Remote control for iTunes - Sailing Clicker and more

Still trying to figure out a way to take control of our home media server. I'm currently controlling streaming from my iMac to my stereo using TuneConnect (remote AppleEvent control of iMac) on my iBook and a separate complex kludge involving SlimServer, LAME, iTunes, Airport Express, and mp3 radio streaming (don't ask).

The Kensington remote works with the Airport Express, but it's IR. Doesn't work from the kitchen like the iBook with TuneConnect.

But then there's Sailing Clicker. The Bluetooth won't work (the iMac is out of range) but an 802.11b client that can handle WPA encryption could work. They support the Palm T/X. (Palm TX).

Sailing Clicker is $24 and the T/X is $300. A bit pricy since a Roku would do more and cost less. However both my wife and I have old SONY CLIEs. Either one could suffer a mysterious accident, and be replaced with the T/X ...

Update 11/2: Griffin has the AirClick.
Update 11/7: Griffin has just revised the AirClick. Also, Roku has now documented the 'Roku Control Protocol' which allows one to control a Roku device directly. This overall problem -- managing the relationships between music source, digital rights management, network bandwidth, user location, multi-display, locus of control, device integration, etc etc is really neat from a usability and design perspective. Frustrating (esp. the DRM part) but neat.

Gordon's Tech: iTunes and iPod integration and oddities (the lost posting)

This is a recreation of a post I did on 11/1 that Blogger apparently lost:

Gordon's Tech: iTunes and iPod integration and oddities

Computer vendors have a tough time managing multiple users. Palm blew it completely, they never reconciled their view of the Palm Desktop with the multi-user nature of XP.

Apple has done a bit better, but they're far from perfect. Consider iTunes on one machine that syncs with 3 iPods, two belonging to one user and one belonging to another user. How should the system be setup? Assume the music is shared.

There's no good answer. Ideally the music would belong to a neutral user and each iPod would sync with a shared Library and local playlists. Alas, items from a shared Library cannot be added to local playlists, nor can they be synced to an iPod. If all users share one Library, however, the contact syncing doesn't work.

A basic design problem.

BTW, if one has a Nano and a 3G iPod one runs into an interesting conundrum. The 3G cable will charge both devices but won't sync the Nano, the USB cable will sync both devices but won't charge the 3G. Since I don't want to have too many cables dangling from my iMac, the USB cable will stay there to sync both devices but the firewire cable will go to cradle downstairs to charge devices.

Mac OS X 10.4.3 Update: Beware!

The OS X 10.4.3 Update (Delta) has been released. I believe the 3 people who read this blog know this is a BIG pile of bugfixes. It would be astounding if it didn't cause some people serious trouble.

I have been keenly awaiting this release, but I will chain myself to the mast to avoid installing it until at least a week has passed. This is not a minor update. I'll let my good friend Andrew do some testing first ... (Andy prides himself on installing every Apple OS and product update without hesitation ...)

Note one fix is to completely disable Quartz Extreme:

Disables Quartz 2D Extreme—Quartz 2D Extreme is not a supported feature in Tiger, and re-enabling it may lead to video redraw issues or kernel panics.

Quartz extreme was a major Tiger pre-release feature. I hope this doesn't mean it's been bumped completely out of Tiger! A bitter pill indeed.

LaunchBar 4.1b1 has Search in Spotlight option

I wrote Objective Development a month or two ago requesting Spotlight integration in their Launchbar application (Launchbar alone is sufficient reason to use OS X over XP). They told me the work was underway. I guess I wasn't the only customer to ask!

Now it's out in beta. I'll report on how this goes as soon as I install it. This might make Spotlight really useful for me.

LaunchBar 4

LaunchBar 4.1b1 is a Mac OS X launcher with drop-down menus, shortcut keyboard access to menu items, and launching of bookmarks, email addresses, files, and applications. This beta release adds new options for opening items, support for color labels, improved iTunes support, improved Address Book support, a Search in Spotlight option, a Look Up in Dictionary option, faster startups, and other changes. LaunchBar is $19.95 for non-commercial use ($39 for business use) for Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.4.

Update 11/1: Fabulous. Heavenly. Suddenly Tiger is worth something. The Spotlight syntax now makes sense. I can do phrase searches. I can do Boolean searches. I've removed Spotlight's keyboard shortcut and assigned the Spotlight Windows shortcut to F2. Launchbar again owns the cmd-spacebar key.

Roku SoundBridge vs SlimDevices Squeezebox

It's great to have choices.

1. The Roku SoundBridge decodes AAC on the receiving device, the SlimDevices Squeezebox decodes AAC on the server -- and streams FLAC.. Roku has an iTunes license, Squeezebox doesn't.

2. Squeezebox is tightly integrated with the OpenSource SlimServer with a web client interface. SlimServer can stream to iTunes or to the Roku SoundBridge (not documented).

3. SlimServer in my limited experience seems to demand a lot of machine resources, and is a bit flaky.

Decisions pending ...

Fixing a broken WDS wired to wireless bridge on an Apple Airport Express

Subtitle: Who is Henry B, and why has he posted about 35,000 times to Apple's support site?

I recently bought an Apple Airport Express (discount) to stream AirTunes music to my compact AudioSource amplifier (inputs are Airport Express and iPod, output to local Mission and remote AudioSource speakers). I was unhappy with the usability of AirTunes (though TuneConnect is helping!), so I decided to investigate a SlimDevices Squeezebox. I figured I'd hook the Squeezebox up to the wired ethernet port on the Airport Express, and use the AExpBS simply as a WDS network extender and a wired to wireless bridge.

Problem was, when I tested with my iBook, the bridge didn't work. The iBook reported the ethernet cable was not connected. Research led nowhere (several sites mentioned that the AExpBS didn't support bridging using WPA encryption, but that's dated, it does now). In desperation, I tried Apple Discussions.

It worked. "Henry B." (level "four", @35K posts), who I hope is a pseudonym for many persons, came up with a response that worked:

Apple - Discussions - WDS bridge not working

...I should be able to use an AEX in WDS mode to connect an ethernet device to my WLAN, using the the AEX as a bridge.

It's not working here. All theWDS settings seem fine. I can stream to the AEX and use it extend my WLAN. If I plug an ethernet cable into it, however, no joy. My iBook says there's nothing plugged in.

...

1. Do a factory reset of your Airport Express to get it back into a known state per:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108044

2. Make sure your Powerbook, Airport Extreme Base Station, and Airport Express are all - for now - in the same room.

3. With your Powerbook connected to the wireless network of the Airport Extreme Base Station (prove it by making sure you have internet access) run the Airport Admin Utility. We are going to have you clean up some settings on it first:

• make sure the Base Station is running firmware version 5.5.1. If not ...
  install firmware 5.5.1 on the Base Station:
  http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportextremefirmware551formacosx.html
  and 6.1.1 on the Airport Express:
  http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportexpressfirmware611formacosx.html
  WPA on a WDS network works perfectly with these firmware versions.
  

• under the Airport tab, make sure you have NOT checked the box to "create a closed network"
• under the Access Control tab, remove ALL table entries
• under the WDS tab, remove all entries and uncheck all boxes

Then update settings to the Airport Base Station.

4. Make sure you have the Airport 4.1 update installed on your Mac:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airport41formacosx.html

5. Now run the Airport Setup Assistant. Use its guidance to configure the Airport Express as a new base station that "extends" the existing wireless network created by the Airport Extreme Base Station.

Incredibly, this worked. The bridge was restored. I noticed two things with this process:

1. After I'd installed the firmware 'downgrades' on both base stations I couldn't connect wirelessly to the Airport Extreme, I had to reset it first.
2. When I ran Airport Setup Assistant it complained that I didn't have IPv6 enabled (it's disabled on my older 10.3.9 machine). I skipped that step and it then hung after locating my base station. I went back and enabled IPv6 and it completed successfully.

Was it the firmware downgrade that did the trick, or was it enably IPV6 on the iBook?
I wonder if bridging from wired to WAN using a WPA encrypted WDS configured Airport Express Base station requires IPv6 ...

In any case, it's a relief not to have to call Apple tech support!

The latest programming fad: Ruby on Rails

I guess I have to figure out what this one is. O'Reilly is always the best source: ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails.

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a pure object-oriented programming language with a super clean syntax that makes programming elegant and fun. Ruby successfully combines Smalltalk's conceptual elegance, Python's ease of use and learning, and Perl's pragmatism. Ruby originated in Japan in the early 1990s, and has started to become popular worldwide in the past few years as more English language books and documentation have become available.

What is Rails?

Rails is an open source Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications. What's special about that? There are dozens of frameworks out there and most of them have been around much longer than Rails. Why should you care about yet another framework?

What would you think if I told you that you could develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you could with a typical Java framework? You can--without making any sacrifices in the quality of your application! How is this possible?

Part of the answer is in the Ruby programming language. Many things that are very simple to do in Ruby are not even possible in most other languages. Rails takes full advantage of this. The rest of the answer is in two of Rail's guiding principles: less software and convention over configuration...

OS X Tiger includes the Ruby interpreter.