So the new replacement HDTV set arrived yesterday, and all seems to be well. It’s so many lightyears of wonderfulness beyond anything we had with our old Quasar–and it’s very, very flat. My husband, about whom I shall shortly say more, kept pointing out to my youngest guy how if you look at the TV set sidewise that it’s so thin that it practically disappears.

More after the jump…

In addition to the “Mac OS X State of the Union” video (as noted a week ago), Apple has made another video from WWDC 2006 available to ADC subscribers with just the free ADC Online Membership.

Where last week’s OS X video was mainly targeted at developers as it focused on highly technical details of Apple’s operating system, the new video titled “IT State of the Union” gives a higher-level view on Apple’s offerings for IT users in corporate and education environments.

To download the video, go to ADC on iTunes and log in to have iTunes show you the way to the the ADC section of the iTunes Store. You will find the new video and the accompanying slides under the left-most tab.

Notice, by the way, that there was an interesting change of names: that left-most tab has been renamed from “Mac OS X State of the Union” to “Online Member Videos.” Let’s hope that this means more ADC videos that do not require a paid ADC subscription will be added to that section in the future.

The BBC, our beloved public service broadcaster, has been leading the pack in terms of web content for years. It has been offering a free “Listen again” service over the web for all its radio output for some time now, and everyone’s been wondering when it would do the same for TV.

That time has now come. The BBC Trust today gave a green light to the initial plans for BBC iPlayer, opening a consultation period during which those with an opinion are asked to offer their views. They can do so by downloading the proposals document and answering a questionnaire - both of which can be found at the Trust web site. Responses have to be in by March 28.

The important part of the document, as far as British Mac users are concerned, is on the second-to-last page:

The seven-day catch-up over the internet proposal requires users to have a up-to-date Microsoft operating system for full functionality. Review the provision of this service on a platform-agnostic basis (or across major platforms) within a reasonable timeframe and subject to value for money considerations and as technology allows.

Nice to see an update to Notae, bringing a bunch of welcome new features to this notes- and snippets-storage app. It now supports web archives and PDFs, better tag navigation, and a Quick Note feature. In this new form, it competes more directly with Yojimbo. By way of a super-quick test, I important imported (ahem) all my Yojimbo notes into Notae 2 and did some messing around; Notae’s search is noticeably faster, in my opinion.

There’s also an update for SubEthaEdit, which is pretty much all about tabs. For those of you who’ve been crying out for more tabs everywhere you look, this is good news indeed. Funny; for years I craved more tabs in all the apps that didn’t have them, but when they appeared (in editors, mail clients and the like) I found I never used them. TextMate remains a strictly one-document-per-windows experience for me. Anyone else out there not fussed about tabbiness?

Finally, and spotted via FreeMacWare.com, there’s PagePacker, a desktop app that produces a neat design-your-own fold-up Hipster PDA that you can clip into your new shiny orange iPod shuffle. Remind me: how did we survive before iPods?

You know, when your nose is buried in shell scripts and webserver config files, it still sometimes takes you by surprise how ingrained in the culture the iPod — and by extension, Apple — has become.

Take this Jayson Stark article on ESPN.com, “Greatest hits, in the palm of your hand”. I enjoy reading the bullet points in the voice of Fred Armisen doing Steve Jobs. ;)

It’s hard to say exactly which moment it was that we realized the iPod had taken over our entire civilization. But it might have been this one:

The day we first heard, last summer, that baseball players were using their iPods to do their pregame video studies — as opposed to, say, their pregame Shakira video studies.

What we have here, friends, is one of history’s most amazing gizmos ever. Name any other invention of all time that you can use to:

• Listen to every song ever recorded by Green Day.
• Watch the last 77 episodes of “24.”
• Show off pictures of your kids.
• Hear actual ESPN.com employees yelling at each other through the miracle of one of our inimitable (thankfully) ESPN podcasts.
• Play Sudoku.
• And sort through every at-bat Todd Helton has ever had against Armando Benitez.

So last night I recorded Heroes in High Def, without incident. It seems as though my EyeTV Hybrid likes certain channels (like NBC) and hates others (like CBS). I live inside the city, very close to most of the transmission towers, which are all compass-wise in the same direction, so I cannot guess why some channels beat others for receptions.

The recording occupied about 7 gigabytes of MPEG-2 transport stream data. I attempted to load it into MPEG Streamclip, but Streamclip could not handle the 7 gigabytes on my 1 GB 1.66 GHz Intel core duo mini. It coughed, it gagged, it wheezed, it gave up the ghost. So I decided to edit the show in EyeTV instead.

This turns out to have been a horrible decision.

(More after the jump…)

Reader J.H. asks: When you use Visio on the Parallels Desktop, is operation of Visio as good, smooth and fast as using it on Windows XP? I tried Visio once on Virtual PC and found it unsatisfactory. Visio is the main reason my office
is not a Mac office.

J.H., out of courtesy, asked for a simple yes/no answer. Unforunately, I wanted to provide a bit more detail :-).

Virtual PC for the Mac was slow for a couple of reasons. First, it is an emulation solution. It actually had to emulate an Intel CPU to run the Windows code and application code installed on top of it. Second, it is pretty clear that the PowerPC G4/G5 processors were definitely slower than the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo commonly found in most Intel Macs out in the wild today.

Parallels has the advantage of being a true virtualization option that works directly on an x86 architecture. Moreover, the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo (and Xeon Woodcrest) have the Intel-VT virtualziation assistance built into the hardware. Basically, virtualized OSes including Windows XP and Linux fly on it an Intel Mac running Parallels Desktop for Mac.

The, BUT…, comes into play if you bought an Intel Mac early in the release cycle and didn’t bump RAM up to 1GB or more. I would hesitate to run Windows as a Guest OS on a 512MB MacBook, for example. However, if you have 1GB or more of RAM, set Windows XP SP2 with at least 512MB RAM for its virtual machine and Visio and other apps seem to run pretty fast to me. Combine that with Parallels Coherence mode that lets you run Windows applications in what looks like its own window under Mac OS X, and the experience feels nearly seamless (Windows apps menus always are Windows-like vs. Mac-like, of course).

So, if you have at least 1GB RAM on a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo (not so sure about a Core Solo in the original low-end Intel Mac mini), you should be able to run Visio and other Windows applications comfortably using Parallels Desktop for Mac.

The much-linked UK Get a Mac adverts are a work of genius. Not because of the scriptwriting, but the casting. Those two guys are David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac), a comedy double-act with a cult following here in the UK. Their Peepshow series, about two self-obsessed flatmates called Jeremy and Mark, who have very similar characters to PC and Mac, is one of the funniest things that’s been on telly in recent years. They’ve also done sketch shows on TV and radio.

From the Peepshow series notes:

On the surface, Jeremy and Mark are quite horrible people; underneath they’re even worse.

See? Even their old characters are just like computers. Excellent.

A host of European countries are concerned about iTunes music downloads and how they only play on the iPod. The latest to speak up is Holland where the Dutch authorities have said;

“What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod. When you buy a music CD it doesn’t play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn’t be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives.”

So I’m still working on figuring out how to streamline the process of exporting from EyeTV into iTunes. Yes, in theory, you should only have to click iPod or Export let EyeTV do all the work. A few problems though: (1) I’m running EyeTV under a nonstandard version of the operating system (of which, I cannot say more without the Apple death squad visiting) and the Export/iPod functions simply do not work; and (2) EyeTV exports H.264/AVC 320×240, MPEG-4, which is not nearly the resolution I want to display on my upcoming AppleTV. So that leaves me working with things in a much more roundabout fashion.

So I thought, well, I’ll just use MPEG Streamclip to export my video. Normally I use QuickTime Pro to create my iTunes video. So I opened up a video I’d recently converted, made sure I matched all the settings between the Streamclip output and the QuickTime output–same bitrates, audio, frame size, etc. I dove into the EyeTV bundles, created an alias for the raw MPEG-2 transport stream data, loaded it into Streamclip, converted it, and loaded it into iTunes, where it played fine.

And then I tried to sync my iPod. Bzzzzzzzzzt. No go. No luck. No how. Even though I kept every setting the same, even though everything seems to play identically in QuickTime, I apparently created a file that wasn’t “blessed” enough to sync to my iPod. So I googled a lot. And I found out it wasn’t just me. QuickTime just seems to be able to exceed the 768 kbps, 320×240 official specs, but Streamclip can’t. See this video info? It syncs perfectly to my 30GB video iPod. And that’s 1655.78 kbits/sec. By my reckoning (checks on fingers a few times) 1655 is bigger than 768. But when I try to sync a non-QuickTime file on iTunes, I get the dreaded “Your video cannot be played on this iPod” message. Grrrr!

So I decided to try converting with QuickTime instead. And this is a good example of barrelling forth with things about which you know better, but you get into a wrong thinking groove and then have a simpsonesque D’oh moment after. I decided to use Streamclip to convert the transport stream into a normal MPEG-2 file. It’s fast and it’s easy, even though it takes up extra disk space. I loaded it into QuickTime, I exported to “iPod”. And there was no sound. D’oh! Damned multiplexed audio. I should have known better.

Now, it’s not as if I can’t export directly from Streamclip, keeping the settings to 320×240 and under 768 kbps and it will (in fact it did during my tests) sync to the iPod, but what’s the point of playing 320×240 video on a 720p display–which is the intended endpoint of this exercise? So here’s what I ended up doing for now:

Standard Def video: Open the EyeTV transport stream file in MPEG Streamclip and export to standard 320×240 iPod video.

High Def video: Open the EyeTV transport stream in MPEG Streamclip, export to a reasonably sized 16:9 format like 720×405 or 640×360. Open the converted video in QuickTime Pro and export using iPod settings.

Clearly, I’ve still got a ways to go here. I’m really hoping that the upcoming versions of QuickTime and iTunes hinted at in the AppleTV specs offer better video conversion and syncing capabilities to take better advantage of homebrew video resolution.

I’m also looking forward to some real highdef content over at the iTunes Store, but that’s a whole ‘nother matter.

Yeah, yeah. The Zune may be a miserable failure according to some, but there are definitely some positive points about the Zune that Apple should take note of and consider emulating. Here is my list of six lessons Apple might consider learning from the Zune and implementing in their iPod line.

1. Be fingerprint resistant. The soft feel of the scratch-resistant Zune casing is far more comfortable to hold texture-wise than the iPod. Also, it doesn’t make your hands sweat. It doesn’t show fingerprints. It doesn’t show scratches. It might not look as shiny, but it’s really nice to use. A soft-textured iPod would totally rock.

2. Offer menus with video out. The iPod does not export its menus out when you set it for TV display. The Zune does. This actually makes it easier to Zunecast over iChat than to iPodcast (you lose the video connection with iChat AV whenever you switch out of a playing video), and provides a far better experience when selecting and displaying videos while connected to a TV, which is the more obvious and typical task for video output display.

3. Consider two-dimensional browsing a la Twist menus. The Zune’s “twist menus” allow you to scroll up and down between individual items and scroll left-right to select categories. Sure, the Apple designers would make it look a lot better, and isn’t it nice to be able to get to where you want to be quickly without having to go up and down and up and down through menu trees?

4. Add context menus. I don’t know about you, but I kind of get annoyed with the whole “set the volume”/Click OK/”set the playhead”/Click OK/”set the song rating” sequence of mid-play interaction. I rather like the Zune’s overlay menu that offers context-sensitive operations, depending on whether you’re listening to music, watching video, playing the radio, and so forth. Apple should definitely take a navigation hint from this presentation.

5. Think about a built-in FM radio. The built-in FM radio is actually kind of cool, especially to a person who hasn’t listened to much FM radio for years. The display of the station, song, and artist (for stations that broadcast that information) is particularly nice for a included/free feature. No, Apple shouldn’t add a tuner if it would jack up the price, but for a low-cost no-brainer add-in? Very nice. (Update: Yes, I do use the FM tuner on the Zune a lot, and no, I never expected to!)

6. Give us a bigger screen. No, the Zune doesn’t have more pixels. (It’s still 320×240.) And yes, the overall form factor of the iPod is hand-friendlier. But the screen is big which is pleasant for watching, particularly on planes. Now, we just have to wait for Apple to introduce a pixelicious widescreen iPod without all that iPhone stuff cluttering up the device. A Superbowl or early-February special event announcement of this would be acceptable.

Welcome to another week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These free downloads are in un-DRM’3d MP3 format and can be accessed from around the globe. So load ‘em up on your iPod or other portable music player and enjoy!

“Weekend Warriors” by A Change of Pace
These Peoria, Arizona high-school buddies share a love for pop-edged alternative rock that has led them to the Warped Tour and touring stints with groups like Senses Fail. This track is from their recently released sophomore album, Prepare the Masses.

“Senorita Mia” by Louie Cruz Beltran
“I was born to play congas. I am a rumbero,” declares this Bakersfield, California percussionist. His love for Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican rhythms has led him to perform with heavyweights such as Santana and Coke Escovedo, his mentor. Today’s free download is from his album It’s My Time.

“Elephant Gun” by Beirut
Led by high-school dropout/musical prodigy Zach Condon, Beirut combines musical styles ranging from indie-folk and lo-fi rock to Eastern Euro gypsy. This track from their new EP, Lon Gisland, offers more of what made them one of 2006’s surprise success stories.

“If You Could Read Your Mind” by Clinic
This quartet from Liverpool has been winning over shoegazers and critics alike since 1997, creatively flavoring their indie rock with a strange, sour beauty (they’ve even toured with Radiohead). This track is from their latest effort, Visitations.

“Keep on Lovin’ Me” by Bleu Collar
This Los Angeles-based hip-hop group comprises MCs Reese One and Basik, and as their collective name suggests, they’re not afraid of working hard to build a following. When not rocking sold-out shows, they’re recording tracks like this one from their forthcoming EP.

“Kiss Your Soul” by Jon Quesnel
Jon Quesnel (pronounced Ka-Nell), a 22-year-old from suburban Minnesota, has a passion for soulful melodies and plies them with a disarmingly powerful voice. Today’s download is from his debut album, Packin’ Up My Bags.

“Told You So” by The Guggenheim Grotto
Already a hit in Ireland, this track from the Grotto’s critically acclaimed debut album, …Waltzing Alone, demonstrates their deft blending of contemporary folk and pop styles.

I’m beginning to see all kinds of innovative uses of Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) pop up around the net, and here’s a neat one that I’m going to try myself. The problems that Matt Thommes is trying to solve around his iTunes music are the same problems I’ve been grappling with myself.

There are three things I wish to accomplish:

1. Eliminate the limit on my music storage capacity.

2. Access my music from anywhere in the world.

3. Access my music directly from iTunes on my laptop - not with an iPod or external digital music device.

I’m a big fan of iTunes, and when I made the leap (and the significant effort) of ripping my music library and beginning to use iTunes as my primary interface for finding, selecting, and listening to my music, I’ve never looked back. It’s just such a more powerful and flexible method for accessing and enjoying a large library of music than dealing with hundreds or thousands of individual pieces of media. (I’m not however an equally big fan of the iTunes Music Store and the associated DRM, but I’ll save that rant for another post).

Matt describes a method for storing your iTunes library on Amazon’s S3 service, effectively solving all three of the stated problems. It looks easy to set up, though the cost is not insignificant. At Amazon’s plan of 100 GB of storage plus 1 TB of transfer for $6.29/month (on a 1 year contract), I’ll spend around $75/year for this service See Updates below. But it may very well be worth it. I’ll report back on my experiences.

Update: As Chris points out in the comments, I grabbed the wrong pricing info for S3 from a hastily read comment to Matt’s original post, that pricing was actually for a cheaper online storage alternative from GoDaddy. Amazon’s S3 pricing structure is a pay-as-you-go scheme costing $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.20 per GB of data transferred. This makes it tough to predict what the actual costs of hosting my iTunes library would be there, since it’s dependent on how much I listen to it. But clearly, it would end up being a lot more than $75/year for a 100GB library that gets used regularly. Thanks, Chris!

Update 2: After reflecting on the comments here and having a couple of conversations with people much smarter than myself on these matters, I’ve come to the conclusion that this really isn’t a practical idea for two important reasons. First, the chances seem very slim that the performance would be acceptable, and several people who have tried managing large iTunes libraries over the internet have reported to me that iTunes hasn’t performed well in this scenario. Second, S3’s pay-as-you-go data transfer plan, while very attractive for some types of applications, isn’t really a good option for using S3 as a remote hard drive that you’d be accessing quite regularly. I’d be willing to consider a reasonable flat fee for this kind of convenience (assuming it worked well), but the idea of having to think about how much it is costing me to listen to my music, and having that cost be variable and dependent on how much I listen to, has dampened my enthusiasm for this idea. So I guess I’m blushingly reneging on my promise to set this up and report back.

Here’s a summary of Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed last week in my personal blog.

Renamer4Mac
This Mac OS X freeware lets you use pattern matching to quickly rename a large number of files.

Renamer4Mac

It lets you preview the effects of the pattern search and change before executing it.

Dia - Open Source Diagramming Tool for Windows & Linux
I have to admit that I like Microsoft Visio and prefer to use it when a licensed copy is availble. However, if one is not available for you, you might want to take a look at the Open Source diagramming tool…

Dia

It is available for Linux and Windows (no Mac OS X version from what I can tell). Has anyone ported this to Mac OS X? Or is there something similar in the Open Source/Freeware realm for the Mac?

Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1
The SeaMonkey community at Mozilla.org announced the release of…

SeaMonkey 1.1

SeaMonkey is the offshoot of the all-in-one Mozilla Suite that included a browser, email client, HTML editor, and IRC client in a single unit.

I prefer using Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client myself. But, I’ve recommended SeaMonkey to a few people who liked the old Mozilla all-in-one format.

Here’s a link to the SeaMonkey What’s New page.

OpenOffice.org 2.1
OpenOffice.org version 2.1 was released a few days ago. You can find the Release Notes here. This Open Source office suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database, and drawing program.

It uses the OpenDocument XML file format as its default file format. However, it can read and write Office 2003 or older Microsoft Office files. I’m guessing that it cannot (yet) read the new Office 2007 file format.

Note that if you plan to run it under Mac OS X, you…

When WriteRoom 2.0 was released some weeks ago, I wrote:

The one change I’m less keen on is the way files are managed. In 1.0, all your files were saved automatically until you explicitly deleted them. On opening WriteRoom, every currently active file was opened, ready to use. WriteRoom 2.0 changes this behavior, and you now need to save files in a specific location and with a suitable filename before you can quit the app.

Now, having been using it for several weeks, I can see that Jesse Grosjean’s decision to change the way the app worked was the right one. Now, WriteRoom works more like every other application, and can open and save documents created elsewhere and in other apps. My head was stuck in a particular mode of working, and I couldn’t see the benefits of changing.

Since then, though, I’ve found the new method hugely useful. Normally, I’ll create a new piece of writing using my Idea Automator Workflow, and save it as a text file for later editing in TextMate. That still works fine.

But now I’ve also got a Workflow, saved as a Finder Plug-in, that opens any selected file in WriteRoom. The files I’ve previously created as text files can be opened up for full screen editing in a snap. Stuff which needs to worked on in a window still can be; stuff that needs some creative thought or imagination can be sent to WriteRoom for distraction-free concentration.

Download copies from http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/. There are two manuals: a general users’ guide and a more involved “Designing Airport Extreme 802.11n Networks”.

I immediately jumped to the bits about setting up a remote USB disk, which seems like the feature I’d like to use the most. Didn’t see much about port forwarding.

Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to really go through anything in detail and it’s late and I need to go to bed. I just wanted to get the news out tonight so you eurofolk and eastcoasterian types could enjoy reading through the docs.

If you are humor-impaired, please skip the rest of this blog entry.

I stumbled upon what seems to me to be real first Apple Phone with a date patent listed as December 10, 1985 (more than a quarter of a century old) and filed in 1982. You’ll note in the diagram reproduced below that unlike the Apple iPhone introduced in 2007, the 1985 version was a flip-phone :-)

If you look at the patent, you’ll see that the Representation of an apple with a bite cut out is correctly noted as an Apple Computer, Inc. trademark.

Patent No.: Des. 281,686

So the new HDTV arrived yesterday afternoon and was back at Costco before the day was out. The LCD display was corrupted. Phone calls and internet seraches suggested it wasn’t fixable. A Costco rep told me to return it to a store and reorder online, which I did. Curiously enough, Costco can not credit purchases back to a credit card. You must take cash or a Costco Cash Card in exchange. Which brings up nefarious opportunities for anyone looking to earn frequent flier miles on their credit card. (I use a normal card, with no special deals on it.) On the bright side, even the standard definition TiVo output looked marvelous on the thing and having composite-in looks like it was a very good choice. I never got a chance to hook up the Mac Mini though during all the trouble-shooting.

In the meantime, I’m still struggling to create a workflow for EyeTV to MPEG Streamclip to iTunes. I need to design a way (probably through AppleScript, but I’m open to other suggestions) to search through all my EyeTV recordings to see which ones are new, and to convert them into MPEG-4 overnight and get them into iTunes. The “see which ones are new” is the easiest part. Since all EyeTV recordings are bundles, I just have to “touch” a file in each bundle after converting to MPEG-4. What I’d really like to do is edit out all the commercials from a bunch of recordings at once and then schedule the conversion as a queue of jobs. It’s not yet happening.

I continue to have problems recording ATSC shows in their entirety using the EyeTV. Shows, which I know are entirely free-to-air, keep breaking in the middle with a warning about being “Encrypted”. Very frustrating, especially since I want to be able to use the Mini/EyeTV as the TiFaux for AppleTV and the HDTV set. My HDTV antenna is a couple of years old, but I can’t imagine that technology has changed all that much in this time. Is there something I’m missing here?

There’s a cool Mac educational contest just kicking off over on Macinstruct. The Tutorama contest invites individuals to submit educational tutorials on anything related to Apple hardware and software products. They’re looking to find the most innovative and creative step-by-step tutorials, video podcasts, Flash movies, and computer-based trainings on Mac-related topics. There’s over $4,000 of prizes including iPods, books personally-signed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and a Mac Mini. Judges include No Starch Press publisher Bill Pollock, Macworld Senior Editor Dan Frakes, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and award-winning author Robin Williams.

These kind of contests can be a win for everybody. The general public gets to find out about great tutorials they might not have otherwise found or heard of, and the tutorial developers can get some nice goodies as well as greater exposure for the best work. I’ll keep my eye on this one and report back here on the winners.

A Nokia N800, yesterday

Years ago, I liked to think of myself as something of a cutting-edge journalist, armed as I was with a Palm III, a first-generation GoType keyboard, and an Ericsson SH888 phone handset.

I was able to cruise around London for press events and interviews, typing stuff up as I went along and filing it to my employers by email. It might sound trivially ordinary now, but at the time very few people were doing this; certainly not many of my colleagues in journalism.

Eventually I changed jobs and didn’t need to file copy from anywhere or anytime anymore. The Ericsson got upgraded for something less like an industrial stapler, and the Palm got archived away in a drawer.

But I miss that portable set up to this day. Now, I carry around a 15 inch PowerBook, a great machine in its own right; but I wish I had something a little smaller, and a little lighter, to carry around instead.

In recent years I’ve considered various options. Perhaps another, more up-to-date Palm device. Maybe an Alphasmart Neo, or a Dana. But nothing has yet been so appealing that I seriously considered buying it.

Not until this week, when I stopped to have a really close look at the Nokia N800.

The Apple Xserve RAID now ships with 750GB drive modules, which increases the maximum capacity of each RAID unit now to 10.5TB. While that’s certainly great news, there’s one other part of the update that might not be as pleasing to fans of the fibre channel storage devices.

As part of the update, Apple also released Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.5.1, which includes a new RAID Admin utility and the new firmware needed by current units to recognize the newer drive modules. The surprising change is in RAID Admin, which no longer has a LUN Masking configuration option.

I spoke with Apple Enterprise support and heard that LUN Masking is no longer a feature of the Xserve RAID, but that any LUN masks already present would be preserved even after using the new RAID Admin utility. However, I didn’t confirm if this is still the case once new firmware is applied.

The Apple support tech I spoke with couldn’t provide a reason for the change, but confirmed that the remaining option for assigning storage to hosts, zoning on the fibre channel switch, is what Apple now recommends.

Most users who’ve been using their Macs for a goodly amount of time know about the ability to “print” pages to PDF files, whether for simple preview, storage, or whatever else. There are a few other options available, though, that can be quite handy.

Like this morning, when I came across this recipe for Cherry tomato soup with basil, which looks simple enough to make and sounds quite tasty, especially on these frigid Southern California winter days where the temperature is plunging into the low 70s and the blue skies are kind of hard to look at due to the gorgeous mountains distracting you in the distance. Ahem.

Anyhow, like many newspaper sites, the San Jose Mercury News has an option to view a “print this” page, as well as “email this.” The recipe sounded like something a couple of different friends of mine would enjoy. Rather than submit my buddies’ email addresses to unknown processing potential, I clicked on “print this,” since it’s often nicer to email that link, or even copy and paste from the simpler layouts.

It occurred to me looking at the print-this page (since ingredient lists often get screwy in copy-paste) that I could probably email small PDF files just as easily. So I hit Command-P. As I did, I thought — hey, it would be nicer to email a PDF automagically rather than finding a saved file somewhere in the filesystem.

Sure enough, clicking on the “PDF” popup menu revealed this spiffy list,

including “Mail PDF” — score! Selecting the command results in a Workflow Action being called, then a new mail opens with the PDF attached.

And dig all those other PDF options! Looking back at that menu, though, check out the last command. “Edit Menu…” brings up this palette,

The + button summons a navigation dialog box to choose your own scripts.

This suggests to me all kinds of possibilities, from automatically sending PDFs to your blogging software, to creating a web clipping service, to faxing online account statements to your tax people, to writing shell scripts that could do just about anything else you can think to do with PDFs.

And all that from cherry tomato soup with basil.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to close the window blinds — the sunshine is getting kind of bright in here. ;)

Last October, Apple published session videos of the 2006 World Wide Developers Conference on iTunes. Unfortunately, access to these videos requires the Leopard Early Start Kit, which, in turn, requires a paid subscription to the Apple Developer Connection. The 90-minute “Mac OS X State of the Union” feature, however, has now also been made available to those ADC members who have signed up for the free-of-charge Online Membership. Even if you’re not developing software on the Mac, this video is well worth watching if you are interested in an up-to-date (as of August 2006) overview of the technical foundations of the Mac’s OS.

If you don’t have an ADC account yet (if you do, you will have seen the related email announcement already, anyway), go to the Apple Developer Connection website and sign up for the free ADC Online Membership. Then head over to the ADC on iTunes page and log in to bring up the ADC section in iTunes. You will find the video and a PDF with the presentation slides under the “Mac OS X State of the Union” tab.

Have a few cups (or pots, depending on your connection speed…) of tea while downloading the 500MB movie — which is then placed in its own playlist in iTunes for convenient access —, and enjoy the show!

From the opening chime to the login window, there is quite a bit of activity going on behind the scenes during the Mac OS X boot process. Nowadays with newer versions of the OS, that process takes hardly any time at all. Old timers will remember the slow march of system extension icons in the paleolithic age, pre-OS X.

This page at kernelthread.com, “Mac OS X System Startup” uncovers the after-hitting-the-power stuff. A sample from the beginning:

• Power is turned on.
• Open Firmware code is executed.
• Hardware information is collected and hardware is initialized.
• Something (usually the OS, but also things like the Apple Hardware Test, etc.) is selected to boot. The user may be prompted to select what to boot.
• Control passes to /System/Library/CoreServices/BootX, the boot loader. BootX loads the kernel and also draws the OS badges, if any.
• …

(via rootprompt.org)

I’m back from America’s largest musical instrument and software trade show, where the big software surprise was…the Pause button.

There were no major updates from Apple (Logic/GarageBand) or MOTU (Digital Performer). Ableton (Live), Digidesign (Pro Tools), Steinberg (Cubase), and Sony (Acid) were showing revs they released last year. Cycling ’74 had an unmanned kiosk. And Spectrasonics, a NAMM fixture for its powerful demos, stayed home.

No new Reason, but Propellerheads did play sounds from its upcoming Thor “polysonic synth.”

Of course, there were still acres of cool new music gear to fondle, and I’ll be sharing my favorites over on the O’Reilly Digital Media blog. But when I asked several developers privately about the dearth of new DAW software, they all said they’d been struggling with porting their code to Intel Macs. (The Windows developers, of course, have their own challenges with Vista, although Cakewalk did score a hit by announcing Sonar would be Vista-compatible this month.)

By all accounts, music software performance on Intel Macs is much improved; several musicians said their MacBook Pros outran even quad G5s. But as one programmer told me, “Everyone used a lot of workarounds to make things run in OS X, and those don’t work anymore on the Intel chips.” He predicted that within the next year or two, we’d see some major advancements.

Personally, I hope those advancements are in usability. At the annual Grammy Soundtable, it was striking how many of the top producers on the panel used multiple parallel DAWs to make their music. More than a decade after Opcode merged MIDI and digital audio in a single program, we’re still searching for the best flow.

I reviewed the Miglia TV Mini HD unit this summer and liked it. So when it came time to lay out my own money for a TV tuner, I decided to take advantage of the $99 EyeTV Hybrid Macworld special. I’d been waiting to buy one for a few months because I was uncertain whether Apples iTV/AppleTV would contain an onboard tuner. It did not.

I chose the Hybrid because (a) it was affordable (unlike a Series 3 TiVo); (b) it did both Analog Cable and ATSC tuning (the Mini doesn’t do analog cable); and (c) it was shipping now rather than at the end of February (like the new plus version of the TVMini, which will do analog cable). Yes, it’s a bit of a pain to have to switch cables to access both cable channels and my HDTV antenna. And yes, I would have liked onboard ClearQAM tuning, a la the TV Mini HD, but when I tested the QAM capabilities this summer they were…iffy. So while they might have been a nice plus, they weren’t an essential part of my decision. Since I live in a big city with excellent free-to-air local HDTV signals, I chose to forgo the QAM.

I learned the hard way that my Intel Mini hates the latest software update of EyeTV. (Version 2.3.1 works fine.) And I can’t seem to export to the iPod at all. (I can on my 733 G4, but it’s so slow that it’s not worth it.) Every time I try on the Intel Mac, EyeTV rolls its eyes backwards and gives up the ghost. (Which is better than version 2.3.2 which will not run at all without crashing.)

The MPEG-2 files, which play back fine in VLC do not open properly in QuickTime Pro (even with the MPEG-2 plug-in). I suspect something in the raw nature of the data. And when I try to transcode in VLC to MPEG-4, the aspect ratio of the recorded video keeps getting mucked up. On the other hand, the video plays back fine in the EyeTV software and the goal is (in theory) to act as a TiFaux PVR to play back on TV. But if I can’t get the videos transcoded into some form that iTunes will accept, I’m going to be out of luck in the AppleTV department. Any hints or tips from the reading public will be greatly appreciated.

Scheduling recordings work great–even if I’m sucking up two gigabytes per hour of standard TV. (I’m doing my first scheduled HDTV recording of Idol later tonight, which will give me an idea of the actual space and quality of HDTV recording beyond the 5-minute test-runs earlier today.) The EyeTV software is easy to use and integrates well with TitanTV. And the playback of recorded shows is also friendly. However, I have yet to find a way to extend the EyeTV library to add folders from an external disk and my main Mini disk is rapidly running out of space due to the quickly increasing number of SpongeBob episodes demanded by my 4-year-old.

More as this all develops.

Update: I’ve just downloaded and started using the most recent version of MPEG Streamclip which is fabulous for editing and exporting the EyeTV video. The edit features are much easier to use than the built-in EyeTV editor, it’s way way faster, and it works brilliantly on my Intel Mini. Forget about VLC. This is way better. Thanks Randy Stewart!

“For the major recording companies selling in the MP3 format would be a capitulation to the power of the Internet, which has destroyed their control over the worldwide distribution of music.”

- New York Times

Even Apple cannot prop up the record industry despite the success of the iPod. So now the backlash has come and DRM will most likely go to its grave.

I greatly respect Mark Pilgrim and have followed his writing for some years, but I take issue with his outburst on full screen editors over the weekend.

With these words:

Here’s the basic problem: you’re writing a text editor. Stop doing that. It’s 2007. Saying to yourself “I’m gonna build my own text editor” is as silly as saying “I’m gonna build my own build system” or “I’m gonna build my own amusement park.” Blackjack and hookers and all that. Writing a great text editor is insanely difficult. There is a certain class of software that sounds easy but is actually insanely difficult. I call it “garden path software.”

… Mark seems to argue that writing a text editor in 2007 is essentially a waste of time, because it’s been done many times before and there are plenty of excellent editors around already.

Um - try telling that to Allan Odgaard, creator of TextMate. Does Mark think Allan’s been wasting his time? Many purchasers of TextMate would say otherwise.

It’s been really interesting to watch all the discussion around the iPhone in both of the topic areas I cover for O’Reilly (Emerging Telephony and Mac Development). There was a very pronounced dip in enthusiasm among the blogs I read in both of these spaces, that started just about 24 hours after the announcement, when you could almost tangibly feel the glow starting to fade. I was at the Macworld keynote where Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, and there is certainly no disputing that he is one heck of a charismatic speaker and can do a great demo, but I don’t think we should discount that fact that a big part of the “wow” factor that spread so fast across the Internet was in large part due to the advances it looks like Apple has achieved with this product. And I’m mostly talking about interface advances.

The Mac developer crowd pretty quickly started realizing and anguishing over the closed nature of the device, which Apple has said we should think of more like an iPod than a computer. They have made it clear they want to completely control the interface, and are not particularly interested in third-party development. You’re probably not going to be seeing much iPhone coverage here on Mac DevCenter.

The telecom development folks are also upset that the device will not be open to customization and third-party apps, but they are also pretty upset about the Cingular lock-in and are let down by the apparently completely non-revolutionary aspects on the carrier side of things. Steve talks a big talk and he likes to use words like “revolutionary”, but I have to agree that what we know so far sounds like business as usual from the telecom/network side. And while that is disappointing, I think it was pretty unrealistic to expect Apple to chart new ground there, at least right out of the gate. They’ve got their hands full just getting into this ultra-competitive market, and the tides of telecom carriers are not something easily changed.

But what I remain excited about is the interface. Ted Wallingford sums up many of my opinions well in this post (which is a response to Ken Camp’s less-than-enthusiastic take on the iPhone).

I agree that the iPhone is NOT categorically revolutionary. But it does represent a number of firsts. The UI with multi-touch is obscenely cool, no question. And the graphical feedback on the phone I saw demonstrated by Jobs makes Nokia’s gear look antiquated. These may not be revolutionary, but I’ll take positive steps. The worst part of a cell phone has always, always, always been the UI. So I welcome these evolutions.

We like open things here at O’Reilly, and I doubt they’ll be any reason to be using the words “open” and “iPhone” in the same sentence any time soon. But I’m with Ted in welcoming significant interface improvements, and I couldn’t agree more that the worst part of cell phones is their UI. I’ve never owned a cell phone that had an interface I didn’t hate (I’m right there with you, Nat), and I’m ready for a device that improves upon that. Om Malik agrees that it is the interface improvements here that are important, and has some interesting thoughts on Apple’s use of fluid interfaces in general.

Daniel Steinberg has written a deep and fascinating analysis of the history and the current state of Java on Apple products, Java to the iPhone: Can you hear me now?, reflecting on his 10 years of covering Java on the Mac platform. Daniel notes that in a recent interview about the iPhone with John Markhoff, Steve Jobs said, “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.” Is this the beginning of the end for Java on the Mac, or possibly the desktop altogether?

Developers are looking at Flash and at AJAX as platforms for rich desktop (yes desktop) applications. If Java becomes irrelevant on the PC and on the device then we will enter a new phase in it’s life. There will be plenty of uses for Java for a good long while but we are entering the FORTRAN phase or the COBOL phase.

Finally, I wonder if Steve Jobs has decided that Java has no place on OS X on the iPhone, what will its role be in the future on Mac OS X on the Mac?

If you care about Java on the Mac, you should definitely click through and read Daniel’s entire post.

(Note: I’ve turned off comments on this post to encourage people to place their comments on Daniel’s original ONJava blog post).

Episode 1 of Steve “Scotty” Scott’s Late Night Cocoa podcast is now available. He writes:

The eventual goal of the podcast is to present fairly in depth discussion of cocoa topics such as Core Data, Bindings etc. However I also felt it would be good to kick off with something a little more introductory. The first episode is a high level discussion with Chris Forsythe (Adium/Growl/Perian/Saltatory Software) about getting into Cocoa.

S3 Browser offers a free open-source tool that allows you to connect to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. With it, you can upload and download data to this online storage service as well as set your access control restrictions for that data.

S3 Browser screen shot from the developer. Click to open at full resolution.

More after the jump…

Welcome to another week of Friday Napster Freebies. Once again, here’s a week’s worth of free music you can download and enjoy on your favorite media player.

This week, I’ve been corresponding with reader Doug Ransom about ways to play with or enhance this feed. Among other things, I mentioned to him how you can use the command line say utility to convert song descriptions into audio files. e.g. say -o blogtext.aiff "put the actual text here". If you have fink and lame installed, you can then convert the aiff output from say into MP3 files. Doug has also been working on building a podcast version of my Friday posts to load the music and descriptions automatically into iTunes. More as this develops. Have a great week and enjoy the music!

“Time2hitdaclub (EXPLICIT)” by 8Ball
Representing half of legendary Memphis rap duo 8Ball & MJG, this solo outing does the legend proud: all downtempo boom, hairy synths, and lyrics devoted to everyone’s favorite activity after a long week.

“That’s My Way” by Samantha Jo
Already the recipient of numerous awards for her songwriting, expect this country up-and-comer to make a lot of noise this year. Check her out on this track from her new, self-titled album.

“I’m Not Worthy” by Andre Williams
This multi-talented singer, songwriter, and producer has written with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, and Edwin Starr and has worked with Parliament, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Spinners. Enough said.

“In the Morning” by Junior Boys
This dance-floor cut from the Canadian synth duo is sure to get the party started. Taken from their newest collection of electro niceness, So This Is Goodbye.

“Soul Traveler (featuring J2 & Prince A)” by Destruments
Few groups have what it takes to combine classic hip-hop and soul and still make it sound original, but these San Franciscans’ pure, organic approach gets the job done.

“Reel” by Jawbox
Jawbox is one of a few groups to successfully make the switch from credible indie label to a major. Today’s download is taken from their reissued major label release, For Your Own Special Sweetheart, which many fans doubted at first but later embraced.

“A Little More Time” by The Early November
Armed with a solid demo and a huge internet buzz, this New Jersey–based quintet strengthened their fanbase with their performances on the Warped Tour. Today’s download is taken from their ambitious triple-disc album, The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path.

We finally did it. We’re going to replace our 10-plus-year-old bargain-basement Quasar (got it refurbed over at the Panasonic outlet when they were still in business here) with HDTV. We’re getting this 32-incher HDTV from Costco. I put the order in last night.

I’ll be honest: the purchase had more than a little to do with the AppleTV timing but we’ve also been looking for a better TV for a few years now. For my shopping list, it had to have a built-in ATSC and QAM tuner. It had to have 720p and 1080i. It had to have HDMI and component inputs. (As a bonus, this one also has VGA and composite-in.)

Of course, larger might have been better, but this unit kind of hit the sweet spot of what we could afford versus size. It also had lots of happy reviews, free shipping and Costco’s generous return policy.

So here are my questions to the readers: are there any requirements we’ve messed up on or totally missed? (Just want to make sure before the thing actually ships!) I’m planning to hook up my Intel mini to it directly and use VLC, and later switch over to the AppleTV when it ships in February. Other than the HDMI cable, what else will I need to buy? We’re not going to wall mount the thing (at least for now) because it’s going to sit on an existing side table.

Any thoughts or insights or even “you bought what!!!??”’s will be greatly appreciated, especially from those of you who are using your minis as media centers.

Here’s a summary of Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed last week in my personal blog.

Azureus: Simple to use BitTorrent Client
BitTorrent (Wikipedia entry) is a data sharing protocol that changes the file download paradigm from a one-to-one model to a many-to-many-model (peer-to-peer). This allows extremely large files to be shared without stressing a single download source point. It also means that if you download a file, you will also be allowing others to download fragments of the file from you too for some period of time. You can choose to terminate sharing the file with others after you have a complete file. But, this is considered a breach of netiquette.

One of the easiest ways to use BitTorrent is to use… Azureus

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organzier
Here’s an item that is hard to categorize.

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organzier

PocketMod lets you create mini paper booklets of information and organizational forms (calendar, contacts, etc.). It prints the mini-pages on a single piece of paper which you then fold and cut (with a scissors) to create the mini-booklet.

It is somewhat difficult to categorize because this mini-booklet can be either created right from the PocketMod website (using Flash) or by downloading a client to your desktop. The PocketMod downloadable app runs on either Mac OS X or Windows.

PocketMod: My Mac Won’t Start! A Tiny Guide
This stretches the concept focus of this blog. But, what the heck.

My Mac Won’t Start! A Tiny Guide

This freebie pocket guide uses PocketMod to create a tiny must-have emergency reference guide for any Mac user. I keep one in my MacBook’s carrying case.

Google Earth Release 4
Google released an update for Google Earth on January 8.

Google Earth Release 4

The listed enhancements are: More 3D content for terrain and buildings, add your own photos and GPS data, a new simpler user interface.

Google SketchUp 6 and 3D Warehouse
The folks at Google have been busy! They also updated their 3D modeling app SketchUp.

Google SketchUp 6

If you want to see what some talented and diligent people have created with SketchUp, head over to…

Google 3D Warehouse

…to see what 3D models have been uploaded and contributed to the collection there.

Mac GPG: Mac GNU Privacy Guard
Mac GPG is a port of GNU PG (Privacy Guard). GNU PG provides a way to encrypt and sign data and communication using the OpenPGP standard. This port attempts to make GNU PG easy to install and use on a Mac.

Mac GPG: Mac GNU Privacy Guard

Please note that as of Dec. 6, 2006, the Mac GPG site advises you to compile the application yourself because of a GNU PG security issue.

TwitterPost: Mac Client for Twitter-ing
Do you Twitter? Twitter is an, um, hmm… I guess you could say it is a mash-ip of instant messaging, texting, real-time mini-blogging. You can type whatever you are doing or thinking into twitter and whoever is a follower of your twittering can see the text either on a web page that updates itself, an IM client, or a text message on your phone. The text message is limited to 144 characters. So, I guess you could say it is closer to texting that anything else. However, it is a many-to-many communications instead of one-to-one.

TwitterPost is a freeware Mac OS X client application that lets you twitter away without requiring a web page open or inter-mixing twittering with regular IM messages in your IM client.

A post from a while ago, but nevertheless a success story for O’Reilly and MacDevCenter:

It all started last October. I was working in a typical Microsoft IT shop, and one of my asperations was to start my own software company. I had been reading Eric Sink’s Business of Software articles and was basically trying to soak in every bit of advice that I could. I had a couple of ideas for the Windows market, and a number of false starts, but nothing that I felt like would be something I would want to build a business around.

Then I came across an mp3 recording of a panel discussion from the 2004 O’Reilly Mac OS X Conference from Niall Kennedy’s blog.

This discussion featured Oliver Breidenbach, Steve Dekorte, Steve Gehrman, Will Shipley, Brent Simmons, and Dan Wood talking about various aspects of running software business in the Mac OS X world. There was something very different about this compared to the Microsoft Developer conferences that I had heard. I was instantly hooked. This was the market I wanted to be in, these were the people that I wanted as my peers.

This was written by Lee Falin in December of 2005 shortly after releasing his first product. Today he has released version 2 of Screen Mimic, an application for creating screencasts. Seems as if he is successful enough to sustain his dream.

Apple has published Jobs’s keynote from last week in full as a free download on the iTunes Store. As far as I can recall, this is a first for Apple. The five most recent keynotes are available as QuickTime streams in the Apple Events section of the QuickTime guide, but not as downloads.

Do any of you readers have a spare Joost token you can throw my way? Thanks in advance. (erica@mindspring.com)

Oh, for anyone who is not familiar with Joost, take a look here.

Wow. All the negativity. Even our own Jochen isn’t impressed. Me? I can’t wait for AppleTV. The way I see it, AppleTV is a boatload of hackable fun just waiting to be played with. Think of it as a $299 Mac Mini with a smaller form factor and no power brick. Yeah, it has just a 40GB disk and an underpowered processor but do you think that those limitations are going to stick around for more than a few minutes after we geeks get our hands on it? How much do you want to bet that it’s running some familiar code on that underclocked Intel chip? How long until we can upgrade to a bigger disk? How much do you want to bet that we can get that “diagnostics only” USB port working? Yes, I am excited about AppleTV and can’t wait to start playing with my Lil’ Bastard Consumer Electronics Dissection and Torture Kit.

It’s true. Even polar scientists need storage space:

One Xserve RAID one is scratch space for data analysis. The IceCube array produces a lot of data, and the researchers try to only transfer the most interesting fraction over the satellite internet connection. This storage will lets researchers sift through some of that data. The less interesting majority is written to tape to ship to Madison, WI, once a year.

The second Xserve RAID provides storage for a backup server, storing snapshots of home directories, web, mysql, postgres, ldap, mail, and a few other critical pieces of data. It is currently configured very conservatively for just over a week of history, but there is expected to be plenty of room for several weeks worth.

One largely unreported snippet that emerged during Macworld week was that Tinderbox now ships with a bundled copy of Yojimbo.

But why? Why does a hugely powerful text/database environment like Tinderbox need something like Yojimbo alongside it? What’s the benefit for Tinderbox users?

This morning, I watched Merlin Mann doing one of his excellent interviews for twit.tv, in which he (jokingly) described the two apps as “the tag team carbon combination from hell”. The point of the bundle is that Yojimbo is designed to make importing information very easy indeed. The idea is that it’s so easy to import stuff, you don’t need to stop and think about the process, you just do it. If something is too complicated, if it requires thought, people just won’t use it.

For the purposes of this software bundle, Yojimbo is supposed to act as an inbox for Tinderbox. It’s easier to get new data into Yojimbo than it is to get it into Tinderbox. But Tinderbox does a better job of organising data, and making sense of it in the long term.

I wanted to know more about the thinking behind this bundle, so I got hold of Eastgate’s Mark Bernstein on iChat to ask him a few questions…

This Flickr set of pictures from the inside of the Apple manufacturing plant in Ireland is interesting for all sorts of reasons, but the one thing that caught my eye most was the way the staff on the factory floor depend on old Macintosh computers to keep things working smoothly.

Just because you’re putting together the latest models of iMac and MacBook, it doesn’t mean you can’t get your job done with an aging G3 Blueberry iMac - maybe an eMac if you’re lucky.

The canteen food doesn’t look very appetising, though.

UPDATE:As noted in the comments, the photos in this set appear to have been deleted. Ho hum. Use your imaginations instead: above the heads of the factory staff, old iMacs and eMacs were suspended on a rack. Elsewhere, even older machines (again, see the comments) lurked on shelves. And the food? A bacon sandwich.

ANOTHER UPDATE:I got this amusing comment from a reader: I worked in Apple Cork facilities in the late 1990s. They were still using LocalTalk (peer-to-peer PhoneNet) networks, QuickMail, and pizza-box Performas with custom FileMaker databases (for quality control) on lines that were building Wallstreet and Yosemite (which everyone pronounced “yo-see-mighty”). My own computer was a PowerBook 5300 that was made up of three broken 5300s; it had a cracked case and couldn’t close. Still, I can’t fault Apple — those machines did
their jobs and wouldn’t die.

Via TUAW

Even when I’m speaking at Macworld, I have camera in hand. So here’s a collection of photos and anecdotes from a terrific week of Macdom in San Francisco:

I have a gallery of images posted on The Digital Story that include the podcaster meetup, live recording of MacBreak Weekly, the O’Reilly booth, and Steve’s keynote address.

Kevin Miller posted a cool pre-keynote candid on The Digital Story.

Colleen Wheeler wrote a nice wrap-up with photo of the O’Reilly authors from the Book Passage event on the Sunday before the show.

Quite a week indeed…

Largely unnoticed and without much fanfare, Apple finally made some changes that are going to be very beneficial to Mac software developers: The Mac OS X Downloads page got a makeover, complete with RSS feeds, a top downloads section, staff picks and recently added sections.

And, after just 4 or 5 years, the “Mac OS X Software…” menu item in the “Apple” menu finally points to something useful - the Mac OS X Downloads page.

As promised, here’s quick listing of some of the storage related vendors spotted on the MacWorld show floor, with a focus on inexpensive RAID solutions:

Apple announced its new Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) this week with a bit less fanfare than enjoyed by its other two new products. Sure, the new AEBS won’t change the world, but it does have one new feature that will bring joy to quite a few households. Apple calls it AirPort Disk, and it provides cheap, Apple-simple network storage to home networks.

Does the iPhone connect to iChat? Can you use it one-handed? Does the Web browser support Flash or Java? Is the virtual keyboard at least as quick and easy to use as entering text with a regular cellphone’s number keys?

You will find the answers to these and many other questions in two iPhone FAQs compiled by David Pogue over at his New York Times blog:

The Ultimate iPhone Frequently Asked Questions
Ultimate iPhone FAQs List, Part 2

P.S.: While you’re there, don’t miss David’s “The iPhone Up Close” video!

Update: TidBITS has also published an iPhone FAQ, titled iQuestion the iPhone. It’s written as an amusing interview with iPhone itself and is well worth a read.

When Steve Jobs previewed AppleTV last September, I was hooked: this box had (and has) the potential to be “The One UI To Rule Them All:” a user interface both elegantly simple as well as sufficiently powerful to manage just about any type of media from the comfort of your living room sofa. I was pretty sure I’d get one as soon as it was released. But now that the actual specs of the AppleTV are out, I’ll skip on this revision of the device for three reasons.

I’m in decompression mode after a very busy Macworld conference and I thought I’d take this time to share a few of my most notable impressions from the show. The iPhone announcement, and resulting legal action by Cisco over the name, have been extensively covered here and all over the net, so I’ll skip over that, except to say that even with the apparently closed nature of the iPhone to outside development, the Cingular lock-in, and the hefty price tag, I’ll still buy one when it comes out. It was that cool. OK, moving on and in no particular order:

-Parallels is also cool, and getting cooler. They released the “Update Release Candidate for the Parallels Desktop for Mac” (how’s that for a mouthful?), which promptly won a “Best of Show” award. The new version includes improved USB 2.0 support and better drag and drop functionality between Windows and Mac OS X. Parallels enjoys widespread support in the Mac developer community, but things will get interesting as VMWare enters the market with a competing product. (A public beta is available now.) VMWare has been doing virtualization for years, will support many more OS options than Parallels, and may give Parallels a serious challenge in this space. Its interesting to note though that the two main things that the VMWare rep was bragging about in their upcoming product were the exact features that Parallels just added in their newest version.

-MemoryMiner looks really compelling, and was the most interesting software I saw at the show that I wasn’t already familiar with. It’s a digital story-telling app that allows for private and secure group annotating of photos and other media. Really nicely done, with a slick Google Maps integration for location info. If like me, you long to have better info and organization around the digital media that reflect your life’s experiences, definitely check this one out. It’s one of those programs that’s difficult to describe well, but you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words…

-Mac Office 2008 looked promising in the demo I saw. They are not just cloning the Windows version (the new Ribbon won’t be in it) but rather attempting to really make it more of a Mac app in look and feel. Thankfully, Microsoft isn’t really adding yet more features (and bloat) to Office with this upgrade, but rather making interface changes to make the existing extensive feature set more accessible. IMO, this is exactly what’s needed, and I especially liked the new Publishing Layout View, which looks like it will vastly improve the Word experience when dealing with columns, text wrapping around images, and other desktop-publishing sorts of uses.

-There are a LOT of vendors making iPod covers, boomboxes, and add-ons. I had no idea this particular cottage industry had so many players, but I guess with the rampant success the iPod has seen, this shouldn’t be surprising. Really, a lot. Seemed like every other booth was showing an iPod doodad of one sort or another. The strangest one I saw was the combo iPod external speaker unit/toliet paper dispenser. For the person who has to have their iPod with them at all times.

-Not much info for developers. As others have noted, Steve didn’t even utter the word “Leopard” once during his keynote. No new macs, no new versions of iWork or iLife, no updates on the next OS. This was pretty surprising, and disappointing to me. They were showing off some of the new Leopard features during the scheduled demos at the Apple booth, but nothing we hadn’t already seen from last year’s WWDC. (Check out Oliver Breidenbach’s take on this, he thinks we may have seen more of Leopard than we realized).

-Digital media was huge. The whole North Moscone section was devoted to digital media, and it was booming. This isn’t new I realize, designers and artists have long been heavy Mac users, but it was encouraging to see so much action in both the areas of digital photography and audio. O’Reilly has embraced this in a big way too, with a great line-up of new digital media titles. Check out our Digital Media site for more details and coverage on that angle of Macworld.

-Not much swag. These people don’t come to Macworld for free pens, mints, and frisbees.

Those are a few of my top-of-mind impressions from this year’s Macworld. For a much more detailed report of the keynote, check out Daniel Steinberg’s new Mac DevCenter article, Macworld 2007: 1984 All Over Again.

Welcome to the week of January 6 - January 12 edition of Friday Napster Freebies. As always, these freebies can be downloaded from around the world. So if you’ve got an iPod, a Zune, iRiver, Creative Zen, or whatever, get ready to enjoy another bunch of DRM-free MP3 files to feed your player. Here are this week’s selections:

“Buddy Bye” by Johnny Osbourne
This “Godfather of Dancehall” has built a 25-year-long career with his warm voice and soulful singing style. Download one of reggae’s all-time classics, “Buddy Bye,” taken from King Jammy’s Selector’s Choice Vol. 1.
[Jan 12]

“Better That Way” by Janell Marie
This folk rockin’ Oregon native knew she was born to sing since experimenting with a mini microphone and a cassette recorder at an early age. Growing up on a steady diet of classic rock and the Beatles, she’s grown to appreciate all styles of music. Today’s download is from her upcoming EP, Better That Way. [Jan 11]

“Time” by DJ Drez
With his numerous independently released mixtapes and full-length albums, this DJ has become a staple of the Los Angeles underground hip-hop scene. Check out his more worldly forays into Indian and North African music from his latest offering, Jahta Beat. [Jan 10]

“When I Wake” by The Changes
Chicago’s very own indie rockers were the only unsigned band to be invited to perform on the 2005 Lollapalooza tour. Since then, they have toured with the likes of Ted Leo, the Walkmen, and Kaiser Chiefs. Check out today’s track from their current album, Today Is Tonight. [Jan 9]

“Dart for My Sweetheart” by Archie Bronson Outfit
This UK trio have come a long way since being discovered in a local pub by the president of their label, Domino Records. Download this song from their current album, Derdang Derdang, and see why they were nominated for Best New Act on the 2006 MOJO Honours List.
[Jan 8]

“Murderer” by Barrington Levy
One of reggae’s most respected performers, Levy has enjoyed unusual career longevity. Since releasing his first single in 1974, he has gone on to record with many of today’s biggest artists. This track is one of his classic dancehall smashes taken from the collection Original Ragga Muffin, Part One. [Jan 7]

“The Apothecary” by Enter the Haggis
Since their inception in 1996, ETH have built an international touring and recording career on their high-energy performances and unique approach to Celtic-based music. Today’s download is from their latest album, Soapbox Heroes. [Jan 6]

Here’s a summary of Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed last week in my personal blog.

xPad Ultimate Notepad just became Freeware
There was a bit of a flamewar leading up to this change from fee to free. But, the main thing is that a very useful application is now free for Mac OS X users.

xPad The Ultimate Notepad

I haven’t tried it yet (though I plan to download and try it real soon). But, its one-line description sounds great: xPad is the ultimate notepad, TextEdit and Stickies replacement for Apple’s OS X. It can also export text notes to the iPod.

HandBrake: Convert DVD to MPEG4 Video
Here’s a handy Mac OS X Open Source appliaction for iPod owners.

HandBrake

The author describes it as: …a GPL’d multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux. A Windows port is being worked on.

iLounge has an easy to read HandBrake tutorial:

The Complete Guide to Converting DVDs to iPod Format (Mac)

iSquint 1.5 Video Converter
iSquint 1.5 is a freeware video converter for Mac OS X that formats videos for playback on iPods. There is a universal binary for Intel Macs.

There is also a for-fee version called VisualHub that provides more features and many more platform formats (e.g., Sony PSP).

CGSecurity PhotoRec & TestDisk
CGSecurity’s…

PhotoRec & TestDisk

…Open Source utilities can help you analyze and (sometimes) recover files from a variety of disk formats including flash cards.

CGSecurity provides executable binaries for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. I tried the version for Windows XP (sorry ’bout that :-) on a known bad Lexar 1GB SD memory card. You can see in the image that TestDisk identified a number of sector errors on the card.

Just a few quick things that caught my eye as I strolled the MacWorld show floor:

1. The crew at the EVDOinfo.com booth looked like a great resource for anyone wanting to use one of the EVDO cards from Verizon or Sprint with their Macs. They also carry several EVDO/WiFi routers, which include a slot for the EVDO card, allowing you to share its broadband connection with several computers at once.

2. XtremeMac has a new line of great-looking and very inexpensive A/V cables, designed to go with the Apple TV (though would work with any A/V device). The line includes HDMI, DVI, HDMI to DVI, and Component cables, all with 24-caret gold connectors and rubber overmolding, and all are priced at $19.95 for 2 meters. That’s about a third of what you might pay at a big box store. You can get other cheap cables online (and they look it), but you’ll be able to pick up the XtremeMac cables from the Apple store when you buy your Apple TV in Feburary.

3. I saw at least a half dozen external RAID vendors on the floor, most of whom are here for the first time. Prices on these units have dropped a lot, and they are available in dizzying combinations of interface and drive types. I haven’t had time yet to talk to them all, but if you’re in the market for a cheap RAID (for DAS, SAN or NAS), then it looks like there’s lots to choose from. I’ll post a listing before the show’s over.

There’s been a lot of discussion in recent months about the likelihood (or not) of Apple releasing some sort of tablet computer. Some people think Apple should; others are convinced that Apple never will. After Tuesday’s keynote, I think we will see a Mac tablet of some sort or another. Let me explain why.

The key is Multi-touch. This technology is simply too good to simply be a UI trick for cell phones. Imagine being able to shift your files around in the Finder by touching and “flicking” them to different locations. Think how you could edit photos if you could use your fingertips to zoom in, touch up, move sliders around.

The Macworld 2007 Best of Show list (and YouTube video) is out. You can find the list on Macworld’s site at:

Macworld Video: Best of Show

An update of my favorite 2006 Mac app (Parallels Desktop for Mac) was one of the winners. The other Best of Show winners are:

Toast 8, Roxio
Parallels Desktop for Mac Release Candidate (Build 3120), Parallels
Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe
Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe
Prey, Aspyr Media
George, Chestnut Hill Sound
IntelliScanner mini, IntelliScanner
ModBook, Axiotron
LCD2690WUXi, NEC
Apple TV, Apple
iPhone, Apple

So, by now, many folks have seen the Keynote, but there’s an incredible demo that Phil Schiller did with CBS News. This being the early Twenty-first Century, and CBS having a brain slightly less small than the rest of the networks, they put up their demo with Phil on You Tube.

Thanks, CBS. Now I’ve drooled all over my MacBook Pro, and June can’t be here soon enough. Though, they did provide Craig Ferguson’s discussion of Apple vs. Microsoft, which is found below the cut here.

There was a lot of talk when Linksys released some new IP phone models recently with the iPhone name about how this might impact the long-rumored Apple phone. (I reviewed one of the those iPhones over on our ETel site). When Steve announced the iPhone yesterday, pretty much everyone assumed a deal had been made with Cisco (who owns Linksys) for the name. Then we saw a non-committal press release from Cisco, which made it sound like a deal was in the works but not yet signed, sealed and delivered.

Now news is hitting the wires that Cisco has filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple over the iPhone name. This could get interesting. I suspect the price Apple is surely going to have to pay for those six letters just got a lot higher.

When I reviewed the Linksys iPhone back in December I asked my contact at Cisco about the name and was told that Cisco acquired Infogear Technology Corporation in 2000, and Infogear had trademarked “iPhone” all the way back in 1996. I was also told that the CIT200 was the first Linksys-branded product in the iPhone family, which has been shipping since October of 2005.

I’ve been looking for details on Apple’s plan for 802.11n adoption, and found some good info now on their site

No suprise that the the 802.11n enabler will work only for the Core 2 machines, which include the hardware to allow it.

Also, I learned from an Apple representative at their booth that the enabler will be part of an upcoming software update for those Core 2 Macs.

Although Apple clearly stole its thunder with the iPhone, the Axiotron ModBook remains the most exciting Mac-related News on the Macworld showfloor.

The ModBook is the first ever commercially available tablet Mac. Although Steve Jobs is reported to see little future in Tablet PCs, clearly he is thinking in terms of shipping millions to masses through the Apple Stores and not about actual solutions that require Tablet PC input.

Which are manyfold in the area of portable data aquisition. May it be surveys, scientific experiments, business process modulation or profane stuff such as taking meeting notes, a pen based tablet has many niche uses of which Axiotron is undoubtedly aware. The coolest thing is the GPS built in which makes the ModBook an excellent navigation and data aquisition instrument.

The price of the product reflects its nature as a speciality article by being roughly twice the price of the MacBook it is based on. But I can imagine a lot of projects where it will come in handy and I am sure that Axiotron will be hard pressed to fulfill demand.

Everything we’re seeing today suggests that the iPhone will be a closed platform, unable to install new applications. I’ve heard rumors that it will be upwards of 18 months before developers are allowed to make applications for the iPhone, and that may send a susurrus through the developer community as the ideas for mobile applications are back-burnered. This may send a wave of frustration through many potential customers as they see the iPhone as a dead-end.

This is probably not as bad as many people thing it will be.

For one, you have a fully capable web browser. It’s Safari, afterall, built to be fully operable much like the Safari you’d normally use to upload photos to Flickr, or work with BaseCamp & Backpack, or operate any of a nearly infinite number of CMS systems and other blog-like interfaces. Filemaker Pro is extensible via the web, and you can make that a secure interaction in Safari. Since it’s got the web, you’re not tied into Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or any other Lazy-Sunday-mentioned mapping client will be fully operable on the new iPhone.

So, in that there aren’t, or won’t initially be, standalone applications for the iPhone, yes, many developers are currently feeling disappointed. But think of it this way: if you can encapsulate that application in HTML or AJAX or any number of other web technologies, your users will be able to use it on the iPhone. Not shabby.

I’ve spent a lot of time between yesterday and today going through the AppleTV specs, watching videos of the AppleTV and so forth. Here’s a basic functionality wrap-up. Feel free to let me know what I’ve messed up on. Follow the jump for the details. Updated Thursday with more details.

What does the rest of the world think about Apple’s announcements yesterday? Let’s see now…

Jason Kottke made a quick mock-up to see how the iPhone compared with other devices in terms of size and “holdability”. Pretty well, it seems.

The Age in Australia compares the co-inciding keynotes from Apple and Dell, remarking that while the Apple event was overflowing with people, the hall for the Dell speech was barely half-full. What’s more:

One person in the audience, Mark Parisi, said he liked seeing the products Dell introduced but he also was eager to leave the hall to get to some Internet access to find out what Apple had announced.

The iPhone is a threat to manufacturers of high-end phone handsets, reported Reuters. It quoted one analyst saying:

This (iPhone) does have the potential to shake up the competitive landscape even if it’s not a device that’s targeted to mass consumers. It’s clearly targeted towards the highest-value subscribers and they are the most profitable subscribers.

Engadget soberly reminds us that, technically speaking, iPhone is not a smartphone:

i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed

The glare of the stage lights seems to be fading a bit and some not-so-glossy features of the iPhone are surfacing:

- The Apple reps at MacWorld are telling people that you won’t be able to install your own software on the iPhone.

- They’re also reporting that the battery is not removable.

- There’s no expansion slot (mini/microSD, whatever).

- It’s rumored that you won’t be able to do over-the-air iTunes Store purchases.

Add this to the lack of 3G and the $500/600 price tag, and I’m left scratching my head.

Is this a smartphone or not? I’d have to say “not”, given the first point.

Are they targeting consumers or power/business users? Expensive, but not customizable with software or expansion cards - sounds like “neither”.

All this information is semi-official at best, and hopefully these factors will line up into a clearer market strategy before June. But if these become fact (especially that first one), I’ll still be scratching my head.

After a long day at Macworld and unwinding at dinner, I’ve come to the conclusion that we might have seen more of Mac OS X Leopard today than we realise.

I think we caught a glimpse of what Leopard is really going to be like with the new iPhone UI. It surely was a showcase for Core Animation and screen resolution independence if I ever saw one. Was it also a showcase for Mac OS X’s new look?

Oh, and one more thing: Wanna bet that when PC returns from his “major surgery”, he’ll be running Mac OS X instead of Vista?

Just in case you’d missed it in the flood of iPhone news, Bare Bones has released updates for BBEdit, Yojimbo and TextWrangler today.

• BBEdit 8.6 includes better Java and TeX language support, and now also supports Markdown (hooray!). There’s a bunch of other changes and some bug fixes. It’s $30 to upgrade from earlier versions of BBEdit 8, and it requires OS X 10.4.
• Yojimbo 1.4 brings Applescript support, among other things, and is a free upgrade from all previous versions.
• TextWrangler 2.2 comes with “more than a hundred” new features and fixes, and continues to be free for all.

Like Chris, I have some questions about the iPhone that have been running around in my head since the keynote…

• What’s inside?
• On the Phone menu screen (above), what does the Notes widget do? Will it sync with Notes in Mail?
• Similarly, will the Calendar widget sync with iCal?
• How do I get photos I’ve taken with the phone into my computer? Will iPhoto just import them automagically?
• Will the next version have a built-in iSight?
• Does it come in white too?
• How do I add software? Can I stick anything on it, storage space permitting?
• Where’s the SDK?

Amid the iPhone frenzy, Apple quietly released an all-new Airport base station device today. Selling at $179, it supports the new 802.11n standard (as well as backwards compatibility for versions a, b and g).

There are three Ethernet ports, one USB, and “multiple antennas” for better reception (I put that in quotes because I’m just not sure how many antennae the old base station unit had…). According to the tech specs page, it comes with software called “802.11n Enabler for Mac” - so that’ll be the thing that wakes up the sleeping 802.11n compatibility in recently-purchased machines.

The device is, as you’d expect, being touted as “perfect for use with Apple TV” and can also act as a hub for network-shared drives and printers, something that’ll be easier with the addition of a USB hub. I suspect this might be pushed as the ideal hardware solution for backups via Time Machine, once Leopard is released.

I am so hyped about today’s keynote, it’s hard to know even where to begin. iPhone. Apple TV, neé iTV. And so forth. There’s even a brand new Airport Extreme base station over at the Apple Store, shipping with 802.11n and which may or may not support USB hard drives. (I’ve got to check on this fact-wise.) Just right to go along with the iTV. (Forgive me. I’m used to the old name.) I really wish that iTV had a tuner. (It does not.) And that it could record on the TV end. (It does not.) But it does have a 40 GB hard drive in there, which can store “up to 50 hours video”. Which of course, I’m going to swap out for a much bigger drive as soon as I get my hands on it. Because I’m a geek. And we geeks do that. Let’s just say “bye bye” to the warranty already. The remote control looks very frontrowish, as does the graphical on-screen interface. The syncing capabilities make it a kind of headless video iPod, if you follow what I’m saying. Anyway, I’m still too freaked and excited by the whole thing to post coherently. More later when I collect my thoughts.

In my earlier post, I said I would prefer to see Apple put together a mobile version of MacOS rather than a slick new mobile phone device. Well, the iPhone seems to be both. It “runs MacOS X”, but what that actually means remains to be seen. The keynote demo and screen shots I’ve seen indicate that the UI is more like Dashboard than OS X, but if the OS X kernel is back there - very interesting possibilities indeed. And that Safari mobile browser looks very good indeed. But to my (pleasant) surprise, Apple seems to have provided some key device innovations as well. The primary one being, of course, the drastic move to a full touchscreen interface, with a single button, and no stylus. If this smart touchscreen interface works as well as Steve Jobs says, it will be quite a feat.

There are still a number of questions to be answered with the iPhone, such as:

- What does “3G” mean - EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA? It had better be one of those last two, or else they’re starting behind the curve.

- Will the WiFi allow you to automatically switch to a Skype phone when WiFi is present?

- Is it unlocked so I can use it on other GSM carriers, in the US or elsewhere?

But if this lives up to even 80% of the hype that Steve J is trying to kick up at the moment, it’ll be a big success.

Where should I begin?

All good stories begin at the ending, and then provide context. This one shall not deviate from that mold. At the end of the Stevenote, Steve brought up The Great One’s favorite line: “I skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.” Apple has long been the company at the head of the curve, ever pulling the masses forward with their energy, design, with their joie de vivre and their incredible attachment to things electronic. The reason I’ve loved Apple always is for the enthusiasm with which they venture. They design computers and software (and phones, now) that have come to fit their lives, to enhance them through the adaptation of technology, both new and old.

Apple excites and entices. Apple enables. Apple makes products that let us take our stuff with us. First it was just music, with the iPod. Then photos, then movies and TV even. It became an amazing companion for the traveler, for the commuter, and began to extend the presence of the computer beyond the desktop or laptop. The iLife, defined by movies, by pictures and music, began to expand, and today it got another chapter with the iPhone.

Over the next few days, as people get their hands on test handsets (which I’m sure will happen at Macworld, I can’t imagine Apple doing something this big and then telling even the pundits to wait.), we’re going to hear a lot about the capabilities and features of the phone and their various merits and demerits, and all of that will be valuable. But none of it is nearly as valuable as the enthusiasm that was generated today. I haven’t been this excited about a product in a long, long time.

The message is clear to every other wireless phone company: start skating, you’re way behind.

Wow, where to start?

At the beginning. A few days ago, when Apple posted the gauntlet-throwing “The first 30 years were just the beginning” sign on its home page, it effectively announced to the world: “This time, we have something special.”

And special indeed. Today’s announcements from Steve Jobs fulfill almost all the Mac enthusiasts’ dreams of the last two years or so. Finally, Apple has a living room media device and a portable computer that rivals the coolness of the iPod combined with the geeky joy of the old Newton.

I’ve been trying not to get too sucked into all of the latest hype about an Apple phone, I’ve been there before. But nothing can get the rumor vines really cranking like a highly-anticipated Steve Jobs Macworld keynote, and now on the eve of Steve’s big show we’ve even got the Wall St. Journal reporting an imminent Apple/Cingular phone announcement.

Russell Shaw wonders if the new device will cannibalize iPod sales, which I think it could if it’s good. As CNN Money rightly points out, if this new phone device is a real iPod, people will love it, but if it’s not, well we’ve been there before too. I’m pretty sure Apple isn’t going to throw another ROKR at us this time, so I’m betting that they get it right. I know I like the interface on my iPod far better than the interface on any cell phone I’ve ever owned, so I must confess that even though it didn’t make it onto my Macworld wishlist, I’m secretly hoping all that hype does pan out and we see a new take on a portable music player and phone device tomorrow that has me reaching for my credit card.

So much for not getting sucked in.

Just when you thought you’d seen all the best Mac bargains possible (I’m thinking in particular of festive delights like MacHeist and MacSanta), TidBITS comes along with another enticing offer.

The TidBITS Archive CD 1990-2006 is a compilation of 6,500 articles from all 860 issues of everyone’s favorite Mac email newsletter.

1990! That’s when a Macintosh IIci was a cutting-edge machine. For anyone with even a passing interest in Apple’s history, this qualifies as something of a treasure trove. That said, I’m not sure there’s much on the CD that you can’t find by digging around in the TidBITS archives; so perhaps this is something that will only appeal to the true TidBITS fans.

The CD will normally sell for just shy of 50 bucks, but if you order before the end of January you can pick it up for only $29.95.

I’ve been asking myself this question for weeks now, and so far I’ve failed to come up with any answer that makes long-term financial or common sense. Maybe you can help me.

It’s one of the earlier Minis, a 1.42GHz G4 PowerPC with 1GB RAM, 80GB disk, and Airport. Various thoughts have occurred to me: music server, household file server, some sort of media thingy for the TV… but I don’t know. I can’t help thinking there’s something I haven’t thought of.

So what would you do?

With Macworld Expo 2007 opening tomorrow, I’m starting this place to keep track of product announcements of interest to home security and automation enthusiasts. I’m starting out with just two, but I’ll update this as more come to my attention. If you’re aware of any, please leave a comment.

Indigo 2.0
The latest version of Perceptive Automation’s home automation software goes gold with a new client-server architecture, enhanced support for Insteon devices, irrigation systems, Universal binary, and a new “control pages” features for building AJAX-based web sites to control your home. Upgrade ($90) and introductory pricing ($180) is available at their website. Macworld Booth: N4234-6

Phone Valet 5
This home and small business phone automation package adds several new features including unlimited voice call trees, expanded Address Book integration, and something called “CCT”. That’s “Call Completion Technology,” a patented approach to ensuring that incoming calls are smoothly directed to a live person or voice mail, if no one is available to answer. See their website for details. Macworld Booth: S1912

Toast 8
OK, it’s not exactly related to home automation, but there’s such a big overlap with home theatre geeks that I’m going to include it anyway. Roxio Toast 8 Titanium includes TiVoToGo functionality. Finally, Mac users can transfer recorded shows to their iPod, Mac, or burn them on DVD. There are plenty of other new features, but for me, this is the only one that matters. More details at their website. Macworld Booth: 314

Nisus Software has announced a new product, Nisus Writer Pro, which adds new features to the old Writer Express code.

These new features include line numbering, text wrap around images, tables of contents, and cross-referencing. Here’s a screenshot, the first of a gallery of screenshots that might interest you. Personally, I find that initial shot of the document window with all the palettes and drawers open a little off-putting - it’s a good idea to browse through the whole gallery, then you get a much clearer idea of how some of the new features work.

I say the software’s been announced, and it has, but at the moment there’s no clear date for an actual release. The Nisus guys say there might be a beta release soon, so if you happen to bump into any of them at Macworld, be sure to nag them about it.

Not surprisingly, our great crew of bloggers here on Mac DevCenter have plenty of thoughts and opinions on what they’d like to see unveiled at Macworld next week. Here’s our rundown, and we’d love to hear your wishes too — just add them in the comments section at the end. And if you’re going to be at the show next week, check out all of the O’Reilly activities and make sure to stop by the O’Reilly booth and say “hi”.

A moment of silence for Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen, who passed away this weekend in Japan. Food shortages after World War II helped inspire his creation. If there is a universal cuisine of programmers, Jolt Cola and instant ramen are surely prime components. The “Cup Noodle” featuring ramen in its distinct styrofoam container was introduced in 1971 and has littered the desktops of programmers around the world ever since.

Up until recently, I had always used GMail by typing http://gmail.com into my browser. At some point, however, I started asking myself questions about security and wondered if an https flavor was available. It turns out that it had been there all along and so began the era of more secure GMail for me.

Given that it’s so darn easy to sniff packets these days with tools like ethereal, I recommend you folks update your bookmarks and remember that last ’s’ as well. It’s just plain silly not to.

A big howdy to everyone stopping by to pick up their weekly dose of Napster freebies. These freebies can help you fill up your iPod or Zune or Zen or whatever with fun new artists. The links provided here appear to work without limitations in many countries around the world. As always, if you have any feedback drop me an email or leave a comment below.

“For You” by Raul Malo
Influenced by Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, this Miami-born Cuban led The Mavericks to Grammy and Country Music Association awards success. While his recent solo work has seen him return to his Cuban roots, it’s still infused with his love for American country. [Jan 5]

“Glassbottom Lights (Remix)” by The Tyde
Half the members of this So-Cal rock group are also members of Beechwood Sparks. Download this track and get into the synthy dance remix courtesy of James Figurine (aka Jimmy Tamborello, of Postal Service fame). [Jan 4]

“Lady Don’t Tek No (Live Version - EXPLICIT)” by Lyrics Born
This S.F. Bay-area rapper was the first to put out an album on the influential Solesides label (also home to Lateef and DJ Shadow). The label may be gone, but the music is still strong. Check out this track from the live album Overnite Enco [Jan 3]

“Step Out of the Shade” by Amy Speace
This talented songstress fuses folk, country and pop styles in her music. Check out this breezy number from her latest album, Songs for Bright Street. [Jan 2]

“There’ll Be Some Changes Made” by Tess Williams
This hard-stomping take comes from Williams’ live album Totally Tess. Though she’s a relative unknown, her bluesy delivery and this jazz standard’s subject matter are just the thing to start the New Year off on the right foot. [Jan 1]

“Lost in Boston” by The Walkmen
These guys hustle. Not only have they done world tours and appeared in the TV series The O.C., but they also run their own rehearsal space and recording studio in New York City, where they make music like this rocker from A Hundred Miles Off. [Dec 31]

“Untitled Pt. 1″ by The Punks
This noise-rock outfit from Olympia, Washington creates experimental, improvised soundscapes that may be baffling to some, but have kept the quartet recording and playing for fans for three years running. Download this “song” and draw your own conclusions. [Dec 30]

You might have already noticed the release, a couple of days ago, of WriteRoom 2.0. There’s been some discussion of it at [TUAW] and Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop.

Some users are critical of Jesse Grosjean’s decision to charge a (very moderate, in my view) fee for the new release. That’s a shame, because WriteRoom is more than just a simple full-screen mode. The new features I’m excited about are the typewriter scrolling mode (makes typing long screeds of words much easier) and the live word count (appears in the lower-left corner of the screen, very unobtrusively).

Here’s a summary of last week’s Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed in my personal blog. If you have freeware or Open Source software to recommend for Mac users, please post it in a response here (or email the information to me if you prefer to remain anonymous).

Inbox.com: 5GB Free Email & File Storage
This is one of those I hope this is not too good to be true items. I read about…

Inbox.com

…and was immediately both curious and suspicious about a free web service that provides 5GB (gigabytes) of storage for email, files, and a photo sharing.

So, I signed up for it and it sure looks for real so far. The only drawback so far is that the email only provides POP3 and not IMAP4. But, hey, Yahoo! charges for POP3 and Gmail doesn’t provide IMAP4 either. So, this is probably not a big deal.

Data is not backed up for free accounts. However, you can get your 5GB of space backed up for a reasonable $9.90 per year and even increase the storage space to 30GB (with backup) for $29.96 per year.

Xdrive: 5GB Free Online Storage With Backup
Unlike Inbox.com’s free 5GB of online storage that does not include backups unless you upgrade to the reasonably priced for-fee service,

Xdrive

…provides 5GB of free online storage with backups (but no email feature). Xdrive also provides a Microsoft Windows utility to allow the ability to drag and drop files between Microsoft Windows folders and your Xdrive folder.

I had an account with Xdrive during the first dot-com boom. They provided, I believe, around 100MB of free space back then. Then, they changed their model to fee-only and dropped the free service. I seem to recall being a paying customer for a while before dropping the service. I have not tried this dot-com 2.0 free Xdrive service yet.

Locomotive: Ruby on Rails Assistance for Mac OS X
Here’s an interesting Open Source app for Mac OS X.

Locomotive

It sets up what appears to be a sandboxed Ruby on Rails environment for Mac OS X to reduce the pain of configuring Ruby on Rails with graphics libraries and the like.

StarLogo/OpenStarLogo
Turtle Geometry (see Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas) started out at MIT’s AI Lab way back in 1970. If you’ve seen or heard of LEGO Mindstorms NXT, you’ll find that many of the concepts it embedded into this robotics kit came from Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms book and Turtle Geometry.

Aquamacs: Emacs for Mac OS X (Text Editor)
Yep, I’m old. I remember when the Free in Free Software was a philosophical notation (Free as in Freedom). And, the first piece of Free Software that really impressed me back then was GNU EMACS. It is not accurate to refer to Emacs as a text editor. It can be its own environment. Many years ago when I managed a large (for its time) UNIX system at a university, I had a linguistics professor ask me to make GNU Emacs his login shell! He literally lived in Emacs. If you want an Emacs tuned for Mac OS X, take a look at…

Aquamacs: Emacs for Mac OS X

Other World Computing and Axiotron throw down the gauntlet and announce the first Tablet Mac to be unveiled at Macworld 2007. This is going to be interesting. (Axiotron Press Release)

Here’s a PDF overview of ZFS by Jeff Bonwick of Sun Microsystems. The 128-bit ZFS file system will apparently be used in Leopard to provide multi-disk data pools as well as to create data snapshots for backups. ZFS provides fast data access with lots of data integrity features. It’s a nice, easy-to-follow overview that’s well worth a look if you have any interesting in learning more about ZFS.

Looking for an easier alternative to osascript that still runs in the command line? Check out AppleScript Shell from Hayne of Tintagel. It’s a Perl-powered script that lets you interactively execute AppleScript commands (including multi-line tell commands) as well as create interpretable scripts (via #!/usr/bin/env ash). There are a number of useful flags built in that can be used to execute commands from a specified file, echo values during execution, to display the current AppleScript, to repeat the most recent script, to call Unix commands, and so forth. e.g.

tell application "Finder"
    set theSelection to selection
    set n to number of items in theSelection
    -echo "number of items selected: " & n
    repeat with i from 1 to n
        -echo "item " & i & " is " & (item i of theSelection as alias)
    end repeat
end tell

The script downloaded easily–although you do have to gunzip it and chmod it to make it executable. I pasted in one of my standard rename scriptlets and it ran perfectly, updating a playlist in iTunes. There were some strange echos during the execution trace, i.e. it listed the whole script up to the current line for every step along the way, but I’m guessing this could be turned off by one of the built-in flags or by editing the source itself, which is quite short.

Scrivener is an new (to me) writing application that is now in late stages of beta. I’ve been playing around with it recently and I like what I see.

It’s one of those apps, like Jer’s Novel Writer and Notae, that’s been created by someone who’s explored what else is available and found nothing that suited them.

Recently, I posted a review of the Logitech Z-10 interactive speakers. Great speakers, but far more interactive for Windows users than for Mac. That is, until Marc Liyanage dived in and wrote the LogitechLCDTool. Now Mac users can use the Z-10’s LCD display too.

I’ve test the LogitechLCDTool, and it’s terrific. I decided to find out more about Marc and how he did this. So here’s a brief interview with a peek behind the scenes.

Get yer fresh hot dashcode beta…

The Year in Mac Development. Yeah, pretty exciting. What a ride, Dude.

Ah, and Apple says it was just the beginning…

The first bug of the Month of Apple Bugs has gone live and describes overflowing a stack for arbitrary code execution. It supposedly affects both Windows and Mac QuickTime 7.1.3. I personally do not have the security background to assess whether this is a real or critical vulnerability so I look forward to your feedback via e-mail or comments.