Henge Docks may be a name you aren’t yet familiar with, but if you’re a MacBook owner then you may want to get to know this company a little better.  Henge Docks makes docking stations for the full line of Apple notebooks, including the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, and all sizes of each.  Since Apple doesn’t provide built-in docking capability it took a third-party company to come up with unique way of getting around that limitation.

Henge Docks was recently at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas to demonstrate their MacBook docking station and GNC caught up with them to get a look at how their system works.  You can see it in action in the video below, including the brand new MacBook Air dock which was shown for the first time at CES, and a few other cool new products in their line.  The line of docks range in price from $50-75 and you can check them out at Henge Docks.

Interview by Steve Lee of Netcast Studio.

J5Create may be familiar to Apple Macintosh users as they’re designers of aesthetic Mac accessories, but their latest gadget will be of interest to those of us with a foot in the PC camp. Here Todd talks to John about their new Wormhole Station.

The Wormhole Station combined with the Wormhole cable creates a keyboard and mouse switch which not only controls both a PC and a Mac from one mouse and keyboard but also moves files seamlessly from one computer to the other. Even cooler, you can set the configuration up so that moving the mouse cursor off one side of Mac screen transfers the cursor to the PC screen. It’s a bit like having a dual monitor setup, only with two OSes!

If you like the sound of this, it’s available in both laptop and desktop configurations. Available now, the Wormhole Station will set you back $109.99 and the cable is $39.99. The CES folk like it so much, they gave the Wormhole Station an Innovation Honoree Award.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

Mike Mihalik from LaCie shows off their new Thunderbolt-connected hard drives for the Apple Macs, including the previously announced Little Big Disk and the new 2big, which has two internal 3.5″ drives. Also announced was the eSata Dock, a docking station that connects legacy SATA devices via Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt offers seriously quick data transfer speeds with write speeds of 252 Mb/s and read speeds of 459 Mb/s shown in the video.

The Little Big Disk is available now, but the 2big and eSata Dock units won’t be available until later in the quarter, with pricing to be announced.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast network.

Canadian firm SurfEasy will debut their eponymous USB key-based private Internet browser at CES, Las Vegas, next week. The portable USB key launches its own web browser which uses strong encryption to keep your surfing habits secret and holds all your personal information such as bookmarks, history and web passwords on the password-protected key itself. Nothing is left behind on the computer itself.

“When you stop and think about it, we use many different networks and computers to access our online lives. Whether it’s connecting from the office or using a Wi-Fi hotspot, we’re providing a lot of personal information to computers, networks and websites that are not designed with our personal privacy in mind,” said Chris Houston, founder and CEO of SurfEasy Inc. “SurfEasy lets people take control of protecting their online privacy and security by simply plugging in a USB key.”

One of the biggest potential benefits is when using unsecured WiFi in places like coffee shops. As SurfEasy creates an encrypted tunnel from the SurfEasy USB key across the Internet, no-one can see any detail about your browsing. All they can see is the encrypted data and the volume of data. SurfEasy encrypts the web traffic using SSL and passes the traffic through its own servers, stripping the client IP from the data stream.  The proxy network is hosted in Canada and the US, with other international locations to come soon.

As the data stream passes through SurfEasy’s servers, SurfEasy publish a Customer Bill of Rights which is upfront about what you can expect from the company in terms of keeping your activities secret. Basically, unless you come to the attention of the legal authorities, no usage data is held.

The SurfEasy browser is powered by Mozilla and is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and 7. Apple users needs to be on Mac OS X 10.5 or later. The SurfEasy USB key costs $60 and this includes 2 GB per month of encrypted traffic through the SurfEasy network. Additional data costs $5 per month for 25 GB and $10 for 75 GB. Product delivery is expected in February.

I can see this being very handy for backpackers and other travellers who have to use Internet cafes while travelling and are rightly concerned about security. Plug-in the SurfEasy USB key to a public computer and you’re instantly secure wherever you are.

It may be too late to order a Christmas present, but if you’re in the market for a new desktop computer and have your eye on an Apple then today is your lucky day.  It’s not often you can get a discount on any Apple product,but today the 21.5″ iMac is on Woot, the bargain hunter’s dream web site.

The 21.5 inch iMac starts at $1199 both in-store and on the Apple web site and sales are rare at best.  Woot, today only, is offering it for $1049.  This model comes with a 2.5 GHz Intel quad-core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, a Radeon 6850M graphics card, and 802.11n WiFi.  These are brand new iMac’s, not refurbished models.

While this deal is good news for those shopping for a new Apple computer, it may also signal that new models are on the way.  That seems to frequently be the case with electronics that show up on Woot, which has had several tablets available recently in their daily deals.  Products like this also frequently sell out quickly, so if you want to get one then you better head over to Woot now.

Like a lot of people, I purchased the Lion upgrade on the first day of availability from the Apple App store.

I upgraded two late-model Mac Minis along with an older 17” MacBook Pro. The Lion upgrade solved a freezing problem on the Mac Mini I use as an HD-DVR. However, it created a number of serious problems on the MacBook Pro – Lion would not work with my Verizon USB aircard, it would not back up to my HP Windows Home Server, and it would not work properly with the Ubercaster podcast recording application.

After living with these Lion-induced problems for more than a month on the MacBook Pro, I downgraded it back to a prior (and fully functional) Snow Leopard backup image. Everything is now back to normal, with everything once again functioning the way it should.

My MacBook Pro is no slouch, yet it seemed a bit sluggish running Lion compared to Snow Leopard.

If you have a Mac that’s more than a couple of years old, and/or you are running a variety of software and hardware that Lion likely won’t support and/or that may never be updated to run properly on Lion, I would strongly suggest skipping the Lion upgrade.

I found the Lion interface changes mostly annoying. On a computer (as opposed to an iPod), I prefer normal scroll bars. In Lion you can turn the scroll bars so that they remain on, but they are thin little gray lines that I have a hard time seeing and grabbing with the mouse. I don’t like the changes Apple made to the Finder in Lion, nor do I like the changes they made to the Spotlight Search functionality. I found the changes to the Mail program to be of dubious value, as well as the cosmetic changes to the Address Book adding no functionality.

Snow Leopard runs perfectly well and just might be the new XP.

I’ve been a fairly happy Apple/OS/X user for the past three to four years. Before that, I was a Windows user that finally became disgusted enough to finally make the jump.

Most computer users are well aware of the arguments, both pro and con.

Up until now, I’ve been happy. Up until now, everything simply worked. Ahem, up until now…

What is different now? It’s called Lion. Depending on what you use your machine for, Lion can be great. However, there’s a dark side to Apple’s latest feline incarnation. If you use a wide variety of software with your particular Mac, chances are Lion is going to break things – perhaps things that you rely on. Say, a podcasting application called “Ubercaster” that no longer functions 100% for starters, or how about a Verizon USB 3G aircard that worked fine in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, but Lion somehow just cannot recognize?

Being a long-time Windows user, I’m used to the new version of the O/S screwing things up, sometimes royally. However, that bad Microsoft habit of releasing half-baked, buggy operating system updates seems to have migrated from Redmond down to Cupertino.

It wasn’t as if I expected something like this might happen. I’m prepared – I have a backup machine in the form of a 13” white plastic Macbook that I purposely kept on  Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, the most recent Snow Leopard updates Apple has sent out have broken Ubercaster entirely on that machine, rendering the backup machine rather useless at the moment for podcast recording. The Ubercaster application will no longer load, even the latest updated version.

Ubercaster still works on my Macbook Pro running Lion, but the setup is now unreliable.

Also, Lion seems to not even work properly with Apple’s own hardware. When I touch the touchpad on my 3-year-old Macbook Pro 17 it no longer makes the screen wake up after it has turned off – it’s now necessary to hit a key to make the screen come back on.

What was Apple thinking? Probably of money.

What was the problem I was trying to solve. The problem I was trying to solve was how to easily add events to a calendar. Until recently my choices were either to have the calendar open and sitting in my dock or open iCal every time I needed to add a new events. Neither is very practical, leaving the calendar open  just eats up CPU and having to wait for it to open up every time I wanted to add an event was also not very practical. It took for ever to open and adding events was not very intuitive. So what was the solution. For me it was an application on the Mac called Fantastical. It is available thru the Mac App Store or through the Flexibits Web site for $19.95. There is a 14 day trial through the Web site. Once it is downloaded and installed it  sits in your menu bar, ready to use when needed. It works with iCal, Microsoft’s Entourage and Outlook. The only way for it too work with Google or the Yahoo calendar you have to add them to iCal.

When you are ready to use it just click on the icon or use a keyboard shortcut. (You can set the short cut under preferences.) Then just start typing the event as you would if you were writing it down or speaking it, in other words naturally. Fantastical uses a natural parsing language to fill in the event as if you are entering it in the calendar of your choice. If you can set up automatic alarms for both timed and all day events under preferences. You can have Fantastical show you the events for that day, next two days, a week or for 31 days. You can also set it to view by events instead of days. I know $20.00 seems like a lot, but believe me it is well worth it. If you are on Windows or Linux do you have a similar application, if so what is it.

If  you have a Mac, you are mostly likely aware of the malware MacDefender. Which is a fake antivirus program created specifically to attack the Mac. For more details I recommend The Mac Security Blog.  Unfortunately as the Macs become more popular these kind of attacks will become more common, which will make installing antivirus and anti-malware software on a Mac as necessary as it is on Windows. If you are looking for antivirus software for the Mac now you may want to try the antivirus software from Avast! Software Avast Software is based in Prague, Czech Republic and has been stopping virus and malware on the Window’s platform since before Windows 95 was out. They are now making a free antivirus program available for Intel Mac 10.5 and above. It is in beta and available thru the Avast user forum for download.  Avast for the Mac was created specifically for the Mac and not something ported over from Windows. It has three separate shields; one for mail, web and file system. You can also scan your system or a part of it at anytime. The Web Shield is a new build and it actually filters all HTTP material before it reaches the browser. This is key since as Ondrej Vicek, CTO of Avast Software so rightly puts it “The discussion on Mac security has centered perhaps too long on individual operating systems,” added Mr. Vlcek. “There is already a lot of internet-distributed malware out there based on JavaScript which works across various operating system platforms and this beta protects against.”

I am a Mac user and am still not totally convince I need a product like this. However I decided it is better to be safe then sorry so I downloaded avast! Mac beta. The download and install went without any problems. You may lose connection to the Internet for a short time, during the installation. Once installed I had it scan my Home folder and it did it with no problem. When I did a full scan of my computer, I did notice that processes did slowed down. I was running several applications at the time so the slow down was not unexpected. Fortunately nothing was found. I have had it running for two days in the background and the only reason I know is the icon on the menu bar. Whether you need an antivirus software on your Mac is something only you can decide. If you do decide you need one Avast! for the Mac is not a bad choice.

The Freecom Mobile Drive Mg is no ordinary 2.5″ external drive. It’s a thing of beauty. Intended to complement Apple’s MacBooks, the slimline Mobile Drive has a magnesium body that looks and feels great. The icing on the cake is that it’s USB 3. I’ve seen lots of external drives but this is the one you want.

Even the packaging reflects the target market. Instead of a relatively dull cardboard box, this comes in an acrylic box so that you can see drive before you’ve even purchased it. The model shown here is the slimline 320 GB USB 3 version which is just 1 cm thick. Freecom have used the bevelled-edge trick to make it seem even thinner than it is but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it is thin and Freecom claim that it is the world’s thinnest external drive. In addition to the 320 GB capacity, there are two 720 GB units which are a bit thicker at 1.5 cm – one is USB 3 only, the other is USB 3 and Firewire 800.

Apart from the USB 3 connector and the Freecom logo, the only other external feature is a white LED which indicates power and disk activity. It’s difficult to make out in the picture below as it’s not lit, but it’s pretty much right in the middle. The drive is bus powered so there’s no power supply needed.

The Mobile Drive Mg comes pre-formatted with HFS+, so if you have a Mac, you’re good to go out of the box. If you’re a Windows or Linux user, it can easily be reformatted to another format.

I think we’ve established that it looks good, but does it perform? Connected up to USB 3, the Mobile Drive recorded the following data rates:

- hdparm gave 75 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 82 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 74 MB/s for writes and 85 MB/s for reads.

Under USB 2, the figures were obviously slower but still healthy for a USB 2 device.

- hdparm gave 30 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 37 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 35 MB/s for writes and 40 MB/s for reads.

Looking at the data, using USB 3 roughly doubles the performance when compared to USB 2, which is not unexpected. If you are interested in the specs, there’s a datasheet .pdf.

Price-wise, the model here costs 79 euros, with the 750 GB model bumping the price to 119 euros. Adding the Firewire port will cost 10 euros extra.

You know you want one.

Thanks to Freecom for the loan of the Mobile Drive Mg.

One of the problems with watching video podcasts as an alternative to conventional television is that you have typically and deliberately watch one video at a time. On longer videos it’s not as much of a problem, but with short videos that last 5 minutes or less you have to keep manually restarting the next video after the previous one has finished.

I now have three Mac Minis – one is an old somewhat underpowered Power PC Mac Mini that I’m using as a video podcast aggregator. I have that machine’s iTunes database located on a much larger shared drive that’s available to every machine on my home network. I’m subscribed to a variety of tech podcasts, most of them in the highest resolution file sizes available.

I have two other Mac Minis that are of the latest design. I have an “Eye TV” USB HD tuner connected to one that’s connected to a substantial external antenna. Depending on atmospheric conditions I can receive up to 18 channels counting the various digital sub channels. This enables the Mac Mini to function as a DVR.

The second Intel Mac Mini is in another room and the Eye TV software also loaded on it is able to work from the other Mac Mini’s shared recordings.

Today I discovered by accident when playing around with iTunes on one of the Intel Mac Minis that the shared videos show up in the shared playlists from other iTunes databases. So, in other words, I can pick a shared iTunes list from the Power PC Mac Mini’s shared iTunes and a list of video files shows up. Since the videos are in the list just like audio would be, I am able to start a video file playing and when one file ends it will immediately start playing the next video file on the list. This is particularly useful because I can start videos playing as I do other things and it will continue to play just as if it’s a TV station. This is quite a handy capability to have. The lack of an ability to set up continuous video playback has long been one of the Apple TV’s biggest shortcomings.

Periodically I go to the Power PC Mac Mini and delete the video files that have been played, since iTunes keeps a play count, so I always have fresh material to watch.

There are a couple of applications on the Mac that I use almost daily. They are single task apps, that do only one thing. The first is Tea Timer and the second is Alarms. Tea Timer is a Dashboard application. It does one thing it reminds you of things you tend to forget, like your tea is ready or your pizza is done. You can have it send you a Growl notification, a voice alarm or a sound. You can select the background color for Tea Timer. When your ready to use it activate dashboard and chose Tea Timer. To start a countdown click on the time field and enter the hours or minutes or seconds then either hit the play button or enter. When the time is up the Tea Timer alarm will go off. I use this application almost daily.

The second application is Alarms which is a application that sits in your menu bar. If you want to add an event simply tap on the alarm bell and a time line comes down. You can click on a time and manually enter an event. If you enter it at the wrong time simply drag the event to the correct time. If you receive a email or a tweet simply drag it up to to the alarm bell and the time line will drop down and you can drop it into the correct time. If you drop an event into a different day it will add it at the start of the day. (You can choose when you want the day to start and end under Preference.) To move the event to the correct time simply drag it there. Alarms is perfect when you don’t need a full fledge GTD application but you just want a reminder. Alarms can sync with iCal if you want it to.

Both of these applications are for Mac only, if you are a Windows or Linux user what do you use. If you are a Mac user and use something different what is it and why. Tea Timer is a free application. Alarms cost $15.00 and has a 14 day free trial, its available in the App store for $7.99 ( no free trial) . I recommend both of these applications.

For some time now, when it came to desktop and laptop computer hardware, innovation has seemed to be somewhat stagnate. After all, what more can be done with word processing software? How can spreadsheets possibly be improved? How can the browsing experience be made better? Can email be made more effective or efficient?

Form impacts function, but function often defines form. The popular form of the day is the smartphone and the tablet, both popularized thanks to Steve Jobs and his team at Apple. Today’s smartphones have processors that are as powerful as desktop machines were five years ago. However, the smaller capacitive touch input screens as well as always-on Internet connections have ended up making possible convenience, ease-of-use and sheer simplicity paramount features. That new software design/interface aesthetic is now traveling back to it’s larger computer counterparts.

Some time back, I downloaded the App store on my Macs, but gave it no more than an initial cursory look and promptly forgot about its presence. This evening while waiting for some files to upload, I noticed the Mac App Store icon and decided to look it over again now that it’s been around for a while.

I must say, the Mac App Store pleasantly surprises me. I ended up downloading a few free apps. The Mac App Store browsing and download experience replicates the iPod/iPhone app store experience. The process couldn’t be easier. By putting all of these apps together in one coherent place it makes it much more likely I’ll end up finding software that (a) I might never have gone looking for in a search engine and (b) gives me a place to look for specific types of software when I might need it. While it’s by no means a complete list of all possible Mac software, it is a welcome addition that will likely spur additional future software development.

Can desktop/laptop operating systems become more useful? There is always room for improvement. Basic business software – word processing, spreadsheets, etc. likely cannot be improved beyond what they are. On the other hand, other computer functions such as photo editing, video editing, etc. likely still have dramatic gains that can be made, particularly as hardware speed and throughput continue to improve.

It’s been a while since dumping my $100-dollar-per-month Dish Network habit. Ominously for the existing broadcast/cable/satellite structure, I haven’t missed it – not even one little bit. Sorry guys, that money now goes for other discretionary things.

Save Our Buggy Whips!

I saw an article about the traditional broadcasters in Canada saying they needed to somehow “get ahead” of the Netflix/Hulu phenomenon before the inevitable hits them, before what is happening in the USA happens to them. Like most dinosaur products and services, instead of talking about how they can come up with better ways to serve customers in an ever-changing, innovative marketplace, they are essentially discussing how they can somehow entice or even force customers to maintain the status quo.

A primary reason that market and business conditions change over time is improved, innovative products and services come along that better serve the end consumer. Organizations and individuals that grow fat and lazy consuming cash cow largess naturally start whining when market conditions change and the cow has no more grass left on which to graze because the stagnant field has been stripped bare.

I Want My Set Top Box

I’ve been experimenting with several different TV set top box solutions. I’ve got an Intel Mac Mini set up as a DVR with an HDTV USB tuner stick. I’ve got a couple of Western Digital WD TV Live Plus boxes. I’ve got Playon TV software running on a an HP Windows Home Server box with about 30 different plugins that give me quick organized access to a ton of different on-demand streaming video content, including Hulu and a fair amount of network programming. I’ve got an original Mac Mini running a $50 software hack that includes Boxee and XBMC software. Finally, I’ve got an LG Blu-Ray player that has a number of different on-demand video services built in, including Netflix, Vudu, and a new recently-added service called Divx TV.

So far, none of these solutions is perfect for every viewing situation. My biggest complaint about on-demand video is that it’s virtually impossible to set up a video play list where I can start the video playing and get it to automatically continue to play without any further intervention. This is especially frustrating when I have a bunch of two or three-minute-long video podcasts to watch through and each file has to manually be started playing. Why can’t someone solve this problem? Every past successful form of media has been able to go into a continuous-play mode. Coming up with a solution to this problem of being able to start a group of video files playing and have them play continuously is ultimately critical if OTT is to be widely adopted.

Divx TV Comes Closer

Divx TV, which is currently available only on select LG Blu-Ray players, actually attempts to solve the continuous play problem. It has a channel up/down feature that immediately begins to play streaming podcast content in a window from a number of different content partners. As you go through the categories and drill down into the sub-categories, the video will immediately change to the newest one selected, just like changing a TV channel. The content is categorized in a number of different ways. Revision 3 is one of the content providers. If a Revision 3 podcast is selected, the latest episode will immediately begin to play in the window. At any point in the process, a “swap” button can be pressed to instantly make the video full-screen (or vice versa) without having to restart the video from the beginning. After the latest episode plays, the next-latest episode will play, etc. If left playing, it will eventually go through all available content and start playing the first episode.

Additionally, Divx TV has a search function where it’s possible to save search terms for future use. One of the problems I’ve ran into when using the search function to find videos from their database that aren’t in the packaged categories is file sizes are inconsistent. Since I’m using a point-to-point wireless Internet provider, my home Internet connection isn’t as fast as traditional cable or DSL connections. Larger video file sizes tend not to stream over slower connections so well and buffering can occur. The pre-packaged Divx TV category content providers provide a more consistent video streaming experience on less-robust Internet bandwidth connections and the video looks pretty good.

Eventually all of these problems must be solved.

What would be an ideal system for me? I’d like to be able to play the hundreds of video podcasts I’ve downloaded on every TV in my house and have them play continuously without intervention. I’d like to be able to mix and match custom streaming content, again with minimal intervention on my part. I’d like to be able to play any video I’ve recorded on my Mac Mini DVR on any TV set in my house via my wired home network. So far, none of these solutions I’ve tried can quite combine all of these features into one sleek package. By the way, the Mac Mini DVR can be a bit of a pain in the rear, since the on-screen computer screen text can’t be read from 15 feet away even on a 58” screen.

Are we there yet? Not quite, but the journey has definitely started.

ArtRage is a series of painting program for touchscreen computers, albeit with a twist. You can paint with actual paintbrushes! ArtRage 2 sells for $20 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage 3 Studio sells for $40 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage 3 Studio Pro, which contains additional features, sells for $80 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage is also available for the iPad.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine.Com.

Please Support our CES 2011 Sponsors.

Save 25% on 4GH Hosting 1yr Subscriptions Save 25% Promo Code CES2.

Tom and Todd get texting with Globaltel Media‘s free SMS chat platform, Cherple. Robert Sanchez, President & CEO, takes them through it.

Cherple is a free web-based SMS texting client, which in itself is not unusual – there a plenty of sites which can send SMS messages. But what makes this a little bit different is that the recipient can text the sender back again, even though the sender is at a computer. A whole text chat can then follow, back and forth.

It’s web-based, so can be used from any web browser, but Windows and Mac downloads are on offer, too.

Cherple currently only works for texts to US-based cellphones, but Globaltel are expecting to setup local Cherple sites in ten countries in the coming months.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central and Tom Newman of The Fogview Podcast.

Please Support our CES 2011 Sponsors.

Save 25% on 4GH Hosting 1yr Subscriptions Save 25% Promo Code CES2.

GadgetTrak is a piece of software that you install on your mobile phone or laptop. The software will periodically check in and let you know the physical location of the device. If a camera is present, for example on a laptop, it can even take a photo of the thief and email it back to the owner. The software cannot be disabled by the thief.

For a Mac or Windows laptop, the price is $34.95 per year.

For Android and Blackberry phones, which includes remote data wipe ability, secure encrypted backup and a loud piercing audible alarm even if the device is in silent mode, the price is $19.95 per year.

For iPhone, iPod, and iPad, the GadgetTrak app is .99 cents, The iOS version does not include remote data wipe, but does include remote camera and push notification support to inform the thief of the GadgetTrak software’s presence.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine.

Please Support our CES 2011 Sponsors.

Save 25% on 4GH Hosting 1yr Subscriptions Save 25% Promo Code CES2.

Jeffrey interviews Mark Williamson, CEO of Zoodles, which makes software that gives a “kid mode” to devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones. As I suspect most parents will testify, children are always keen to get their hands on Mommmy’s or Daddy’s latest toy. The “kid mode” creates a walled-garden (or sand-pit) that includes lots of child-friendly educational games and activities, such as painting, and prevents the child from accessing other software on the phone. I’ve had a look at the Zoodles website and there are plenty of games for different age ranges, including games from Lego and Disney.

Recently, Zoodles has been focussing on Android but there are versions for iOS, Mac and PC. The basic version is free, though there is a Premium membership that gives more control over the software.

I’ll be trying this out with my 3 year old – any chance of a WebOS version?

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of The Geekazine Podcast.

Please Support our CES 2011 Sponsors.

Save 25% on 4GH Hosting 1yr Subscriptions Save 25% Promo Code CES2.

Grant Dahlke from Other World Computing aka MacSales.com introduces Sandforce processor-based high capacity, high-performance SSD (solid state drive) hard drives for computers such as Apple’s Macbook Air that are up to three times larger and up to 22% faster than the drive than Apple’s OEM drive. They also have a line of drives for older IDE and ATA machines, which enables much better performance from older computing hardware due to the much faster read/write times of solid state drives as opposed to the performance of conventional spinning hard drives.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central.

Please Support our CES 2011 Sponsors

Get your 14 day Free Trial of Audible Gold to start Listening to great Books!
Save 25% on 4GH Hosting 1yr Subscriptions Save 25% Promo Code CES2.
Sponsor: The New Luxor, Las Vegas Deals Start @ $40.00 best rates guaranteed

A few days ago I made a trip to my local Best Buy store and ended up walking out with a Samsung 58” 500 Series Plasma HDTV. I’d gone into the store thinking if I left with anything, it would most likely be an LCD HDTV. However, after spending quite a while comparing picture quality and prices on the massive number of sets covering the big-box store’s back wall, I happened upon the Samsung model PN58C500, a 58” Plasma.

This Samsung Plasma has an absolutely stunning picture, rivaling the best high-end LCD sets that cost two and almost three times more. The PN58C500 sells for $1,197.99. I happened to have a “Best Buy Rewards” coupon for 10% percent off of any HDTV set costing $750 or more, and the coupon did end up applying to the PN58C500. My final price, including our rather high local sales taxes, ended up being $1,147.

There’s no 3D circuitry, but that’s not a problem for me since I consider 3D TV’s (as well as 3D movies) to be a useless gimmick. The PN58C500 has Samsung’s “AllShare DLNA Networking” that allows the set to connect to computers and DLNA servers running on your home network to stream HD video via Ethernet. I’ve also got a Mac Mini, as well as a Western Digital HD Live Plus media player attached directly to the set via my surround sound receiver/switcher.

The PN58C500 has a useful variety of video formatting modes to easily cycle through via the remote control that facilitates getting the right picture format for the particular video you are watching or device you are watching it from. It has 3 HDMI inputs, and is a thin 2.8 inches thick.

The remote control seems to be a bit touchy, needing to be pointed at the set to ensure that remote control commands register. Also, the built-in speakers seem to fire out of the bottom, but the volume levels are more than loud enough to be usable.

If you are looking for a new big-screen HDTV, you can’t go wrong buying this set considering the price versus value. I cannot over-stress the absolutely stunning picture quality this set produces.

There’s no doubt that Apple Macs and Linux PCs are far less likely to suffer from virus infections or malware when compared to their Windows cousins, but there’s also no doubt that newer technologies such as cross-platform scripting can lead to vulnerabilities across the board.  Besides no-one wants to be blamed for passing on a virus infection as payload in a file, even if your computer isn’t actually infected.

McAfee and Kaspersky have had Mac security products for awhile and now Sophos joins the list by offering its Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac and best of all, Sophos is offering it for free!

Apparently “based on Sophos’s flagship security software, which protects over 100 million business users worldwide”, the software has protection, detection and disinfection capabilities for viruses and malware on OS X.  It will also detect Windows viruses present in files but aren’t activated.  As with most Windows anti-virus products, the Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition runs in the background, scanning files on-access. You can read more about the technical specs and download the software here.

I’m not a Mac user, but if I was, I’d already have Anti-Virus Home Edition downloaded and installed.  Yes, I know that it’s arguable that there aren’t any OS X viruses right now, but you can bet that they’re coming and when they do, the viruses will burn through the Mac community like wildfire as most people don’t have protection.  It’s free to download so what have you got to lose except a few CPU cycles?

Our relationship had always been so full of promise and fun. Being gone so much of the time due to my job was certainly a strain. Even so, when I was around, I didn’t make many demands.

Something was coming between us. Lately I’ve been looking elsewhere and slowly began finding satisfaction on the Internet. The thought of divorce has been crossing my mind over the past few months. It was a painful decision, but I knew it had to be made.

Today I decided it was time to sever our ties.

I’ve been a Dish Network customer for about 10 years – until today.

What came between us? I’ve been experimenting with the idea of getting TV content from various sources on the Internet. I’ve tried connecting both Mac with Front Row and Windows Media Center laptops to an LCD HDTV. A full-fledged computer is very flexible in that it can play virtually any file type, but the clunky, complex hands-on Interface is not designed to be operated from an easy chair. I want as much content as possible integrated into one place.

In the meantime I stumbled across some software called Playon TV available at http://www.playon.tv. The software comes with a 30 day trial and works with the DLNA and UpNP network device standards. The software sells for $39.95. Playon TV is designed to be installed either on a computer or a home server on the home network. Playon TV enables streaming of Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Videos, Pandora, etc. to a DNLA/UpNP device like the WD TV Live Plus, X-Box 360, etc. There are also plenty of free third-party plugins for Playon TV that add a mind-boggling and growing variety of content to the Playon TV network share. It works well with my hacked Apple TV with XBMC.

Yesterday I visited my local Best Buy store and bought a Western Digital WD TV Live Plus to connect to the small HDTV in my kitchen. The WD TV Live is a very small set-top box that comes with a small remote control that has an Ethernet port in and an HDMI port out. Straight out of the box it does an excellent job of playing Netflix and is capable of playing back 1080P content. Only the Plus version plays Netflix.

The WD TV Live Plus combined with the Playon TV software convinced me it was time for radical measures. This afternoon I cancelled my Dish Network account and will save $97 dollars per month. I also bought a second WD TV Live Plus unit to connect to my main HDTV/surround sound setup.

At $97 dollars per month savings the two WD TV Live Plus units will have paid for themselves within 3 months.

Can I live without access to Dish Network? I think it’s going to be similar to a few years ago when I dropped my wired phone line. There was a bit of an emotional attachment that I had to let go of, but once I cut the cord it was no big deal.

For some time now I’ve been experimenting with different ways of getting Internet-based video to my widescreen LCD HD televisions.

Often people think, why not simply hook up a regular desktop computer up to the TV. A desktop computer can be set up to play back virtually any video file type. The problem is, desktop and laptop computers are optimized for use on a desktop, not from a living room chair.

Is the ultimate media extender a set top box of some sort? The trouble with most set top boxes is that they are either walled gardens, or they miss the boat in very important ways.

A media extender should be able to play files stored on a home network, as well as be able to easily stream from services such as Netflix, Hulu, etc. Once set up, everything should be accessible through a simple remote control. Also, for my purposes, I’m willing to pay up to $250 for a box for each television in my house. It should also be able to play ripped DVD collection files that have been ripped to a central home server or network attached storage device.

I’ve hit on an interesting combination that seems to do everything I want it to that involves hacking a standard Apple TV and adding Playon TV server software to another computer on my home network. Playon TV software sells for $39.99.

Recently I purchased a commercial Apple TV hack called ATV Flash, which sells for $49.95. You download either the Windows or Mac version and install it on your computer. When you run the program it will ask you to insert an empty USB memory stick that it will write the installation files to. Then you plug the USB memory stick into your Apple TV and power it up. It will upgrade the Apple TV to be able to play a much wider variety of files, as well as adding Boxee and XMBC playback. It also retains all of the standard Apple TV functionality.

Next, I added the Playon TV software to my HP Windows Home Server. It could have easily been any other computer on my home network that meets the software’s minimum performance requirements. Once Playon TV was installed, I added my credentials for my Netflix account, as well as my Hulu account.

Finally, on my hacked Apple TV I simply start the XBMC application and navigate to UpNP devices on my home network, where Playon TV shows up. I now have access to Hulu and Netflix right on my Apple TV.

The Apple TV itself does not have enough processor horsepower to play back Netflix or Hulu Flash streaming without stuttering and freezing. However, playing it through the Playon TV software causes much of the processing to take place on my Windows Home Server machine, which has plenty of horsepower. Playon TV works by converting the Hulu and Netflix Flash streams into UpNP streams that the hacked Apple TV running XMBC can easily play without stuttering.

So, with this setup I’ve got access to all of my regular iTunes material, including HD and SD video podcasts, as well as a wide variety of streaming material from popular services such as Netflix and Hulu. It would be easy for me to buy additional Apple TV units, apply the ATV Flash hack to them, and attach them to other HDTV’s in my house.

If you are a Mac user you have probably heard of MacHeist. MacHeist is a package program that is release occasionally. It contains several programs, which if you brought alone would cost several hundred dollars. When you buy the MacHeist package you get all the programs for less then $20.00. The programs that are offer with MacHeist vary with each release and the date of release is unknown. This latest MacHeist which is now over, had the following programs in it: MacJournal, RipIt, Clips, Flow, CoverScout, Tales of Monkey Island, RapidWeaver and Tweetie. The MacHeist Web site says that they sold over 175,000 copies of the software and raised over $1,250,000 for charity. I admit I am one of those who purchased the MacHeist package this time around. I was already going to buy Ripit and was interested in Clips, so it made sense.

If you are a user and are interested in any of the programs in the package MacHeist seems like a no brainer. It is also a good deal for the charities, and MacHeist itself. There, however is a fourth group that maybe the losers in this scenario. That group is of course the developers of the various software. For example if you brought Rapid Weaver as a stand alone package it would cost you $79.00. With MacHeist you are getting it plus five other programs for a little less the one-fourth the price. So why do they participate in the MacHeist. It can’t be that the money is being given to charity, as Merlin Mann said on Macbreak Weekly 184 if you want to give money to charity, then give to charity. Is it a way to foster good will, that is the willingness to sell product A at a lost for a short period of time, in the hope that the buyer will buy product B at full price down the road. I don’t have an answer to this question, but there is obviously a reason developers participate after all this is the third year of the MacHeist program.

There is one area that I don’t totally agree with Merlin Mann. He thinks that as a user you should not purchase a MacHeist bundle, but if you really want the product you should pay full price. I disagree with him on this, my way of thinking is that MacHeist allows me to have programs that I wanted but couldn’t afford. I have always wanted to use Rapid Weaver, but I could not afford it, the chance of me buying it at full price was very small. Therefore the creators of Rapid Weaver didn’t loose $79.00, because they never would have gotten it in the first place. Also, I didn’t force the developer to participate, I just took advantage of their participation. If you are a mac user did you purchase the MacHeist package. If you are a developer did you participate in the program, if so why or why not, I would be interested to hear either way.

I always forget about this website.  When I finally go there to check my site amongst OS browsers, I always find one small problem. Quick change in the CSS and everything is all better.

I am talking about Broswershots. They simply take my site and call it up using different browsers on all Operating Systems. Linux, PC, Mac and BSD checking the following browsers:

• Avant
• Chrome
• Dillo
• Epiphany
• Firefox
• Flock
• K-Meleon
• Galeon
• Iceape
• Iceweasel
• Internet Explorer
• Kazehakase
• Konqueror
• Minefield
• Navigator
• Opera
• Safari
• SeaMonkey
• Shiretoko

I can also view the many versions of the browsers. Let’s say I am optimizing for Internet Explorer. I can check IE 4.0, 5.0, 7.0 or 8.0 on a Windows format. Check the boxes, enter the URL and away we go.

What Dillo sees of my websites from Browsershots

The process is not instantaneous. The service will set a 30 minute time limit which you can extent, but you have to physically be there to do so. If you checked all boxes, then you will definitely need to extend the process a couple times. It can also really show you how slow your website might load if you have an influx of users. One website I checked came up with all versions in about 10 minutes, yet another website (a little more PHP process driven) took a little more time.

Once your screenshots appear, you can view and download. Of course, this is dependent on the Internet connection at both sides, so you may have to request a new screenshot if you don’t see the proper results. For instance, IE 8.0 came back with a blank screen. I then told Broswershots to retry and the end result was perfect.

This website is pretty useful in detecting problems. Although I do have a PC, Mac and Ubuntu machine, I am really happy I don’t have to load up every browser on those machines. It’s about 80 different browsers and their versions to choose from. I am hoping soon they will also check across phone browsers. That will be a perfect addition to Browsershots.

I’ve been using WebnoteHappy for the Mac for a few weeks and love it. I’m always surfing the Internet researching things and have tried various ways of capturing content on web pages that I visit and want to remember. The common way to do that is with your browser’s bookmark feature. I used that for a while but wasn’t happy with the results. In the Windows world I use a program called Azz Cardfile, that allows me to paste the contents of a web page or a link to the page in what looks like an electronic card file. I can then add notes about the site and click on the link within the card file to go back to the site in my browser. The notes are searchable too.

When I moved over to the Mac world, I missed Azz Cardfile, but I finally found something better from HappyApps.com. WebNoteHappy works with your browser to capture (bookmark) a link to a web page you find interesting. You can then add notes and other information and even search your links and notes and launch the web page in your browser. This program also allows you to create folders to help you organize what you find. You can even create Smart Folders where you set up rules to automatically move items into folders. All the links and notes are stored in a common library and only pointers are stored within the folders so items can reside in multiple folders. As an example, I have a Photographer folder with a Wish List subfolder. I also have Wish List folder under Gadgets and the program allows me to store the same item in both places (if it’s photography related).

When you install the program it places a “bookmarklet” in your browser’s toolbar. When you find a web page that you want to remember, just click the “Webnote It” bookmarklet, and it opens up WebNoteHappy and generates an entry. You can then type any notes you want about the site and even add tags.

The program sells for $24.95 USD and you can try it for 30 days before you buy it. There is also a free WebnoteHappy Lite program that works the same way except it doesn’t have folders to organize your bookmarks. The program works with both Firefox and Safari browsers.

I started out with the Lite version and moved up to the paid version because I found the program was a great time-saver for me. When I installed the paid version it found all the items I had saved in the Lite version and I didn’t loose a thing. After I upgraded to the paid version I had a few questions and received very fast response to my questions.

If you use a Mac and want to get a little more organized, give WebnoteHappy or WebnoteHappy Lite a try.

73’s, Tom

First off I will say that I love the Mac OS and I love the Windows OS. (How about that for staying neutral?) Listeners to my Fogview Podcast know I switched to the Mac about six months ago when my main Windows XP computer died. I had an iMac that I was using for video editing and my photography work so I started using that for my daily work. I know there are a lot of Mac fan-boys out there but I’m not one of them. A computer is a computer and each type has it’s advantages and disadvantages. I enjoy using and learning about the Mac OS but I still do a lot of my work on my new Windows Vista machine.

I found that the Mac has it share of “spinning beach balls” just like Windows has it hourglass when the CPU is overloaded and can’t do one more thing. I have programs crash on the Mac just like they crash on Windows. I don’t have to worry about viruses and spyware on the Mac like I do on Windows, but I know that could change in the future.

What I would like to mention is the four things that still confuse me as a newbie “Mac switcher.”

1. Closing a window on the Mac doesn’t close the program.
   I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked the close window icon and realize later that the program is still running. Most Window programs go away when they are closed.
2. The program menu bar is at the top of the screen instead of at the top of the window. This is related to the first item because if I close a program’s window (i.e. iTunes), I now see another program underneath it but I’m still in the program I thought I closed. If I try to access the menu for the program that I see on the screen, I will be accessing the menu for the program I thought I closed. (See the screen shot on the right for an example of what I’m talking about: iTunes menu and Aperture window)
3. Control = Alt and Alt = Command keys
   Yes, the keys are switched, at least for how I normally think of them in Windows. For example, I press Ctrl-C to copy in Windows, and Command-C in Mac. Alt-tab to switch programs in Windows and Command-tab in Mac. (The last two are not switched, which only adds to the confusion.)
4. Home and End act like Page Up and Page Down instead of begin/end
   If I’m typing something in Windows, the Home/End keys will move the cursor to the begin/end of the line I’m typing. On the Mac it generally shifts the content of the window up and down on the screen and doesn’t change the cursor location. (I realize that each program can use the Home/End keys as they see fit, but in the Windows world these keys always seem to work the way I expect — or at least the way I’ve come to expect of them.)

Of all the differences I mentioned, #4 is the one thing I have not been able to get use too. I’m always trying to use the Home/End keys on the Mac to move my cursor around when editing text (I admit that I make lots of typing mistakes). I try to use it when entering URLs into the browser, Google search strings, emails I’m composing, and blogs entries (like this one), and I’m always surprised at the results. I would love for a Mac user to tell me what keys will do a similar thing on the Mac.

Learning to use a Mac has been a fun thing and helps to keep my brain engaged. I picked up a great book that helped answer the question of “How do I do that on the Mac.” It’s called “Switching to the Mac, The Missing Manual” by David Pogue. I highly recommend it if you’re thinking about switching too.

I’m not a Mac expert but I will write more in the future about my experience navigating in a Mac world from a Windows map. Stay tuned.

73’s, Tom

The following video was created showing one of the many possibilities for using Automator. I know Automator has been around for awhile, but if you are switching over to a Mac, it maybe something that is unfamiliar to you. If you want to learn more about Automator I would recommend going to Automator World, which is an excellent reference guide.   There are Automator scripts already set up for you to download and use or they can be used as templates.  There is also a forum where you can ask questions.

Automator, does take some time to learn, but it is well worth the effort.  I am still learning things about it all the time. My recommendation is to keep trying different things to see what works. The one thing that I find helps, is if I write down the steps one at a time and then find a action that matches those steps in Automator.   If you learn Apple Script, then you can use it along with Automator to create even more powerful processes to run.

I set up this process because I have two Macs. One is a Mac Mini which is downstairs with Miro installed on it and a Macbook upstairs. My video’s are on an external drive attached to my Apple Express base station.   There are times when I am  upstairs and I want to play the videos that had been downloaded using Miro.   Using Automator, I have set up a process that allows me to do this. The following video is how I did it.

Using Automator to Auto Play Videos Continuosly from kim landwehr on Vimeo.

If you run the process you will get the following result.

Once you are finished, playing the videos I would delete the ones you no longer want and move the ones you want to save to a different folder.

This morning, Apple posted an update to OSX Leopard to 10.5.3. Run the software update to get the newest version. Apple has posted information on this update.

There are a lot of issues fixed for this update. If you use a USB audio or video device, this will fix any stuttering issues. Another big issue it fixes, certain hard drives that didn’t, will show up in Finder.

For those of you who connect up your Mac to Active Directory, this fix will improve binding and logon. It also fixes a delay people were reporting when logging in a .local domain. Most importantly, you should now be able to change your password at the login window if you are using a Mac OSX 10.4 Open Directory Server.

The update will also help those who use AirPort and Time Capsule. Other updates are with iCal, iChat, Mail, Spaces, Parental Controls and VoiceOver.

No word yet on if it will help anyone running Hackintosh. Of course if you do try the upgrade, make sure you have your system properly backed up.