ReWinD Blog

Pretty good list that someone pointed me to today.

46 Tips for the Business iPhone User

Apple, Technology Apple, iphone

I’ve been having intermittent issues with my MacBook dropping the connection to the SMB share on my Solaris server. It wasn’t bad enough for me to spend any time trying to troubleshoot it because a quick stop and start on the airport would usually allow me to mount the network volume again. The problem usually showed up a few times a week and never lasted more than a minute or two. My Windows PC, which is wired to the ethernet network, never had any issues with dropping this connection to the same SMB share.

After the AirPort Extreme Update 2008-004 that came out just a couple weeks ago, I haven’t had any problems at all. My connection to the share on the Solaris server has been rock solid. It’s one of those things that took me a while to notice, but after a week went by getting the disconnect message from the Finder I realized how nice it was to just have the connection work.

If you’re wondering why I care, it’s because I manage my iTunes library from my laptop, but have my iTunes music folder on the network share. All the content is stored there, but the library file (like an index of iTunes content) is on my MacBook. When iTunes can’t find the network volume, it saves any downloads (usually podcasts that download automatically) to the local volume on the MacBook. It’s simple to copy the content back into the assigned iTunes Music folder when it’s available, but running “Consolidate Content” takes a while and locks up iTunes while it runs.

I’m also extremely grateful for how the Finder was rewritten in Leopard to allow multi-threading for network shares. Anyone who’s had a Mac for more than a couple years will remember the pain of watching the beachball in the Finder when a network volume disappeared, or you put a notebook to sleep with a share mounted and then woke it up on another network and it spent eternity trying to figure out why this new network didn’t have the old network share available. I still occassionaly forget to put away my home network share when I leave, but now the Finder lets me know much more gracefully without any lockup of the computer while it figures out what I’ve done.

Anyways, thank you Apple for fixing this bug that looks like it was caused by the Airport driver.

Apple, Technology Airport, Apple, iTunes, smb

OK. Delicious Library isn’t running on the iPhone (yet?) but here is a shot of what the web export page looks like when viewed from an iphone. I like it.

Apple, Technology deliciouslibrary, deliciouslibrary2, deliciousmonster, wilshipley

Another tweet from Wil Shipley…

New (DL2-enabled) store is holding up well, we’re updating the DL1 website this weekend for rollout. Finally. Free at last.

It seems likely that DL2 should be available to download (and purchase in the new store) quite soon. I’m looking forward to this app, but I’d still like to see some improvements with sharing online.

Apple, Technology deliciouslibrary, dl2, wil

I’ve tried to pick up on subtle hints from Wil Shipley’s blog and other public comments about the release date for Delicious Library 2 in the past, without much success. It turned out to be a false alarm, because Delicious Monster was handing out coupons for DL2 last year, not the finished product.

This time, I feel a little more confident. This tweet seems pretty definitive that, in fact, DL2 is done.

I hope that Peter Gabriel is still excited about saving $60 in upgrade fees after a year has gone by waiting to use those coupons.

Apple, Technology deliciouslibrary, deliciouslibrary2, deliciousmonster, dl2, petergabriel, wilshipley

If you launch Google Notifier for Mac, you’ll be prompted to “upgrade” to the latest version. I’m thrilled to report that this latest version 1.9.97 works perfectly with Google Apps for Your Domain. All the links in the pull-downs will take you to the appropriate page in the hosted versions of Google Apps Mail or Calendar.

I tried to find release notes to find what else has changed in this release but have been unsuccessful in the last 2-1/2 minutes. In fact, when you get to the “What is Notifier?” page in Google Help Center, the link for information on the Mac version of Notifier goes nowhere (404 error).

I reset Safari to check for the bug where Mail notification would only work when you had logged in from Safari first. So far, no signs of that bug either.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the invaluable Gmail+Growl for Google Notifier which allows you to run all the Notifier notifications through the Growl notification notifier.
Have I mentioned that I love Google Apps?

Apple, Technology Apple, gafyd, gmail, google, Technology

Wil Shipley reveals in the midst of a stream of consciousness blog post that attendees at TED only received a coupon for the next version of Delicious Library. The actual app is still not finished (yet).

C’mon, Wil. We’re rooting for you!

Apple, Technology Apple, deliciouslibrary, deliciouslibrary2, deliciousmonster, dl2, Technology, wilshipley

A couple weeks ago I noticed that Google Notifier was no longer giving me notifications of new email. All this started right around the time that Google launched their Premier Edition service. I was going to write about this back then, but the post sat in my drafts while I was trying to figure out what was happening. I think I finally have the full (if somewhat disappointing) answer.

I sign in with my Google Apps account (not a regular Gmail account). Unfortunately, Google Notifier hasn’t been updated to work properly with Google Apps for Your Domain. The links to open your calendar, inbox, compose a new message, and so on try to take you to the regular Gmail or Calendar pages. The login fails because Notifier is presenting credentials for Google Apps. What was more puzzling was that the new items list still worked in Calendar, but not in Mail. The notifications and the count of new mail items in the menu bar used to work and now I’ve figured out how to make them work again.

The key (for some unknown reason) is to login to Google Apps in Safari first. Yep, that’s it. I have Firefox set as my default browser and rarely use Safari so I hadn’t noticed until I logged in with that browser. Once you do that, Google Notifier will start working again for email notifications. I still can’t open my Mail from Notifier, but the notifications and unread message count work.

This a good spot to put a little plug in for Growl as well. All you need is Gmail+Growl, which will feed the notifications to Growl so you can integrate them into your other system notifications.

I did a little digging around in the package for Notifier and there are several hardcoded references to the gmail page. Along with the dependency on having a valid cookie with Safari, this makes Google Notifier less than perfect. Hopefully, someone will get around to updating this utility to work properly with mail.google.com/a/<domain> as well as mail.google.com/accounts.

Apple, Technology Apple, email, firefox, gafyd, gmail, google, mac, notifier, osx, safari, Technology

Don’t run off and check the Delicious Monster site or the unofficial forums just yet. Still, I think I’ve got the goods on Delicious Library 2. In Wil Shipley’s latest personal blog post, he talks a lot about his visit to TED this past week and how he’s completely infatuated with Meg Ryan. After obsessing about whether Matt Groening really thinks he’s funny or Meg Ryan digs his buns of steel, Shipley dropped a innocuous comment that Delicious Library 2 is included in the TED swag bag.

He also mentioned that Peter Gabriel is going to save $60 in upgrade fees (and yes, I’m sure that is pretty important to someone in his position). I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that means the upgrade fee is $20 (or half the cost of a full license) and Gabriel owns three licenses (which is three more than anything I’ve ever sold to an A-list celebrity). Still, I’m not sure why receiving one copy of DL2 would remove the need to upgrade other licenses. If Gabriel doesn’t need separate upgrade licenses, why did he need separate full licenses in the first place?

So why do I care? Well, I like collecting stuff. I’m a bit of a bibliophile (I’m working on a Master’s in History, so this should be no surprise) and Delicious Library is a fun app. The need for it isn’t so great since I’ve discovered LibraryThing last year, but I still enjoy it. I also have a modest CD and DVD collection. DVDProfiler, which I love, hasn’t been updated in a while and Listal seems to cover most of my needs, but I still like the offline access in DL.

I still think that the next generation of collecting software needs to be online, or at least an online/desktop hybrid. Collecting is in the sweet spot for social software concepts. I’d like to manage my collection, but also share it with others, see what my friends like, get recommendations based on the collective wisdom of the crowd, leverage a shared database of detailed information collated by OCD collectors (the great success of DVDProfiler), write reviews to share, rate items, etc. All those things work better online.

There’s still room for desktop software and offline tools, but I’d love to see something like bi-directional sync with DL2. Here’s to hoping!

In any case, we should find out what DL2 can do as soon as the upgrades are made available to the unwashed masses who didn’t make it to TED this year.

Apple, Technology Apple, collecting, deliciouslibrary, dvdprofiler, librarything, listal, Technology, TED

I ran across this podcast/article at HTGuys today. It gives a pretty good high-level description of a working home theater system that uses the Mac mini as the hub for video and audio. The system is primarily used for movie viewing (ripped from DVD’s) and the bulk of the conversation is about this, but it does mention recording TV as well.

This article highlights some of the advantages that the mini provides over the AppleTV. In particular, the mini allows for AC3 audio passthrough to your receiver for surround sound. There doesn’t appear to be a way to encode surround sound into AppleTV-compatible files. The mini also allows for the possibility of TV recording and central storage that can be shared out to the rest of the house (the AppleTV has a 40GB hard drive for caching content shared from another computer’s iTunes library). With a wired network, the system here is able to stream HD content to three computers at the same time.

As much as I’d like to dump my cable DVR and roll my own, I still can’t make up my mind which approach to take. More and more, I see disadvantages to the AppleTV approach.

Apple, HomeTheater, Technology Apple, AppleTV, HomeTheater, htpc, iTunes, mac, Technology