A few years ago, I peeked over the shoulder of a very dear friend as he was using his computer. “R” is a computing guru through and through, spending his days between WebObjects applications, Aperture, countless browsers and utilities. He is the kind of user who cannot work with less than four partitions and three huge disks attached to his machine. And work he does, brilliantly. In fact, I have rarely seen anyone squeeze so much computing power out of his machine. Imagine my surprise when I noticed how close to the defaults R’s installation was…

A former Apple engineer told me the iTunes team is adding features faster than they can be documented. Here’s one I’ll be using a lot: a way to re-download deleted podcasts.

Occasionally, podcast episodes don’t download completely. This happens to me a lot with This American Life, and it recently happened with my own podcast, Digital Media Insider (home page | iTunes link). So I figured I’d delete the partial download and try again. But I couldn’t get it back. iTunes didn’t show the deleted episode when I clicked “Update Podcast”:

Unlucky 13: After deleting the partially downloaded episode 13, I couldn’t get it back. Right-clicking and selecting “Update Podcast” wouldn’t display the missing episode.

The secret, I learned at KD Murray’s site, is to collapse the episode list by clicking on the disclosure triangle next to the podcast’s name and then to Option-click the triangle again. That expands the episode list and shows the missing episodes in gray with a “Get” button next to them:

Option-clicking the disclosure triangle next to the podcast’s name reveals the missing episodes.

Now, normally you wouldn’t want to re-download episodes you’d deleted, so I can sort of understand why this feature is hidden, but by using it on some other shows to which I subscribe, I discovered episodes I didn’t realize I’d missed. And the partial-download problem is probably fairly common, so it might be nice to have a “repair podcast” menu option. Or better, since the duration of the podcast should be recorded in the XML file, make iTunes smart enough to re-download truncated episodes itself.

What “hidden” iTunes features have you found?

Who would have thought a year or two ago that Facebook would become the first contender for the title of the most widely used Web OS (Operating System)? Certainly not me. And, yet, we see app after app developed and released for this social networking Web OS. Here’s one that I learned about while reading Read/Write Web…

Google News Facebook application

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CNET’s Chris Soghoian’s blog entry titled Five must-have security/privacy extensions for Firefox seems to have a Windows-centric point of view. But, I’m pretty sure the Firefox add-ons recommended apply equally well to a Mac OS X user (or Linux for that matter). Here are the Firefox add-ons he recommends: SafeCache, SafeHistory, Locationbar, NoScript, and CustomizeGoogle.

I just pre-ordered my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. So, I’ll be checking to see how freeware and Open Source apps run on it as soon as I receive my shipment and upgrade my MacBook. If you get and install your copy before me, please let me know what your test results are like!

I’m a Windows Mobile fan (sorry ’bout that) but that doesn’t mean I’m a Windows Mobile fan-boy. I go off on mini-rants now and then and thought I would share a side-by-side comparison of what the Weather.com sites formatted for generic mobile devices (like Windows Mobile) and the version formatted for the iPhone looks like. FYI: The little rant on one of my personal site-blogs was about getting Microsoft to fix broken components like the Windows Mobile web browser. MacDevCenter readers can just look at the generic-mobile vs. iPhone formatting to appreciate what an impact the iPhone is having on web design for mobile devices.

Google announced that Google Docs can now be retrieved and viewed (but not edited) on Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and iPhone/iPod touch devices. Documents and spreadsheets can be viewed on all of those device types. Presentations can only be viewed on iPhone or iPod touch devices (for now according to the announcement).

I created a quick and dirty (and blurry… sorry ’bout that) 2 minute video demo using an iPod touch. I hope they add editing and Google Gears offline features real soon.

AbiWord 2.4.6 is a multi-platform Open Source word processor. I recall using it for a few months on a notebook running Microsoft Windows several years ago. I tried out an early version (1.0 beta release I believe) of OpenOffice.org and have not revisited AbiWord since then.

It’s interesting that AbiWord is available for Windows and Mac OS X (as well as Linux) while the OpenOffice.org project still can’t figure out how to build a native Mac OS X version yet (even though the NeoOffice Project has a solution for them ready-to-go).

Windows Live SkyDrive (Microsoft really needs to come up with shorter product names) bumped up its online storage capacity from 512MB to 1GB. Um, ok, this is better. 5GB would be nicer though :-). According to the SkyDrive Team Blog, three other features were also just added. (1) RSS Feeds are now available for public folders. (2) You can share a file with someone by just typing in an email address (vs. selecting from a Hotmail address book).

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Google acquired the Twitter super-clone Jaiku. Jaiku is the twitter-like social network micro-blog presence (enough buzzwords yet???) web service. Like other sites before it acquired by Google, it will remain available to existing users but is essentially closed to new members. Google has developed a habit of buying great web services and then closing its doors for a long time. Remember the JotSpot wiki service?

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Findbyclick.com advertises itself as The easiest way to find interesting places, add new ones and share maps with your friends. But, most of the so-called interesting places seem to be Starbucks and Kinkos locations. Still, its an interesting idea. And, I suppose as more people contribute, we’ll see other, umm, interesting things located on its maps.

I mentioned recently that my Mac mini bit the dust. Although everything should be backed up to an external Firewire drive, I decided to get a second option for my iPod data just-in-case.

Senuti 0.50 Beta 2

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The big news of the day is of course Steve Jobs announcement of an iPhone SDK for February.

I am very excited about this. It is an important signal to the Mac OS X developer community that Apple values our commitment to Mac OS X and rewards us with letting us have a part of the success that it will enjoy as OS X on embedded systems.

We can’t wait to get started. My company, Boinx Software, will certainly make software for the iPhone.

Well, you could argue that any one of the OS X ‘Big Cats’ was the winner, simply because Apple has made a user-friendly UNIX system that outperforms most, if not all, other operating systems. Leopard is now fully POSIX conforming making it more inter-operable with other POSIX systems.

Some other goodies are things like DTrace which will help hardcore C hackers more than those who are building widgets, but still, there must be some hardcore C hackers out there eager to build things for the Mac, and hopefully not just device drivers, though those are welcome.

I look forward to using XCode 3. XCode has always been one of the best IDEs out there, not really fair to call it an IDE since it is so much more fundamental to Apple development than just an IDE.

Sadly, Apple seems to have neglected perl. Though perl 5.8.8 is going to be included in Leopard, 5.10 is due out shortly. (It has been due out shortly for a long time now.) Also, Apple completely neglects mention of perl on their fancy 300 Leopard features page. There is one mention of perl in association with DTrace but otherwise Ruby and Python get all the attention. With so many perl developers carrying around Apple laptops and so much Apple or Mac specific software on CPAN you would expect more and better perl integration in Leopard, but you would disappointed like me.

Apple posted a single web page that lists and describes Leopard’s many new features. You can find it at…

Mac OS X Leopard 300+ Features List

Am I the only one who wonders how they got this headline past Steve?

Looks like Ars was right about iTunes Plus changes today. iT+ tracks are now 99 cents (US), down from US$1.29, and there are a number of new tracks available from independent labels.

I want to give a shout-out to Apple Insider for a stellar series of “Road to Mac OS X Leopard” articles detailing changes coming in the any-day-now update. They offer a layer of depth and context well beyond what you can find on the official Leopard site.

Not content with a bulleted list of UI tweaks and bug fixes, AI has been providing history lessons on each application and technology, with nostalgia-producing screenshots and reminders of just how far we’ve come.

The latest post was today’s “Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Mail 3.0” which includes some hints at just how close Apple came to biting the dust thanks to mismanagement in the 80s while it traces the history of email apps on Mac, then wraps up with details on the new version of Mail.

Others in the “Road to…” series:

• Time Machine
• Spaces
• Dock 1.6
• Finder 10.5
• Dictionary 2.0
• Preview 4.0

Thanks much to Apple Insider for going beyond the call of duty.

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What do you know? It has been one year since I relaunched this OgasaWalrus blog after moving from my old Zope based web hosting service to this one. It started out as more of a personal notetaking system to help me remember interesting Freeware and Open Source apps for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Fortunately, there seem to be a few other people also interested in this topic and, more importantly, are able fact check me when needed (thanks!) and bring up F/FOSS apps I don’t know about (more thanks!).

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Looks like Adobe wants to go head-to-head with Google Docs. They acquired Virtual Ubiquity which created a bit of buzz with their Flash-based Buzzword web editor. Now they need a web spreadsheet and web slide presentation creation service.

Yesterday, user Yacko asked me why I keep closing and re-opening applications on my Mac, especially since Mac OS X has been built from the ground up for multitasking and features many a way to hide, minimize, tuck away and generally forget about unused processes, applications or even documents. Now, my personal preferences matter little to the world but, giving the question a bit of thought, I realized there is more to it.

Have you ever seen the default wallpaper of a Windows 95 installation? That horrendous, disgusting, depressing shade of gray-green that, for years, went mocked and scorned by many? It turns out it may just be what the doctor ordered for long term computer use. Have we missed something all along?

Since the introduction of the iPhone, Apple has been the focus of criticism from many a member of the computing community: keeping the platform closed is an outrage, a Microsoftian move, living proof of the evil that lurks underneath the company’s cheerful facade. Whether you agree with these points or not, one cannot deny Apple has pulled all the strings to indeed keep people out of the iPhone and send a firm message to those who had dared trespass - and I am not even talking about “bricked” iPhones here since knowing whether the side effect of the upgrade was intentional or coincidental is still everyone’s guess. Surprisingly, however, keeping the iPhone closed may be a good thing.

If you’re interested in music production on the Macintosh, here’s a trio of recent postings on the O’Reilly Digital Media Center web site which you may find worth a look.

Last week, I reviewed “Sequel,” Steinberg’s entry-level music software package. Shipping with a huge library of loops, samples, and software instruments, Sequel is a very respectable challenger to Apple’s GarageBand, and well worth checking out if you would like to start making music on your Mac. And checking Sequel out is easy, as Steinberg is offering a downloadable trial version of the software.

Music technology was also prominently featured at last week’s Apple Expo Paris. To find out which three products from that category were (or, rather: “I considered”) the most noteworthy at the show, check out Musique sur une Pomme Américaine.

I read a number of Apple rumor sites speculating about Apple replacing the Mac mini (a moment of silence for mine that passed on last week) with a Mac nano. Some of the rumor items speculate that Apple might dump the optical drive (DVD) from the unit to save space.

Here’s the thought that prompted this posting though… When Apple introduced the iPod nano, they dumped the hard drive from the mini line and went to flash storage. I think Apple needs to keep an optical drive for at least playing CD music and DVD video without having an ugly cable attached device on a Mac nano. But, what about dumping the hard drive from the Mac and going all flash storage (say 30GB) with the option of adding a 80 to 320GB hard drive in a small enclosure either beneath or above the Mac nano with a seamless bus plug (like a notebook in a docking station) instead of a cable?

I just hope they have it ready for sale soon. I need to replace my Mac mini and am waiting for Leopard and whatever new Mac emerges before doing so.

The Engcom Virtual Slide Rule is really just an educational demonstration of the slide rule for young folk. But, you can actually move the center slide area around to get an idea of how a slide rule worked.

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Proximity 1.1 is a donation-ware Mac OS X app (source code is available) that can monitor for the presence of a bluetooth device (including mobile phones) and run a custom AppleScript when the device is detected as coming into or going out of range.

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Here’s way more info from and about the U.S. Congress than most of us can probably process. But, if you can, head over to…

OpenCongress.org

…where U.S. Congress legislative information as well as news about the Senators and Representatives can be found.

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