OCLC Research, 1:29 AM.
Deadline approaches for faculty research grant proposals. Proposals for the 2008 OCLC/ALISE Library & Information Science Research Grant Program are due September 17, 2007.
TidBITS, 1:29 AM.Three Handy Tips for iPhoto Organization.
Organizing my photos in iPhoto always seems like a good idea, but my efforts often fall short of my ideals. However, I've recently been playing around in the new iPhoto 7 that comes with iLife '08, and I've learned three useful photo-organizing tips that are either new in this version or that had previously eluded me. I can't promise that these tips will help you whip out your holiday cards from iPhoto while you bake cookies and realize that Chanukah is way before Christmas this year, but they certainly won't hurt.
Rate Photos with Keyboard Shortcuts -- You can rate a selected photo, in nearly any view, including a slideshow, from the keyboard. Command-5 rates your photo as 5 stars, Command-4 as 4 stars, and so forth, down to Command-0 (zero), which removes all stars. Once photos are rated, you can then, for instance, set up a smart album to find photos that have more than a certain number of stars, making it easy to view only your favorites.
Describe Photos in Batches -- Titling, describing, and keywording photos goes faster if you do it in batches. To do this, select a bunch of photos and then choose Photos > Batch Change. From the Batch Change dialog, you can change the title or description of all the selected photos at once. And, the description option can be applied to the end of any existing descriptions, so, for instance, for a trip to the Farmer's Market, you could enter individual descriptions for any photos that needed special commentary (Huge Turnips!"), but then append something like "Farmers Market, Ithaca" to each description.
You add keywords via a different interface, but you can still add them to multiple shots at once. Choose Window > Show Keywords to open the Keywords palette, select a bunch of photos, and then click any keyword button in the palette to apply that keyword to all selected photos. In that same Keywords palette, you can click Edit to manage your keywords and assign single-letter keyboard shortcuts to them. The single letter shortcuts are especially handy for applying keywords quickly, since with them you can select a bunch of photos and, as long as the Keywords window is open, press a key to apply its associated keyword to all the selected photos.
Flag Photos -- As you go through a bunch of photos, you may want to single some out - maybe you are considering them for an order of prints or you want to show them to your spouse - you could create a separate album, but if you are like me, this results in your having about 20 miscellaneous albums that you aren't sure if you need any longer. It might be better to create a more temporary "album" that could later, possibly, be converted to a more formal project like a calendar or book. You can do this with the new Flag command in iPhoto 7.
To flag selected photos, click the Flag icon in the toolbar or press Command-Period (yes, that's an odd keyboard shortcut for those of us who remember it being the universal "Stop everything!" shortcut). To view all your flagged photos quickly, select the Flagged item in the Source pane (in the Recent category). Now that you've flagged 'em, you can drag them from the Flagged category to an album, or you can make them into a new event via the Events menu.
The screenshot below shows an unflagged photo at left and a flagged photo at right. The flagged photo has an orange flag in its upper left corner.
That's all for the tips, and I hope they give you the extra productivity push to work with your photos more meaningfully. I'll be using them to sort through my family's photos from 2007 to identify, title, describe, and keyword those that I want to include in my holiday greeting card this year - I'm already planning to use iPhoto 7's new Year in Review card template.
Copyright © 2007 Tonya Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2004. Leopard Compatibility List Updated.
Rather than write oodles of short articles that mostly note that a new version of some utility adds compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, we're going to take advantage of our new TidBITS Publishing System to create a list of important or interesting software that has been updated. (Our definition of "important or interesting" largely revolves around products that we've covered in the past or plan to cover in the future; there's no way this can or should be a comprehensive list.) It's important to note that this list also doesn't include software that runs fine in Leopard without needing an update - don't infer anything if a program isn't included on the list.
We'll add new items to the top of the list, blog-style, and we'll tweak the modification date each time so those reading via RSS will be alerted when there are changes. We won't be publishing this article in an email edition of TidBITS, since it will continue to grow over time. Eventually, of course, Leopard compatibility will no longer be interesting, and we'll let the article remain static after that point. Until then, though, here's what we know. For releases that are purely for Leopard compatibility, we won't go beyond listing the name, version number, and link; for those releases that are more significant, we'll toss in some notes as appropriate.
26-Nov-07 -- Back in the saddle again after Thanksgiving!
25-Nov-07 -- Here are a few that we've missed along the way.
20-Nov-07 -- Catching up after yesterday's issue. We've moved a few items up from previous days if the changes are again related to Leopard compatibility.
16-Nov-07 -- Apple hit us with a ton of updates yesterday, so we'll point you at our coverage of those updates for the Leopard-specific stuff along with rounding up a crop of third-party updates.
14-Nov-07 -- The updates continue to flow in, with the most notable release being Fetch 5.3.
13-Nov-07 -- After a hiatus over the weekend and a busy Monday putting out the issue, we find...
09-Nov-07 -- A quick check today reveals...
08-Nov-07 -- Just a few new things today.
07-Nov-07 -- The updates continue apace, although a few of the ones listed below have been out for a few days and merely made it onto our radar today.
06-Nov-07 -- Things are settling down a bit with Leopard-specific updates, but be sure to let us know if we're missing something that has been discussed in TidBITS.
05-Nov-07 -- Just one today, not because there weren't others but because we were working on the TidBITS issue all day.
02-Nov-07 -- Lots more updates today as we work our way back through our press release list.
01-Nov-07 -- We're mostly catching up with the entries so far.
Copyright © 2007 TidBITS Staff. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Black Friday Office 2008 Deal Too Good to Miss.
No, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac isn't shipping yet (it's anticipated to ship in January), but if you buy a qualifying copy of Office 2004 between November 1st, 2007 and January 14th, 2008, in the U.S. or Canada, you're entitled to a free upgrade to Office 2008 in exchange for a $7 shipping charge ($10 CDN). But, for today only, it gets better.
If you're into "Black Friday" deals, those crazy offers that crop up in the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., the "official" start of the holiday shopping season, you'll love this one: if you're in the U.S., and you buy your qualifying copy of Microsoft Office 2004 on Friday, November 23rd, you'll get a $100 mail-in rebate.
The announcement on the Microsoft Office for Mac blog says even the inexpensive Student & Teacher Edition qualifies for the rebate and the free upgrade, turning the $125 price for that version (available to full- or part-time students, parents of minor students, home schooled students, and full- or part-time faculty or staff of an accredited educational institution) at Amazon.com into a cool $25 plus $7 shipping price for Office 2008.
The current deal that extends until mid-January is even better than the upgrade offer we talked about in September, which promised an upgrade for $10 shipping to a comparable edition of Office 2008 to what you'd purchased from the Office 2004 product line. Now, Microsoft says, everyone will get the Office 2008 Special Media Edition, no matter which version of Office 2004 is purchased.
If you're not in the U.S. or Canada, all is not necessarily lost. We're told that different Microsoft regions have different offers available. Check the Microsoft site for your region for details.
Copyright © 2007 Mark H. Anbinder. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers aThe day after writing about Kindle for TidBITS (see "Comparing Amazon's Kindle to the iPhone and Sony Reader", 2007-11-19), I received a unit - bought and paid for by yours truly, by the way, as Amazon.com apparently didn't seed many units to the press, and didn't respond to my request for a review model for The Seattle Times.
I wrote up my observations on The Seattle Times's blog, and will have a full review in the paper a week from Saturday. I didn't list every kudo or complaint in the blog - nor will I have room in the upcoming review - but as a type designer and graphic designer, I'll point out that the Kindle supports one font, one layout, and multiple sizes. The font is fine. Quite legible. The ability to resize, well implemented and useful for varying conditions.
The layout? Not so great. Forced justification with apparently no hyphenation dictionary or hinting in the format. That's a huge failure. On a private list, I noted that, "Justification without hyphenation is like taxation without representation." That is, the poor letters and word groupings have no input into how they're displayed, which makes for a poor republic.
Adam Engst thought this would make a good T-shirt. And so I made one at Cafe Press.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social NetworksGerman Court Forces Unlocked iPhone.
T-Mobile, the wireless division of Deutsche Telekom, which also owns the wireless carrier in the U.S. of the same name, has announced that they'll follow a court order and offer Apple's iPhone with no contract, and unlocked so it will work on other carriers. The catch? The free-and-clear version of the phone will cost 999 euros (almost US$1,500) rather than 399 euros (almost US$600) for the standard phone.
We anticipated some European carriers might have to comply with laws requiring they offer an unlocked phone with no contract, but since the carriers can charge a significantly higher price for the unencumbered phone, it doesn't seem like too big a hardship for either Apple or T-Mobile.
T-Mobile has said they're the only wireless carrier with complete EDGE network data coverage throughout Germany, but those who desperately want to use an iPhone on Vodafone's competing network will now be able to try.
Copyright © 2007 Mark H. Anbinder. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Seamlessly run Windows on your Mac with VMware Fusion! RunComparing Amazon's Kindle to the iPhone and Sony Reader.
Amazon has released its much-anticipated Kindle, a $399 electronic book reader that features a persistent high-speed network connection using Sprint's 3G EVDO cellular network. Amazon is offering over 88,000 books for sale for use with the Kindle, with New York Times best-selling titles and new releases generally priced at $9.99. Short stories and classics cost $2 or less; a seemingly small number of books cost more than $10 in a quick browse through the library.
Basic Comparisons -- The Kindle breaks away from previous electronic book readers by providing a large number of titles and a continuous network connection. The most closely comparable device prior to the Kindle is the Sony Reader, a second generation of which shipped recently with a street price of around $300 (see "Sony's PRS Ebook Reader and Connect Bookstore," 2006-12-18 for a review of the first generation). The iPhone isn't a direct competitor, but it's worth comparing because of its network connection and highly legible screen.
The Sony Reader uses the same E Ink technology as the Kindle, which apparently provides an extremely bright, low-glare display that can be read in direct sunlight and at varying angles. The Reader is 6.9 by 4.9 by 0.3 inches (17.5 by 12.5 by 0.8 cm) and weighs 8 ounces (0.23 kg). The heftier Kindle is 7.5 by 5.3 by 0.7 inches (19 by 13.5 by 1.8 cm) and weighs 10 ounces (0.28 kg). The iPhone, which offers no built-in book-reading features - even reading email-delivered or Web-hosted PDFs is a chore - is smaller than both, at 4.5 by 2.4 by .46 inches (11.5 by .61 by .12 cm) and weighs in at 4.8 oz. (0.14 kg).
The displays on the Kindle and Sony Reader are both grayscale (4 shades of gray for the Kindle versus 8 shades for the Sony Reader), so books with complex illustrations or which require color won't work well or at all. Both devices have 6-inch diagonally measured screens that display 800-by-600 pixels at about 160 pixels per inch (ppi). The iPhone is a full-color device that uses anti-aliasing to improve text legibility on a 480-by-320-pixel, 3.5-inch diagonally measured screen at about 160 ppi.
The Kindle features a Secure Digital (SD) expansion slot and a USB port. The Sony Reader has both, along with support for Sony's proprietary Memory Stick, while the iPhone has just USB connectivity. Amazon doesn't list Kindle's memory capacity, but elsewhere the company said that the Linux operating system that drives it and internal files occupy about 60 MB of 256 MB of internal storage. The Sony Reader has 192 MB; an iPhone a whopping 8 GB. The iPhone trumps the others here because it's designed to play audio and movies.
Whereas both the Sony Reader and the iPhone require a computer (Windows for the Sony Reader, Mac or Windows for the iPhone), the Kindle doesn't require a computer at all. However, if you do want to load personal content or audio files, the Kindle mounts as a USB drive, and you can manually back up content or copy over new items in formats Kindle supports. (The Kindle is therefore the first electronic book reader that works with Unix, Linux, and variants.)
Zooming in on Differences -- After those basics, though, the differences between the three multiply. The offerings for what to read with the Kindle make it clear how serious Amazon is about making Kindle a success.
It's All about the Network -- Much of what makes Amazon's overall approach with Kindle work is its persistent network connection. The Kindle is the first device I'm aware of that ships with high-speed network access and without a subscription fee or a recurring fee of any kind. The cost of network use and data delivery is built into the price of each item you purchase or subscribe to. It's the first portable ebook reader that might have a shot because of how it marries legibility, a network, and a large library.
Blogs and periodicals are delivered continuously as new items or issues are published over what Amazon calls "Whispernet," a continuous push network for content you subscribe to. When you purchase a book, it's immediately downloaded.
The Sprint EVDO network that Amazon relies on is available extensively in most medium-sized and larger cities, but is scarce outside of major population centers. That might lead to Kindle being more frustrating to use when on the road or in smaller towns where the Kindle uses a more widespread, but modem-speed technology called RTT.
However, extensive use of Kindle - in the millions of units - could conceivably lead Sprint to change its deployment pattern for where to put new EVDO base stations, as Sprint will receive a piece of all transactions in lieu of subscription revenue. As Amazon head Jeff Bezos said at the device's announcement, "We pay for all of that behind the scenes so you can just read."
Obvious Limitations -- Before I sound overly enthusiastic about the Kindle, let me note a few problems.
With Amazon's marketing power and customer reach behind this device, with a full-time network connection, and with so many titles available at such low cost at launch, it's possible Kindle will light the fire that Amazon hopes, and finally get a mass audience of ebook readers.
One wonders, though, why Amazon produced such a toadstool of a product when the thoughtfulness for what lies within is so obvious. In pictures, it's the only real misstep. The iPhone is among the most beautiful and functional devices ever created, while the Kindle is just plain homely for something that similarly aims to change the world.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Fetch Softworks: Fetch 5.3 has a new look for Leopard,Submit Ideas for the 2007 TidBITS Gift Guide.
It's time once again to gird our loins for the annual holiday shopping season, in which Apple is on track to sell an estimated 29 gazillion iPods and 13 packages of iPod socks. But if you want to go beyond the obvious for your gift giving and receiving, we're here to help with something a little different. Instead of soliciting ideas from readers and then assembling every last one of them into a massive gift issue that many people probably can't finish reading before the end of December, we're going to focus in on just the best ideas. We'll collect ideas in TidBITS Talk, as always, but after 10 days we'll create a survey from the suggestions and open that up to public vote. Once the voting has identified the top gift ideas in the various survey categories, we'll write them up in the 2007 TidBITS Gift Guide, currently scheduled for 07-Dec-07. Of course, the TidBITS Talk threads will remain available for anyone who wants to explore further.
We've started threads for the initial categories in TidBITS Talk already, so if you subscribe to TidBITS Talk, just reply to a message in the right thread. If you read TidBITS Talk via the Web, you can post via the Web too; just scroll down to the bottom of the window in the appropriate thread.
Please suggest only one product or idea per message, give the reason why you're recommending it, make sure to include a URL or other necessary contact information, and recommend only others' products. If possible, try to suggest products that haven't appeared in previous gift issues. To refresh your memory on what readers have suggested previously, check out the last three gift issues from 2006, 2005, and 2004 before writing in. Thanks in advance!
Copyright © 2007 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
DealBITS: Get the word out about your product AND generate sales!One of the advantages of our Web redesign is that it's a lot easier for us to publish articles and blog posts than ever before. The downside of that flexibility is that we now have much more content than we've been able to squeeze into each email issue while keeping the issue to a reasonable size. We've dealt with this so far by focusing on the most timely and relevant content for the email issue, but that's come at the expense of keeping otherwise excellent articles from our tens of thousands of email subscribers.
No longer. We're going to start an email-only Bonus Stories column in which we list some of the most useful and interesting articles that have so far appeared only on the Web site. Simply click through to read the full articles on our Web site. Do note that these stories may not have received the final edit pass that pieces in an email issue receive, and that our blog posts tend to be a bit less formal than normal articles. Some of these articles may still make their way into an email issue when we have a slow week.
We have quite a bit of a backlog, so we're going start slow while we feel out the best approach and format to present these listings. But we have a good feeling about this project - text wants to be read.
Talking Your Way Out of a Plastic Bag -- Turns out that an iPhone is interoperable with plastic baggies. (2007-10-18)
WireTap Studio: Lossless Editing and Real-Time Audio Preview -- Ambrosia Software's new WireTap Studio ups the ante in the field of easy-to-use audio recording and editing tools. Find out what Andy Affleck, author of "Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac," thinks of the new release and how it stacks up against existing tools. (2007-10-18)
Nokia N800 Internet Tablet: iPhone without the Phone? -- Many people claim they want the iPhone without the phone part, but the iPod touch seems to have a few too many limitations. What about Nokia's N800 Internet Tablet, which provides a full-featured Web browser on a Linux-based platform? Travis Butler looks deep into the N800 to see how it stacks up. (2007-10-12)
ICANN Tests Non-Roman Characters in Domain Names -- Speakers (and writers) of languages that use non-Roman character scripts and letters should rejoice: they'll finally be able to type .com in their native tongue and keyboards. (2007-10-12)
Stop the Catalog Madness with Catalog Choice -- If you hate receiving unnecessary and overly frequent catalogs as much as Adam does, check out Catalog Choice, a new free service aimed helping reduce the 19 billion catalogs thrown at us each year. (2007-10-11)
Use Custom CSS to Tweak TidBITS Display -- A TidBITS reader wrote to us with a suggestion for the new Web site redesign: "My top suggestion of all suggestions is to make the title in all caps so your new format is easier to scan." That's not something we'll be implementing, but if you want it, you can use CSS to make it happen. (2007-10-09)
Copyright © 2007 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
DealBITS: Get the word out about your product AND generate sales!Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/19-Nov-07.
Hosting on .Mac -- Apple's online service now offers domain hosting, but only if used in conjunction with iWeb '08. (5 messages)
Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great -- Readers react to the changes in Spotlight under Leopard, including much better search criteria, a built-in calculator, and searching networked volumes. (9 messages)
Phone Message Software Recommendation please -- A number of suggestions are made for software that will easily accept transcribed phone messages. (6 messages)
iPhone Provides a Light -- Your iPhone (or other LCD-equipped piece of electronics, including an old PowerBook!) can also serve as an impromptu flashlight. (2 messages)
Leopard: Stopping Buffer Overflows -- The latest version of Mac OS X includes security improvements, but is our interconnectedness increasing vulnerability? (2 messages)
Leopard Firewall Takes One Step Forward, Three Steps Back -- Early problems with Skype and the Leopard firewall point to other problems with Skype's implementation. (2 messages)
Office 2004 printing problem Intel Mac -- Several users are seeing problems when printing from Office 2004 under Leopard. (3 messages)
Grumbling about Pages and iWeb -- You can use sources other than iPhoto for accessing photos in iWork, but the solution isn't necessarily obvious. (4 messages)
Mac Book Pro Screen Smear -- A mark that appeared to be a finger smear is oddly persistent. Perhaps the solution is Melamine foam. (3 messages)
Bento -- Readers react to Jeff Porten's article about FileMaker's Bento preview. (5 messages)
Leopard File Sharing -- When our children comb our electronic discussions, they will marvel at our capabilities to remember dates such as 19-Nov-97 in honor of the release of LaserWriter 8.5.1, or the oldest version of the Mac system that can still network with the newest version. (2 messages)
BBEdit 8.7.1 Adds Features, Fixes Bugs, Saves Data -- Adam's note about dealing with a large BBEdit Backups folder inspires others to share their solutions for keeping folders at manageable sizes. (2 messages)
Running Adobe Products in Leopard -- Adobe has posted a FAQ about what to expect when running its software under Leopard. (1 message)
Recent iMacs -- Sporadic problems with new iMacs may be solved by a recent firmware update. (3 messages)
OS X On Generic PC Hardware -- Some hackers have been able to run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware. Should Apple be worried? Is it really usable? (5 messages)
Copyright © 2007 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social NetworksNo TidBITS Issue on 26-Nov-07.
As is our custom this time of year, we won't be publishing next week's emailed issue of TidBITS on 26-Nov-07 due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. And, honestly, we need a little rest after the recent release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the five "Take Control of... Leopard" titles that arrived the same day Leopard shipped, Jeff Carlson's book "iMovie '08 and iDVD '08 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide" (hitting stores in December), Adam's book "iPhoto '08 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide" (arriving in time for Macworld Expo in January 2008), and the various projects the other members of the staff are currently juggling.
However, we're creatures of habit, so don't be surprised if we continue to post articles or updates to the TidBITS Web site or to our staff blogs. Check back at the site or subscribe to the TidBITS RSS feed or Twitter stream to keep up with everything we're writing.
Copyright © 2007 TidBITS Staff. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
MARK/SPACE, INC: The Missing Sync provides the very best inPunching a Hole for Back to My Mac.
If you're a Leopard user dying to use the new screen and file sharing service called Back to My Mac, Apple released some new information that's helped me get the service to work. In brief, Back to My Mac requires a full .Mac account, and connects through secured tunnels all the computers on which you have both entered your .Mac account information in the .Mac preference pane and turned on Back to My Mac in the same pane. (You can read a full rundown of the service in an article I wrote for Macworld that was published 07-Nov-07.)
Back to Which Mac? -- I had had difficulties getting Back to My Mac to function correctly. It first worked after Leopard was released between two of my computers set up with Leopard; one computer was at home, the other at my office. The home computer could access the screen and files of my work machine, but not vice versa. I knew that a firewall might be in the way because of a DSL router supplied by Qwest that was problematic to configure. Back to My Mac requires either NAT-PMP (Network Address Translation Port Mapping Protocol) or UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) to shim open a static incoming port via which remote computers can connect.
(The router crashed whenever I attempted to connect to configure it via its Web interface, but I discovered that if I used a URL path (like /home.html), not just the IP address of the router, I was able to configure the router successfully. It's apparently a bug in the 2Wire modem that Qwest ships that manifests itself for Mac users, but not apparently for other users.)
After a few days of using Leopard, I was unable to get Back to My Mac to work at all. TidBITS editor Jeff Carlson had the same experience. When 10.5.1 was released, my home machine could once again see my work machine but not vice versa. Jeff and I did some testing, and found strange problems. When we used the same .Mac account details at one of his computers and two of mine, one machine would show the other two computers in the Back to My Mac set, one would show none, and another would show just one. It stymied us.
However, after overcoming my Qwest DSL modem problems, I was able to test information provided in a Knowledge Base article updated earlier this week about Back to My Mac security. Apple notes that the service uses UDP over port 4500 and TCP over port 443. While this was already known, I hadn't tried to set up my DSL's firewall. (Apple also links from this note to a page I'd forgotten that describes all the ports its operating systems use for common and Apple-specific services. This is very helpful when configuring a firewall.)
Turning on Incoming Access for Two Ports -- Because of the modem crashing when I was configuring it, I had disabled its Wi-Fi feature, and attached an AirPort Express Base Station to an Ethernet port on the modem. NAT-PMP was turned on for the AirPort Express, but that apparently didn't enable the right kind of punch through for Back to My Mac via the modem.
I determined that the Qwest DSL modem lacked UPnP, which is a shame, but it had some very fine-grained controls for enabling incoming access to specific services by name for computers on the local network. (It seems to pick up the Samba sharing name of those computers to identify them by IP address, even when the address changes; or I could assign a static private address, too. A little complicated, but well implemented and explained in the router Web interface.)
I turned on incoming access for the two ports mentioned in the Apple tech note, and now Back to My Mac works as expected. If you're in the same boat, it's worth digging out the manual or calling technical support to figure out how to enter the port information you need to allow incoming access. Some routers don't offer the level of control that my 2Wire modem from Qwest has, and you would have to either open incoming access for all computers on given ports, or map those ports from the outside world to a particular computer on your privately addressed network.
Apple's Lacunae in Security for Back to My Mac Documented -- It's worth mentioning that the Knowledge Base article I mention earlier explains briefly many of the security concerns that I mentioned in my Macworld.com article last week. Notably, Apple points out that Back to My Mac's linchpin is your .Mac password. While the password is protected when you log into .Mac and Back to My Mac uses strongly encrypted tunnels, the password itself is the only key needed to enable this feature. Thus, if you have a weak password or other people can determine it, other people could gain access to any Back to My Mac enabled system, too. Picking a strong password provides a greater defense against a password being compromised through guessing or social engineering.
Apple suggests that you use the screen locking feature that's available with the Leopard screen saver; that you use Keychain Access to enable a menu item that lets you manually lock the screen; that you disable automatic login for any user account with Leopard that has a .Mac account pre-filled in the .Mac preference pane; and that you consider the physical security of any Mac for which you've entered .Mac password information.
All of this is rather laughable, because Apple could have had a simple assistant and/or a checkbox for Back to My Mac, which would have guided you through picking a stronger .Mac password and turning on the various features it mentions. It's not rocket science.
Apple's note amounts to a statement like this: "Back to My Mac is very secure between locations and doesn't disclose any private information; but the endpoints are very weak and we didn't provide any help to you to make the endpoints stronger automatically."
It's a big admission, couched as it is as advice.
Do you have experiences with Back to My Mac for better or for worse? I'd like to hear them. If you can't get it to work, I'd like to offer some advice. Contact me at glennf@tidbits.com. I'm working on a book on the subject of remote access, and learning more about Back to My Mac problems will help me better help others through the book.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2004. Accessing My Home Music Library with Simplify Media.
When Apple first added the capability to share an iTunes library with other iTunes users on the network, my friend David Blatner loved the fact that he could sit on his porch at home with his laptop and stream music located on his computer at work. The Internet is just a big network, after all. At the time, I didn't really care because all the music I needed was already on my laptop.
Unfortunately, Apple locked down the Internet sharing aspect in a subsequent release, so now you can share only over a local network. That's what I do at home: my entire music library lives on an external hard drive connected to my old PowerBook G4, and I carry a (still large) subset of it on my MacBook Pro.
Recently I was introduced to Simplify Media, a utility for Mac OS X or Windows that opens a connection between two Internet-connected machines, no matter where they are, and enables you to stream music within iTunes (or Winamp). You set up a free account with Simplify Media and run their software on each computer you want to make accessible. Specify your music folder, log in, and forget.
When you launch iTunes with Simplify Media running, your machines show up in the Share category of iTunes's left column. Click one and you'll see your library as if it were loaded onto your computer's hard drive.
Now, when I get a hankering to hear a specific song or artist that isn't on my MacBook Pro, I can tap into the big library at home. It is almost time to start listening to holiday music, which I hate to add to my computer and then remove in January to make room for other music.
Copyright © 2007 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2004. Transparent Menu Bar, Die Die Die!.
Without speculating on precisely what flavor of Suck they were drinking in Cupertino the day Apple decided to make the Leopard menu bar transparent, can we just stipulate that for some users, at least, the imposition of this unwanted "feature", without the courtesy of being granted any sort of choice, is so annoying that we'd be willing to pay $100 just for the satisfaction of reaching down the back of Steve Jobs' jeans and giving him the biggest wedgie of his reality-distorted life? It is with a sense of indomitable smugness, therefore, that we observe that the nut has been cracked, the Gordian knot cut, and the ravelled sleeve knitted up. Someone has found the magic setting that restores to the menu bar its rightful and peacefully solid opacity.
The place to look is Steve Miner's blog. There are two approaches listed here, one rather dangerous and tricky, the other much easier and simpler. The first involves editing a .plist file, which can be difficult, not least because serious permissions issues can arise that can render your Mac unusable. The second, which you'll see if you scroll down the comments a little, proposes that you do the very same thing by a simple command in the Terminal.
Here's what to do. Copy the following into TextEdit and rejigger it so that it appears all on a single line (that is, delete any Return characters):
sudo defaults write
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1
Now copy that line. Start up Terminal, wait until you see the prompt, and choose Edit > Paste. If what you copied didn't include a final Return character, you will now have to press Return. In any case you'll be asked for your password. Nothing visible will happen afterwards, so you must now restart the computer to see whether the menu bar has turned opaque. (Don't bother logging out and in; that isn't enough. You really must restart the computer to get the change to "take".)
Your menu bar will now be very, very opaque - and very, very white, and very, very flat-looking. To fix the whiteness and the flatness, you have two choices.
One possibility is to turn the menu bar grey, as in Tiger. To do so, enter the same command in the Terminal that you gave before, but put "0" instead of "1" at the end. Or, as one reader over at MacOSXHints has suggested, try a value of "0.63"; apparently this is the most Tiger-like setting of all. Remember, you'll need to restart the computer again afterwards. This is the solution I am currently using, and I really like the way it looks.
The other possibility is to place a dash of color tinting over the white menu bar. To do so, turn to the redoubtable Peter Maurer. In his blog, he reveals that he had in fact already written an application for conquering the menu bar's transparency, but when Leopard went final, it stopped working, so he withdrew it. When combined with Steve's .plist trick, though, it does work, so he has re-released it under the name Menu Bar Tint.
Download Menu Bar Tint, install it somewhere useful, and start it up. Menu Bar Tint must actually be running in order to operate, so immediately go to the Login Items in the Accounts preference pane and drag Menu Bar Tint into the list from wherever you installed it.
You now have Menu Bar Tint's preferences window showing on your screen. (If you don't, double-click Menu Bar Tint in the Finder.) You must now set three color preferences that will be used to generate a gradient of color over your menu bar. For each one, click the color rectangle to summon the Colors dialog. In the Colors dialog, pick a color, and (this is important) don't forget to set some opacity using the Opacity slider at the bottom of the dialog, because if you don't, your colors will be completely transparent and therefore you won't see anything happening. The painting of color over your menu bar is live, so you can experiment and view the results in real time. Menu Bar Tint also has some settings for making the overall transparency of your colors different when the mouse is over the menu bar, but I don't like that effect, so I set the two sliders in the Menu Bar Tint preference dialog to the same value.
Menu Bar Tint is very clever, but it doesn't know enough to shut itself off when some application (such as DVD Player) goes into full screen mode, so I prefer to run without it for now.
And what if we change our minds and want to undo our settings entirely? In the Terminal, the following will restore the dreaded menu bar transparency:
sudo defaults delete
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
'EnvironmentVariables'
Again, you want that all on one line, neatly arranged in TextEdit, before you enter it into the Terminal. And you want to be really, really, really careful, because if you get this wrong you will hose the WindowServer .plist file completely and your computer will be unable to start up (though I suppose the file must be backed up in Time Machine, so presumably you could fix things somehow, in a pinch, from the backup).
The really big question that remains unanswered at this time is: what else might be the consequences of the setting that we've changed here? Will Core Image behave differently in any other ways, apart from changing the manner in which the menu bar is drawn?
Copyright © 2007 Matt Neuburg. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Freeverse, Inc.'s SOUND STUDIO 3.5.5 - Sound Studio is for anyoneA Simple Hack To Fix Leopard's Stacks.
I am, shall we say, prone to a lack of organization. As a child it reached such an extreme level that when my sister took over my room after I departed for college she commented to our mother that she had absolutely no previous memory of seeing the color of my carpet. This was only after the two of them shoveled my remaining belongings into a bunch of boxes that still sit in a storage unit someplace that I've never visited.
Needless to say such a profound lack of placement skills is clearly not limited to the physical world. Some people file every email and document into hierarchical folder structures for rapid recall at a moment's notice. Me? It's a good thing I see my wife every night since her face in the photo on my Mac desktop is often covered with various downloads and documents in progress.
That's why I was looking forward to Stacks in Leopard. Combined with Spotlight, it seemed an interesting way to help organize my desktop and keep my needed files at my fingertips. Spotlight, now that it works (see "Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great," 2007-11-01), will allow me to sort through my fairly massive repository of old research, documents, and presentations without having to worry about sorting things into highly organized folders. Stacks, on the other hand, seemed ideal for organizing my current projects and keeping them on my Desktop while deceiving any shoulder surfers into thinking I was some zen master of file management.
When I first installed Leopard I was pleased with the two new stacks on my Dock; one for my Documents folder, and one for a new Downloads folder where all downloads were automatically placed. Sure, some of the features Steve Jobs demonstrated in his Leopard preview keynote seemed missing (dynamic stacks), but I was happy enough with being able to put a few small folders on the toolbar and getting one-click access to my current projects.
But Stacks quickly disappointed. Rather than keeping the clean folder icons I saw immediately after installing Leopard, Stacks defaults to the icon of the last file added. This instantly destroyed the zen balance of my Dock and I was surprised that something so simple could be so darn annoying. Suddenly I couldn't tell stacks apart, and the fact that their icons kept changing made a bad thing even worse. Then, thanks to TUAW, I found an easy solution to make Stacks much more useful.
A Mac user in Japan created a series of beautiful drawer icons. Instead of just displaying the latest icon in the Dock, it turns out that Stacks really displays an overlaying stack of the icons for the files in the folder. By simply dropping the semi-translucent drawer icon into the folder the stack is based on, it appears as a drawer holding the icons for the files in the stack.
Installation is simple. First, download the icon sets. Then, drop the icon you want to represent the stack into the stack. Next, right click the stack and choose Sort By: Date Modified. The stack icons are pre-modified with a date out in 2010 so they'll always appear as the first icon in your stack, at least until 2010. (When this hack was first posted you had to adjust the date yourself from the command line, but the icon author updated the files so they are already configured for you).
Zen balance is now restored to my Desktop and Dock, and I find myself once again using Stacks to organize my current projects. For smaller folders the single-click access to the stack is surprisingly more convenient than right-clicking was under Tiger. And sorting by date modified makes even large directories useful as stacks, since I usually want to access the most recent files anyway.
Stacks still needs some work, and I'm looking forward to some of the dynamic features Steve Jobs demonstrated before Leopard was released, but this simple hack turned a disappointment into a useful feature. Now I might have to try the Mac OS X Hints trick for making a Recent Applications stack too...
Copyright © 2007 Rich Mogull. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Fetch Softworks: Fetch 5.3 has a new look for Leopard,Mac OS X 10.5.1 Fixes Numerous Leopard Flaws.
Apple has released the first update for Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.1, with a laundry list of fixes for widely reported problems among early users. It's available via Software Update in Leopard, with the downloads under 40 MB for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs; oddly, the standalone versions for the desktop and server versions of Leopard weigh in at 110 MB.
One significant improvement is Apple's statement that 10.5.1 "improves the reliability of Back to My Mac-enabled Macs appearing in the Finder's Shared Sidebar." In our experience and that of colleagues, Back to My Mac has worked erratically or not at all, but early signs are promising; see "Punching a Hole for Back to My Mac" (2007-11-17).
The 10.5.1 update also reportedly fixes problems in storing wireless network passwords and using Disk Utility, and it addresses five Mail flaws. A bug that resulted in "potential data loss issue when moving files across partitions in the Finder" has been corrected; this issue cropped up when using Command-drag to move, not copy, files in the Finder across local hard drives and mounted volumes. Most other fixes are cosmetic and minor.
One missing fix in this release is a solution for the progressive Wi-Fi performance degradation experienced by some AirPort users.
The update also fixes some security and usability issues with the firewall, some of which we have previously covered (see "Leopard Firewall Takes One Step Forward, Three Steps Back," 2007-11-05). The label for the Block All option has been updated to read "Allow Only Essential Services." In other words, the firewall behavior hasn't changed, but the label now more accurately represents how the firewall functions.
The most notable other changes are in the application firewall: Skype and other applications that modify themselves when they run are no longer rendered unusable when the application firewall is selected. In 10.5.0 the application firewall would digitally sign the code of any application you authorized for network access and refuse to run the application if the application changed (a technique to protect your computer from attackers). Now, instead of just stopping the application from running without notifying the user, 10.5.1 prompts you to allow network access again if the application has been modified.
The application firewall now also enables you to block programs running under the root user, giving you much better control over your system. These don't completely fix all of the problems with Leopard's firewall, but they're good steps in the right direction.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman, Rich Mogull. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!Final Cut Express 4 Adds AVCHD, iMovie '08 Interoperability.
Apple has released Final Cut Express 4, the latest version of its intermediate video editing software. Taking its cues (and code) from Final Cut Pro 6, the new Final Cut Express features an open format Timeline that lets you mix DV and HD formats in the same project and adds the capability to import AVCHD formatted footage (which is transcoded to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), the same way Final Cut Pro and iMovie handle the format.) Also like Final Cut Pro, simply adding the first clip to the Timeline dictates a project's format. More than 50 new FxPlug plug-ins are also included.
Apple is also touting the capability to import iMovie '08 projects, which Final Cut Express accomplishes by being able to read Apple's Final Cut XML format. (In iMovie, choose Share > Final Cut XML. When you import the text file that's generated, Final Cut Express accesses the footage from the iMovie Events folder on disk.) However, importing is limited to edit points and transitions, and doesn't include titles or video adjustments; Final Cut Express substitutes cross dissolve transitions for the ones used in the iMovie project. Audio levels are retained, however. In projects where DV and HD footage is combined, Final Cut Express crops (or doesn't) according to the iMovie project's aspect ratio setting.
Tying Final Cut Express and iMovie '08 is a sensible move. iMovie lacks several fine editing operations, such as precise control over audio levels within a clip, an area in which Final Cut Express excels. Now, iMovie can be seen as a place to store and manage video - and quickly assemble a rough cut of a movie - before handing it off to Final Cut Express for fine tuning.
The Final Cut Express package also includes LiveType 2.1 for creating animated titles. Soundtrack, the separate audio editor that shipped with Final Cut Express HD 3.5, is no longer part of the package; in a briefing, Apple said that more people were using GarageBand instead for the same features.
Final Cut Express 4 is available now for $199 (a $100 price drop from version 3.5); owners of any previous version of Final Cut Express can upgrade for $99. It's a universal application that requires a Mac with a 1.25 GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor, a PowerPC G5, or an Intel processor; AVCHD support is available only on Intel-based Macs. Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later is also required.
Copyright © 2007 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
DealBITS: Get the word out about your product AND generate sales!Apple Updates Final Cut Studio 2 Applications.
Apple has updated its Final Cut Studio 2 suite of applications, bringing Leopard compatibility and specific fixes to the set of video and audio editing tools. They're available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads.
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 (a 38 MB download) rolls in numerous improvements and compatibility updates, such as support for Sony XDCAM EX footage, the Sony HVR-V1 HDV camera, Sony HDV cameras that record to internal hard disks, the AVC-Intra footage format, and DVCPRO HD 720p50 footage. Support for the AVCHD format has been improved as well, though spanned clips ingested in Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 may need to be re-ingested. Other improvements include support for 60 fps drop frame timecode, 50p video formats, and Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) iXML metadata; new Motion templates; and a host of other fixes. Note that Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 projects are not backward compatible with Final Cut Pro 6.0.1.
The other updates aren't as involved, but include welcome changes nonetheless. Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2 (a 70 MB download) fixes issues with audio effects and adds support for 50 fps and 720p60 Final Cut Pro projects. DVD Studio Pro 4.2.1 (an 11.9 MB download) provides native support for more HDV and H.264 formats and fixes problems with processing still images and using multiple tapes in a DLT drive under Mac OS X 10.4.10. Motion 3.0.2 (a 20.6 MB download) adds support for 50 fps frame rates and 60 fps drop frame projects, and also improves performance in Motion master templates used in Final Cut Pro.
Color 1.0.2 (a 79.8 MB download) improves its support for the new formats in Final Cut Pro 6.0.2, addresses problems with round-trip operation between Color and Final Cut Pro, and fixes a number of other issues. Cinema Tools 4.0.1 (a 10 MB download) addresses bugs and limitations such as improper length values in pull lists, message text in exported lists, and support for PDF formatting. Compressor 3.0.2 (a 95.5 MB download) adds a Color tab in the Filters pane of the Inspector. Lastly, the Pro Applications Update 2007-02 (an 8.8 MB download) fixes underlying frameworks and shared components that affect these applications.
Copyright © 2007 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
MARK/SPACE, INC: Introducing SyncTogether, Mac-to-Mac syncingiPhoto 7.1.1 Increases Leopard Compatibility.
Apple has released iPhoto 7.1.1, saying only that it "supports compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues." The update is available via Software Update as a 10.8 MB download; a standalone download has also been posted. You must have already updated to iPhoto 7.1; if you've missed that version for some reason, install it first, and it in turn requires the iLife Support 8.1.1 update.
I'm in the final throes of updating my "iPhoto '08 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide" book, and I'm looking forward to this 7.1.1 update's improved "overall stability." I haven't lost any data that I know of, but iPhoto 7.1 has crashed seven times on me so far while I've been writing in November.
If you ever want to see how unreliable an application has been, try this in Tiger (in Leopard, you can just look at the number of crash log files for the application in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter):
Copyright © 2007 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.11 with Safari 3.
Safari 3 has been released for Tiger, along with a host of security updates and bug fixes, as part of the Mac OS X 10.4.11 update. The updates are mammoth: update for PowerPC (67.9 MB), combo update for PowerPC (180.8 MB), update for Intel (128 MB), and combo update for Intel (321.5 MB). That last update would take 18 hours to download over a dial-up modem or 3 minutes via a home fiber link. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther also received a revised security update - 2007-008 - for its terminal 10.3.9 release (client, 49 MB; server, 63.4 MB).
The list of security updates and bug fixes is long. Many of the security updates are rather important, fixing six kernel-level bugs. Malicious Flash content could allow a machine to be taken over, and Apple has updated Tiger to use version 9.0.47.0 of Flash Player, which is also available separately. It's worth noting that a few of the WebCore fixes are credited to a Google employee, reflecting Google's use of the WebKit (which underlies Safari) for the Android mobile-phone platform (see "Google's View of Our Cell Phone Future Is an Android, Not a GPhone," 2007-11-12).
On the non-security side, the list is more modest except for the inclusion of Safari 3 for Tiger. Many of the issues are relatively minor, although important to those that they affect. Our Kiwi friends might be happy to see that Apple, months too late, has finally provided the correct updates for Daylight Saving Time for their nation (see "Daylight Saving Time Rules Fixed for New Zealand," 2007-09-20.)
Apple also updated the Safari 3 beta for Windows XP and Vista to fix a number of security problems found in both the Mac OS X and Windows versions, as well as to add a vast amount of feature refinement. The list of new and improved items is rather extensive, including basic functionality like printing page numbers and more important features such as listing FTP directories and managing cookies.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Fetch Softworks: Fetch 5.3 has a new look for Leopard,FileMaker's Bento: Undercooked and Slightly Fishy.
Databases have been available since the dawn of personal computers, but they have always suffered from a simple issue: just about everyone needs one, but few people know how to build one.
Mac users (and computer users in general) have generally had two options. The simple method is to use databases that succeed by providing specialized interfaces and very limited customization options. Two examples: Address Book and iCal. Both are databases, and both are great if you need exactly what Apple provides. You can add a middle initial to anyone in Address Book, but if you want to keep track of people who owe you money, you're pretty much out of luck trying to calculate a grand total.
The more complicated method is database software that enables you to build exactly what you want. FileMaker Pro has generally been the software of choice covering the middle ground between "easy to learn" and "decently powerful," but FileMaker Pro's ease of use is deceptive. Building a good database in FileMaker is like writing a good novel in Word; anyone can buy and use the program, but you need skills to make the results worthwhile.
This drives the publishers of database software batty. It's easy to picture the staff meetings where the senior executive says, "If we can just come up with the database that lets my mother run her bridge club, and my brother run his fantasy football league, we'll sell a bazillion copies and retire to Aruba." For this reason, complex database software has for years come with templates that work out-of-the-box for recipes and the inevitable "project management solution." Scratch the surface, though, and all of that complexity is still there waiting to bite you.
FileMaker Inc. clearly had one of these executive meetings sometime in the past year, because they've just released a "preview edition" of Bento - which apparently is Japanese for both "lunchbox" and "FileMaker without all of the messy bits that require programming skills." Who knew?
I am a database programmer, so I took a look at the preview release of Bento with two questions in mind. First, what can't I do with it, and are these limitations that my clients would also notice? Second, does it work well enough with what it can do that I would recommend it on those merits?
Poor First Impressions -- Bento is currently a free download that gives you a full version of the software which won't expire until 14-Feb-08. All you need is a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard; the hardware requirements for Bento are exactly the same. So you might think, as I did, "Aw, heck, let's just grab it and fire it up."
This might then cause the same dawning sense of horror that I had when Bento, by default, immediately populates your initial database with all of your contacts and events from Address Book and iCal. Put another way, this beta software is touching some of the most crucial data you store on your computer. If there's a bug anywhere in Bento, man, are we in for a world of hurt.
So before you fire up Bento, make a backup. (And yes, Virginia, Time Machine may be backing up your stuff, but it doesn't have a long track record yet either. So let's make another backup.) In Address Book, go to File > Export > Address Book Archive and save your contacts. This is a newly nested menu item in Leopard. In iCal, you can still use File > Back Up iCal.
Safety net properly established, let's see what's in all those little compartments.
An iLife Approach to Data -- Bento provides an all-in-one window, where you can see all of your databases in much the same way that iTunes groups all of your media. On the left side of the window, you have a master list of "libraries," which are synonymous with FileMaker tables (in versions 7 through 9) or databases (in earlier versions). In the center of the screen is a focus on a selected library.
The right side of the window shows a master list of fields available for the selected library; for example, if you're looking at a contacts library, you'll see "Birthdate" on the right side of the window regardless of whether it's in use. This is the same functionality that Address Book hides in Card > Add Field, but the crucial difference is that many people reading this didn't know they could add fields in Address Book until just now, because it's buried in that menu. Bento scores points by making this capability more transparent.
As it happens, since I installed Leopard, I've been 200 miles away from my installation CDs for both FileMaker Pro and Quicken, so I actually have a real-world need I can use to test Bento. What I'd like to make is a quick-and-easy poker database, so I can track my play at various casinos and see how I'm doing in various types of games. Let's see how Bento stacks up.
Building My Bento Box -- When you launch Bento (and apparently every time you launch the application), a drop panel offers you some startup options, including an introductory movie. Note that the movie is also in a panel, and until you specifically close it you're likely to wonder why you can't open any menus or click on anything else in Bento. If you're like me, that is.
After watching the movie, the first thing I did was turn off the Address Book and iCal integration. This integration is obviously one of the main selling points of Bento, and one of the reasons it probably requires Leopard is that it does some slick synchronization that keeps all three applications updated no matter where you make your changes. But my test case didn't require that data, and if yours doesn't either, I suggest you disconnect them too.
The first library I needed was a list of poker rooms in various casinos. So I created a new library from the Contacts template, and used the checkboxes on the right side to pare down the fields to only names and phone numbers. Bento shines here; the equivalent FileMaker process for doing this requires much more know-how, especially for changes after your initial setup.
Next, I created a blank library for game types: three fields that say "Hold 'Em", "No Limit", and "1-2". When I dragged these fields onto the blank form where I would enter my data, the fields automatically alphabetized by name, which was slightly annoying as I had created them in the order I wanted them. But when I rearranged them, Bento treated me both to automatic alignment and a pretty animation sliding everything around. It's clearly nowhere near as customizable as a FileMaker layout, but anyone who has ever zoomed in to 400 percent to line things up in FileMaker will appreciate Bento's approach here. Bento provides a table view to go along with the form, but it doesn't automatically match the form as I expected it to. Still, with a few checkbox clicks I easily duplicated my work... once I realized that drag-and-drop doesn't work in the table view.
Finally, I created a "poker sessions" library using the Expenses template. I deleted a bunch of fields I didn't need, and they vanished with a Dockish "poof." To create relationships between libraries, you simply drag one library into the form view for another. With that done, I had a view for all of my sessions, with links back to both my list of poker rooms and my other list of game types. A quick switch back to the other libraries, and another drag-and-drop, and I could see a table under "Borgata" showing only the sessions I played there.
It was all very quick and pretty. Unfortunately, after that, it was pretty much useless.
The Preview, the Bad, and the Ugly -- This is a preview version, so any of the following issues might go away in the real release. The problem is that there are a lot of them.
The documentation claims that Bento will auto-complete when you type a few characters into a field. I'm not sure when this happens because I never saw it. Worse still, I managed to create a new casino named "Trop" when I attempted to auto-complete "Tropicana".
I was perfectly happy with a spreadsheet view rather than using the pretty forms, but relationships between libraries work only in forms. When viewing as a table, all you see are the fields for the primary library.
If you want a field showing dollars and cents, it's easy to add it to a form - but only if you know to scroll down past "number" and specifically select "currency," an option that doesn't appear onscreen until you scroll to it. In any other software, this would be no big deal - but Bento's main feature is that you shouldn't have to hunt for things like this or wonder how to format the number field in the first place.
There's a nifty pop-up clock that helps you enter a time, but don't bother hitting Enter, Tab, or Return to move to the next field - you must instead press Command-W and briefly wonder whether that will close the entire Bento interface. Speaking of pop-ups, if you want to use that easy, simple relational library you created, you have to click an icon to bring up a second window to select entries for it.
Finally - and here's the killer for any semi-sophisticated use of a database - the advanced find function barely has its high school equivalency degree. There's no method that I could discover to filter within the relationships I had created - so no chance of seeing only the No Limit games that I played at the Borgata. This to me is the key reason for creating relations, so I can cross-tabulate and slice-and-dice my data. Bento provides easy methods for creating sums and averages - but I can do that just as well using Numbers or Excel.
Bento Ingredients Are Raw -- To be honest, I was pretty certain that I'd be writing a negative review before I even launched the software... because I read the manual first. The manual is straightforward and easy to read, provided you're proficient at FileMaker. As soon as I saw constant uses of "table view" and "form view," it seemed to me that Bento accidentally defines the gap between programmers and non-technical users. Bento's developers have taken out functionality that might be too much for the poor dears, but they haven't removed the complexity in the basic concepts and language that actually cause problems with using the software. The result is "FileMaker for Dummies," and unlike the book series, the disdain for "dummies" comes across in the implementation.
This is a shame, because they're onto something here. FileMaker Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple, and I found myself wishing that Steve Jobs had wandered into their offices, picked up the Bento development team, and shipped them over to the iWork '08 group. Bento could be a spectacular addition to iWork - if only they dropped all the FileMaker terminology, and even some of the functionality, in favor of something that flowed more smoothly. Bento is FileMaker with training wheels bolted on, and anyone who could learn Bento on their own could just as easily become semi-proficient with FileMaker Pro.
What we really need is database software that stops worrying about forms and views, and starts integrating user data into part of an overall workflow. That's the beauty of Address Book and iCal - you put your data there, and it automagically appears elsewhere as needed throughout all of your Mac OS X applications. Bento provides cosmetic integration from those sources, but doesn't create integration to anywhere else. The poker session I wrote about above is simultaneously an iCal event (when), a Quicken entry (how much), and a separate bit of autonomous information that I want to work with on its own merit (lots of other data). If I want that data to appear in all three places, I have to build that third place (in FileMaker or Excel, because Bento doesn't provide sufficient tools), and then enter the data in each application separately.
Apple's applications have, at their best, provided this sort of breakthrough thinking. Bento didn't need to rethink database concepts to get a positive review - but if you're going to ship FileMaker for Dummies, you shouldn't be surprised if it's not recommended to people who aren't dummies.
So I won't be recommending Bento to any of my clients, but that's partially because my clients have needs that Bento clearly won't meet. There are two groups of people whom Bento might serve well: those who will be happy with the built-in templates and integration out of the box, and those who don't want to spend $200 on FileMaker and its own included templates. At $49 for the release version of Bento ($99 for the 5-user Family Pack), I would recommend it only to people who have a specific need for one of the included templates - although it would be a decent freebie if it were included with the bundled software in the consumer Macs.
Rob Russell on TidBITS Talk made me think of one additional feature that could really make Bento worthwhile: if Bento 1.0 ships with integration into an online library that lets the user choose among hundreds or thousands of user-contributed templates, then suddenly we do have the database that will serve the needs of the non-programmer, and that would be well worth Bento's $49. Give my grandmother ten recipe templates to choose from, and she won't need her grandson to build one. Better yet, if you tag the data so she can switch templates as desired without re-entering her recipe for matzoh ball soup, and suddenly you're providing a power that only we programmers enjoy today.
For now, Bento does have limited template options, but it's also a freebie - so you have nothing to lose by getting in on the trial (as long as you back up your Address Book and iCal data first). I have no doubt that Bento will serve the database needs of the "parents with iMacs" crowd - but their technically oriented children will be needed to get it working well unless my mythical online library exists. I think that's falling short of the premise.
[Jeff Porten is a database guru with a fondness for sushi.]
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Copyright © 2007 Jeff Porten. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
MARK/SPACE, INC: Introducing SyncTogether, Mac-to-Mac syncingFetch Softworks has released Fetch 5.3, a Leopard-focused update to the company's venerable file transfer software that goes well beyond basic compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Fetch 5.3 sports a redesigned look-and-feel that integrates better with Leopard, has been digitally signed to reduce keychain alerts, adds support for Leopard's application-specific firewall, uses the default Downloads folder in Leopard, exempts the Fetch Cache from Time Machine backups, and more. The most notable new feature that's unrelated to Leopard is that Fetch 5.3 now allows you to use the Copy and Paste commands to upload files and copy files between servers, a perfectly sensible approach that's sometimes easier than drag-and-drop.
My favorite feature in Fetch remains WebView, the clever way you can set it to copy HTTP URLs for files you've uploaded to an FTP server. I use Fetch for uploading article images because once I've uploaded them, I can just select the file in Fetch, press Command-C, and then paste the reformatted HTTP URL into my article.
Fetch 5.3 is a universal binary that requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later; it's a 16 MB download. The update is free for all Fetch 5 users; upgrading from Fetch 4 costs $15 and new copies cost $25. Free licenses are available for educational and charitable use.
Copyright © 2007 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Seamlessly run Windows on your Mac with VMware Fusion! RunClean Up Messy Folders with Hazel.
I recently wrote about how keeping backups in BBEdit saved my bacon during a recent server crash (see "BBEdit 8.7.1 Adds Features, Fixes Bugs, Saves Data," 2007-11-08). I ended the piece by commenting that I hadn't realized I was storing over 17,000 files in that BBEdit Backups folder, so I trashed everything from before 2007.
After reading about my situation, Chris Owen of Hubris Communications wrote to tell me about a short cron script he runs every night on his BBEdit backups directory to delete all files older than six months, plus files older than 30 days that are also greater than 500K in size. For those who are or wish to become cron-savvy, here's what Chris sent me. (Modifying this script to work on machines other than Chris's is left as an exercise to the reader.)
#!/bin/bash
find /Temp/Backups/ -mtime +180 -exec rm {} ;
find /Temp/Backups/ -size +500 -mtime +30 -exec rm {} ;
I thought Chris's point was brilliant, but I didn't have time to wade through the Unix man pages to figure out how to set up a cron script. Besides, I've been looking for uses for Noodlesoft's Hazel, a snazzy little utility that watches specified folders and does things with the contents when your criteria are matched.
After 30 seconds of work in the Hazel preference pane to implement both of Chris's rules, my BBEdit Backups folder was cleaner than ever. And thanks to Hazel's constant lookout, I don't have to worry about that folder's contents growing out of control any more.
Needless to say, Hazel can match files on a wide variety of conditions, and it can do a lot more than just move files to the Trash. See the screenshot for the conditions and actions menus, which list all the possibilities.
For anyone who finds themselves needing to manage a regular influx of files - whether that management involves deleting, renaming, importing into iPhoto, or whatnot - Hazel is the easiest method I know about. Hazel 2.1.1 costs $21.95 and is available for 14-day trial; it's a 1.6 MB download and requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Copyright © 2007 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
Seamlessly run Windows on your Mac with VMware Fusion! RunPGP Causes Leopard Slowdown, But Fix Is Simple.
I don't like being kept waiting. And the 10 to 15 seconds it was taking for a beta of Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith 2.2 to preview each email message in Leopard was far, far too long. Bare Bones head and founder Rich Siegel is a pal of mine, so my quality assurance email report was full of detail and umbrage. Rich suggested that Spotlight under Leopard might be engaged in some activity - Mailsmith 2.2 uses Spotlight quite effectively - and that I might see an improvement after a couple of days.
Drat the man, he was right, and he's a gloater. He sent me a tweet via Twitter: "@glennf Stay after class and write on the board a hundred times: 'I will never doubt @siegel again.' Hm. Might make a good 'Simpsons' intro."
But after installing QuickTime 7.3 and restarting the PowerBook, the problem recurred. I sent Rich some more troubleshooting data - a Sample Application report available with a button click via Leopard's Activity Monitor that pulls in tons of low-level detail about what a program is doing - and he saw the problem: PGP Desktop.
Although I didn't have PGP Desktop 9 launched, the pgp-agent process was still running. I disabled the item in the Login Items portion of my account setup in the Accounts preference pane and restarted. No good. Terminal showed me that when Mailsmith launched, several pgp-agent daemons would also appear. Mailsmith works directly with PGP's encryption tools; other mail programs tend to rely on Appl
