Links...

My friend, Jay, after seeing my post about the text-only browser Lynx pointed out Links. And I found this nice OS X savvy installer by Scott Lahteine after digging around for a bit. The installer gave an error, but when I typed "Links" in the Terminal, it launched anyway. Works fast and a little easier to navigate than Lynx. Check it out.

Bluetooth Printer for your 3650...

Engadget writes about "HP’s new mobile printer with built-in Bluetooth, the Deskjet 450wbt, which can wirelessly print photos taken with Nokia’s 3650, 6600, 6620, and 7650 cameraphones." I would guess that it would work with your 12-inch, too. Pretty cool...

MacUpdate Update...

I've had a pleasant correspondence with Joel Mueller from MacUpdate this afternoon that has put to rest any concerns I had about MacUpdate's practices. I'll return to linking to them in the future. Although it appears that Lon Hutchison is associated with MacUpdate, he acted on his own in flaming my post to the dealmac forums and in his rude email to me, and MacUpdate should not be avoided because of one hot-head's heated reaction to criticism. See below for my original post about this issue...

Bluetooth Snarfing Statistics from CeBit...

Saw this on /.: Martin Herfurt (of Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, mBH, Austria) has posted this pdf report called "Bluesnarfing @ CeBIT 2004," discussing the statistics of an experiment conducted at CeBIT. The good news, no 3650s were successfully 'snarfed, according to his numbers, although 28 3650s were in attendance comprising 3.1% of the Nokia population of phones at CeBITT.

PuTTY for your 3650...

Saw this over at Gizmodo. Check out PuTTY for Symbian OS:

PuTTY is a free SSH client developed by Simon Tatham and others. This page contains a port to the Symbian OS, with support for Series 60 (Nokia 3650, 6600, and N-Gage) and Nokia 9200 Communicator series (Nokia 9210, 9210i, and 9290). The current version contains SSH protocol support, terminal emulation, and a basic user interface. More documentation is available in the distribution.

It's still in beta, but this looks to be a pretty cool and powerful way to connect to your Mac from afar...

Hate e-mail...

Well, crap. I angered some guy named Lon Hutchison over on the Deal Mac forums, because I pointed out the problems that I have had with MacUpdate in the past. Here's the forum thread in question. This guy anonymously posted a reply attacking me in the thread, which I hope they will soon remove (go vote that they do now please) but then followed it up with this wonderful piece of email which I have only edited one word with **:

From: nycdewd@yahoo.com Lon Hutchison Subject: your lies Date: March 31, 2004 1:29:24 AM EST To: C.K. Sample, III I hope MacUpdate finds out about your lies on DealMac and your ego-stroking piece of sh** blog. I hope they have enough money to take your lying lame ass to court. You disgust me... you're a lying pretentious bastard...

Well, isn't that nice? So pleasant to be attacked in the morning by uninformed people who do not even bother to read about the personal experience that I have had with MacUpdate that made me draw the personal conclusions that I made and voiced on DealMac. As far as I know, there is nothing about that that is illegal. Keep sending the hate email, buddy, and we'll see who ends up in court... UPDATE: The name Lon Hutchison sounded familiar so I searched in Zoe through my old email and found another email from him from his other email address: lon@macupdate.com, which he signs with a link to the "about MacUpdate page", so he is somehow involved with MacUpdate, and thus the flame and the hate email. All the more reason not to use MacUpdate. Digging their own graves...

12-inch Xgrid...

I saw an article somewhere about this article about Apple's Xgrid and it looks very interesting. I downloaded it and installed a copy on my 12-inch and the G5. When I get home, I might install it on Kristin's 12-inch. If I can figure out how to get this working properly with command line mencoder, I think I could process video at much better speeds than I have previously... maybe...

Bring Out the Gimp!

If you're like me, you like free. Rather than spending lots of money to buy Photoshop, Illustrator, and all the high end graphics programs you can find, you should check out Gimp.app, a "self contained application bundle of the GNU Image Manipulation Program for OS X." It is open source, requires X11 to run, and after you download the dmg file, simply copy Gimp to your Applications folder and launch it. It will launch X11, guide you through a one time installation and configuration session and then launch itself. Have fun creating your next great graphic! If you need a how to, check out Grokking the GIMP.

Share2Blue2th on TechTV's Call for Help Postponed...

For those of you awaiting news of this, according to chats with Cat, Share2Blue2th will most likely be mentioned on Call for Help in about a month. ...

HALO review: Part 2

Look over here for part 1 of this review. I've been using the HALO Wireless Bluetooth Headset from Solteras with both my Nokia 3650 and my 12-inch for several days now and the battery is still going. This product has amazing battery life. The sound is clear, however, after the first 8 hours of usage, the weakening battery would seem to slightly affect the microphone, as my father noted that in a conversation with him on my cell phone, the mic suddenly started picking up more ambient noise, causing a "cave-like" sound effect. This could have been the connection and not the Halo. More usage will tell. Regardless, I used the HALO with completely flawless performance for eight hours before this happened. Eight HOURS! Not in standby. 8 hours of talking and listening to iChat, iTunes, and telephone conversations while paired to two different devices. For performance, I highly recommend this device. For comfort, I highly recommend this device, which is much less physically intrusive than the Jabra Freespeak. The only down-side, as I mentioned previously, is its appearance. It is visually noticeable and people will stare at you while you are wearing it. You may like this, or you may not. If being noticed for tech appeals to you, then you should definitely get this device.

Possible Clue for USB Modem Users Who Want to Use Share2Blue2th...

So, I was digging around in the man pages for the commands that make Share2Blue2th work, and I noticed a snippet in the natd man. Type "man natd" in the terminal to read up on it, but it says that if you are not going to use en0 / en1 (Ethernet and Airport), but rather a PPP connection (as you do with a USB modem), you will have to use the –nat switch to ppp(8), rather than –interface en0. So, if I am reading it all correctly, the code in the scripts pertaining to the ports should be switched to:

sudo /usr/sbin/natd -nat ppp(8) -use_sockets -same_ports -dynamic -clamp_mss

and

sudo /sbin/ipfw add divert natd ip from any to any via ppp(8)

I have no means of testing this, so I haven't tested it. Good luck and please let me know if it works! Hopefully, this will help some of you who have emailed me about this issue...

iChat problems...

Has anyone else been having intermittent problems with the new iChat AV? The Beta wasn't giving me as much problems as I am now experiencing. I keep getting notifications that "You left the chat" when I didn't and people have missed sections of conversations that I have sent to them. Looks like Windoze compatibility may have made iChat buggier...

Rumors: Merlot and new 12-inchers...

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports on the rumored MAC OS 10.4 that is codenamed Merlot, in Alpha, and mentioned in detail over at Mac OS Rumors. Also, O'Grady's Powerpage reports that new PowerBook G4s will be announced this week, the last of the G4s before releasing G5 Powerbooks. Check it out.

More from BoingBoing on VLC for iTMS track playback...

Check it out:

DVD Jon on VLC and Apple's iTunes singles
Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen writes, in reference to VLC's support for iTunes's M4P DRM format:

In case you didn't know, I'm a VideoLAN developer. I reverse engineered FairPlay and wrote VLC's FairPlay support. It's been available in VideoLAN CVS since January, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2.).

Just wanted to let you know that once you have generated the user key file(s), you can copy them to as many computers you want and play your M4P files there using VLC.

[Boing Boing Blog]

Coolness!

HALO review: Part 1

So yesterday, as you will recall, I received my HALO Wireless Bluetooth Headset in the mail from Solteras. Since it finished charging late yesterday afternoon, I have been playing with it rather extensively. First, the good: very clear sound. Plays nicely with both my 3650 and my 12-inch. The HALO has a little speaker that is held directly over your ear, so it is not uncomfortable and intrusive, as the Jabra Freespeak can be with it's little blue earplug. The HALO is noticeably clearer sounding than the Jabra FreeSpeak with less overall crackles and sound artifacts with both the 3650 and the 12-inch. Listening to iTunes over the HALO is less like listening to an AM radio than it is like listening to a mono FM radio. Still not as good as actual headphones, but not too bad (although you do need to adjust iTunes' equalizer for treble boost). I called several friends last night on the drive home from work, using the HALO. They all reported the reception as being nice and clear, much like the Jabra. Unlike the Jabra Freespeak, when I arrived home and was talking to my brother I was able to walk into other rooms of the house without losing connection or sound quality with the 3650, which was sitting in my bag on the coffee table in the dining room. The broadcast range is overall much better than with the Jabra Freespeak. The battery life is extremely impressive. I talked on the phone for probably an hour last night with the HALO. Since 10 o'clock this morning (it is now 2:42pm EST), I have had the HALO paired with my 12-inch. First, I streamed the audio from a copy of the first episode of Futurama. Whenever I paused the movie, I had to unpause to reinitiate the connection, then pause and unpause again immediately to sync the video with the audio. I maintained an audio conversation with my friend Jason who lives in London over iChat for more than an hour this morning. While doing this, he noted that the mic in the HALO was picking up his voice in the earpiece, as he heard a slight echo of his talking (this doesn't happen with the Jabra Freespeak). Since then I have been streaming iTunes to my right ear, while sitting at my desk. The only time there has been any noticeable sound artifacts has been when I connected to my 3650 via Salling Clicker and initiated my Share2Blue2th scripts. This is to be expected. The HALO is more comfortable on my ear and actually lighter than the Jabra Freespeak, which is surprising considering how much larger it looks when on your ear. And this is the main problem with the device:
As you can see from these two pictures, the HALO is large and extremely noticeable. While it will get you instant cool g33k cred in the trendy, tech-savvy corners of urban life, everywhere else people will be wondering where the Star Trek convention is and which way will be the quickest way to escape from it and from you. During a conversation I had with a coworker earlier today while wearing the HALO, he could not keep his eyes on my eyes, even after gaping at the device for several minutes and after we had discussed it at length. He just couldn't stop staring at it. The Jabra Freespeak gets glances, but for the most part is a familiar form factor, looking either like a futuristic hearing aid or a bulky version of a wired headset. The HALO is large and, despite being unobtrusive on your ear, looks like it is some piece of Borg technology attempting to burrow its way into your ear. For this reason, and this reason alone, I will most likely continue to use my Jabra Freespeak more than the HALO. Although the HALO is great for use with my computer where no one can see me, or in my car. Jabra is better for walking on the street to and from my car and in the hallways. However, if you don't care at all about people staring, or if you live in one of those overpopulated tech-savvy areas where the HALO will win favorable attention, I highly recommend this device. The sound is great. It is comfortable. The battery life is unbelievable so far (and I am only about 6 hours into it). One very bad design flaw that Solteras should correct in the future. I do not recommend driving at night with the boom extended on the HALO. The boom emits a blue pulsing light to let you know that it is connected, but while driving at night it is a potentially dangerous distraction to see the side of your face flashing blue in the rear view mirror or over your shoulder whenever you look to check your blindspot. Simple solution: don't extend the boom. I didn't as soon as I noticed the problem and everyone could still hear me loud and clear. I'll report more on this after I've played with it more. Some very geeky part of me wants to pair the HALO with my 12-inch and the Jabra with the 3650 and wear them all the time... *will be cross-posted on MobileWhack...

Share2Blue2th Muy Bueno!

Was looking over my referrer logs, and found this link to softonic.com, which by the looks of it is a spanish-language software review site. In any case, they gave Share2Blue2th a ¡MB!, which means Muy Bueno! ¡Gracias!

VLC will play iTMS tracks...

Saw this mentioned over at BoingBoing:

My favorite media player is something called Video LAN Client, or VLC, which plays everything from Quicktime to Divx and RealVideo. It's free and open source, and improves steadily. Now, someone's hacked in support for M4Ps, the DRM format used by Apple for the iTunes Music Store singles. Alas, it requires that you be using a machine that's been authorized by Apple to play the tracks in question.

VLC rules. Read the rest of Cory's post to hear the trouble he's been going through in authorizing / de-authorizing his computers. Apple really needs to do something to rectify these problems, as I myself had a good deal of trouble contacting the iTMS support team when I had the same problem. There should be a way, akin to the way you add and remove computers from iSync, to log in to your iTMS account and authorize and de-authorize computers from there. Or, you know, I guess Apple could just come to their senses and get rid of DRM. Yeah, that'd be nice, too...

Solteras HALO Wireless Bluetooth Headset: First Look

I just received my HALO Wireless Bluetooth Headset in the mail from Solteras. It is currently charging. After it is done, I will start playing around with it and post a detailed report. The unit required a modicum of assembly, attaching the earhook (the behind the ear part of the unit that houses the battery) to the main guts of the thing with a little plastic clip. For now, here's some pictures of the HALO:

The first image is of the entire unit, the replacement faceplate, an extra plastic clip, and the instruction manual (please ignore the copy of Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination that everything is resting on; that's just a little "light reading" for my dissertation). The second image is of the HALO by itself, fully assembled, and the third image is another such image with the boom extended. Pretty cool! More to come...

3650 and a 12-inch moblog

I just took the plunge and started a 3650 and a 12-inch moblog. Nothing up there yet, but I suppose I'll start archiving my Picture of the Weeks over there. Stay tuned...

File Sharing Musings Redux...

So, a couple of days ago, I was wondering about Mac to PeeCee file-sharing lawsuit statistics, and my good friend, Erik, emailed me with the following bit of interest:

You asked about the relative safety of p2p on a Mac--I remembered this Boston Globe article as discussed on Slashdot last year. Grandmother in Florida accused of downlowding "I'm a Thug" over Kazaa. The RIAA pulled the suit when they learned the identity of the user at the specific IP address, and when they learned she was using a Mac, which couldn't run Kazaa. SO: safety from judgement, perhaps, but not from getting sued in the first place. erik

Word.

Bluetooth Speakerphone for your 3650...

Gizmodo mentions the Jabra SP100, a new bluetooth speakerphone. Right now I have the Jabra Freespeak, and the Solteras HALO is coming in the mail for me to review any day now, so I don't really need another bluetooth talk solution for the car. Nevertheless, I just sent Jabra marketing an email to see if they will send me a unit for review. There is something appealing about a handsfree solution in the car that I could leave in the glove compartment of the car...

Free Culture, Banned Music

This should really be two posts, but they sort of go together so I'm doubling them up. First off, check out Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig's new book, which he is releasing under a Creative Commons license and which is available for free download and reading in pdf format on your 12-inch (although only the torrent file of the book is currently working). Get it read it, and when you see the actual book in stores, buy a copy and donate it to your local library. Also, in the world of free, albeit slightly less legal, check out Banned Music: A Project of Downhill Battle. Grey Album and Double Black Album both available via bit torrent for easy listening on your 12-inch. Also, and this is a total aside, I wish Apple would make one of these that was fully Mac compatible, less that $50 / came bundled with new software / new Apple computers, and was driven by ebook sales and subscriptions, while still capable of loading free content: an iLibrary to go along with my iPod and iTunes.

Browsing with Lynx...

Sure, Safari is fast. And some people like Firefox as a nice, fast alternative to Safari. But if you want really fast, check out Lynx-2.8.5.d16-SSL-10.2 text-based browser that runs in the Terminal. It says it only works with 10.2, but it is running fine on my 12-inch running 10.3.3. Now, I wouldn't use this all the time, mind you, but it is a fast way to read text online. Check it out.

SafariKeywords...

Want to search with a different search engine than Google in the little built-in search bar in Safari? Check out SafariKeywords.

Aqua AbiWord

I've used AbiWord in X11 in the past. Now there is a new Aqua native version:

Experimental native Aqua version of AbiWord
AbiWord is a free open source MS Word compatible word procesor. Until now, it required X11 to run under Mac OS X. [MacMegasite]

Coolness. I'm going to download this sucker and give it a whirl. Here's the direct link to this DEVELOPER ONLY UNSAFE FOR COMMON USAGE release. HA!

Filesharing musings...

I was just wondering if—like with viruses and worms, and for the same reasons—if filesharing lawsuits are largely a plague for PeeCee users that misses or overlooks Mac users. Wonder what the percentage of PeeCee to Mac busts has been?

Any Cingular users out there?

I'm trying to help someone get their 3650 set up as a bluetooth modem for their 15-inch. The Cingular part of the equation has us stumped. Any Cingular users who have this working, please email me at c k s 3 at mac dot com with the 411, yo. THANKS!

Make the News with your 12-inch...

Literally. Check it.

Making the Function keys functional...

Check out this O'Grady's Powerpage article for the details, but in short, if you want to use your F1-F12 keys in their should be default settings on your 12-inch as function keys and not as volume, brightness, and other random controls then:

With the 10.3.3 update, there's a new checkbox in the keyboard preferences pane labeled "Use the F1-F12 keys for custom actions." If you check it, then you get "real" function keys, while holding down fn gives you the brightness, sound, etc controls.

Looks like this originally came from this Mac OS X Hint. Pass it on...

iChat AV 2.1 Update...

iChat AV 2.1 Update available via Software Update now:

iChat AV v2.1 adds support for video conferencing with the new AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 for Microsoft Windows.

Sorry for the delay in posts today. I was stuck in meetings...

TechTv delay...

Well, gentle readers, I'm afraid that the scripts will NOT be mentioned on tomorrow's Call for Help as previously announced. I received an email from Cat from TechTV asking me to call her. I just did, and she was having a little bit of trouble getting the scripts working. So, they still want to run it, but I'm going to talk to Cat some about it first, so most likely it will air sometime next week or the week after. Slight buzzkill, but still stoked...

Share2Blue2th on TechTV's Call for Help

I just received an email from Michael Schwingler of TechTV, saying:

I'm pleased to announce that your product, 'Share2Blue2th,' will be featured on TechTV's 'Call for Help' on March 24th, 2004. The show premieres at 3 p.m. Eastern and repeats the following day at 9 a.m. Eastern.

Sweet! That's cool. Thanks, Michael! Also, I can now feature the following logo on my site: Unfortunately, all I have to archive my appearance with is a VCR. If anybody reading this has a networked TiVo / ReplayTV / EyeTV or some other nicer way to grab the segment featuring my scripts from the magic box and into quicktime, please email me a download link to someplace where you can post it for me. Thanks!

Toothing...

Thanks to Erik for pointing out the new Wired article about a new phenomenon by which people with Bluetooth capable phones, like the 3650, contact each other for on-the-go sexual relations:

And now comes "toothing," where strangers on trains and buses and at bars and concerts hook up for clandestine sex by text messaging each other with their Bluetooth-enabled cell phones or PDAs.

Eep! There's something very disturbing about associating a bastardization of the word "teething" with this hook-up ritual, imho.

iPhoto 4.0.1 Update Available Via Software Update...

Run Software Update now to download iPhoto 4.0.1 Update:

iPhoto 4.0.1 includes many organizational and stability enhancements. Performance has also been increased throughout the application, giving you faster importing, smoother image viewing and easier Rendezvous photo sharing. This version of iPhoto also features improved thumbnail images in your photo library. To take advantage of this, your thumbnails must be upgraded, which may take a while, depending on the number of photos in your library.

Cool. UPDATE: That little, nicely phrased warning at the end of the blurb about the thumbnail upgrades in iPhoto is no joke. Right now, it says "Upgrading Thumbnails... Time Remaining: About 15 minutes," and it's already been running for about 10 minutes. Of course, this is with a little over 3000 photos, but still....tick tock tick... According to top iPhoto is eating up about 78% of the CPU and a buttload of memory. oof!

Wired Article on Nokia Phone Blogging

Wired has an article up about Nokia's new LifeBlog software and what it could mean in terms of moblogging...

More MacFixIt on 10.3.3 Update...

MacFixIt has continuing coverage of 10.3.3 update issues, one of which being that Silent Night, the haxie that prevented the fans from running too much on first generation 12-inchers has been overwritten by the update. Check it out...

12-inch Strat...

This Doc Searls write-up is cool. I especially like this sentence:

"The difference between a Dell desktop and an Apple PowerBook is like that between a Kenmore washer and a Fender Stratocaster. "

Give the whole thing a read. It's an interesting discussion of Linux in the portable computing world and how Apple is currently filling a void that IBM and other PC makers need to step up to the plate and address: working portable linux. Saw mention of this over at Ted Leung's blog.

Share2Blue2th works with Palm Tungsten T3

Just received an email today from Alastair saying:

I have at last (all previous attempts, scripts, incantations having failed...) achieved internet sharing over bluetooth with my Palm Tungsten T3, so do add that to your list of "successful connects". And a huge thank you. I managed to do so both with the folder of connect scripts, and also on the T3 using the Clicker scripts.

Coolness! One slight problem, however that Allastair notes is that he "can't keep connection and surf for more than 3 minutes." He and I are going to try to troubleshoot this issue and I'll post more about it later... But, regardless of that one issue, Share2Blue2th is now confirmed to work with 3650, 3660, P800, P900, N-Gage, and Tungsten T3. The Tungsten T3 is a milestone, I think, because it means that the scripts are not exclusively for Symbian based devices. Theoretically any bluetooth capable device should be able to be configured to work with them. The question is how?

Readable Text on your 3650...

Good hint from Rael over at MobileWhack about making Project Gutenburg etexts readable on your mobile:

Before transferring that hard-wrapped classic over to your mobile reader, open it up first in a text editor capable of removing hard-coded line breaks, do so, save, and then give it a whirl. In BBEdit, select all and then Text > Remove Line Breaks. This leaves the eBook reader to do its job nicely without competing with the pre-wrapping done by Gutenberg and friends.

7610 and a 12-inch?

I often think about how long the 3650 and a 12-inch thing will hold. How long until I have to make a new site that is linked to from this site by an entirely different name. This Mobitopia post about Nokia's new 7610 has me thinking that the next incarnation of this blog might end up being 7610 and a 12-inch. But it just doesn't have the same ring to it... *sigh*

BlueService 1.2.2

Saw this mentioned over at MobileWhack, which kindly reminded me that BlueService existed. It was one of those little pieces of software that I had installed on my old 12-inch and used quite frequently, but when I moved to the new 12-inch, I was surprised to find it missing, and forgot that it was a 3rd party product that I needed to install. From the Read Me:

BlueService 1.2.2— This service sends selected plain or rich text of Cocoa applications (e.g. Textedit, Mail, Stickies, Notes, ProjectBuilder, Fire, OmniWeb or TeXShop) and of Carbon applications supporting services to BlueTooth devices supporting OBEX Object Push or OBEX File Transfer. Therefore it's possible to send notes or short messages to your handheld or your mobile phone (especially useful if your phone isn't supported by Jaguar's Addressbook and its SMS capabilities).

Select text on your 12-inch on the fly to push quickly out to your 3650. Coolness.

MacFixIt on 10.3.3

MacFixIt has a detailed report out today of all the pros and cons various users have reported with the update to 10.3.3. So far it is working like a charm for me. Many things are just a little bit quicker than they were before the update...

Ctrl+Alt+Command+8

Pretty cool shortcut that my friend, Jason, just pointed out to me. Ctrl+Alt+Command+8= BIZARO (sp?) 12-INCH!

10.3.3 Combined Updater posted...

Apple has posted the Mac OS X 10.3.3 Combined updater for you cautious 12-inchers out there who have been waiting to see if the guinea pigs like me would be burned by the update. Speaking of burned, I am starting to see improvements. I just used Disk Utility to make a copy of a CD and then burn a new backup copy of that CD from the recently created image. MUCH FASTER! Sweetness...

Gizmodo takes the "Powerbook Plunge"

Just saw this post over at Gizmodo. Someone over there has moved to a 12-inch Rev. A machine. Cool and congrats!

New ShapeShifter for you 12-inchers who love customization...

If you love themes, Unsanity's ShapeShifter 1.2 has just been released. Download the demo and give it a whirl. Price, if you decide to buy, is $20.

TinyURL for 3650 and a 12-inch...

I don't know why I bothered, but here's a http://tinyurl.com/258tu tiny url for this site.

One 12-inch to rule them all...

Ok. I normally don't post about things like this, but check out these cool and free Lord Of The Rings Icons. Now, the only question is: Do I make my hard drive into the One Ring or into Palantir with the Eye of Sauron? Good or evil? ... or is this more a choice between evil or evil?

How to Configure N-Gage for use with Share2Blue2th...

Reader Benny emailed in with details on how to configure the N-Gage to work with the Share2Blue2th scripts:

What I found was that if I set up an access point from the default it wouldn't show up in the browser as a selection. What I found was that you needed to have a Gateway IP address filled in. The default comes up as 0.0.0.0. I just changed the first 0 to 127 to make it 127.0.0.0. I don't think it really matters, just so long as it's different from the default. Secondly, once you change the Gateway IP address, more choices come up under that. One of those is for "Homepage". That one defaults to "None". I went to that and changed it to www.apple.com Again, I don't think it matters what it is as long as something is there. Once I made those changes the access point showed up in the other lists as possible access points. I wasn't able to get a connection using the normal "Services" wap browser on the Nokia. I first loaded in the "Doris" browser and everything worked. I also tried it with Opera and NetFront and they both worked as well.

Cool. I'll update the read me file soon, but in the meantime, have fun with these instructions, you N-Gagers! Thanks, Benny!

10.3.3, so far so good...Bluetooth fotzed....Make sure you repair permissions...

Well, so far everything seems to be working properly since upgrading to 10.3.3. Not really any major improvements yet, that I have noticed... Well, it looks like my bluetooth has gone all screwy. I am going to play around with this, run Cocktail, and see if I can get it working properly again... UPDATE: Okay, everything is working again. Make sure you repair permissions / run Cocktail after installation. Whew!

Mac OS X 10.3.3 via Software Update

Run Software Update now to receive Mac OS X 10.3.3 update (58.8MB). Here's the info:

The 10.3.3 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" and is recommended for all users. Key enhancements include:

• network volumes are now available in the Finder sidebar and Desktop for convenient access
• improved file sharing and directory services for Mac (AFP), UNIX (NFS) and PC (SMB/CIFS) networks
• improved PostScript and USB printing
• updated Disk Utility, DVD Player, Image Capture, Mail and Safari applications
• additional support for FireWire and USB devices
• improved compatibility for third party applications
• previous standalone security updates and Bluetooth Update 1.5

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n25711

The brave-ish-ly foolhardy among you should join me now in downloading this untested beast! Lock and load...

Graphic Converter 5.0 released...

Most likely, you got a free bundled copy of Graphic Converter with your 12-inch. If you use images at all, it is a very valuable piece of software that you should familiarize yourself with. If you do, you will soon find it indispensable to your daily workflow and want to dish out the money for the full version, which has just been updated to Version 5.0. I use it every day for all sorts of things. Batch processing images, making them smaller for the web, or basic photo-editing. Check it out.

JunkMatcher for Panther Mail.app on your 12-inch...

Check out JunkMatcher. It's a free junk mail filter that works with Apple's built-in Mail.app junk mail filtering:

Apple's built-in Mail.app has a wonderful, statistically trained junk filter. Unfortunately, spammers nowadays use various tricks to conceal the real things they want to say (use of graphics, encoded characters, etc.). If you're going nuts about this, download the small tool I wrote, and follow the instructions below to use various effective techniques such as IP-based filtering, and flexible regular expressions to identify those sneaky junk mails.

It is highly customizable, has integrated (and optional) reporting to Spam Cop, and after you filter everything to your Junk mail box, you can still use REBODE scripts to report it. Pretty cool. The last several months with this site getting a decent amount of attention, my regular SPAM numbers have increased dramatically, Apple's built-in filters were only catching about 1/3rd of the culprits, and I am entirely too lazy to put Mail.app back into training mode to make the proper adjustments. I'm hoping that JunkMatcher will be my hero. From all the positive user responses on VersionTracker, it looks like it will be...

New Resource for you portable Garagebanders...

...and the non-portable, too, I suppose. MacJams has put together a GarageBand Resource Library where you can find those loops, beats, and helpful apps that'll help make your next GarageBand mix . . . uh, well, it'll give you more options for your next mix. I'm still waiting for the net to be flooded with really bad GarageBand tunes...

Ha ha ha!

Remember, this post about blogs stealing content from other blogs? Well, check out Jason Ball's post from Saturday, March 6th (for some reason his permalink isn't working). Ha HA! *snicker snort* Oh!

Share2Blue2th a no-go with the Z600...

Derrick gave it a shot, but it doesn't look like the Share2Blue2th scripts work with the Z600. I'm starting to think that despite previous discussion group reporting to the contrary, that my scripts will only ever work nicely with Symbian-based phones...

Mail.app weirdness...

Over the last week, I'd noticed that my .mac mail was acting a bit odd. A little sluggish, and several messages that I had just deleted or just moved to another folder kept reappearing in my inbox. I went through the inbox and moved all the messages out to different folders or erased them. I rebuilt the inbox. But there was one message that kept coming up but never fully downloading, and another piece of junk mail that kept showing back up in the inbox, even though it had been moved to the trash and the junk mail folder several times. I tried running Cocktail with no results. Every time I tried to rebuild the mailbox, the progress bar would stop at "Caching 3 of 347..." which was especially odd, considering that I only should have had 3 messages in the inbox. I tried disabling and re-enabling Junk filtering with no results. Ultimately, I had to delete my .mac mail account from within Mail.app and then make a new .mac account. Everything seems to be working again now, although I'm still not sure what really went wrong or caused all this. In any case, if you've tried to email me anything in the past few days with no reply, please resend, as I may not have received it.

Share2Blue2th mentioned by Derrick Story

Derrick Story mentions using Share2Blue2th with his Sony Ericsson Z600, but from the description, I don't think he's tried it yet:

Web Browsing on the Mac -- By using a slick little AppleScript called Share2Blue2th, I can use the Z600 to connect the PB to the Internet.

Nope. Not what the scripts do. They do the exact opposite. UPDATE: He updated the post to what Share2Blue2th does:Share the Powerbook's net connection out to the phone. I don't have any confirmations of it working with the Z600 yet, so I hope he gets it to work, so I can update the Read Me file and the phones supported...

Political 3650 and a 12-inch...

For you anti-Republican 12-inchers and 3650 owners out there, you might consider joining the Bluetooth Against Bush movement. Saw the link over at Gizmodo. All I have to say is that that is one really long bluetooth device name that they want you to type in. Guess they're all against being conservative...

Hi, Ted!

Hey, I made Ted Leung's Blogroll! And I'm at the TOP (although that might have to do with it being arranged alphabetically and my site starting with numbers...). HOOT! Thanks, Ted!

Versiontracker Pro

So, I upgraded to Versiontracker Pro and have been playing around with it from time to time, scanning my existing applications and getting info of available updates. There are both download and install features. The install feature (when available) only seems to work half the time. What's really cool is that I can export all the programs I have in my list, and publish it here if I so choose, which I do. A few programs that I don't intend upon upgrading any time soon, like Photoshop 7.1 and Final Cut Express 1, have been removed from the list, but for the most part it is a rather comprehensive list of all the Applications I have crammed into my 12-inch. One criticism of the Versiontracker Pro software. It is a processor hog! I make sure to close it out after I am done checking for the day. Ever since I upped the RAM in my 12-inch to 384MB the spinning-beachball-of-death has practically disappeared. It made a re-entrance with VersionTracker Pro. Word to the wise...

Share2Blue2th mentioned on The Unofficial Apple Weblog...

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has mention of my Share2Blue2th scripts, which they evidently saw mention of on MobileWhack. Spread the word. Word.

Firewall with Airport Extreme Internet Sharing...

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. No matter what ports I seem to open in the Firewall, certain functionality keeps getting blocked in the connection established between my 12-inch and the G5 via the G5's internet sharing. If I turn off the firewall, no problem whatsoever. Very irritating...

HOOT!

Dear Apple Customer, Thank you for contacting Apple. At your request, Apple will issue a $12.00 credit for OVERNIGHT SHIPPING CHARGE and send it to your credit-card company within five business days. Please contact your credit-card company if you have questions about when the credit will be posted to your account. Sincerely, The Apple Store Team

Burn with iDVD to External DVD-R drive...

Here's something of interest for you 12-inchers out there with Combo-Drives who have been debating purchasing an external Superdrive-substitute of some sort:

Tip/Trick for Burning in iDVD to External...
Tip/Trick for Burning in iDVD to External DVD Burners.

Pretty nice little hack.

Airport Firewall problems...

Well, I finally got the Airport Extreme card for the G5 at work, so that I can use both it and my 12-inch simultaneously (and even control the G5 from the 12-inch using KMremoteControl, which is the coolest), but I had a bit of trouble getting everything set up. For some reason, when I enabled Internet Sharing on the G5, the built-in firewall blocked all traffic. Had to open up port 80 in the firewall to make things work. Shouldn't this happen automatically when you activate Internet Sharing? UPDATE: It looks like I have to open ports for Chat and Email, too. wtf?! UPDATED AGAIN: Had to open up the iChat ports mentioned in this KBarticle to get iChat working properly. Again, why doesn't this happen automatically?

Share2Blue2th for Salling Clicker on VersionTracker

My Share2Blue2th plug-in script for Salling Clicker is now up at Versiontracker. 60 downloads so far...

Bigger Blogs pick up on AT&T downgrades...

Today, both Wired and The Register have posted stories about the AT&T downgrade shenanigans for those of you who are interested...

Share2Blue2th for Salling Clicker

Well, it's not as nice and neat as it could someday be, but I have a working Share2Blue2th plug-in script (24KB) for Salling Clicker. It comes complete with its own detailed Read Me file. Enjoy!

PocketDock for my iPod: ARRIVED!

So, my PocketDock from SendStation finally arrived today, after a whole lot of waiting on FedEx. I am still waiting to be refunded the shipping fee by Apple. Anyway, as you can see in the picture it is small. Here's a 4 pic photo-gallery of it, taken with the 3650. Works like a charm. Much better than the cord that came with the iPod. Easier to pack in my bag with my 12-inch!

On hold with AT&T Wireless...

I received an email from Chip today about this post about AT&T's downgrade offer, saying: "Just call ATT. I live in LA and they said that my phone would not be affected. FWIW." Thanks, Chip! So, I decided to take his advice. Unfortunately, the AT&T Wireless rep that I have on the phone cannot find the mailing I received in her database and doesn't seem to have an answer. She wanted to transfer me to a local store, but I said that tech support might be able to more easily answer my question. Now I am back on hold again. Sidenote: This happy guitar music they have repeating with AT&T sales pitches and slogans is extremely annoying... UPDATE: It looks like she is going to transfer me to a convo with both tech support and a local dealer simultaneously! CRAY-Z! Still on hold... 26 minute call so far... Okay, it looks like she is having the convo with tech support and the local dealer and leaving me on hold. Opting to pop in from time to time with more questions about my phone model and the letter I received. Right now, the brain trust's current opinion is that I do not have to exchange the phone. They are back in discussion currently, and I am waiting on the line. 32 minutes... Ha! They know nothing! She said that if I take the letter in, they will "most likely" not take my old phone from me. So I get a free extra phone? So, I asked, "Okay, so I can keep both phones, but will my current phone stop working?" She said, "The only reason your phone should stop working is if you remove your chip from it or it just stops working" (?!?!). Then she asked for my wireless number again and put me back on hold. She just came back and said that "most likely" my current phone will work, but that I can actually go to the store with this coupon and get a second phone for free, if I like.... 38 minutes total on the phone. So, the question is: Should I get the Nokia 3200, the Nokia 3100, or the Siemens C56 as my "backup phone"?

Still waiting...

Remember how FedEx screwed up delivery of my PocketDock? Well, it is still not here. Also, Apple has not yet responded to my two requests for a refund of shipping charges . . . not even to let me know that they are reviewing my case. grrr....

mobileMT for your 3650?

For those of you with blogs running on Moveable Type, here's mobileMT:

mobileMT is a WAP interface for the MovableType publishing system written in PHP. It makes use of the XML-RPC protocol to submit entries to MovableType. This allows for anyone with a mobile device that supports the the WAP 1.1 standard or above to post to their MovableType installation on the go.

I don't have any way to test this, as I don't use MT. Anybody out there tried this with a 3650? How does it work? Shoot me an email...

MacUpdate: An Editorial Rant

If you are wondering what brought about this anti-MacUpdate rant that I am about to launch into, please see below. Here we go: I'd like to point out to everyone that MacUpdate blatantly steals content from Versiontracker. The MacUpdate listing for Share2Blue2th would not have been incorrect if they had bothered to read my submission before ripping the info directly from the pages of VersionTracker. I also do not appreciate the way that any time I list anything on VersionTracker, I suddenly receive a nag-email from MacUpdate reminding me that I should list my software with them as well. This time, I went ahead and listed with them to try to prevent the nag-email, but instead, they ignored my submission, blatantly plagiarized the incorrect listing from VersionTracker, and I still received the same nagging email:

C.K. Sample, III, Share2Blue2th 3.0 has just been updated to version 3.1 on MacUpdate. Check it out at: www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13341 Please keep MacUpdate informed of any new Mac version releases of your products, so we can promote them for you. You can update your listing by sending us an email or going to: www.macupdate.com/email/submission.php -Joel Mueller www.macupdate.com [emphasis mine]

This is the same email I receive anytime there is any change in my listing at Versiontracker. I'm creating a Junk Mail filter to take this into account now, and I am no longer linking to MacUpdate until I hear that they have changed their plagiarizing ways. I advise others to do the same. They offer a good service, but they need to go about it in different ways than their current misdirected methodology. //rant off

Pressure sensitive 12-inch?

Check this out:

Apple trackpads can sense in three axes
A blog from the Queens University Human Media Lab reports that the PowerBook/iBook trackpad can sense not only x and y data, but z-axis as well, being sensitive to pressure gradients. Nice potential for human interface work. Link (Thanks, Connor!) [Boing Boing Blog]

I wonder if this is all ALbooks, or just the most recent ones. I want to check this out using FingaMIDI, as soon as a Panther compatible version is released... From the information available on the FingaMIDI site, it looks like this pressure sensitivity should be present in all 12-inchers:

FingaMIDI is a replacement driver for the ADB trackpad found in the Apple G4 Ti PowerBook and probably the Snow iBook, G4 iBook and aluminium PowerBooks. It allows the inbuilt trackpad to be used as a three-axis MIDI controller, sending x, y and z (pressure) data as parameter change messages. The trackpad button sends middle-C note on and note off messages.

Cool!

Versiontracker and MacUpdate

Well, the new version of Share2Blue2th is up and listed on both MacUpdate and Versiontracker. Unfortunately, Versiontracker totally mangled my submission, getting the changes in this version section entirely wrong, and MacUpdate decided to ignore what I had submitted to them and instead totally copy the misinformation from Versiontracker. I've emailed both of them. Hopefully they will rectify the mistakes soon. UPDATE: MacUpdate's listing is now correct. After resubmitting Versiontracker's listing is now correct. I also received an apologetic email from Kurt Christensen, VersionTracker Founder, for the mistake. Thanks, Kurt!

Share2Blue2th version 3.1

I've just finished Share2Blue2th version 3.1 (48KB) for sharing your Mac's internet connection over bluetooth with your 3650. This version eliminates the need to edit the scripts in Script Editor by prompting the user for the MAC address upon first launch and includes an updated read me file. The scripts work without any problem with the 3650 and the N-Gage. P800 and P900 users will still need to edit the script to add -p800 before the -v in the first bit of command line code. All the improvements in this recent revision of the scripts are thanks to Jon on the Macscripter.net Discussion Forums. Thanks, Jon!

AT&T downgrades revisited . . .

Engadget has an article up that they are calling "exclusive" even though MobileWhack and myself, among others, have already commented on this issue. *cough cough* Excuse me! Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes—It doesn't look like AT&T will fully stop supporting the phones, like the 3650, that run on the 850, but the reception won't be as good as the other models. This is insanely disappointing. I wouldn't mind a free phone in exchange for my 3650, if it were actually an improvement, but AT&T hasn't offered that yet (a 3620 might be nice). I'm going to be pretty upset if my current phone coverage starts dropping as this switch goes on. If such a thing does happen, what are my options? Wish there was more info forth-coming from AT&T Wireless.

Virex from the command line...

So I was reading this article and saw the blurb about running Virex from the command line in a cron script. But I don't want it scheduled. I want to run it when I want to run it from the command line. After digging around on the net, I found this:

cd /usr/local/vscanx ./vscanx -rc --summary --ignore-links --one-file-system / >/dev/null

I currently have this running. What I really want to do is write a script that checks for virus DAT file updates, downloads and installs them if there are new ones to be had, then runs a scan of the home folder. Need to dig around about this...

PocketDock for my iPod: (or why I H8 FEDEX)

So I ordered a PocketDock from Apple on Wednesday, because the included iPod to Firewire adaptor cable that came with my 15GB iPod is already crimped in a few places from my daily abuse and looking like it will short out any minute. So, I decided to go with the PocketDock and a thick little 4" Firewire cable that I already own. Good solution. And I wanted it yesterday, so I decided to fork out the extra $12 to have Apple ship it overnight through FedEx. Unfortunately, FedEx was the only overnight operator that Apple has, and it looks like they have performed the usual inexplicable FedEx screw-up. Here's my tracking information on the package that was supposed to arrive by 3pm EST (now) today:

Ship Date : 03/04/2004 Delivered To : Delivery Location : TARRYTOWN NY Delivery Date/Time : Signed For By : Service Type : Standard Overnight Estimated Delivery Date : 03/05/2004 15:00 Scan Activity Date/Time Scan Exceptions ------------- Arrived at Sort Facility MEMPHIS TN 03/05/2004 12:14 Package status MEMPHIS TN 03/05/2004 07:06 Delay beyond our control Left FedEx Origin Location RANCHO CORDOVA CA 03/04/2004 22:21 Left FedEx Ramp SACRAMENTO CA 03/04/2004 20:09 Arrived at FedEx Ramp SACRAMENTO CA 03/04/2004 19:09 Pickup status RANCHO CORDOVA CA 03/04/2004 13:10 Pre-routed meter pkg picked up

Now, how does something that is supposed to go to Tarrytown, New York, get misrouted to Memphis, Tennessee? And then, why does FedEx have the nerve to comment "Delay beyond our control" in the tracking info? Ridiculous! I already emailed Apple asking for a refund of the $12 shipping. //rant off... This is what I get for not being patient and simply ordering directly from SendStation. *x-posted on my iPod blog

7 Samurai on the 3650

I forgot to mention that over Christmas, I received a Best Buy gift certificate, and with that gift certificate, I purchased a PNY Technologies Multi-Slot 2.0 Reader that comes in a nice aluminum looking card sized form factor with a built-in USB cable that pops out. It's the best bridge for data transfer between the 3650 and the 12-inch that I have found. It is about the size of a credit card and somewhere between a quarter and a half an inch in width. Easy to take along with you. In any case, it reads and writes to all sorts of removable media, and I use it with both the MMC from my 3650 and the MicroDrive from my Canon Powershot G1 digital camera. Today, I decided to compress the two DiVx compressed parts ripped from my Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai DVD into two 3GP files to watch on my 3650. I popped open my 3650, removed the 128MB MMC from within, popped it into the PNY card reader, and copied the two (@40MB each) files over in less than a minute. Unmounted the card, pulled it out of the reader, and popped it back into my 3650, and booted her up. To my surprise and joy, not only is the movie playing like a charm in Realplayer, but I can actually read the subtitles! How cool is that?!?

Register Raves about Salling Clicker...

El Reg has a beyond-favorable review of Salling Clicker. Check it out.

The MouseAL

MacMice has released the MouseAL, for those of you 12-inchers who hate your trackpad and have been dying for a mouse that matches the AL finish on your sweet little powerbook. (Although, imho, the top of that thing is just a little too plastic-shiny).

Wired Article on Blogs...

There's a new Wired article up about blogs. This section caught my eye:

"Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution."

I was wondering whether this was some sort of cosmic coincidence—like when the same commercial is playing on three different network television channels at the same exact time (which btw isn't coincidence at all; it's marketing) or when several different things (television shows, newspaper articles, conversations with friends or strangers) in a given week all have the same subject or theme that was not brought about by yourself—or whether I was just being paranoid, but I've noticed recently that several more notable blogs than 3650 and a 12-inch note the same exact information (and twice now even the same exact phrasing) shortly after I have posted the info here... You know who you are! Hands off my content! Now what would be really funny is if someone would repost this exact entry, only bothering to change '3650 and a 12-inch' to the name of their blog, and then if that in and of itself became some sort of meta-meme that worked its way through the blogworld...

Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks

iChatAV (Beta) weirdness...

Check out this pic: Notice how the little green aqua-esque icon that is supposed to indicate that I am available and online has a weird little rectangular box of white near its lower left corner. What is causing this? Anyone else have this problem? It just popped up about 5 minutes ago and it is annoying the ever-living heck out of me...

Incase Designs Redesigns and the MoyaPak

So, I've been dying to link to my new bag, the MoyaPak, on Incase Designs' site, but unfortunately, the laptop section of their site is still "Closed for Remodeling." This has got to be wreaking havoc on their sales. I just don't understand why there isn't even a temporary, badly done html version of the site available. Bad business move to have your internet presence on hold like that for a redesign, imho... However, I am enjoying my new MoyaPak. Very nice satchel pack with plenty of compartmentalization. Not too big and not too small.

Biblical 12-inch...

Among an entire slew of subsets to my current life, I have been known to be an amateur biblical scholar, specializing in biblical texts as literature, learning Greek, wanting to know Hebrew and Coptic, and generally interested in all the really obsessive compulsive parts of scriptural philology that go into deciding what is scribal error and what is legitimate biblical text. (In fact, something in this kuro5hin story about the comments that Windoze coders work into the code, reminds me of reading in Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration about Irish workers in Latin Scriptoriums writing "it's cold in here" in Gaelic in the margins of texts.) In any case, yesterday, I downloaded MacSword, which is based on the Sword project, whose:

purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools-- covered by the GNU General Public License-- that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. We also create Bible study software for all readers, students, scholars, and translators of the Bible, and have a growing collection of over 200 texts in over 50 languages.

After you download MacSword, you can go to this page and download biblical modules in a huge variety of languages, as well as commentaries, and really crazy stuff like the Esperanto Bible and the Klingon Language Version of the World English Bible (!!!). They have the Latin Vulgate and the various Greek Versions (although none of the Greek versions are accented and they do not have permission to distribute the Nestle Aland 27th Ed./ UBS 4th Ed. Greek Text, which is my version of choice). Pretty cool free resource for you comparative textual scholars out there.

Tell me about it...

Check it:

iTunes-Pepsi bottles still not available in some areas
Pepsi bottles featuring the iTunes free song promotion are taking longer to get into stores than expected... [MacMinute]

I still haven't seen even one of these bottles...

proximitySync—auto-sync your 3650 and your 12inch...

Want to automatically sync your 3650 with your 12-inch? Check proximitySync out:

what is it? Never worry about remembering to sync your phone or PDA again! ProximitySync automates the task of synchronizing your computer and bluetooth-enabled mobile device. With ProximitySync enabled, the two devices will automatically synchronize up to twice per day when they are brought near to each other so your contacts, phone numbers, and calendars are always up-to-date. ProximitySync's phone menu also allows you to "force sync" remotely right from your phone - no need to walk over to the computer. Adding or editing phone numbers on your computer? or on your phone/PDA while you are on the road? ProximitySync will ensure that both are updated the next time they are close together, all without a moment's thought from you! - you'll never lose that important number or have to spend hours typing phone numbers into your new phone again! Subscribe to calendars in iCal that are updated frequently? ProximitySync makes sure you have the latest changes with you on your phone or PDA... always.

This is pretty cool, but, man, it is really hard to read that website. Bad design. Pretty design, but bad design.

REBODE Revisited

I received an email this morning from Hugo Diaz, the author of the REBODE Script. It's a rather informative email, so I thought I'd pass it along:

Hello c.k., This is Hugo Diaz, the author of the REBODE Script. I read your blog entry about the REBODE Script... Spam Script Redux I wrote that script and can tell you that the ".Mac" mail you received is probably a spam message trying to fool you. That spam is completely unrelated to bouncing messages with the REBODE Script. It was just a coincidence that it came out the same day you tried the script. You can safely turn the bounce back on. I have also updated the download so that it now includes instructions to set-up rules in Mail that will automatically get rid of the bounces generated, making it more convenient. The reason for bouncing is that a few spam messages are 'fishing' for your e-mail, to see if it's alive. If you don't bounce, you get more spam. But the important part is to report it to uce@ftc.gov so that we can someday put these people out of business. Sincerely, Hugo Diaz. PS: As a general rule, legitimate businesses will never send you unsolicited e-mail asking for passwords or containing attachments claiming to be related to your account. Those messages are generally attempts at fraud.

Cool. Thanks for the info, Hugo!

Nick Lachey has a 12-inch...

So, last night I was watching Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica, waiting for Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave , when all of a sudden I see Nick Lachey sitting there with his 12-inch sitting on a table booting it up while holding his cellphone in front of him (which by the looks of it wasn't a bluetooth model). I wonder if Nick and Jessica have ever read this website? Don't front, gentle reader. You know you have plenty of shows that you wouldn't regularly admit to watching. Like 7th Heaven (featuring Jessica's sister) or The O.C.(which is the best show to be on TV in years)...

One really cool thing about running Zoë...

One really cool thing about running Zoë is that I can get an RSS feed of today's email that I can plug into NetNewsWire for reading and possible posting.

First Music Video shot entirely with 3650

Check out this story over at Gizmodo. Somebody has shot an entire music video using the 3650's built-in video cam. Crappy video quality, but cool use of 3650...

E-mails from "The Mac.com Team" variant of Bagle Worm

In this earlier post, I talked about some suspicious emails I received from (supposedly) .mac. Reader Brandon points out:

Just in case anyone hasn't let you know already, the emails you received are a variant of the bagle worm: us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp ...which I found out via this posting over at Ars: episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x

Thanks, Brandon!

Check email in Safari using Zoë

This is a pretty cool little Java app: Zoë. At its most basic form it is a browser-based email client that you can run in Safari. However, it handles the email by building a webpage, very similar looking to a blog, complete with links to contributors (people who have sent you email) and a calendar archive. Read this page for the expanded discussion and philosophy behind this:

The goal here is to do for email (starting with your personal mailbox) what Google did for the web... The Google principle: It doesn't matter where information is because I can get to it with a keystroke. So what is Zoë? Think about it as a sort of librarian, tirelessly, continuously, processing, slicing, indexing, organizing, your messages. The end result is this intertwingled web of information. Messages put in context. Your very own knowledge base accessible at your fingertip. No more "attending to" your messages. The messages organization is done automatically for you so as to not have the need to "manage" your email. Because once information is available at a keystroke, it doesn't matter in which folder you happened to file it two years ago. There is no folder. The information is always there. Accessible when you need it. In context.

Pretty cool. I'm playing with it now. Looks like it may have an RSS reader built in, too... UPDATE: Just a note on the RSS reader. From looking around on the web, I noticed that this is the program that was pinging RSS feeds every 5 minutes, which is obscene overkill. So, anyway, I wouldn't recommend activating the RSS feed reader function. Also, check out this Zoë blog, which includes Zoe Control 0.41 (direct download link), a OS X front-end for Zoë. Also, here's an old O'Reilly article on Zoë that I somehow missed.

Share2Blue2th works with N-Gage...

I received an email today verifying that Share2Blue2th works with the N-Gage and thanking me for the Share2Blue2th scripts. Reader Hall states: " ...added the mac and it worked. the n-gage system looks and acts just like the 3650!" Thanks, Hall!

Bookmark your Audio Files

MacFixIt points out one of the coolest things I've seen in a while:

iTunes/iPod tip: Bookmarking audio files Apple recently published an interesting Knowledge Base article noting that you can use bookmarking on any AAC-encoded audio file by simply using a file utility (such as XRay or FileXaminer) to change the file's Type code to "M4B " (including the trailing space). Note that this feature doesn't work on standard MP3 files; you'll need to convert files to AAC, or re-rip them from the original CD in AAC format, to be able to use this feature with them. [MacFixIt]

Why I think this is unbelievably great is because it means that I can simply convert any nauseatingly long audio files I record using my Belkin Voice Recorder on my iPod, and suddenly have bookmark abilities! Long stretches of lecture notes that I can pause and return to later. THAT RULES!

Shopping with Froogle on your 3650

My brother and I have always used ugly, non-mobile friendly sites like Ask.com and ebay in the past to do this. Good to know there is a new better alternative:

Fone Froogle - Modern Dialing For Dollars
Froogle is now available for your mobile phone, so next time your are shopping for something in the store (i.e. digital camera, computer peripheral, etc.) you can use Froogle's new WML browser to instantly compare prices across the US. Read more... [PowerPage.org]

engadget

There's a new full-time gadget blog in town. Check it out:

Introducing engadget
Back in August of 2002 I helped found Gizmodo, the gadgets weblog. It was a labor of love, but never intended as more than a part-time freelance job. After nineteen months I've decided to take a risk and launch a new site that will let me do what I want: Blog about gadgets full-time. In partnership with The Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN), I've launched Engadget (www.engadget.com), where I'm already posting obsessively about everything exciting on gadgets and personal technology... [engadget.com]

Spam Script Redux

So, remember yesterday, when I was raving about the REBODE script? All the spam that I attempted to send back failed to send, and my friend Erik pointed out via email:

One problem with the Apple Mail script you mentioned: often, spam has a spoofed header, so the bounced message is being sent to some poor schlub, not the spammer. There's nothing he can do about having his email spoofed. Bouncing sounds like a way to hit back, but it's probably just putting more strain on your email server and other innocent servers.

So, good point well taken; I will stop using the script. But, then I receive these two emails:

Dear user of Mac.com gateway e-mail server, Your e-mail account will be disabled because of improper using in next three days, if you are still wishing to use it, please, resign your account information. Pay attention on attached file. For security reasons attached file is password protected. The password is "******". Cheers, The Mac.com team http://www.mac.com

and a little later:

Dear user of Mac.com gateway e-mail server, Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content) outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe, follow the instructions. Please, read the attach for further details. Attached file protected with the password for security reasons. Password is ******. Have a good day, The Mac.com team http://www.mac.com

*Scratches head* Okay, now what I am trying to figure out is whether this is legitimate correspondence from the Mac.com team (wouldn't they be the .Mac team?) that is being sent to me as a result of the script's spam forwarding (which seems odd considering I found the script on Apple's site. OR, is it in fact just more spam, masking as a legitimate email (I mean each email has an attachment and a password for it, just like all the stupid spams I receive on my peecee work email that I am told to delete immediately). Anybody know anything about this? If somebody at Apple reads this, you should probably clarify and if these are not coming from you, warn people not to open them (!!!). Also, check out that first letter: "improper using"?!?! I would hope that Apple staffs better writers than that... UPDATE: So I opened up the script in Script Editor and removed the line that bounces the email back to the sender. So now I am still using the scripts, but just to report the spam to the government. I am an informer...

Listening to Bluetooth...

Dori Smith gives a thorough review of using a bluetooth headset with your Mac. Check it out.

Coolest Script EVER...

Check this out:

REBODE Script—A script for Apple’s Mail client that allows you to select spam in your Junk mailbox and report it to uce@ftc.gov. Then it bounces the spam back to the sender, and moves it to the trash.

Coolest script ever. I hate spam.

iDVD 4.0.1

Run Software Update now to update iDVD to version 4.0.1:

This software update will upgrade your version of iDVD 4 to iDVD 4.0.1. This update is highly recommended for all users of iDVD 4 and will provide for improved reliability when authoring and burning DVDs.

Here's to hoping it doubles the speed of the encoder! That would be nice...

New Bag...

That didn't take long... I went by the Apple Store in White Plains after work and picked up an Incase MoyaPak, which is more or less an evolved form of my old bag. It's going to take a while to get used to the clasp on this bag, as my old similar bag had velcro. Also, my brother called while I was in the store and I answered on my Jabra FreeSpeak, which I was wearing. It was funny to watch people's reactions as I looked at bags and talked to my brother about looking at bags. One of the store employees actually interrupted our conversation to ask me about which bluetooth capable phone I was using with the headset, as he was currently shopping around for one and he didn't like the T610 or other Sonys. I pulled out my 3650 and said, "This is the best," he said that's what the guy in the store had said, but that he didn't like the keypad, and I said he could look for the 3660. My brother, who heard the whole thing said, "You should say, Perhaps you know my website... I laughed, and said to my brother, "Yeah, I should say Actually, I write 3650 and a 12-inch. You might remember the several times when I complained on my site about this very store and your manager being a complete disagreeable jerk when my first Powerbook wobbled like a rocking chair four days after I bought it..." Kevin (my brother) laughed. Good times, good times...

Audacity 1.2.0

Audacity 1.2.0 is now available:

Audacity 1.2.0 is a new stable version of the free Audacity sound editor. This release features major improvements over version 1.0, including new effects, improved audio quality, and an updated user interface.

Pretty powerful free audio program. Check it out.

12-inch Heat Fix

O'Grady's Powerpage reports the following:

12-Inch PowerBook Heat Fix
Is your PowerBook G4 12-inch running hotter than blazes? Try this fix to reduce the operating temperature of the smallest PowerBook G4. Read More...

Read more... [PowerPage.org]

I haven't tried this myself yet (or at least not all of these steps), as the new 1Ghz PB isn't getting as hot as my old 867 used to get, but I'll give it a shot on Kristin's machine when she gets home tonight.

In search of a new bag...

Well, my three-year-old incase bag has started to die on me. The bottom left corner has frayed, and rather than risk it ripping while I am walking down the street, I've gone ahead and retired the bag, using an Eastpak backpack with laptop compartment as my temporary replacement for carrying around the 12-inch. I say temporary, b/c this has always been my travel pack for my laptop: it looks like a regular school backpack, which is good security, as no one would think there is a laptop in there. However, it is difficult to look professional (not to mention stylish) when you are carrying around a carbon-copy of the pack you used to carry around between classes in school. Also, the laptop compartment would hold a Wallstreet much more cosily than it handles my diminutive 12-inch. The Eastpak is just a little too big and ugly all around. So, I'm looking for a new bag for my 12-inch. I'd probably have already ordered an incase designs bag, except the laptop bag section of their site is currently under redesign. I wonder how long that is going to take... In any case (no pun intended), I'll let you know what I decide upon...

Sizzle

So, the solution to my "how do I split this ripped DVD into two separate functional DVDs" dilemma from yesterday has been solved. The answer: Sizzle. Although considering the warnings on the Sizzle page, I opted to use version 0.1 rather than the newer v0.5b1. Works like a charm, and fast too. Only problem (and this only effects movies like Seven Samurai that are in black and white with subtitles): for some reason Sizzle changes the subtitles from white floating text to unreadable black floating text. If anyone knows of a workaround for this, let me know...

Airport 3.3.1

Yesterday, Apple released an Airport Software Update (v.3.3.1), which oddly enough is not available via Software Update. Wonder why that is? Anyway, from the page:

AirPort Update improves reliability of AirPort connections when changing network locations. The update is recommended for all users with an AirPort Extreme and AirPort enabled computer or an AirPort Extreme base station.

I wonder if this is to fix the kernel panic bug that has been happening when people switch locations... I'll have to test it out and report back later... UPDATE: Well, my repeatable case of kernel panic has disappeared. It would appear that the Airport update does in fact resolve this issue of kernel panics occurring when switching from an Airport location to an Ethernet location. Lock and load....

Seven Samurai in under 3 hours!

Well, the G5 is definitely fast. I brought my slightly scratched copy of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai to work today, to make a backup copy under my "Fair Use" rights, that hopefully won't skip in my DVD player. Used DVDBackup to decode and rip the data. That took about an hour and left me with a folder containing all the VOB files from the DVD, weighing in at 7.5GBs. Just for fun, I decided to see how DVDibbler would handle compressing the files into one DiVx file. This took just under 2 hours and produced a 1.29GB movie file (after a one minute bit of post-processing the AVI file through DiVx Doctor 2). Now, what is amazing about all this is that ripping a DVD through DVDibbler normally takes about 9 full hours on my old 867mhz G4 Tower, or my old 12-inch. It was basically an overnight process. For the G5, under two hours. That's amazing! Now I just need to figure out how to take the un-DiVx-compressed .vob files and reburn them to two separate 4.7GB DVDs that will play on my DVD player at home...

Apple's Backup

So, yesterday, I decided to try out the DVD burning capabilities of my internal Superdrive in the new 12-inch. Unfortunately, I thought I'd be practical about it and make a DVD backup of some files from my old tower (which I will be putting up on auction on Wednesday if my friend, Erik passes on buying it). So first off, I downloaded and installed Apple's Backup 2.0.1 from the .Mac site. Or at least I thought I did. I tried installing it three times with no effect whatsoever. I think having two drives with Application folders threw the installer for a loop (at least that is my theory). I should have taken the hint and stopped, but instead, I found an archived copy of the program from when it was installed on my other 12-inch, and simply copied that over to my Applications folder. Problem #1: Dumb installer. Now, I've used Backup to backup files to my iDisk in the past, so that functionality would seem to work fine. This time, however, I was archiving 11GBs of data on 3 DVDs. The entire process took about 3 hours and when it was done, I thought, Hey, let me pop one of these suckers in and check out how the backup went! This was only to discover that I had 3 useless DVDs of backup info, b/c they appear blank upon insertion in the Finder and you can only get at the data by rerunning Backup and selecting restore (which I would imagine would take 3 more hours). Very unhelpful. I even tried using the Terminal to see if I could navigate to the 'invisible files'. Unfortunately, somewhere along the ls cd ls cd route I used to try to find my data, the long odd names that Backup uses to organize its archive freaked out Bash, which could no longer follow the path. Overall, big waste of time and DVDs. If anybody at Apple reads this, I'd really like this product a LOT more, if the data burned to removable media were accessible from outside of the Backup program (so that it would not only be removable but also moveable). So, in any case, I'm shopping around for a good burn-to-DVD backup utility (I already have Carbon Copy Cloner for backing up my entire hard drive to a larger FW disk). Any recommendations? UPDATE: Phillip points out: "| just read your item on using Back-Up with DVDs - I might be wrong, but when you use Back-Up with a HD, the file Back-Up creates is meant to be a package, which you can navigate through the contextual menu..." So, it would seem that Backup took my 11GBs of data and put it all in one file that it spread across 3 DVD disks. So I could most likely view the data if I would take the time to launch Backup and follow it's navigation methods. Not necessary to go through an entire restore. Still, I'd rather have access from the Finder. For my purposes, it would be better if I simply manually copied the data over to blank DVDs. Maybe I can script this... Something to divide the files into <4.7GB disk images that I could then burn...