0 and O, 1 and 7. (Means you need a longer string to meet entropy requirements.)

Internet Acronym Server

This service dates to 1988, so it is of the age of Archie and Veronica and many other forgotten services of the pre-web Net.

It's rather nice to know that it's still running. Note the domain name: Internet Acronym Server.

MacBook random shutdown: balky heat sink sensor

I'd read many theories about the random shutdown problem with MacBooks. None of them turned out to be right. Apple had a hard time sorting it out -- they were replacing motherboards and machines for a while. The problem, apparently, was in a heat sink sensor:

PC World's Techlog MacBook Shutdowns: Case (Finally) Closed?

... Last Monday: I get a phone call; my system is ready for pickup. The courteous Genius who gives it back to me provides more details on the defect: Some MacBooks have a heat sink sensor that malfunctions, thinks the system is overheating when it isn't, and shuts down the machine thinking it's preventing potential damage.

Modern laptops are insanely complex. Apple needs to invest more in self-diagnosing hardware.

iSync users: avoid Motorola phones?

Reading this and a related iSync article I come away with the impression that sync is unreliable with Motorola phones, but I'm very intolerant of sync errors.

I think Motorola sells the most phones in the US...