Category Archives: Macintosh

Nook Simple Touch

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I asked Scott to bring home a Nook Simple Touch, because he works at Barnes & Nobles he can take advantage of “borrowing” things and bringing them back. This gives me a chance to really sit down and try to use some of the technology that Barnes & Nobles has brought to life.

I’m only half-heartedly looking for a eBook reader as my iPad does a very good job at displaying eBooks. I have a gaggle of eBooks already saved up, all in the ePub format and I’ve been off-and-on reading them both on my iPad and the Nook Simple Touch reader. I’m quite on the fence between the two devices. Here’s the layout before me:

Points for iPad:

– I won’t have to buy anything new. I already own my iPad. It does a great job at displaying books and is compatible with a gaggle of formats even some the Nook Simple Touch cannot handle, like graphic-intensive PDF files.

– The iPad is backlit, which makes it easy to read at night without turning on the lights and disturbing anyone else who is trying to sleep and is light-sensitive. This isn’t as big a reason as I originally thought because when it’s late and there isn’t any light outside I’m most likely going to pass out and reading is just going to push me that much faster towards unconsciousness.

Points for Nook:

– The iPad is heavy. Much heavier than the Nook Simple Touch. That might be a compelling reason to switch.

– The Nook can display many of the ePub files I already have quite well. The display is eInk and while it is not backlit, it is slightly easier to read.

– I prefer the fonts on the Nook Simple Touch to the font selections on iBooks on my iPad.

– The Nook has a 2-month (really?) battery life, while my iPad has at most a 1 to 2 day battery life.

– The Nook doesn’t have the iPad’s obnoxious annoying notification system always popping up bibble-babble while I’m trying to read.

So what to do? I can easily afford to buy a Nook Simple Touch, the price is certainly right, at $139 dollars. My only misgivings about the Nook is no built-in backlight and no available dictionary lookup feature that exists in the iBooks app on my iPad. Do I go ahead and buy the Nook Simple Touch and enjoy it or should I stay with my iPad? I use the iPad for lots of other things other than reading books, but there is something about having one device that does it all instead of having a gaggle of devices for specialized uses. The only thing that is outstanding is the weight and size. The Nook is easy to hold in my hands, while the iPad is heavy. Is it enough of a reason to plunk down the money and get a Nook?

Another idea I have is that it would help Scott’s store’s bottom line. I like B&N above every other bookselling company, especially over Amazon. Do I stimulate the economy by buying a Nook Simple Touch? I’m on the fence. Teeter-totter. Is there anyone out there with an iPad and a Nook? How did you resolve this conundrum and get off the fence?

A Tablet Just Isn’t A Tablet (And No One Wants One) Unless It’s An iPad | Cult of Mac

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A Tablet Just Isn’t A Tablet (And No One Wants One) Unless It’s An iPad | Cult of Mac.

Playing catch-up is hard to do! Especially with a device as good as the iPad. The BlackBerry Playbook was a joke and the Samsung device doesn’t seem to be much better. I can’t really denigrate the Samsung device because I’ve never played around with it, but I can castigate the Blackberry Playbook because all the reviews lead in the same direction. Double facepalm. There just isn’t any competing with Apple.

Show Me > Tell Me

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I just got off the phone and an iChat session with Scott’s Mom. She reacted the same way my mother did when we had our first iChat screen-sharing support experience. They both were speechless about how easy it was to respond to a screen sharing request sent over iChat and were both shocked that I could not only hear them and talk to them over the link but also share their screen and see what they see and help them solve the problem. The only difference with Scott’s mom is that she has a Mac Mini without a microphone, so we bridge the communications gap with a phone. It’s still good however.

And then we get to the core of what I love so much about iChat screen sharing. I can really help if I can see and help control, leagues better than if I’m just relying on what the client sees and then tries to describe to me over the phone in classical telephone support. The biggest issue I have with classical telephone support is it has a catch-22 wedged right in the beginning of it. The catch-22 is that people have to have a good understanding of computer jargon and terminology so that they can describe their problem and get a solution over the phone. If they had those skills then they would most likely not need me to give them technical support in the first place! It’s almost the worlds worst practical joke on people who have made it their career to help others with technology. Because iChat is so friendly and so convenient, it makes this entire support experience just fly by in heartbeats. Everyone is happy, they get what they want and they don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on airfare, or wait for us to drive in, or pay some shyster an unholy amount of money to make a house call and then end up doing more cash-generating damage just to pad their bottom line. I can see what they see, do what needs to be done and actually *teach* how to solve the problem with an inherent simplicity and elegance that plain telephone support can never ever match.

I have often times mused about starting my own company. A Web 2.0 Internet company. It’s driven by iChat, with Google Chat performing the long-haul services (just like it was for my loved ones in this example) and social networking to link it all together. I envision a twitter account, say @MacNeedHelp and it’s staffed 24x7x365 by various people all around the world. When someone needs help, they contact that twitter name, tell them whats wrong, and in seconds they have a trained computer professional inviting them to an iChat screen sharing session ready, willing, and able to help them solve their computer problems. The clients pay a tiny monthly fee, like insurance, so that they can call whenever they like and use the service as much as they want to make their computers work best for them. What’s better, they start to actively learn how to start solving their own most common problems and stop using the service over a time. Most people I suspect would pay $5 a month just to have the peace of mind. Even if they never use it, it’s something wonderful to be able to ask for help, and get a friendly voice who can solve whatever it is that is troubling you and help you get on with your day. Perhaps someday I’ll pursue this cute little idea further. This iChat system is worth it’s weight in absolute gold!

Not going to pay a lot for that muffler!

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When I first brought Verizon networks to my workplace and selected them for our mobile technology carrier (remember, I care for the carrier about as much as I care for a particular rib of celery) we discovered pretty early on that we were getting hosed on MMS messaging. There is a difference between MMS and SMS. Of course nobody knows what either of these are and so we have to melt this all down into obnoxiously simple terms like “photo-texting” and “texting”. People would prefer “texting” to “Short Message Service”… whatever.

So we had MMS on these phones on accident. Sending any MMS traffic with Verizon unless you have a plan for it (bullshit carrier moneymaking cash-grab) costs about a dollar a shot. MMS can do a lot, including a pretty nifty “Multiple SMS MMS Message” format so you can address one SMS message to many targets and they’ll all get the message at the same time. In order to keep our Verizon bill from becoming poisoned with MMS bullshit we had to turn on MMS Block on each line. This blocks MMS traffic as well as this pretty neat multiple-destination SMS feature, which I find rather stupid, that it should be tossed out with MMS. Of course, like most things that irritate me in my life, I found a way around my bullshit carriers issues and filthy money-grubbing ways with an app and one single change to my iPhones options.

First, you download an app called “Groups” which allows you to manipulate address book groups in your iPhone, it also allows you to select multiple people for inclusion on an SMS message. Then on your iPhone, you go to Settings, then Messages, and turn off MMS Messaging. When you do this, and use Groups, and send one SMS to multiple people the phone behaves as it should. It makes a duplicate of your message and sends the message out one-at-a-time queue-like to all your SMS targets. Because SMS with our particular plan is complimentary (makes you wonder why they used to charge for it, filthy cash-grubbers) this path is a snap. It takes a bit longer to send out your messages, but at least they do get sent out to people en-masse. So you can get your lost MMS feature back without having to spend more money on the black hole that is your carrier.

If I could whack all the carriers with a shovel and bury them in shallow unmarked graves I would. I’m not particular, I hate them all. It’s not a customer relationship, it’s a battle of wills against a filthy tentacled monster bent on doing whatever it takes to ruin your day and your life. They are all the same, it’s just the flavor of bullshit changes from one to the other. I quite enjoy it when I find an option that lets me stick it to them, at least in a little way.

P.S. If you work for a carrier, I heartily recommend that you not read my blog, not follow me on twitter, or on facebook. And if you do, I invite you to stop. Your absence from my life will not make me unhappy. All of these relationships are unpleasant ones. Lets save each other the agony, okay?

Misplaced Loyalty

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After reading some twitter feeds recently, and for the record there are twitter people and twitter feeds. You follow a person and you can enter into a conversation with them, a feed doesn’t have conversations, they’re just semi-human-shaped billboards that yark. Anyways, following the twitter feed there was a discussion over whether or not a classical bookstore that carried comic books would upset a local comic book store, assuming that if the huge chain sold comic books that it would muscle out the smaller comic book stores the same way that Walmart kills off mom-and-pop stores in towns they occupy. This whole thing got me thinking about the loyalty many have to comic book stores. It’s a feeling I’ve wrestled with as well and for me personally it’s right smack dab in the center of the digital comic book debate. If you roll out day-and-date comic book releases digitally you are essentially removing the impetus for customers to go to a comic book store. I wonder where this sensation of misgiving is coming from, if a comic book store dies, does it threaten comic books? Is it really a bad thing? It’s almost as if comic book stores have established themselves as an habitual destination and when you upset a habit it causes a great deal of discomfort for people who are principally embedded into that particular habit.

Specifically I am writing about DC’s coming overhaul in September. They are going to day-and-date digitally deliver their comic books so technically I would never again have to visit my local comic book store. For clarities sake I don’t read Marvel comic books, so I wouldn’t be drawn in by those books, so why go? Do I feel bad about not patronizing my local comic book store? I don’t know to tell the truth. I’m quite betwixt over it. Life goes on, losing a very small customer like me certainly won’t hurt their bottom line – but what if it does and they can’t make ends meet. Do I feel responsible? Do I feel like I’d be missing out or somehow or guilty even? I feel like I should, but I don’t. When September comes I can just carry my iPad with me and enjoy Comixlunch on Wednesdays without having to carry around a stack of comic books I’ll read once and then pile up somewhere. They’ll pile up on some storage device instead.

Which Eyeglass Style Looks The Best

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I’ve thought about possibly getting some eyeglasses for myself at work since I spend so much time in front of a computer. I don’t need correction, but the glasses I’m looking at, from Gunnar, claim to help relieve eyestrain, cut glare, and generally improve eye health especially when using modern display equipment. To that end, if I do spring for these glasses, there is a question of style. For those of you that know me and know what I look like, I have created a polldaddy poll with the models that I think would look the best on me. I’d like all my readers to please vote on what they think the best style is.

[polldaddy poll=5107799]

Thanks for everyone who votes!

Dropbox Lied to Users About Data Security, Complaint to FTC Alleges | Threat Level | Wired.com

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Dropbox Lied to Users About Data Security, Complaint to FTC Alleges | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Read the above article, it’s quite good and covers the problems that many geeks have with Dropbox. I have to admit that I’m quite fond of finding ways to “Have my cake and eat it too” and in the spirit of that saying it’s important to highlight a core issue that needs to be covered: If you don’t manage your own security, you don’t have any.

Every service is vulnerable to a search and seizure order as long as it’s hardware exists within the United States. Any company that claims that they protect your data even from this basic assumption is lying to you. You can help them by helping yourself. The people who run Dropbox certainly have aims to secure your data, otherwise nobody but a scant few would be willing to store their data in the cloud. This situation is only half-way to what is really required to make a service like Dropbox a real charmer. It comes down to security and I’ve written about it at length before. The end user has to meet Dropbox for the other half of the way. Dropbox encrypts their data using AES-256 and they have a master key that they use along with yours so that they can maintain a backdoor in case of a search and seizure order to fulfill. Protect yourself by using any number of applications, ranging from TrueCrypt, iCrypt, openssh, to encrypted DMG files. If you create one of these encrypted files to store your private information then send it to Dropbox, even if they have to divulge the file to the authorities all they can provide them is another AES-256 encrypted file that they don’t have a key to. When the authorities try to pry open the file, all they’ll see is noise, because they don’t have your key.

It’s really quite easy when you think of it, Dropbox is at most 50% secure. You can provide another 50% making your use of Dropbox 100% secure. It all comes down to going that little extra inch with any of the tools covered above. I can’t help but really love encrypted DMG files as they are the most convenient to use with Macs. You just double-click on the DMG file, enter in your password, and the volume is mounted as if it were a drive on your computer. All the files are plain and easy to use. Ejecting the drive after you are done using it closes it and the data lives 100% secure in the cloud.

Getting bent because Dropbox only gives you 50% security is rather dumb. Anyone at all has to assume that it maxes out at 50% irrespective of what Dropbox claims. If you are smart and secure your own effects, then you’ve nothing to worry about and can get over this silly thing without a single thought. Makes sense to me.

Upgrade Your iPhone or iPad’s Storage With Seagate GoFlex Satellite | Cult of Mac

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Upgrade Your iPhone or iPad’s Storage With Seagate GoFlex Satellite | Cult of Mac.

I’ve thought about an item like this when I was standing in line two April’s ago waiting for my iPad at Best Buy. What could enable me to buy the smallest device (16GB) without having to sacrifice a huge pool of storage? When I bought the device I was sure that someone would eventually come up with something. I was right, there were at least two apps:

  • http://projectswithlove.com/streamtome/ – Stream To Me
  • http://www.zumocast.com/ – ZumoCast
Both of these services allow you to place twin applications, one on your computer at home or at work and the other application on your iOS device. This design makes much more sense to me than the Seagate drive linked to above. If you’ve got access to the web, why not use it? Plus this way your data is more secure than some drive that can be stolen or confiscated. Both apps could arguably access every last shred of your content if you had a storage system big enough to handle all of it. Arguably way more than 500GB and you wouldn’t have to contend with a rather weak battery and wondering when the drive will stop working because it’s out of juice. Just having one device where you have to watch the battery is surely enough for anyone! I can’t see this option being useful when you have other options like Stream To Me or ZumoCast handy.

Cleverness is Punishable

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Chock one up in the oops column. This whole past week I’ve been yarking at OIT to put my Savin Copier on an access control list for our plain-jane SMTP server here on campus. Through a labyrinth of miscommunication it turns out the task was done in December 2009, but I didn’t learn of that fact until a week ago, somewhat through 2011! Oh well, bygones. So now I have my copier set up to send email and yesterday I started to clean my office.

Let me repeat that bit. I. CLEANED. MY. OFFICE.

Yes, that’s right. God help us all. So I started putting order into the bitter waters of the chaotic sea. Mostly it was sorting wheat and chaff. There is only a bit of wheat (the mac stuff) in comparison to the chaff (everything else). Mostly it was sorting legacy bullshit into legacy bullshit containers, so everything with a PS/2 connector, bullshit. Everything that was vogue pre-2005, bullshit. The blizzard of little Blackberry devices? Utter bullshit. So all of it went into boxes, marked with a Sharpie and stacked neat as ya please. I even got a chance to move Frankenserver into the machine room. For those that don’t know, Frankenserver is the nickname I gave to a Mac Mini that is running OS X Snow Leopard, then that runs VirtualBox, which has a Windows 2003 Server image loaded on that. In there is SQL Server 2000 SP4, IIS 6 (or 7, don’t care which) and a copy of our production database’s sample database for training. It’s slow, but it works and I got it done without having to buy a single G-D thing.

Along with all of this meandering malarkey, I also had a giant pile of dead paper that was in a Z-filer on a platform that now supports a rather viney plant. The paper mocks me. It just sits there, dead and cryptic. Yes I could leaf through it, but the minute I do I feel this odd laziness come over me. It would be so much better if all of it was in PDF format and up on Evernote. Frankly my dear, everything ends up in Evernote. I drank the kool-aid, and I liked it. So I got it in my head to pull all the staples out of this paperwork and try out my copier’s new handy-dandy Scan-to-Email which is set to my Evernote Email Address. I loaded up the giant stack and let the ADF chew through it. Voop veep voop veep. I then gathered it all up and threw it in our fancy new “Security Level 4” crosscut shredder. Done and done.

I felt quite satisfied that I had tamed a bit of the paper tiger in my office and confident that what I had scanned was safely stuffed away in my Evernote archive. This morning I opened Evernote and looked through the results. This is where my punishment reigns supreme. A list of files, “FILE 1/5” and when I looked into them, they weren’t PDF’s but 2MB chunks of text! Hells Bells. What had happened was I had scanned so much that the scanner in the copier converted all my PDF files into base64 text files and then split them up into 2MB segments and mailed them out. So there they were, all my files, in a funky format and not very handy to have. I extracted the files, one at a time, renamed them, then used the ‘cat’ command to join them all together in the right order, stripped off the SMTP wrapper at the beginning and fed them all into this neat little command:

openssl base64 -d -in-out

Thanks for this little gem goes to Mac OSX Hints and a fellow named Chris Janton. I knew that openssl did a lot of heavy-lifting in OSX, but not this far! I should have assumed it did. So passing my stupid base64 text chunk into openssl, spit out my hefty PDF files and then I cleaned up Evernote, re-added the hefty PDF files and alls-well-that-ends-well.

Discovering this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my morning, but at least I wasn’t lost on how to fix it. I spent only a bit of time considering what your “average computer user” would have done, and they would have likely just deleted the Evernote bits and declared the entire thing a loss. It’s rather a shame that my estimation for other people’s cleverness with computers is so abysmally low. But that’s another blog post altogether. 🙂

Location, Location, Location!

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People are asking me what I think about the location-gate kerfuffle surrounding Apple. So, it seems an apropos topic to write about here. What exactly is/was Apple doing? It turns out the iPhone 4 was recording cellular tower geographic information and when iTunes backed up the device it also grabbed a file called consolidated.db, which contained latitude and longitude data. The clever and curious started to poke around this data and discovered that the iPhone had data that appeared to indicate where the phone had been and then they mapped the data to make the entire deal visual and accessible by many people who are already very skitterish about location.

Everyone had an immediate attack over this. Claims that Apple was spying on its customers, that it was an invasion of privacy. Claims ranging from the charming right down to the purest of malevolence on Apple’s behalf. Apple noticed the powder keg of negativity that the discovery of consolidated.db brought about and changed iOS to better protect users tender privacy concerns.

Yes, I suppose if you didn’t know the intent and found location data on your phone you might be concerned, but what is this mad rush to the absolute worst possibility? That Apple is spying on you, that it’s collecting location information to use against you? This is the claim of the lazy paranoid with too much time on their hands. What is the value of that data? If you were an international person of mystery and you had grave life-or-death secrets to protect then perhaps you’d have some ground to stand on, but last I checked the average iPhone-toting American leads a very tiny life, unremarkable to anyone at all, and even if it is divulging location, with all the location-based check-in services like FourSquare and Facebook, aren’t you already giving away the keys to your very dull and lame kingdom? I’ll be the first to admit that I fall right into this slot. My life is EXCEPTIONALLY DULL. I travel in circuits that are OBVIOUS and BORING. I’m like a ping-pong ball in a game played with robots that do the same thing every time. I bounce from home to work, from home to Meijers, from home to the comic book store. Boing Boing Boing. What am I protecting? Not a god-damned thing. That’s why I don’t have a problem with online advertisements, tracking cookies, my location leaking out around the edges, or any of that stuff. It’s mind-achingly dull! It runs right along with my feelings of people turning on the iSight camera on my iMac and SPYING ON ME. Knock your socks off! First, I’m not all that pleasant to look at, so that hurts you more than it hurts me, and secondly, what deep dark secrets will you uncover? Perhaps you’ll uncover my most coveted secret of all, that once I develop 5 o’clock shadow I can’t stop itching. There, I’ve saved you all the work and trouble. Dull, isn’t it? Yes. Exceedingly so.

So what is it that people are so worked up about? I think it has more to do with how people want to be seen than actually what is seen. They want to have grand lives full of drama and intrigue, not lives spent planning on how much sour cream to buy tonight to make that one dish come out better this time. It isn’t about what they are protecting, but the image that there is actually something to protect. We are all predictable, regular, non-exceptional, and above all else, magnificently dull creatures! Whatever really awesome specialness we do possess is almost always popping in and out of existence between our ears. Every once in a while we write something down and stuff it away, sometimes we even act on it, but when you take the long view of human behavior it’s more of a dull repetitive machine with little tremors of specialness in between great swaths of inexorably dull events.

So what of Apple’s Location-Gate? Get over yourselves. You aren’t that important. Your lives, frankly, aren’t that interesting. Accept it and move on to the next thing you feel the need to squawk and twitter about ineffectually.