I’ve said it many times before: for the most part, I just don’t see the point of Dashboard widgets. Ever since the introduction of Tiger, there have perhaps been three or four that I’ve shown any interest in; none of those has been used for long. My view has always been that everything I might need from a widget can be done just as easily with an extra browser tab.

But I just found a couple of widgets that break out of the browser with style. Both found at keilly.com, they are the BBC Listen Again widget and the ZX Spectrum widget.

Cocoalicious is a neat open source app for posting links to a del.icio.us account, and browsing through your del.icio.us library (pun intended) outside of your browser.

Sadly, for some users recently, Cocoalicious has been broken. For some reason it simply wouldn’t connect properly to del.icio.us accounts. Old links were stored just fine, but new ones couldn’t be added. At least, that’s how the problem manifested itself to me.

Anyway, the good news is that there appears to be a work-around. Take a look at the very final comment on this blog post and you’ll find simple instructions for amending the Keychain item for your account in Cocoalicious - doing this seems to get things working once again.

With all this podcasting I’ve been doing (iTunes link), my G5 tower’s 250GB hard drive is almost full. Perhaps not coincidentally, this ol’ Mac has been rather cranky lately. I remember reading that once the free space on your system drive dips below ten percent of its capacity, OS X starts to exact revenge, crashing randomly and forgetting things. That sure sounds familiar.

Be that as it may, I just ordered a 500GB internal drive to start offloading some of the detritus like audio sample libraries and disk images for DVDs I hope to watch someday.

The last time I installed a secondary drive, I was so awed by its relative size (20 times bigger than my stock Mac drive!) that I partitioned it into five slices. After a while, that just became a hassle.

So this time, I’m wondering: What would you recommend? One partition for a basic system backup and the rest for files? One big partition? Seven little partitions named after short men with pointy hats? Leave a comment and let us know what works for you.

UPDATE, 2007-03-03: The drive arrived today and, keeping all of your comments in mind, I set it up with just one big partition. Using Grand Perspective, I found that the biggest space-sucker on the old drive was ripped DVDs, so I transferred all of them to the new drive—regaining 95GB in the process! Kinda embarrassing to realize I’m that far behind in my movie-watching.

Looks like the AppleTV is delayed by a few weeks. I just got an email from the Apple Store.

Thank you for ordering the new Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to
wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your
widescreen TV.

Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we
now expect to begin shipments in mid-March, not in February as originally
anticipated.

Last week, developers Brent Simmons (Ranchero/NewsGator) and Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater) announced that the blog-posting application MarsEdit would be taken over by Red Sweater. Exciting news for longtime MarsEdit users, a group that includes Brent himself:

Daniel knows that “operators are standing by” — I’ll give him the help he needs make this transition successful. A big part of my motivation is selfish: I’m a MarsEdit user, and I want to see the product keep improving. But, more importantly, I want to make sure MarsEdit users are happy, and this is the best way to do that. (From a Q&A at newsgator.com.)

Presto change-o, and Daniel is already putting out version 1.1.3, which he describes as “mostly a bug-fix and rebanding release.”

Since I post to multiple blogs on various platforms, having a dedicated application like MarsEdit or Ecto has become integral to my workflow thanks to the efficiency it lends. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on future development.

It’s a pleasure to see developers cooperating like this, keeping notable apps like MarsEdit going rather than being “disappeared.” Makes me ponder what other apps, whether on hold like MarsEdit or abandoned like so many have been, could be resurrected by today’s crop of developers.

Have any ideas? Who would be your ideal developer + old application pairings?

Last year I wrote a short ebook for O’Reilly called Your Life in Webapps. It covered some basics about the shape of webapps and how feasible it was for people to switch completely to a webapp lifestyle.

My conclusion at the time was that though it was technically feasible, it was not necessarily advisable.

Recently I received the same question from two different people; “What is a good replacement for Word on my Mac?” My brother Nathaniel asked me this when his version of Word stopped working on his new Mac. Microsoft apparently is able to install software on Apple’s new computers providing a preview of Word amongst other things. When the preview software expires, the software useless unless you pay up. My brother was a little upset, he didn’t really understand how the software got on his computer in the first place since he did not install it, and why did it suddenly stop working? And no, he was not prepared to pay for something he thought already belonged to him. He uses his computer for writing, “a glorified word processor” as he called it, but he uses iTunes and does some web surfing too. One would not necessarily call him a “power user.”

On the other hand, my good friend Gustav is a power user. He blogs, runs Excel programs he’s written, and is teaching himself Ruby on Rails on his machine. He is always running the latest version of OS X and when he asked about a replacement for Word he said he wanted something with a smaller memory footprint that Open Office, which is a bit of a resource hog. Abiword was the perfect thing then, it is just a word processing program, nothing more.

Abiword is a free text editor (free as in beer and as in freedom), licensed under the GPL. Abiword looks a lot like Word, or rather how you expect Word to look. I have no idea what Word looks like today, with the release of Vista surely the interface has changed in Word but I do not use it. Abiword has all the right buttons in the usual places, it is very easy to get acquainted with its interface. It has all the tools you’d expect, spell checking, various formatting, plus some things you might not expect. One very handy feature is that it reads and writes all kinds of documents. You can use it to write html for example and of course it can read all your Word documents (.doc) and rich text (.rtf) documents. Abiword also has a versioning system. This is particularly useful if you make multiple revisions of your documents or need to get back text you wrote previously. It changes the text of different revisions to make it clear what has changed. It even has a built in tool to report bugs so you can aid in the development of the software.

Abiword has been developed for years and has a mature code base. It has versions for nearly every platform including the big three: Mac OS X, linux and Windows. I strongly recommend it to anyone who needs a word processor.

Our esteemed colleagues at TUAW have suggested that UK-based Mac users might want to sign a petition calling on Tony Blair to:

prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users only, and instruct the corporation to provide its service for other operating systems also.

If only it were that easy. While the BBC is funded by public subscription, it is no more under the Prime Minister’s control than any of the commercial TV stations in the UK. Indeed, it has a history of winding governments and Prime Ministers up the wrong way, and there’s not a great deal they can do about it.

The cause is a worthy one, and any attempt to tie up content in MS-favourable DRM would probably be met with outcry. But this petition isn’t the way to deal with it.

So my advice to British Mac users with an opinion on this is not to sign the petition at pm.gov.uk, but rather to read, and respond to, the BBC’s own consultation document. Comments made there will have far more impact.

UNEASY Silence reports that the new Bandwagon iTunes backup service that I posted about a few days back has hit a few stumbling blocks. Their $69/year unlimited-storage introductory price had me wondering how the developers were going to make any money. The developers are wondering the same thing right now.

As of 24 February, they have stepped back from their initial offer and have opened up a forum on their blog to discuss more realistic pricing that will allow them to stay in business.

Now that I own my own HDTV, I decided to see how the widescreen movies I encoded for my iPod played back in high def. I connected my iPod to my new TV. In Videos -> Video Settings I set both Widescreen and TV Out to “On”. Then I selected a video and played it.

There are a couple things you need to take into account when connecting to your HDTV from the iPod:

First, you are creating a standard definition signal from your iPod. To the best of my knowledge the current generation of iPods doesn’t do HDMI or anything like that. So you’re going to want to compare your video quality to the way DVDs play back on your TV and not, say, a true High Definition signal.

Second, you’ve got to use your most optimal compression for that big screen and that means QuickTime Pro. It allows you to bypass the published iPod 768 kbps limits and produce 624×352 video at 1600+ kbps. Obviously, you can produce better video quality than that, and you can even watch it in iTunes or Front Row, but it won’t sync to your iPod.

More after the jump…

Thanks to a post on Lifehacker, I found out about the It’s All Text Firefox plugin that lets you edit any text area in your favorite editor.

From the comments on the plugin page, some Mac users have had issues with getting it to find their editing applications, and it is still in beta, so your YMMV.

What I did as a workaround was point the plugin at the /usr/bin/open utility. This will open the field’s content in a document in whatever app you have as your default text-file opener — as man open says,

The open command opens a file (or a directory or URL), just as if you had double-clicked the file’s icon. If no application name is specified, the default application as determined via LaunchServices is used to open the specified files.

Hopefully they will get this working properly soon.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“Within a Mile of Home” by Flogging Molly
This genre-defying septet got its start playing countless gigs at the L.A. bar Molly Malone’s. They’ve been compared to raucous Irish rockers The Pogues and Black 47. Hear them for yourself with this live track, taken from the documentary Whiskey on a Sunday.

“The Strikes” by Nakatomi Plaza
Based in Brooklyn, NY, this punk-rock trio has embraced the DIY ethic for the past eight years, touring and promoting themselves relentlessly. Today’s free download is from their Frog Octopus Wolf EP, a precursor to their upcoming third album, Unsettled.

“The Upper Ten/The Lower Five” by Ghost Stories
After years of playing in different groups, musician Ron Lewis was ready for his own project. The resulting album, Quixoticism, was nearly seven years in the making. Its songs, including today’s free download, were recorded in an empty house on just eight tracks.

“Sultanas de Merkaillo” by Ojos de Brujo
Barcelona’s internationally renowned flamenco collective has expanded their audience by fusing different styles of music, including hip-hop, rock, and reggae/dub. These influences can be heard on their new album, Techari, which includes today’s free download.

“Somewhere Girls” by Secretary Bird
Some may know singer-songwriter Mike Semple from his work with Friends of Dean Martinez and the score to Fast Food Nation. His current band, Secretary Bird, is likely to win him even more fans with this title track to their new album.

“Sweet Weepin’ Jesus” by Kemp Harris
In the tradition of stark, thematically driven albums such as Sam Cooke’s Night Beat, singer-songwriter Kemp Harris’ sophomore release, Edenton, is a journey back to the raw-boned gospel, R&B, and blues of his youth.

“Weapon X” by X-Clan
The legendary hip-hop group is back with a new album after years away from the scene following the death of one of their own. Return From Mecca continues the Clan’s stream-of-conciousness style and puts commercial hip-hop stereotyping on notice.

Apple just released a nice support doc detailing AirPort Extreme (802.11n) USB drive support. Looks like you can use HFS+, FAT16, or FAT32 with a 512-byte block size. (Apple notes that not all USB storage devices use 512-byte blocks.) No RAID volumes and no partitions allowed. (Update: At least that’s the official word. In the comments below, Jason reports that he’s had no problems using a 2-partition disk with his new AirPort Extreme.)

Here’s my weekly summary of Freeware, Open Source, and free web services mentioned in my personal blog last week.

PongSaver: Mac OS X Screensaver
In a retro-mood? Check out this freeware Mac OS X screensaver from Rogue Amoeba…

PongSaver

The description from the website says it is an OS X screensaver/clock which keeps time by using the score of a game of Pong.

InkScape 0.45
The Open Source multiplatform InkScape 0.45 vector graphics drawing application was updated on February 5. Some of the new features described on InkScape site are: Most notably is the new Gaussian Blur feature, which allow softly and naturally blurring Inkscape objects like path, shapes, groups, text, and images. Gaussian blur enables a wide range of photorealistic effects: arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows, glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other objects to achieve the “feathered mask” effect.

Democracy Internet TV
The multiplatform Open Source Democracy Internet TV version 0.95 was just released. The first quick gotcha (only if you use it with Windows) is that the Windows Firewall intercepts its outgoing network request (presumably for updates and torrent files) and errors out the first time around. If you squint, you can probably see the Python trackback error messages in the screen cap here. Subsequent starts errored twice before the player started up.

I upgraded BIAS Peak to version 5.2.1 today prior to doing a bunch of AIFF-to-MP3 conversions — and kept getting this wacky warning:

Apparently not all MP3s are equal.

Peak’s Save dialog has a checkbox called Auto File Type Extensions, which seems to be what’s causing the problem, but shouldn’t the program be smart enough to figure out that x = x?

Noted on Daring Fireball: Apple has posted a set of developer interviews from MWSF 2007 on its website.

My G5 tower crashed today, so I thought I’d reboot it from the Disk Warrior CD and clean out the demons. But first I had to get sneaky.

Holding down the mouse button so the CD tray would open on reboot, I hit the Mac’s power button. I heard the glorious startup sound, then…nothing. So I powered off again, slid the CD drive cover down with my finger, and poked a straightened paper clip in the tiny hole under the drive to open it. (It sounds ridiculous just reading this back.)

Plopping in the CD, I started up again while holding down the C key so the Mac would boot from the CD drive. And…nothing. Hmm. Had I damaged the drive by forcing it open?

So last night on “Heroes”, a blue iPod nano was featured prominently as part of the ongoing story. Take it as a given that much of Heroes requires a suspension of disbelief: people flying, villains eating brains to acquire superpowers[1], etc. Last night, though, stretched the credulity of some viewers to the limit.

Upon returning to the scene of a crime that had taken place the previous evening, an iPod nano was still blasting away its music the next morning. Either the reality of Heroes must operate in an alternate universe from the one we live in or that nano must have genetically-altered super batteries. You tell me. Was that nano “on the list”?

[1] Magically delicious!

If you live near a Dollar Tree and you own an iPod, you might want to pop by and see whether they have any iPod Video XtremeMac TuffWraps in stock. The 3-Pack iPod accessory cases, which usually sell for $30-$35 per 3-pack have been sighted in these dollar stores for a buck. My local store had them sized for 30GB, 60 GB and nanos but stock will vary by location.

Also on offer for a buck: XtremeMac’s AirPlay FM transmitter for the iPod (older style ones, with the port next to the jack). Better yet, this comes with a free one-month 3-audio Audible membership–albeit only for new customers. This is the same transmitter you find at Amazon for about $7 and up.

With the official release of Lightroom 1.0, it’s a good time to take a look at the respective strengths of both offerings from Adobe and Apple. Along those lines, something kind of fun is brewing on the O’Reilly Digital Media site. On the Inside Aperture blog, Micah Walter is field testing both Aperture and Lightroom on a real shoot, and posting his findings daily for this week. His first post, Aperture vs. Lightroom: Let the Games Begin, sets the stage on location in the West Indies.

Over on Inside Lightroom, Michael Clark is conducting a similar comparison, and has posted his first round of thoughts in A Comparison: Adobe Lightroom vs. Apple Aperture. Both Micah and Michael are working photographers with good technical chops. I think they will handle this comparison with skill and fairness.

If you’re weighing the pros and cons between these two applications, you might want to follow what these guys have to say.

Every Mac person has that friend who’s got the black MacBook. They spent the extra $150 for the black shell, just to be that one different guy carrying the matte black hotness. However, they still get a white power adapter, remote, and all the rest of the accessories. Is it just me, or is this one of those giant ideosyncracies of Apple? How the heck did that make it past His Steveness? Shouldn’t all the accessories for the Black MacBook come in matte black as well?

So, recently I bought an Airport Extreme, one of the flashy new 802.11n models that Steve released unannounced at MWSF, and I absolutely love it. 802.11n, for the uninitiated, is a draft spec for wireless that vastly exceeds the current 802.11g standard, in range and bandwidth, and should be finalized any day now. However, my friend Jay noted that the new 802.11n Airport don’t work with the TiVo wireless network dongles UNLESS they’re in 802.11b/g compatibility mode! Rumor has it this will be fixed eventually, but in the meantime, TiVo users, be wary!

Remember Bruce’s post a few weeks ago about storing his iTunes Library on S3. He said he’d be willing to spend $75 a year to be able to back up his data and access it from anywhere in the world. He was all ready to sign up until the realities of S3 costing dropped into his lap. At $0.20 per GB transfer and $0.15 per GB per month storage, it would end up costing him a lot more that $75/year.

Well, there may now be a solution. Bandwagon (formerly Xacktunes) will offer unlimited S3 storage for your iTunes for only $69/year (at least as an introductory price). No, this isn’t a “take it with you anywhere” scheme, but rather a back-it-all-up so you don’t lose your purchases when your Mac dies: music, videos, audio books, plug-ins, everything. It doesn’t matter whether you rip it yourself or you buy it from iTunes.

More after the jump…

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy! Be aware, however, that the Napster site is pretty slow and unresponsive today, so if you’re having any problems with downloads, you might want to try again later.

“The House Under the Hill” by The Finches
This San Francisco-based duo writes and performs songs about fantasy architecture, filial love, and travel anxiety, all with a tip of the hat to Leonard Cohen and Francois Hardy. This song is from their debut full-length album, Human Like a House.

“My God, It’s Full of Stars” by Aerial
These Swedish rockers rock. In one year, Aerial toured Europe and made their sophomore album The Sentinel–a collection of focused tracks packed with the great guitar work for which the band is known.

“Be My Valentine” by Dr. Elmo
Nothing says “romance” on Valentine’s Day like Dr. Elmo. This veterinarian’s comedy carol, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” has sold over 10 million copies. Today’s download is another tongue-in-cheek ditty dedicated to the day of love.

“A Friend of Mine” by Piebald
Already veterans of Boston’s indie scene, these high-school comrades have seven albums to their credit and have headlined shows with My Chemical Romance. Today’s download is from their latest album, Accidental Gentlemen.

“Steady as She Goes” by James Yorkston
Hailing from a small village in Scotland, this former punk rocker turned acoustic singer-songwriter first gained recognition with Radio One god John Peel. His latest album, The Year of the Leopard, has finally been released in the U.S.

“The Great Compromise” by Kingsbury
After releasing two EPs, Orlando, FL’s very own complete their full-length debut despite losing two of the original members. While most groups would have lost their focus, Kingsbury has never been better. Today’s download comes from The Great Compromise.

“Lest I Fall” by Man of Sorrows
Pushing the boundaries of hardcore metal, these lads from San Antonio, TX mix in Latin percussion with their crunchy guitars and low-end driving drums. Your typical metal? Probably not. Consider this the new sound of Christian metal.

Over at pbs.org, the “I, Cringely. The Pulpit” column takes on AppleTV, particularly asking why the Mac Mini, Airport Extreme and AppleTV share the same stackable footprints: “There is simply no imaginable situation where you would want to stack together these three components that are clearly made to be stacked. Unless what you want to do is somehow connect the Apple TV to the Mac Mini through the AirPort at a range of three inches just to take advantage of 802.11n, which the Apple TV and the AirPort Extreme have but the Mac Mini doesn’t. Well that’s just crazy.”

The columnist suggests that perhaps Steve Jobs is just messing with us–or that the seeds of a peer-to-peer movie distribution network can be found within the AppleTV’s always-on state. A Peer-to-peer system, he suggests, could reduce the network costs for iTunes, “making the network costs effectively free. Hello HDTV!”. Except of course, for that wonky DRM stuff.

Cool article. Read it all.

There are few things that I love more than a good parody, and one of them is a parody of a parody. When Justin Timberlake did his appearance on SNL and did his best Color Me Badd impression with Andy Samberg, I laughed like crazy. Timberlake’s Dick in a Box skit was the hit of YouTube for weeks, and it still makes my wife laugh like crazy. So, what’s this got to do with the Mac? Well, a couple silicon valley women have parodied it perfectly for Valentine’s Day with their Mac in a Top video that may or may not be safe for work (which is why I didn’t embed it here!) but is a hilarious, if adult, look at the popularity of the Apple brand. Check it out, and chuckle. Just not at work. Unless your workplace, well, has a sense of humor.

Here’s my weekly summary of Freeware, Open Source, and free web services mentioned in my personal blog last week.

Gawker: Create Mac OS X Time Lapsed Video with a Web Cam
Here’s an Open Source app for Mac OS X that will probably redirect all productive time to making amusing time-lapsed videos.

Gawker

If you feel like taking on Wallace and Gromit (or Gumby for the older crowd), you should take a look at some of the same videos on the Gawker site for inspiration.

Fugu: Mac OS X SCP Client
Fugu 1.2.0 was released on May 2, 2005 and hasn’t been updated since (though there is a roadmap through version 1.5). However, it is still a useful utility if you transfer files using SCP/SFTP instead of FTP.

Although you can open up a Mac OS X terminal window and use the scp command from the command line, it is often nice to have a GUI interface for the task. Fugu uses what Windows users often refer to as the Norton Commander interface (a reference to an old DOS application). It provides two vertical panes. The one on the left is your local Mac.

FlightGear Flight Simulator
Here’s a very nice looking (based on the screenshots) Open Source multiplatform flight simulator app…

FlightGear Flight Simulator

Here’s a link to the Free Software Magazine’s review of it.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes launched yesterday (Feb. 8). It caused such a rush that the service went offline for a few hours and is still a bit flaky even a day later. Pipes lets you consume feed data from any site and then use simple logic or combinations of feeds to product a custom result. The programming is created using an easy to use drag and drop graphical interface. The example shown here is my first attempt. It takes the feed from O’Reilly’s Inside Port 25 site where Matt Asay and I write blogs related to Microsoft and the Open Source world. It then checks through the feed and pulls out just the blog items I wrote. A simple change could reverse it by just grabbing Matt’s blog items.

When I first switched from Windows to Mac OS, I was an obstinate and arrogant young man who thought he knew all the answers.

Having spent the previous years working extremely hard to keep Windows stable and usable, I mistakenly took the same approach with Mac OS X. On starting to use it, I decided that I was the boss, and I would make the system work my way.

If you haven’t gone over to play with the new Yahoo!Pipes yet, you just might want to give it a try. It’s kind of like a Quartz Composer/Tinker Toy-inspired layout system for information and it’s tons of fun. Pipes allow you to collect and filter information to create custom information feeds.

To get started, visit Yahoo Pipes via Firefox. (Pipes works a lot better with Firefox than Safari.) Click “create a new pipe” and log into your Yahoo account.

More after the jump…

Objc-appscript is:

high-level Apple event bridge that allows you to control scriptable Mac OS X applications from Objective-C programs

Rixstep: You’ve just hosed your system, dude! You’re toast!

MacUser: Where is the Mac news?. A good question. News about some kind of update to Mac hardware - any Mac hardware - is long overdue from Apple. Before Christmas, I was pondering the purchase of a new machine about now, but I think I’m going to hang on a little longer.

A fun thread on the Camino forums asks: Who are you, Camino users?. The thread’s been open (and active) for months now… not too late to dive in.

UK Tinderbox users: look out for the forthcoming Tinderbox weekend in Cambridge. You couldn’t pick a better location.

Lynda L. Fudold writes in that she’d like to see a Lazy Web-style resource for Mac apps:

I’m not a coder, but an Apple Authorized Business Agent, as well as
active participant in a couple of MUGs, and I’ve attended a couple of
O’Reilly Mac OS X conferences.

I happened to have had a conversation with a prospect/client
yesterday, who is pining away after a piece of software no longer
commercially available, that ran on Mac OS 9, and previous Mac OS’s.
This is the second time someone has said to me, gee if software xyz
were still available…

So, I’m wondering, is there a format out there, on your site or
elsewhere, for folks who’d like to see something developed, or to
submit ideas to the guys and gals who have the skills for writing the
code?

I’m not aware of a resource like this, but I think it’s a very interesting idea. I’m curious if the Mac developer community would like to see us add something like this to Mac DevCenter.

Does something like this already exist? Would you use it if it did? Would developers monitor a resource like this for possible projects? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

I mostly use linux to get my work done, but occasionally I am very glad that my network has Macs on it. It means I can easily buy music from iTunes or use Skype for example.

I thought I would try out Skype with video, all the cool kids are doing it so why not. Oops, not available for linux. Hmm, try some other apps that do the same thing? Mixed results. Ekiga is not so great, other tools are just not usable, not least because they are built in Tcl. Time to move to the Mac.

Cool, plug in my new web cam, the Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000, and off we go. . . but wait! The web cam does not work on the Mac? But I just had it working on linux, yeah I had to download a driver and some pretty freaky software but it worked. How can they not support the Mac?

Oh well, I guess I will just use Skype to make phone calls, without the video. Hmm, what is the deal here with Skype’s license? I know it is the non-free section of Ubuntu so it is not GPL’d. Better look through the EULA. Oh. Nasty. Time to turn to Google.

My friend Google tells me that Skype is apparently reading from the BIOS on certain Windows machines, glad I do not run Windows or let it onto my network! But what is the story here? Aha, Skype uses the BIOS information to identify specific machines, perhaps to limit connections, perhaps for something else, Skype doesn’t say.

Google also tells me that Skype seriously obscures its code (.pdf). Why? What do they have to hide? Maybe this is to be expected from a company that ran roughshod over copyright law when they built Kazaa. Even Skype’s CEO, is afraid to set foot in the US for fear of being immediately arrested upon arrival. I guess money can’t buy you everything can it Niklas Zennerström? No Disney World vacations for you!

On a serious note Skype, why not open up a little? Let us know what you are doing on our computers. Start by answering these simple questions;

1. Does Skype contain backdoors or Malware?

2. How can we know without just taking your word? You only provide a “black box” which is impossible to see inside. You are purposely vague about what you do with the information from the BIOS you obtain.

3. Can I refuse to become a SuperNode? (SuperNode = no firewall + fast cpu + lots of bandwdth. This is one of the reasons why many universities ban Skype, because universities often have computers on their network that become SuperNodes.)

Until I get more information, I am going to apt-get remove skype and send to to the trash on my Apple machines. I will stick with my Apple tools and things available under the GPL, at least that is software I can trust.

Apple just posted a fabulous article which does exactly what the name of this post suggests. If you’re interested in QC and/or Widget building, pop right on over and read it.

I haven’t tried this yet, but with Dashcode, “you can simply drop your Quartz Composer composition in the widget without writing a single line of code. Note that Dashcode is going to ship with Leopard, but is available now as Beta software”.

After Sunday’s big wipe-the-Mac-Mini-and-reinstall-Tiger exercise, I took a look at my collection of recently-installed disk images to see what items turned out to be the most critical for getting back up to speed. Admittedly, I’m using the Mac Mini for recording and playing back TV so these images skewed heavily video. There are many titles I use daily on my main Mac (like Photoshop and Microsoft Word) that would never show up on my test unit. And there are some items, like MPEG Streamclip that are seeing a lot of use these days on the mini, which wouldn’t get all that much day-to-day use on the primary Mac. Hopefully there might be someone out there in readerland who will get a kick out of the following list.

So I spent all of yesterday reformatting my Mac Mini, repartitioning and reinstalling Tiger. Why, you ask me, would you bother reinstalling Tiger? Because, my dear readers, I made two (count ‘em) backups of my developer operating system partition and none of the Tiger one.

Stupid me.

[more after the jump]

Honolulu’s second Apple Store opened this morning in Kahala Mall (about 5 miles from the town’s first Apple Store in Ala Moana Shopping Center). I wanted to see the event for myself and, of course, get the free Apple t-shirt given to the first 1000 people. That’s the shirt’s logo in the first photo.

The store was scheduled to open at 10am. I arrived about 8:10am to find about 150 people already ahead of me. I heard (but did not verify) that the first person in line arrived at 3am (a bit too early for me).
The crowd started building quickly and it seems the mall’s security team was not expecting the speed at which the line was growing. We were moved around a bit and security started placing poles with rope rails to keep the walkways clear. I’ll guess there were at least 400 to 500 people in line before the doors opened at 10am.

Apple kept the crowd (at least the segments that could see the store) entertained with a group providing Hawaiian chants, Hula, and a Hawaiian Blessing of the store.

You can see about 2 minutes of video to see a bit of the pre-opening activities yourself.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“The Chase” by Original Recipe
Their formula is simple: Go to the record shop and purchase the most ridiculous records you can find from the $1 bin, go back to the “studio,” drink a little too much, and sample them. Here’s a fine example of this drunken technique from their debut Noisette.

“Beesting” by Buildings Breeding
What started off as an experiment and a farce on MySpace became the “local indie-pop supergroup” of Davis, CA, due to their well-written tunes and subtle musical accents. Today’s download is from their self-titled debut.

“Assisted Living” by Clair De Lune
Known for their contrast of beautiful songwriting and furious energy, this quintet from Minneapolis has just released Assisted Living, an album that has been described as “full of beautiful cacophony and sentimental anger.”

“Song of Yesterday” by Alexa Ray Joel
Being the daughter of a pop-star dad and supermodel mom can’t be easy. However, blessed with the gift of perfect pitch and encouragement from parents Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, she’s following her dreams. Today’s download is an original tune from her Sketches EP.

“Leaving the Nest” by Benjy Ferree
After a failed attempt at an acting career in Hollywood, this Washington, D.C. bartender was accosted by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, who convinced him to pursue music and later produced the EP Leaving the Nest.

“Katie Cruel” by Karen Dalton
The late folk-blues songstress was a favorite of Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, and others. Dylan said she “had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.” This track is from her only fully realized studio album, In My Own Time, finished in 1971.

“Nothing” by Sounds Like Violence
Phrases like “mind blowing” and “positively magnificent” have been used to describe the long-awaited debut by these hard-rocking Swedes. Hear for yourself with this track from With Blood on My Hands.

Steve Jobs says its the Major’s fault that music, including music from iTunes, has DRM on it. The Majors say it is Apple’s FairPlay that is the problem. Now we may be able to find out.

Jobs has been forced out of his protected forcefield and publicly stated that Apple will “embrace wholeheartedly” DRM-less downloads. EMI, for their part, is planning on releasing their entire catalog without DRM to the highest bidder according to the Wall Street Journal, link via Chicago Sun-Times. Now we get to see who is telling the truth.

We should look for a couple of things;

1. Will digital downloads take-off if they are not limited to playing on specific players?
2. Will piracy significantly change?
3. Will another music download site threaten iTunes dominance?
4. Is this viral? Will DRM-less movies be next?

Here’s a summary of Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed last week in my personal blog.

Skype 2.5 for Mac OS X
Do you Skype on your Mac? If so, head over and pick up the latest release…

Skype 2.5.0.85 for Mac OS X

This release just came out today (Jan. 31). The two new features are: Ability to send cheap SMS messages and free 10-person conference calls.

Adium 1.0 Multi-IM Client for Mac OS X
The Mac OS X Open Source…

Adium 1.0 Instant Messenging Client

…was released on Feb. 2. It can let you IM with people using AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and other IM services.

Krut Computer Recorder 0.9.2
This Open Source project can record audio and video from your computer and save the data MOV or WAV (WMV?) files.

Krut Computer Recorder

Binary versions are available for Linux and Microsoft Windows. I’ll guess (though I have not tried yet) that this Java-based product can also run with Mac OS X. The latest version was released on January 17, 2007.

About a month ago, in the aftermath of the iPhone announcement, I wondered aloud what the future of multi-touch might be. Stupidly, I concentrated my speculation on small, handheld devices and tablet-style computers. But why should multi-touch environments be small..?

Ever since I wrote my Delve into DEVONthink article back in August 2005, I’ve kept an eye on the app’s growth and development. I don’t use it myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it an admirable piece of work and a very useful tool for certain kinds of people.

One group of users that seems to get a lot out of DEVONthink is students and academic researchers. I’ve just discovered AcademHacK, which devotes a lot of space to DEVONthink and related hackery. There’s a fascinating piece concentrating just on different ways of using it:

This program fascinates me, I really do think there are a thousand Oompa Loompas running around inside my computer sorting and retrieving data. The hard part of this application is that there are so many uses and it can do so much that at times it is impossible to figure out anything it can do.

What clever things are you doing with DEVONthink, or apps like it?

Boinx Software is proud to co-host the second CocoaDevHouse Munich with TheCodingMonkeys at our offices on Feb. 24th. If you happen to be in Munich, Germany on said Saturday, drop by to meet interesting people and have fun.

…are coming to a sad realisation - Cancel or Allow?”

Ok, seems I lost that bet (for now). But - this is the truly best ad dialog I’ve heard in a long time.

Would you like a 23-inch MacBook? Of course you would. Jeff Porten knows how you can use an old PowerBook as a secondary screen for another, newer notebook. It’s a hack, but it works, and might be a good option if you don’t mind lugging two laptops around:

I’ll answer the question that I’m sure many of you have been pondering: yes, this setup is entirely portable. I toss both laptops into my Brenthaven backpack and I’m good to go. My guess is that the total weight I’m carrying is in the ballpark of 25 pounds; in any case, the bag doesn’t feel any heavier than it usually used to when I was just carrying around my 17-inch PowerBook (and maybe a book or two).

The most interesting Mac news today is from no less than Steve Jobs himself, author of an extraordinary short essay about the state of DRM in the music industry. It’s extraordinary not just because of what he says, but also the mere fact that he’s saying it this way. He must really have wanted to get this off his chest.

Not all is perfect in High Def land. As you may recall, I purchased an EyeTV Hybrid to accessorize my Mac Mini in anticipation of the release of AppleTV. I’m trying to build a high def streaming media center to be able to bypass TiVo and enjoy HDTV recording on my Mac. Today’s post is the complaint post. It’s about all the little bits that are bothering me about my setup with EyeTV and the Hybrid. All these problems occur under normal EyeTV/Hybrid operation running under a standard installation of Tiger. I’m ignoring any flaky behavior I observe while running EyeTV under developer preview operating systems.

The channel listings don’t always update. Having channel listings that you can browse and select for recording is one of the key selling points of the EyeTV software. Unfortunately, those listings are not consistent. Although I have not had any problems downloading standard analog cable listings, I’m running into repeated problems keeping digital over-the-air broadcast listings up to date. No amount of restarting the computer, restarting the program or selecting “Update TitanTV Guide” has worked in terms of updating the program guide. Right now, I’m trying to see if I can fake the program out by messing with the global Application Support folder, but so far no luck. Instead, I have to launch a browser, navigate to TitanTV and download “tvpi” files from the TitanTV site. I can then load these schedules into EyeTV for future recording. This is a complete pain.

Don’t “touch” the computer while recording. My 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo with 1GB RAM is “underpowered” when it comes to HDTV recording. Any interaction with the system taxes it beyond what it can handle, producing breaks and interrupts in the recorded data. To produce a clean recording, I have to set the schedule and then leave the computer alone until the recording completes.

The program can get confused. The other day, my iPod export of an EyeTV show finished just as another show was due to start recording. Guess what happened? Nothing. The program missed the recording and never started, instead getting hung up in an odd “about-to-start-recording” mode. I have owned a TiVo since 2000. It has never gotten so confused between playback and recording that it missed a show.

The iPod output tags are confused. For whatever reason, when EyeTV exports video to iTunes, the episode name is set as the “Artist” and the TV show is the “Name”. This results in episodes of SpongeBob being called “SpongeBob Squarepants” as part of a TV Show called (for example) “King Krusty”.

In-program export is fracking slow–and incompatible. Using MPEG Streamclip to convert video is approximately an order of magnitude faster than EyeTV. It’s insanely and unnecessarily slow. And the iPod video it produces often doesn’t even sync to my iPod without reconverting through iTunes or QuickTime.

The biggest name in online music today is Apple. Their successful iTunes store sells songs by the Billion (Yes, with a capital B) to consumers across the globe. Personally, I’ve spent more money on iTunes buying albums and songs than perhaps I’d care to admit to my wife or to my accountant. At last count, I had close to 2,000 tracks from the iTMS, all with its built-in DRM called FairPlay. Lately there’s been a lot of hullaballoo concerning FairPlay and DRM as a whole. Apple’s been largely silent on the subject, conspicuously so for a market leader. Today that silence was broken as Steve Jobs himself released a statement on music on the front page of Apple.com.

The statement is unequivocal in its terms: The record labels require us to license their music for sale using FairPlay. We think FairPlay is a good system, but to license it to others would compromise its integrity. If you can convince the record labels, specifically the big four, to license their music to us without DRM, we will include it in our store. Specifically, Apple points out that the European concern regarding DRM lands almost squarely in their own backyard, as Bertelsmann owns half of Sony/BMG, and Vivendi owns Universal outright, as EMI is an entirely British-owned company.

Steve’s hint is far from subtle: convince the labels to go DRM-free and Apple will gladly follow suit.

It is a truly interesting day for DRM and Apple and all of the music-loving world. Well done, Steve.

A nice treat from the folks at Zune: 30-odd free unDRMed MP3s ready for download, including tracks from Wierd Al, Barenaked Ladies and the Shins. Perfect for your iPod, Zune or other MP3 player.

Save the date.

Very good read. Wolf is right to point out that programmers write code out of necessity and that rewriting helps them to understand how it works. But why are developers keen to type their code? Why have visual programming languages not found a greater following? Why are text editors currently the new hype among developers despite being totally unhelpful in “understanding” and “problem solving”?

I don’t know if it is still valid, but when I was studying cognitive science, research showed that typing is slow but keeps the brain nicely occupied so that it thinks it is going fast. There is a greater sense of achievement as the brain gets tired from being used so much, even if for the wrong end of things.

So, while (re-)writing code helps programmers to a greater understanding, does actually typing it give them a better sense of achievement while they do it?

The Husband: “What’s wrong with the new HDTV? Every time they show the game, it gets all fuzzy and gray.”

Me: “That would be because it’s raining.”

The Husband: “Oh. Right.”

It actually looks fabulous and the TiVo-like replay buffer built into the EyeTV software for High Def reception worked beautifully. Especially when 14 seconds into the game you realize you just missed a touchdown.

Update: So Superbowl finishes, and I start taking down all the computer equipment to move it back to the office. Husband asks: “The HDTV was great but isn’t there a better way to do this where you don’t have to move the computer into the living room for us to watch?” “Yes,” I reply. “It’s called AppleTV and it will be here in just a few weeks.” Can’t wait!

Before I run out for the weekend, I just wanted to point everyone to Infinite Loop’s interview with Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba. Well worth a read–I was particularly interested in the Apple TV discussion. And there’s a hilarious discussion of the Rogue Amoeba name and logo as well.

Just a few brief updates this afternoon before I start getting ready for the weekend–and for (da da dummmm) Superbowl Sunday.

First, my decision to load Tiger into a new partition has worked amazingly well. I’m running EyeTV 2.3.3 and it seems bypass all the bugs I had under my nonstandard OS. Both remote controls–Apple and EyeTV–work exactly as advertised with the EyeTV software, which means I can hide the mini’s keyboard and mouse in a drawer. I was delighted to find that a button on the EyeTV remote allows me to turn closed captions on and off without having to use a menu. Very convenient! I can now understand what Milo Ventimiglia is saying in his scenes. (For whatever reason, I had no problem understanding Christopher Eccleston.)

More after the jump…

Welcome to another edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“Spring Hall Convert” by Deerhunter
This Atlanta-based psych-pop collective has endured financial strain, death, and lineup changes, but has persevered and come out the other side with a rocking sophomore album, Cryptograms.

“Seasons” by Julie Sokolow
Using only her voice, a cheap acoustic guitar, and the built-in microphone on her computer, this Pittsburgh singer-songwriter put together Something About Violins, a collection of eerie lo-fi productions reminiscent of Cat Power and Julie Doiron.

“P-Body” by Sean Price
From the Boot Camp Clik, the self-proclaimed “brokest rapper you know” is back with Jesus Price Superstar, featuring more of the self-deprecating, knucklehead rhymes that have made him one of the more entertaining MCs to bless the mic.

“Breaking Glass” by Uncut
Originally a dance-rock outfit, this Canadian foursome traded their computers for guitars and have toured with current heavies including Metric, Sloan, and the Walkmen. This track is from their latest album, Modern Currencies.

“Soul Bird” by Jackie Mittoo
This reggae legend recorded this track in the early ’70s after leaving his native Kingston for Toronto. The album to which it belongs, Wishbone, branches out into funk and soul and has finally been re-released. Enjoy.

“Altar of Goat Skulls (EXPLICIT)” by 7000 Dying Rats
You can’t really call them a group, since their lineup “seems to be dictated by whoever we happen to be drinking with at the time” according to singer and multi-instrumentalist Toney Vast-Binder, the collective’s ringleader. Today’s grindcore excursion is from their newest album, Season in Hell.

“Thick Ropes (EXPLICIT)” by Planet Asia
Hailing from Fresno, California, Planet Asia has become one of hip-hop’s hardest-working yet underrated MCs. With a large collection of independent singles and albums already under his belt, he worked with producer Evidence (of Dilated Peoples) on his new album The Medicine, featuring today’s free download.

Via macosxhints.com comes this cool article, “Display Flickr collections as desktop backgrounds”, which describes subscribing to RSS feeds as Photocasts via iPhoto.

Have a friend or family member who posts images to Flickr that you continuously visit? Are you a member of a Flickr group and want to see what’s new? This hint uses the RSS feeds from Flickr and Photocasting in iPhoto to display images as your desktop background….

Of course, you could also subscribe to your own photo feed, or tag-based feed — like, say, ATHF, so you can keep up on the latest in the Global War on Error.

Here’s a summary of Mac Freeware & Free & Open Source Software (F/FOSS) discussed last week in my personal blog.

Max: Mutliformat Audio File Extractor & Converter for Mac OS X
Here’s a Mac OS X Open Source project for the audiophiles out there…

Max: Audio File Extractor & Converter

It can extract audio files from a CD and then store/convert it in more than 20 different audio file formats including MP3, Ogg (Vorbis), FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey’s Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE.

It can use the community driven music metadatabase MusicBrainz to obtain CD track information.

WebDesktop: Web Browser for Your Mac Desktop
If your Mac OS X desktop seems, hmm, to passive for you, take a look at this freeware addon…

WebDesktop

It puts a web browser layer on the Mac desktop and lets you display any standard web page. Weather, stock quotes, news, and other dynamic information can be updated right on your desktop’s background.

Gliffy: Web Diagramming Tool
I mentioned the Dia (Open Source) diagramming tool for Linux and Windows a few days ago. But, if you use a Mac or don’t want to install anything, take a look at…

Gliffy

It is a free web diagram creation service that also allows you to share the diagrams you create. It can also save the diagrams in the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file format. You can import this file into numerous client-side diagramming tools.

Zoho Office Suite
Hey, has anyone tried this?

Zoho Office Suite

It is a free web-based office suite that includes the following web-based applications: word processor, spreadsheet, slide presenter, wiki, collaborative groupware (calendar, etc.).

The Zoho API exposes its features to those who want to work with Zoho data in their own apps.

Like a lot of people, I viewed Flickr user soyburger’s photo set, showing his basement full of stylishly-displayed retro Macs, and had to scrape my jaw back up from the floor afterwards.

And also like a lot of people, I wanted to know a little bit more about a person who would go to such lengths to collect and display old Macs. So I emailed soyburger (real name Jeremy Mehrl) to ask him to tell me more. Here’s what he said.

I have until now dedicated my Mac Mini to a WinXP partition (via BootCamp) and another partition to test out a certain nonstandard version of OS X, of which I cannot say more due to nondisclosure and Apple’s Men in Black. Having decided to use the Mini for all my High Def experimentation with EyeTV, etc, it’s been a bit of a pain using this configuration. I haven’t been able to upgrade to the latest version of EyeTV because it goes crashy crashy under the nonstandard OS, and previous EyeTV versions which are more stable will not export video from the program itself.

More after the jump…

Wow. If you work with audio on a Mac, check this out. Audio Ease’s upcoming Soundabout displays a waveform preview when you highlight an audio file in the Finder or iTunes. With simple clicks and drags, you can then extract just the part you want, convert the file to an MP3, e-mail it, insert it at the cursor position in Pro Tools, and more. Just watch the demo movie; I bet you’ll be as dazzled as I was.

(The iSight commentary is clever, too, eh?)