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HTTP://WWW.VOM.COM/SVCG/
NEWSLETTER
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Mac User Group meeting wi! start at 9 a.m. on Saturday January
9th. Remember to enter at the back entrance of the Library. The
group wi! start out with Q&A fo!owed by a PAGES
demonstration.
Donating Used
Computer
Equipment
The URL listed is for the
Computer Recycling Center.
All of the info needed (and
then some) is listed on the
site.
http://www.crc.org/
Check out iRecycle!
http://earth911.com/iphone/
iRecycle makes it easy to
find recycling locations
anywhere in the U.S
MAC
NEWSLETTER
Page Layout and Word Processing Program
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 1
SVCG OFFICERS President
Beth Pickering
bethpick@emailx.net
Secretary
Kathy Aanestad
aanestad@vom.com
Treasurer
Joan Fabian
JKFabian@vom.com
Newsletter
Kathy Aanestad
aanestad@vom.com
Members-at-Large
Chip Allen
cnjallen@mac.com
Elizabeth Palmer
elizabeth@vom.com
Dave Bixler
bix1154@comcast.net
Jeanette Barekman
jsbarekman@yahoo.com
Dennis Astrubel
SVCG Evangelist Veda Lewis
veda@sonic.net
Webmaster
Kathy Aanestad
aanestad@vom.com
Board Meetings: Open to all members.
S.V.C.G. meets second Saturday of each month
at Sonoma Public Library, 755 West Napa
Street; HOURS: Mac: 9AM-10:30AM,
Windows: 10:30AM-noon unless otherwise
notified. Guests Welcome. No Charge.
About this publication
Sonoma Valley Computer Group Newsletter is published monthly by
Sonoma Valley Computer Group. Desktop publishing services donated
by: Kathy Aanestad. Call: (707) 935-6690, email aanestad@vom.com.
© 2009, SVCG. All rights reserved. Sponsored by our local ISP,
DataProfessionals, on 19480-8th St. East.
Mailing Address:
Sonoma Valley Computer Group
PO Box 649
El Verano, CA 95433
SVCG USER GROUP
BENEFITS AND DISCOUNTS
PEACHPIT
See Pg. 3 for info.
O’REILLY
Members receive a
20% discount on
O'Reilly books and
conferences. Contact
Kathy for the code.
NEW RIDERS
BOOKS
http://
www.newriders.com
BECOME A NEW
RIDERS CLUB
MEMBER. You can
save up to 20% on all
books every day at
newriders.com simply
by becoming a New
Riders Club Member.
Membership is free
and easy. All you have
to do is answer a few,
short questions in our
ongoing, online
survey, which you can
access on any book
page. Don't worry.
All of your
information stays with
us--we won't sell it or
give it away to anyone.
After you've filled out
the profile, you'll save
JANUARY 2010
20% automatically
whenever you log on
to http://
www.newriders.com
as a member. It's that
easy!
Note that you may use
your User Group
Coupon Code ON
TOP of your Club
Member savings. Just
remember to log in
first when making a
purchase and then
enter the code at
checkout as well!
Contact Kathy for
code.
WILEY BOOKS
http://www.wiley.com/
WileyCDA/Section/
id-350383.html
PAGE 2
MAC USERS —
2010 TOPICS!!
We’re going to take a look at:
• Pages - see Pg. 5
• iPhoto
• Mail
• iCal
• iDVD
… and MORE!!!
PEACHPIT: PUBLISHERS OF TECHNOLOGY BOOKS, eBOOKS, AND VIDEOS
You can save 30% on all books every day at peachpit.com simply by becoming a Peachpit Club
Member. Membership is free and easy. All you have to do is answer a few, short questions in our
ongoing, online survey, which you can access on any book page. Don't worry, all of your information
is confidential and stays with us--we won't sell it or give it away to anyone. After you've filled out
the survey, you'll save 30% automatically whenever you log on to http://www.peachpit.com as a
member. It's that easy!
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 3
Take Control of
Your iPhone Apps
By Jeff Carlson
Mail, Maps, Messages, Phone, Photos, Remote, and Safari
(and for iPod touch owners, the Music and Video apps, too).
If you've had the nagging feeling that you're not getting as
much from your iPhone or iPod touch as you could, this
ebook is for you!
TidBITS Publishing, Inc.
November 2009
Pages: 122
Learn iPhone app basics
and get numerous clever tips based on author
Jeff Carlson's real-world experiences with
using the iPhone for work, photography, and
fun. Apps that Jeff covers with the sharp eye of
a professional tech writer include include
Calendar, Camera, Compass, Contacts, iPod,
SVCG MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION/RENEWAL FORM
New Applicant______
PLATFORM:
Renewal __________
Mac ______ Windows _________
Name: _____________________________________________________________
Address: ___________________________________________________________
City/State: __________________________________________________________
ZIP: ____________________________
Home Phone: _____________________
E-Mail Address: ____________________
Send check to:
DUES:
USER LEVEL:
Active member (participation on Board or
Library): FREE
Novice _____
POB 649
El Verano, CA 95433
Non-active member: $10
Intermediate _____
Advanced ____ Expert ______
How did you hear about the Club?
Class ______
Club member _______ Newspaper _______ Newsletter _________
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 4
What is PAGES?
by Kathy Aanestad
Pages is part of Apple’s iWork’s suite which
includes Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Pages
is a word processing and page layout program
— a huge step above AppleWorks. This
newsletter is created using Pages. Up until four
months ago, this editor used Adobe’s InDesign
to create the newsletter and found that Pages
was easier to use and more fun!
There is a good selection of templates to
choose from if you decide to go that route.
Otherwise, if you want to create a blank
document, Pages allows you to place text and
graphics wherever you want. Among other
features, Pages lets you link columns of text
like what the more expensive programs let you
do for a fraction of the price.
In Saturday’s demo, you will be introduced to
the numerous templates, how to format text
using word processing tools, how to use page
layout tools, how to adjust images with graphics
tools, and more.
select a photo, shape, or table on the page, the
format bar displays tools to adjust the images. And
while you write, Pages can automatically format lists
with bullets or numbers, check your spelling,
proofread your document, and generate a table of
contents.
The following is from Apple’s website:
Fine-tuning your document is easy, too. You can add
headers, footers, footnotes, and bookmarks with a
few clicks. Insert section, layout, and page breaks
from a pull-down menu. And the word count is visible
at the bottom of the page — just click the total to see
details including the number of characters, lines,
paragraphs, and more. When it comes to word
processing, streamlined and smart come standard in
Pages.
Streamlined word
processing
Every word counts.
Creating great-looking documents is simple
with Pages. At the top of the page, the
contextual format bar lets you do the basics —
formatting text and adjusting images — with
just one click. View and choose fonts with the
“what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG)
font menu. Change text size and color. Adjust
line spacing and paragraph alignment. Apply
character and paragraph styles. When you
Advanced writing tools
Any word processor can help you type. Pages gives
you all the tools you need to write and perfect your
writing. Now you can view your document full screen.
With one click, clutter disappears so you focus on
what you’re writing and make changes without
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 5
distractions. Organize your ideas in
Outline mode. Create an outline with
multiple levels, expand or collapse
topics, and drag and drop to promote
or demote items. Mail merge takes
your data from Numbers or your
contacts from Address Book to create
personalized letters, invoices, and
faxes. And in Pages, you can insert
sophisticated equations into your lab
reports with MathType 6 and add
professional bibliographies to your
research papers using EndNote X2.1
When it’s time for comments and
feedback, change tracking makes
collaboration with anyone easier,
clearer, and more concise. And it’s
always easy to find your place. Next
to your document, you see
thumbnails of all your pages and
sections, including changes that have
been made. Quickly copy or delete a
section. Or drag and drop to move
sections around. Scroll through
thumbnails to preview your document
or enlarge them for a better view.
Powerful page layout
Do-it-yourself design.
Create your own design from a blank canvas — Pages
makes page layout easy. Choose fonts and add images,
graphics, tables, and 3D charts. Powerful graphics
tools let you resize and rotate photos, apply
reflections and shadows, add picture frames, and
remove backgrounds from images with a simple point
and click. You can even control the text: how it looks,
how it flows, and how it wraps around images. Move
everything around on the free-form canvas until you
see the layout you envisioned.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 6
Compatibility and
sharing
It’s an easy read. In any format.
Pages makes it easy to share your
documents with colleagues or friends. You
can open Microsoft Word files in Pages
and save your Pages documents as Word
files. With powerful graphics and
formatting tools, it’s easy to make Word
documents look great in Pages. You can
also save your Pages documents as RTF
files or as plain text or export them as
PDF files. With the new email option,
send Pages, Word, or PDF documents
right from Pages using Mac OS X Mail.
Share your work on the web.
What if you need to share your document, but you aren’t sure whether your colleagues use a Mac or PC,
iWork or Office? Now you can upload it to iWork.com Public Beta.2 Reviewers receive a unique iWork.com
URL where they can view your work, post comments, and download your document in Pages, Microsoft
Word, or PDF format.
Share your documents.
Open and save as Microsoft Word files. Email your documents right from Pages. And share with everyone
on the web.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 7
The Pogie Awards for the Year’s
Best Tech Ideas
The great, clever features of the year that
somehow made it past the obstacles of cost,
engineering and lawyers.
By DAVID POGUE
Published: December 30, 2009
The Pogie Awards, now in their fifth
consecutive year, aren’t meant to identify the
best products of the year; that’s way too
obvious. Instead, the Pogies celebrate the best
ideas of the year — great, clever features that
somehow made it past the obstacles of cost,
engineering and lawyers.
Kindly turn off your cellphones and refrain from
flash photography. All right, then, let’s begin.
the screen for sleepy time. You have to charge
your phone overnight anyway, so why shouldn’t
it be doing something useful in the meantime?
DROID DOCKS The Motorola Droid, of course,
is an app phone (that is, an iPhone wannabe with a
black rectangular touch screen, etc.). It’s generally
a very good one, with slide-out keyboard, excellent
speed and the Verizon network.
ITYPE2GO In 2009, the risks of text
messaging went mainstream. Statistics made it
clear that texting while driving was shockingly
common — and incredibly dangerous.
The winner here isn’t the phone, though — it’s the
docks. One $30 plastic dock suctions to your
windshield. When you slip the phone into it,
hidden magnetic sensors automatically fill the
Droid’s screen with Google’s new GPS navigation
software, complete with turn-by-turn driving
directions, spoken street names, color coding to
indicate traffic, map icons (for parking and so on),
satellite view and more.
But what about texting while walking? You’re
looking down as you flail away on your
keyboard; next thing you know, you’ve crashed
right into a person, a tree or a fence. Trust me:
It’s hard to look cool when you’ve just faceplanted on a No Parking sign.
Fortunately, iType2Go (a $1 iPhone app) is a
funny idea that really works. It superimposes
“...the Pogies celebrate the best ideas of the year.”
Or buy the $30 home dock. When you insert the
Droid, the screen becomes a handsome, horizontallayout alarm-clock/weather display, complete with
buttons that let you access your music or even dim
what you’re typing over a live camera view, so
you can see where you’re going even while
you’re focused on the screen.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 8
With the touch of a button, you can also direct your
typing output to an e-mail message, Facebook page
or Twitter update. And you can rotate the phone to
get the widescreen keyboard, if you prefer. (Similar
for Android phones: Droid Text’n’Walk, $4.)
MIFI. It’s not often a company invents an entire
new category with one fell press release, but that’s
what Novatel did. The MiFi ($100 from Verizon or
Sprint; monthly fee required) is a tiny, credit cardsize, personal, portable, powerful, passwordprotected wireless hot spot. That’s right: you now
have a Wi-Fi hot spot in your pocket, purse or
laptop bag.
In many ways, it’s better than those U.S.B. cellular
modems that jack into your laptop. On the MiFi,
five people can connect at once. There’s nothing to
connect or disconnect and store. And the MiFi can
handle more things than laptops; Wi-Fi netbooks,
cameras, game gadgets, iPhones and iPod Touches
can get online, too.
SAMSUNG DUAL-SCREEN CAMERA The
front of Samsung’s DualView TL220/TL225
($300/$350) looks completely shiny and black. But
when you tap the empty spot next to the lens, a
small screen lights up, right there on the front of
the camera.
Having a front screen is great for framing selfportraits, for letting your subjects see what they are
going to look like, for displaying a self-timer
countdown, or for displaying a happy face as a
“Smile!” cue when you’re taking a group photo.
The screen can also display a choice of cartoon
animations that keep younger subjects riveted,
smiling and facing the camera. The camera itself
isn’t so great, photographically speaking. But what
a great idea.
NIKON PROJECTOR CAM You can’t mention
great camera feature ideas of 2009 without
bringing up Nikon’s Coolpix S1000pj ($430). It’s
another so-so pocket camera with a killer hidden
feature: a built-in projector.
When you want to show your pictures or videos
to friends, no longer must you crowd them
around the camera’s little built-in screen. Now,
with a single button press on the top of the
camera, you can turn on the projector. The image
is beamed straight from the front of the camera
onto a wall, a ceiling or a friend’s T-shirt.
Nobody’s going to confuse the image (40 inches,
max) with an Imax movie. But especially when
the lights are low and the wall is nearby, the
projected image is perfectly adequate and really
something to see.
BING POP-UP PREVIEWS The actual search
results from Microsoft’s new Bing.com service
may not always be as good as Google’s. But Bing
has a few incredibly juicy features, like the one
that lets you point to any search result in the list
without clicking. A popup balloon shows you the
first few paragraphs of text on it. Without leaving
the results list, you know if it’s going to be
helpful. You really miss this trick when you
return to Google, where you have to click a link
to see what’s behind it.
PALM PRE DATA CONSOLIDATION Palm’s
latest app phones, the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi,
offer a software trick that’s satisfying both in
concept and execution: it consolidates the
different sources of your life’s information.
For example, you get to see the appointments
from your online Google or Yahoo Calendar, your
Outlook work calendar and your Facebook
events, all on a single color-coded calendar. Ditto
with your various online address books, your
various e-mail accounts and your various chat
program buddy lists. Simple is a good thing; we
like simple.
FIND MY PHONE. Your cellphone, obviously,
knows where it is, especially if it’s a model that
has built-in GPS functions. So why do we wind
up losing our cellphones so often?
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 9
That’s the question that Apple answered with its
Find My iPhone feature, an incredibly useful
aspect of its $100-a-year MobileMe service. On
the me.com Web site, with a click you can see
where your iPhone is on a zoomable map.
If it’s just lying in your house somewhere, the Web
site lets you make it beep loudly for two minutes,
so you can hunt it down among the couch
cushions. If the phone is in the hands of some
stranger, you can make the phone display a
message (say, “Return my phone! It’s covered with
deadly germs!”) or even erase the thing completely
by remote control, so at least your personal life is
protected.
The only thing that could be better than Find My
iPhone would be a free version. That’s what you
get with certain Motorola phones, like the Droid
and Cliq. May this one catch on with every phone
company.
READABILITY The single best tech idea of
2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be
Readability. It’s a free button for your Web
browser’s toolbar (get it at lab.arc90.com/
experiments/readability). When you click it,
Readability eliminates everything from the Web
page you’re reading except the text and photos.
No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or
anything else. Times Square just goes away.
You wind up with a simple, magazine-like
layout, presented in a beautiful font and size
(your choice) against a white or off-white
background with none of this red-text-againstblack business.
You occasionally run into a Web page that
Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal,
just refresh the page to see the original. But
most of the time, Readability makes the world
online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.
Go forth and install it.
Oh, yeah — and happy high-tech new year.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 10
Ten Tips for Dealing with Unexpected
Mac Slowdowns
By Ed Shepard
A friend recently sent me an email, questioning
why his MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM was
“getting slower and slower, with an increasing
frequency of the appearance of the SRWOD
(spinny rainbow wheel of death).” This is
something I occasionally hear about, but haven’t
experienced (except for Safari randomly bogging
down for several seconds).
3. Make sure your
computer is up to date
with all the latest
software and firmware
updates from Apple.
This can go a long
way to improving
system performance. To
check this, click the Apple in the top left corner
of the screen and select “Software Update…”
Unfortunately, mysterious computer slowdowns
can be difficult to diagnose. Overstuffed system
cache, old temp files, corrupted preferences, a hard
drive in the early stages of failure, and faulty RAM
are always candidates for causing this problem.
Here are some suggestions to resolve system
slowdowns.
4. Simply running a free maintenance program
can often help bring a sluggish and flakey
machine back to speed. These programs force
the Mac’s regular Unix maintenance scripts;
normally these run daily, weekly, and monthly
early in the morning. Click here for further
reading on this.
Also, please make sure you have a solid backup of
your Macs important data before proceeding. I’ll
say it again: make sure your Mac is backed up
properly before proceeding.
I use a program called Onyx to run these scripts.
You can get it for Tiger (10.4) and Leopard
(10.5). It’s effective and easy to use. It starts by
checking the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard
drive, so you can determine if the drive is
failing. This step takes several minutes. After
that Onyx can flush system cache, etc.
Any Mac will slow down when its hard drive is
almost full, regardless of processor speed. Simply
moving some of your data (especially media files
like movies, video podcasts, etc) to an external
drive can greatly improve a Mac’s responsiveness.
2. Clear your Mac’s desktop. The OS has to draw
each of those icons as separate windows, so when
you have dozens of files littered on the desktop the
system is taxed. Clearing the Macs desktop is
proven to improve system performance.
One catch about Onyx is that it has several
options that most people shouldn’t use, such as
the option for erasing bookmarks and internet
browsing history. I do like and recommend
Onyx, though—get it for free from the
developer by clicking here. You can also
download Onyx directly from Apple’s site by
clicking here.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 11
You can also download a simpler program called
MacJanitor that will only run the maintenance
scripts by clicking here. When a tech diagnoses
your Mac, he or she runs a battery of programs that
are similar to Onyx. This takes several hours.
However, Onyx does a great job for occasional
repairs and maintenance.
5. Check the health of your hard drive. I depend on
Onyx to verify the S.M.A.R.T. status of my Mac’s
hard drive. Immediately back up your computer if
you think there’s a real issue with the drive. Then
consider using a dedicated drive diagnostic/repair
tool such as Disk Warrior. If the drive is having
issues and you’re going to replace it, consider
using a 7200RPM model. A faster hard drive will
result in a (slightly) faster Mac.
6. Check the health of your Mac’s RAM. There are
several ways to test the health of your Mac’s RAM.
I use Rember, which is a free program that is a
front-end GUI to a basic Unix ‘memtest’
command. You can read more about testing RAM
by clicking here
Deal with mutant applications. Ok, so maybe the
word “mutant” is unfair. However, it’s always a
good idea to delete applications that you don’t use.
I use AppCleaner to do this.
Also, many apps install helper programs that run
by default whenever you startup your Mac. This
typically happens in the background, without the
user having to confirm anything. Often these aren’t
needed and can hog system resources without
having anything to show for it. To disable startup
items you don’t use, navigate to System
Preferences > Accounts > Login items and uncheck
the list.
when they are running, which makes them
gobble RAM over time.
Use Activity Monitor and iStat Pro to analyze
which system processes and applications are
hogging system resources. You can download
the iStat Pro widget by clicking here. Activity
Monitor is found in the Utilities Folder which is
nested in the Applications folder in OS X.
9. If you have an Intel Mac, use Xslimmer to
trim away the legacy PowerPC code from
Universal binary applications. Read more by
clicking here.
10. Programs that automatically perform
syncing, indexing, and backup operations on
your Mac can occasionally slow it down. They
can sometimes cause minor drags that slow the
system for a couple of seconds at a time.
If none of these helps, the problem will likely be
more time-consuming to resolve. At Small Dog,
our techs run a battery of tests with several
software and hardware tools to seek out and fix
strange system slowdowns. Hopefully the above
suggestions will keep you from having to send
in your machine!
Editor’s note: Check out this cheeky website to
log your time spent waiting for the “Spinning
Beach Ball of Death!”
Finally, any active, running application uses system
resources including CPU cycles, RAM and disk
activity, even when it is in the background and
you’re not using it. Some programs leak memory
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 12
Top 10 Favorite FREE Mac Apps
(5/29/2009)
By Ed Shepard
As promised, here is my list of favorite FREE
applications for Mac. While these are my own
personal favorite apps, many of them are also great
for new Mac users and recent switchers.
These are all legitimate applications, and not
pirated or black market titles. I use these apps
weekly and even daily, and don’t hesitate to
recommend them.
Note that I didn’t include any web-based
applications and services in this list, though I was
tempted to do so. We’ll cover our favorite web
apps in a future Kibbles & Bytes.
1 OnyX This is a multifunction maintenance,
optimization, and personalization utility for Mac
OS X. It’s available for Panther, Tiger, and
Leopard. I use it about once a month or so to keep
all my Macs running smoothly.
OnyX allows you to verify your Mac’s Startup
Disk and the structure of its System files, run
miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance,
configure some hidden parameters of the Finder,
Dock, Dashboard, ExposÃ©, Safari, Login
window and some of Apple’s own applications, it
deletes caches, removes a certain number of files
and folders that may become cumbersome and
more.
Click here to learn more and download OnyX!
2 VLC VLC media player is a highly portable
multimedia player for various audio and video
formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX,
mp3, ogg, more) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and
various streaming protocols.
In other words, VLC will play back many file
formats that the QuickTime Player, Windows
Media Player, etc can’t handle. Best of all, VLC
doesn’t need any external codecs or programs to
work.
Click here to learn more and download VLC.
3 Bean Bean is a small, easy-to-use word
processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor),
designed to make writing convenient and
efficient. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and
is available free of charge! MS Word,
OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all
people, and indeed offer many more writing
tools, templates, and output options. But
sometimes you simply need to write, and that is
Bean’s niche.
Bean includes many writing essentials including
a live word count, a Get Info panel for in-depth
statistics, a zoom-slider to easily change the
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 13
view scale, an Inspector panel with lots of sliders,
date-stamped backups, auto-saving, page layout
mode, an alternate colors option (e.g., white text on
blue), selection of text by text style, paragraph
style, color, etc, a floating windows option (like
Stickies has). find panel allows regular expressions
(pattern matching), and all of Cocoa’s good stuff
(dictionary, word completion, etc.).
I combine Bean with Think for efficient, clutterfree writing.
app as much as I used to. However, for simple,
successful backups, Carbon Copy Cloner can’t
be beat. You can also use CCC3 for backing up
across network, backup to disk images, and
backup of selected files only. CCC 3 features an
interface designed to make the cloning and
backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to
general backup, CCC can also clone one hard
drive to another, copying every single block or
file to create an exact replica of your source hard
drive.
Click here to learn more and download Bean for
Mac.
Click here to learn more and download Carbon
Copy Cloner!
4 NetNewsWire This is an easy-to-use RSS and
Atom reader for your Mac. It allows you to
browse, subscribe, read, and save hundreds of
thousands of website feeds. It is a true desktop Mac
application, with integration with Spotlight,
Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterific and
more. Best of all, it effortlessly syncs with
NetNewsWire’s web-based RSS reader for free,
allowing you to manage all your RSS feeds from
any Internet-connected computer (Mac or PC).
7 The Unarchiver Forget the other commercial
unarchiving apps (like the free version of
StuffIt)—the Unarchiver is all you need.
Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on
your Mac. The developer notes “Many new Mac
users will be puzzled the first time they
download a RAR file. Do them a favor and
download UnRarX for them!”
Click here to download NetNewsWire!
5 HandBrake HandBrake is an open-source,
multithreaded video transcoder, available for Mac
OS X, Linux and Windows. It will convert just
about any video file you can play on your Mac into
a variety of other, easier to play, more portable
video formats. Most people use HandBrake to back
up their DVDs, or convert a DVD into a file that
can be played back on their iPod, iPhone, Apple
TV, PS3, etc. Use it as you will. HandBrake has
been updated substantially over the past several
years since its initial release
Click here to learn more and download HandBrake.
6 Carbon Copy Cloner 3. I admit, since Time
Machine debuted with Leopard, I don’t use this
Click here to download the Unarchiver and learn
more.
8 Google SketchUp Google SketchUp is used to
create, modify and share 3D models of anything
you like. I know a few people who used
SketchUp extensively to plan and pre-visualize
house renovations. I’ve used it to create a virtual
set for planning camera placement. There are
dozens of video tutorials, an extensive Help
Center and a worldwide user community for
SketchUp, making it relatively easy to learn.
It’s amazing that SketchUp is free! Download
SketchUp by clicking here.
9 Tweetie for Mac. Tweetie is my desktop
Twitter app of choice. I like that I can easily
mange multiple Twitter accounts, view entire
tweet “conversations” iChat-style, and compose
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 14
Tweets in a seperate draft window (with built-in
URL compression). The free version is adsupported, which so far I don’t mind. I mean, it is
free after all.
Click here to learn more and download Tweetie
for Mac.
10 AppCleaner Want to remove some of the apps
you’ve downloaded here, or downloaded in the
past? Try AppCleaner. It’s a small application
which allows you to thoroughly uninstall
unwanted apps. Installing an application
distributes many files throughout your System
using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.
AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely
deletes them.
Click here to learn more and download
AppCleaner for Mac.
Honorable Mention: Quicksilver. I know I’d get
lynched if I didn’t include this app, which is #1
on many lists of essential Mac software. I simply
don’t use it anymore, or ever since I upgraded to
Leopard. It’s an awesome app though. Click here
to learn about and download Quicksilver
Runners Up: Audacity, Adium, NeoOffice,
CyberDuck, Firefox, Camino, Carbon Copy
Cloner, xPad, Windows Media Components for
QuickTime, by Flip4Mac, iStat Pro, Think,
SuperDuper, Burn Chicken Of The VNC, Skype,
Anxiety
Yes, that’s
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 15
What Would a 10-Inch Apple ‘iSlate’
Look Like?
By NICK BILTON from New York Times Technology Section
right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Apple
iTablet time — oops, I mean iSlate
time!
Over the last week, we’ve heard more
rumors, some facts and a lot of
excitement about the impending
Apple tablet.
Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo recently
pulled together an “Exhaustive Guide
to Apple Tablet Rumors,” leaving no
slate unturned. In brief, Gizmodo
believes the device is likely to be
called the iSlate, will cost around
$800, and will be announced in
January, but won’t hit store shelves
until March or possibly April.
Nick Bilton/The New York Times
A 10.1-inch display on a 2006 H.P. tablet.
Comparison between a 10.1-inch display and an iPhone.
Many predictions point to either a 7or 10-inch display for the tablet.
Seven inches would be a manageable
size, almost like carrying a
paperback book. But what about a
10-inch device? I rummaged under
my desk and pulled out an old 2006
model of the Hewlett-Packard
Compaq Tablet PC TC1100, pictured
above, to try to understand what a
10-inch screen might feel like.
Although the H.P. device is 12 inches
in size diagonally, the screen
measures exactly 10.1 inches. If the
final Apple tablet screen is in fact
this size, it will need to be extremely
thin and come very close to the edge
of the device. The Apple version will
also need to weigh a lot less than the
H.P. tablet, which is a hefty 3.1
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 16
pounds. If you’re holding this device with one hand, it can become tiring very quickly.
Another interesting tidbit that helps back up the idea of a 10-inch screen comes from the Taiwanese
publication Digitimes, which reported on Monday that Apple was trying to strengthen the glass of such a
screen and was forced to delay the product’s introduction until the first quarter of next year. The report
cited unnamed sources “from Apple’s component suppliers.”
Remove Unwanted Text Shadows in
iWork Programs
by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
If you use the iWork applications, or other
programs that use their own font styling features
and the system-wide Fonts panel, here’s a little
potential “gotcha” that may sneak up on you
some day. Assume you’ve been doing work with
text, including using the floating Fonts dialog
(Format -> Font -> Show Fonts, or Command-T,
in iWork programs). At some point, you add
some text, and notice it has an unwanted
shadow—or maybe you notice that your text
actually has a double-shadow, something like
this:
Double shadows in Keynote
(I’ve made the double-shadow clear here for
purposes of demonstration, but the reality is that
they may be more subtle—especially if both
shadows are on the same side of the letters.)
isn’t checked. (If you’re seeing two shadows, it
will be checked, but unchecking it removes only
one shadow.) So where’s the extra shadow
coming from?
The culprit is the Fonts panel, which has its
own, separate shadow controls: somehow, the
shadow on the Fonts panel has also be enabled.
Confusingly, you can’t actually see these
controls in the default Fonts panel; it’s too
narrow.
(This begs the question of how those shadows
get set when you can’t see the buttons in the first
place. I don’t
know the
answer to that,
but I do know it
happens, based
on the number
of times I’ve
seen this come
up in forums
and via e-mail.)
If you expand the panel as seen below, though,
you’ll see the shadow setting buttons appear.
To remove the shadows, you open the Inspector
panel, select the Graphic tab, and (if you’re
seeing one shadow) find that the Shadow box
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 17
The button on the left turns the shadows on or
off; the others control (from left to right) opacity,
blur, offset, and angle.
To remove the extra shadow, click the leftmost
box to disable text shadows completely. iWork’s
shadow feature provides the same settings for
opacity, blur, offset and direction, so you don’t
give anything up by using the built-in shadow
features instead of those on the fonts panel.
This same fix should work in any other program
where you see unwanted or double shadows, and
that use both their own font styling features along
with the system-wide Fonts panel.
Buying A Printer: Fact vs. Fiction
Dispelling (and, sometimes, confirming) the conventional wisdom about printers.
by James Galbraith, Macworld.com
Buying a printer would seem to be
straightforward: Decide what you need the
printer to do—text? photos? scanning, copying,
and maybe faxing?—and you’ll have a good idea
of what kind of printer you need.
Unfortunately, connecting those dots isn’t always
so easy. That’s because the printer market is rife
with conventional wisdom that isn’t always wise
at all. Here are a few of the most common printer
myths and my take on whether or not they’re
really true.
Inkjets do a bad job with text
Not true. Most inkjets print perfectly legible
text. But for documents the public will see—such
as resumes and brochures—it’s hard to beat the
clean and sharp characters produced by a laser.
The problem is technical: If you spray a liquid
(such as ink) on a porous surface (such as plain
paper), that ink is going to bleed into areas where
it shouldn’t, making for less-than-optimal text
and other fine lines.
If you had unlimited space and money, you
would buy a laser for text and an inkjet for
photos. Most of us, however, live in the real
world and have to choose one or the other. If you
like to print photos at home, that choice will
most likely be an inkjet printer.
To help get the best possible text out of your
inkjet, try using better quality paper. Many
companies sell presentation papers for their
inkjets that allow less ink-bleeding. Also, make
sure to check that your printer driver is set for
best results-high or fine quality—and that proper
paper type is selected.
Image quality from
multifunctions is poor.
Not really true. Because they combing printing,
scanning, copying and (sometimes) faxing into
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 18
one machine, multifunction printers have become
wildly popular. But do you sacrifice quality for
convenience? Probably not.
Lasers are hazardous to your
health.
These all-in-one devices are often built on the
same print engines as stand-alone printers. Some,
in fact, look like the vendor just glued a scanner
on top of a standard ink-jet. In such
multifunctions, print quality is identical to the
stand-alone version of the printer.
Possibly true. A study published by the
Queensland University of Technology several
years ago found that laser printers emit tiny
particles into the air. The resulting particulate
pollution is comparable, under certain conditions,
to the air near a busy road. Emissions rates were
found to vary by the vendor and the age of the
printer. Follow-up research indicated that those
emissions have something to do with the paper
being heated inside the printer, before the toner is
applied.
The only catch is that manufacturers don’t make
multifunction versions of their highest quality
printers. High-end printers used for fine art and
archival prints can use specialized inks and print
on a wide variety of papers. So, for example,
Epson’s Stylus Photo ink jet printers can cost as
much as $800; the Stylus Pro models start at
$1300. Yet Epson’s highest end multifunction—
the Artisan 810 All -in-one Printer—costs as little
as $200 (Best Current Price). Its output will
clearly not be in the same league as that of the
Stylus Photo or the Stylus Pro
You need an Airport base
station to share a printer.
Not true. Plugging your printer directly into the
USB port on an Airport base station () is a
convenient way to share a non-networked printer
—but it isn’t the only way. Many printers, even
those on the low end, now offer both wired and
wireless Ethernet printing options. But the easiest
way to share your USB printer over your local
network is to enable printer sharing in the Print
and Fax System Preferences. Once that’s setup,
other computers on your network can see your
shared printer via Bonjour in their Print and Fax
System Preference.
In theory, those ultrafine particles emitted by
lasers could have the same kinds of health effects
as other small particles—such as those in
cigarette smoke or polluted air. But those health
hazards have not yet been definitively established.
In the meantime, researchers recommend moving
printers—particularly those that get heavy use—
away from areas where people sit; wherever you
put your laser, it should be well-ventilated areas.
Your printer is spying on you.
Possibly true. The Electronic Frontier
Foundation maintains a list of color laser printers
that, it says, lay down light yellow code-patterns
on every print; the dots are viewable in blue light
or under magnification. These codes were
developed to help the federal government track
down criminals who were printing counterfeit
cash. But the EFF fears that the codes could also
be used to track and monitor anyone who uses
those printers. Monochrome laser printers and
inkjets don’t appear to leave such markings.
James Galbraith is Macworld's Lab Director.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 19
Move cursor while paging through files
by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
If you use the Page Up and Page Down keys to
flip through files in TextEdit and other
applications, learn how to also move the cursor
location while doing so.
Here’s a quick Friday tip for those who like to
navigate open documents via the keyboard. In
many OS X applications, including TextEdit,
pressing Page Up and Page Down don’t actually
move your cursor position within a document.
Instead, they move only the view. So if you click
on the first line of a TextEdit file, then press Page
Down three times, and then type something, the
window will jump back to the first line, and that’s
where your typing will appear.
To move the cursor position with the view point,
press and hold Option before pressing Page Up
or Page Down. This will move the cursor into the
line in the middle of each screen as the display
moves up or down a screenful at a time. Now
when you start typing, the typing will appear on
that center line of the current screen, instead of
on the last line you happened to click.
This trick does not work in every application,
though, so you’ll have to experiment to find those
where it does.
Cures for a crusty keyboard
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
Reader Marcie Phipps seeks to clean up her act.
She writes:
I have an old keyboard that I love,
but its keys are sticking due to built
up dust and gunk. Is there a way to
clean it?
This is a common question and with it come
solutions both tried-and-true and controversial.
Starting with the tried-and-true:
The first step in cleaning a keyboard is to
unplug it, grab a can of compressed air (found
at any electronic supply store), and blast air
around the base of the keys in the hope of
dislodging whatever’s gumming up the works.
Do this holding the can of compressed air
upright. Flip the can upside down and there’s
some danger that you’ll squirt propellant into
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 20
the keyboard.
Turn the keyboard over and give it a good shake
in the hope of removing the gunk you’ve
loosened. While in this position, blast it a few
more times with the compressed air. If a key
remains unresponsive after this treatment, gently
pry it up with a small flathead screwdriver and
clean its post with a slightly damp cloth.
Now, the controversial:
If the keyboard is so filthy that it appears to be a
lost cause—as it might after a major coffee, soda,
or Mai Tai spill—put it in the dishwasher. Place it
in the top rack, dial the dishwasher to a rinse only
setting, don’t put soap in the thing, and run it
through. Remove the keyboard and let it drain,
with keys down, until it’s completely dry—this
could take a couple of days.
This is controversial because some keyboard
manufacturers suggest that you not do this as
they won’t guarantee that the keyboard will
survive the ordeal—particularly if you hit the
keyboard with really hot water, detergent, and
flying cutlery.
Speaking from personal experience, I’ve done
this with a beloved Matias TactilePro keyboard
that I’d given up for dead (this is the perfect
condition under which to conduct this
experiment). I’m happy to report that not only
did it survive, it works perfectly (and is a whole
lot nicer to look at than it once was).
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 21
What to look for in an external hard drive
Take Control of Mac OS X Backups
by Joe Kissell, Book Excerpt
Editor’s Note: The following article is excerpted
from Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Mac OS X
Backups, Fourth Edition. It includes two portions
of a chapter about backup media: the first
portion looks at backing up to a local, external
drive and the second has Joe’s overall
recommendations for backup media. Take
Control of Mac OS X Backups, Fourth Edition is
a 196-page electronic book that explains how to
create a backup strategy that protects your data
and enables quick recovery in case of
catastrophe. It is available for $15 from TidBits
Publishing.
When it comes to safeguarding your data, I use
and suggest external hard drives as a backup
medium. In almost every case, I believe they’re
the best choice for individuals and small
networks.
I deliberately said “external hard drives”—even
though you could save some money on the
enclosures and extra electronics by buying bare
drives that can be mounted inside your desktop
Mac Pro or Power Mac. I advocate external
drives because:
•
•
You can disconnect an external drive and
store it off-site—an important safeguard
against theft.
If your computer suffers severe damage
due to a power surge, a leaky roof, or
being knocked off the desk accidentally,
your internal hard drives may fail along
with the rest of the machine.
•
Hard drive virtues
You may feel anxiety about the cost of external
hard drives—especially since you should have at
least two, and perhaps three of them. They may
seem extravagant in a way that DVD-Rs, say, do
not. So let me sing the praises of hard drives for
a moment, while explaining why they’re not only
the best solution, they’re economical too:
• Speed: The first thing hard drives have going
for them is speed. You may have hundreds of
gigabytes of data on your computer’s internal
hard disk, but copying such large amounts of
data can be extraordinarily time-consuming
under the best of circumstances. Even fast optical
drives and tape drives transfer data at a fraction
of the speed of a slow hard drive. If you want to
do more with your computer than watch it back
up your data, you’ll appreciate the time savings a
hard drive provides.
• Capacity: If you’re backing up to a medium
with less capacity than your hard disk, sooner or
later you’ll have to swap media. Even the newest
Blu-ray media can’t store the entire contents of a
moderately large hard disk on a single disc.
Swapping media isn’t the worst thing in the
world, but the more often you have to do so, the
more of an aggravation backing up becomes. If,
on the other hand, you use an external hard drive
with sufficient capacity, you’ll never have to
swap media—and you can allow your backups to
run unattended at any time of the day or night.
• Random access: In addition to raw speed in
copying files, hard drives offer the advantage of
random access. (Tapes, by contrast, offer only
linear access—the drive must fast-forward or
rewind to get to any arbitrary piece of data.)
Besides using space more efficiently, this means
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 22
it takes no longer to restore files stored over a
period of weeks than it does to restore files
stored on a single date.
• Versatility: When you use a hard drive for
backups, you can put both duplicates and
versioned backups on the same device. You can
(usually) boot from it, and even, in a pinch, use it
as supplemental storage for other projects. Plus,
using a hard drive keeps your optical drive (or
other removable storage devices) free for
installing software, burning DVDs, or other dayto-day tasks.
• Economy: As I write this, 1TB FireWire/USB
combo drives can be found at retail for well
under $150, and if you look online at discount
stores and eBay auctions, you can find them for
even less. (By comparison, when I wrote the first
edition of this book in 2004, the going price for a
160 GB hard drive was close to $200.) That’s
quite a bargain—especially when you factor in
the recurring costs of optical media or tapes.
Further, how much is your time worth? Can you
afford to spend an entire day restoring from a
stack of CD-ROMs? If, instead, you could be up
and running minutes after a drive failure, what
would that be worth to you? Based on my own
experience, I can say with conviction that an
initial investment of a few hundred dollars pays
for itself many times over when you consider the
time and aggravation it saves in the long run.
Warning: If you have a large internal hard disk
and far too little data to fill it, you may be
tempted to partition it into several volumes and
store backups on each one—instead of using
separate physical drives. Although this is
marginally better than not backing up at all, it’s
still an incredibly bad idea. Hard drives usually
don’t die one partition at a time. You could easily
encounter a problem that makes it impossible to
access any part of the disk, in which case your
backups would be useless. And just like a second
internal drive, a second partition is vulnerable to
theft and damage that affects your entire
computer.
Does size matter?
If you’re using a hard drive for backups, how
large does it need to be? This seemingly tricky
question has a relatively easy answer: as a rule of
thumb, a destination volume should have
between 1 and 1.5 times the capacity of the
source volume. Sometimes one can comfortably
store both a duplicate and several months’ worth
of a versioned backup on a single disk the same
size as the one being backed up—but you can
check this with a little bit of math.
Except when backing up to a Time Capsule (in
which case you’ll use its disk only for versioned
backups and rely on a separate drive for
duplicates), I advocate partitioning each backup
disk into two volumes—one for a duplicate and
one for versioned backups. It’s easy to figure out
how much space you need for each, and then add
the two amounts together to get a total disk size
for the backup drive.
Duplicates: For duplicates, you need a volume
that will hold all the data on your disk—which
may be much smaller than its actual capacity—
and provide extra breathing room. To find out
how much space your data currently occupies,
select your hard drive’s icon in the Finder and
choose File -> Get Info. The figure next to the
word “Used” (shown on the right) is the amount
of space the data currently occupies.
Assuming that you regularly add new files to
your computer, you will want to leave a
significant cushion to accommodate the files
you’re likely to add during the next 6 to 12
months. If you do not have a good sense of the
rate at which your data will grow, multiply the
Used figure by 1.5, and then round up to the
nearest gigabyte. (In this example, the volume
“Leopard” would require at least 487GB for a
duplicate.) In any case, your duplicate volume
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 23
need never be larger than the total capacity of the
disk you’re backing up.
remember, if you’re using Time Machine, it
doesn’t compress your backups), multiply x by
two.
Note: If you’re backing up several Macs over a
network to a single set of media, be sure to
perform these calculations for each computer,
and then add them together. Although some
network backup software can save space by
maintaining just one copy of a file that’s identical
across multiple computers, you’ll be safer if you
ignore that possibility and allow more breathing
room.
The Finder’s Get Info window for a hard disk.
The number next to Used indicates the amount
of data currently stored on the volume.
Versioned backups: For versioned backups, the
situation is slightly different: your backup
software may compress your data, saving space;
on the other hand, you’ll continually add new
and modified files, increasing the space used.
Begin by determining the total space occupied by
the data you plan to back up (again, use the
Finder’s Get Info command), which could be
your entire disk, or perhaps only your home
folder if you perform a selective backup. Next,
subtract the total size of any folders you intend to
exclude (for example, ~/Music/iTunes/
iTunes Music). Now multiply this total by
1.5. The resulting figure—let’s call it x—is the
minimum amount of space you should allot for a
versioned backup partition if you’re using
compression. Without compression (and
I hasten to point out that these figures represent
recommended minimums. They will enable you
to back up your data comfortably today, but as
your hard disk fills up, you want a backup disk
that can keep up with it. So all things considered,
you should buy a backup disk with a higher
capacity than what you think you need right now.
Given the rapidly falling prices of hard drives,
and the decreasing differences between mediumand large-capacity models, it no longer makes
sense to get a slightly smaller disk just to save a
few dollars. As of mid-2009, desktop drives in
the 500GB to 1.5TB range provide, on average,
the best value (in gigabytes per dollar), and one
or more of those drives will make the most sense
for the majority of users.
Choosing a hard drive
Because so many different external hard drives
exist, the choice can be daunting. Here’s my
quick guide to what you need to know.
Interface: You can get hard drives with almost
any combination of FireWire 400, FireWire 800,
USB 2.0, and eSATA (external Serial ATA)
interfaces. The theoretical speed with which
these interfaces can transfer data goes in this
order, from slowest to fastest: FireWire 400,
USB 2.0, FireWire 800, and eSATA. However, in
practice, USB 2.0 is nearly always much slower
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 24
than either version of FireWire. FireWire 800 can
be significantly faster than FireWire 400, but
usually not twice as fast, as the number implies—
you may see only a modest speed increase.
Finally eSATA is unquestionably the fastest, but
as of mid-2009, no Macs come with eSATA
ports; you have to add them with a third-party
PCI or PCI-X card (for Power Mac and Mac Pro
models), a PC card (for PowerBooks), or an
ExpressCard/34 (for some MacBook Pros). Even
then, not all adapters support booting a Mac from
an eSATA drive (check with the manufacturer if
in doubt).
For most people, FireWire 800 is the best choice
(assuming your Mac supports it), followed by
FireWire 400 and USB. In any case, be sure to
get a drive with at least one interface that
matches what’s on your Macintosh. (For
example, the MacBook Air has no FireWire ports
—just USB 2.0.) If you can afford the slightly
higher price, you won’t go wrong with a quadinterface drive, which has USB, both FireWire
varieties, and eSATA.
One-touch backups: Maxtor sells OneTouch
external hard drives with a button that enables
you to launch software and execute a backup just
by pressing it. I’d rather have my backups run
automatically or on a schedule—one less button
to press! (Note: Seagate purchased Maxtor in
mid-2006, but the new combined company is
keeping the two brands separate for the time
being.)
Automatic backups: CMS Products’ ABSplus
drives include software that performs a duplicate
as soon as you plug in the drive. That’s great—
but only part of what we want. I’d opt instead for
the flexibility of standard backup software. Feel
free to get an ABSplus, but plan to supply your
own software, at least for archiving.
Clickfree devices: The Clickfree line of backup
devices—which includes everything from credit
card-sized flash drives to pocket-sized portable
drives to 2TB desktop drives—combines a USB
external storage device with built-in software.
The first time you plug the drive into your Mac,
you run the included setup program, which
requires only a couple of clicks. Thereafter, the
drive automatically backs up important files
whenever it’s plugged in. No scheduling,
configuration, or manual intervention is ever
required, but if you need to restore files, you can
do so by running the software included on the
drive. Although that all sounds marvelous in that
it’s incredibly easy to use, bear in mind that
Clickfree products provide neither bootability nor
versioned backups, my two key pillars of a solid
backup strategy. So I suggest resisting the
temptation and sticking with conventional drives.
Maxtor OneTouch External Hard Drive
Build-your-own: Numerous companies sell
FireWire-, USB-, and/or eSATA-equipped cases
into which you can place your own IDE or
SATA drive mechanism. If you’re comfortable
doing some minor tinkering and bargain hunting,
you may be able to save a bit of money this way.
(See the next item, also, for an alternative.)
Caseless connector kits: You don’t necessarily
need a case to connect a bare drive mechanism to
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 25
your Mac. Several companies offer adapters that
connect various combinations of bare IDE or
SATA drives directly to USB or FireWire ports.
Although you’ll have to go without the
additional protection and ventilation that a case
provides (making them best only for short-term
use), you can save money and space with one of
these. Examples include:
•
Granite Digital’s Emergency Copy USB
to SATA/IDE Bridge Adapter ($25) or
USB to SATA II Bridge Adapter ($20)
•
Newer Technology’s USB 2.0 Universal
Drive Adapter, which connects any IDE
or SATA drive to a USB 2.0 port ($35)
and their spiffy Voyager Q, a quadinterface desktop dock for any 2.5-inch or
3.5-inch SATA drive ($95)
•
WiebeTech’s line of DriveDock products,
such as the UltraDock v4 (FireWire 800,
FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA
interfaces for any 3.5-inch IDE drive, or
2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drive, $199)—
other models have various other
combinations of interfaces
Hot-swappable drive bay enclosures: Several
companies, including FirmTek, Granite Digital,
and WiebeTech, sell hot-swappable FireWire,
USB 2.0, and/or eSATA hard drive assemblies.
You get a single case, power supply, and cable, to
which you add one or more hard drives, each in a
special carrier. You can pop out one drive and
pop in another quickly, making it easy to rotate
backups. But you pay quite a premium for that
small convenience.
Multi-drive enclosures: Another recent trend is
enclosures containing two or more nonremovable drive mechanisms configured as a
RAID in order to appear as a single, larger
volume. Examples are Maxtor’s OneTouch III,
Turbo Edition and LaCie’s Hard Disk MAX.
Pocket-sized hard drives: If you need to back
up large amounts of data while traveling, or if
your laptop lacks a CD or DVD burner, consider
a pocket-sized hard drive. These drives typically
use the same 2.5-inch mechanisms that laptops
do, and can often be powered through the
FireWire or USB cable, eliminating the need to
carry a bulky AC adapter with you. (In fact, I like
these drives even for backing up desktop
computers, because they’re quieter than full-size
drives and require less desk space and cable
clutter—albeit at a slightly higher price.) Some
examples:
•
•
•
LaCie Mobile Drives: LaCie makes
several lines of pocket-sized hard drives,
with various interface options and
capacities up to 1TB (in some cases using
two drives in one enclosure).
Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini: Maxtor’s
pocket-sized drives hold up to 500GB
and use USB 2.0 interfaces.
OWC Mercury On-the-Go: These drives
are available with several different
Wiebe Tech Hot Swappable Bay
combinations of USB 2.0, FireWire 400,
and FireWire 800 interfaces, in capacities
up to 500GB (with larger sizes expected
soon). You can also buy an empty
enclosure and add your own 2.5-inch
drive, such as the new Western Digital
Scorpio Blue 1TB drive. (The OWC
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 26
Mercury cases are among the few that can
accommodate the Scorpio Blue’s 12.5
mm height.)
•
Seagate FreeAgent Go: Similar to the
other drives listed here, these come in
capacities up to 500GB (with rumors of a
640GB model in the works) and include
FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0
interfaces.
•
Western Digital My Passport Essential
SE: This tiny drive with a big name
comes in 750GB and 1TB capacities, but
has only a USB 2.0 interface.
Encrypted hard drives: When you put a
bootable duplicate on an external hard drive, you
can’t use your backup software’s encryption
feature; if the files have to be decrypted by
software before the system can read them, you
won’t be able to boot from that drive. And thus,
ordinarily, only standard copies and versioned
backups can be encrypted—though some
programs you might want to use for versioned
backups (think: Time Machine) don’t offer
encryption as an option. This isn’t much of a
worry unless, as I recommend, you store one of
your backup drives off-site at all times—if
someone else gets their hands on it, they have
immediate access to all your data.
One way to get encrypted duplicates, or
encrypted versioned backups when using a
program like Time Machine, is to use a drive that
features hardware encryption. Everything written
to such a drive is encrypted automatically, and
everything read from the drive is decrypted
automatically, by circuitry in its enclosure;
instead of typing in a password, you unlock the
data by using a physical electronic key or smart
card, swiping your finger on a built-in fingerprint
reader, or entering a code on a keypad.
Several manufacturers now make such drives (or
enclosures to which you can add your own
drive); they come in both full-size (3.5-inch) and
pocket-sized (2.5-inch) models, with a variety of
interfaces. They’re more expensive than standard
drives, but are an excellent investment if you
store sensitive personal data. Examples include:
•
•
•
•
Ceelox HD3500 Fingerprint Hard Drive
Data Locker
LaCie SAFE hard drives
Outbacker MXI Bio hard drives and
Stealth MXP Bio flash drives
•
RadTech’s Impact enclosures
•
RocStor’s Rocbit and Rocsafe MAC OS
X drives
•
SecureDisk enclosures
iPods: You can
use an iPod as a
backup device if it
has enough free
space—but
remember, that
will limit the
amount of media
you can store, and
you may also
wear it out
prematurely, since
it wasn’t meant
for continuous disk
use. (Only older iPods with FireWire interfaces
can be used as startup disks for PowerPC-based
Macs.) iPods are also more vulnerable to theft,
since you’re more likely to carry them around
with you—so be sure your backups are
encrypted! To use your iPod as an external hard
drive, open iTunes, select your iPod in the
Devices list on the left, and check the Enable
Disk Use checkbox. The iPod touch (and iPhone)
do not support this feature without the use of a
third-party hack.
Brands and warranties: You’ll usually pay
more for a brand name than a generic drive. Is
the extra money worth it? Often not. The drive
mechanisms themselves come from relatively
few manufacturers, all of which are quite
reputable—it’s the cases, power supplies, and
supporting electronics that vary from vendor to
vendor. Look for a 3-year or better warranty, and
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 27
check out the manufacturer’s Web site to look for
signs of life and Mac support. But don’t be afraid
of second-tier brands.
Warning: Some Western Digital My Book and
Passport hard drive models can’t be used to boot
a PowerPC-based Mac, even if connected via
FireWire. The problem doesn’t affect Intel-based
Macs. Go to Western Digital’s site for a full list
of affected products.
Joe’s hardware
recommendations
Don’t make decisions about hardware based on
price alone. You may find the cost of a stack of
DVD-R discs, for example, to be a fraction of
what a hard drive costs—but that’s only part of
the story. Speed, convenience, flexibility, and the
ability to make bootable backups all add
tremendous value to hard drives. Even if you can
afford only one external hard drive, making it
part of your backup system will pay for itself
many times over in saved time and aggravation.
If your budget permits, two or even three
moderately large external hard drives are a good
way to go.
supplement or even a substitute for conventional
versioned backups. An excellent approach that
gives you the best of both worlds without costing
a fortune is to use a single hard drive for local
duplicates and versioned backups, and then use
an Internet backup service (perhaps only for your
most essential files) to provide both redundancy
and off-site storage for your versioned backups
—without requiring you to move any hardware
around.
[Joe Kissell has written many books about the
Macintosh, including many popular Take Control
ebooks. He’s also Senior Editor of TidBits and
contributes frequently to Macworld. Take Control
of Mac OS X Backups, Fourth Edition was
released in September 2009 by TidBits
Publishing, and it is completely up-to-date for
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.]
Network backups are even more convenient
(especially if you use a laptop with a wireless
network), though they lose a few points for
speed. Another advantage: if you’re sensitive to
noise, having one less whirring gadget on your
desk is a good thing.
If you’re looking purely for the most economical
hardware path, use your built-in SuperDrive and
record backups onto DVD-RW media. Your
hardware cost is zero, and $50 should buy you
enough blank media to last years.
Finally, don’t overlook Internet backups. If the
volume of files you need to back up is reasonably
small and your Internet connection is fast,
Internet backup services could be a good
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 28
Chill Pill RapCap Microphone
for iPod
The RapCap is
a clever little
microphone
that makes it
easy to record
crisp, clear
audio on
compatible
iPods and
iPhones.
RapCap helps
you record
higher quality
audio than the built-in mics on iPod nano 5G
and iPhone 3G and 3GS.
•
•
Optimized for voice recordings
Recordings are saved in easy-to-edit
WAV format
VERY EASY TO USE
•
•
•
With its durable, ultra-compact design and
simplicity of use, the RapCap will become an
essential part of your digital lifestyle.
RapCap is compatible with iPod nano 4G, iPod
nano 5G, iPhone 3G and 3GS, iPod touch 2G
and iPod touch 3G/Late 2009, as well as all iPod
classic models!
•
SUGGESTED USES
•
Easily record voice memos, thoughts,
and to-do lists
•
Easily record classes and lectures for
later reference and dictation
•
Obtain audio clips for a blog or digital
journalism website
•
Quickly record music practice
•
Makes a perfect accessory to include
with gift of iPod nano 4G, iPod nano 5G,
iPhone 3G and 3GS, iPod touch 2G and
iPod touch 3G/Late 2009, as well as all
iPod classic models
HIGH QUALITY MICROPHONE
•
•
Plug and play
with iPod nano
4G, iPod nano 5G,
and iPod classic
Plug and play
with iPhone 3GS
using built-in
Voice Memo app
For iPhone 3G,
iPod touch 2G,
and iPod touch
3G/2009 you will
need to download
the recording app
of your choice.
Griffin iTalk
Recorder is free,
as is QuickVoice
Recorder.
Many other audio recording apps are
available. Click here to see these.
iLounge.com published an article
reviewing many audio recording apps for
the iPhone / iPod touch; click here to
read this.
Simply plug the RapCap into your iPod’s
headphone port to switch into recording
Mic captures crisp, clear audio
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 29
mode and start a new recording with a
single button click
•
Listen to recordings immediately after
you capture them
•
Automatically transfer recordings into
iTunes when you sync your iPod with
your computer
•
Recordings are saved in WAV format for
easy editing with any audio-editing
software, including GarageBand,
Audacity, etc
•
Powered from iPod / iPhone battery – no
need for external power
EXTREMELY COMPACT AND DURABLE
•
•
•
RapCap is about the size of a gumdrop,
so you can bring it everywhere
RapCap has no moving parts
RapCap attaches securely to your iPod’s
headphone port
•
RapCap can be used with most iPod
nano, classic, and touch cases
•
Rap Cap features a tough, extruded
polycarbonate shell
SPECIFICATIONS
•
Compatible with iPod nano 4G, iPod
nano 5G, iPhone 3G and 3GS, iPod touch
2G and iPod touch 3G/Late 2009, as well
as all iPod classic models!
•
Length: 36mm
•
Diameter: 13mm
•
Net weight: 4.5g
•
Compatible with iTunes App Store
programs including iTalk and iTalk Pro
•
Download the latest iPod firmware from
iTunes for maximum compatibility
WARRANTY
•
One year limited warranty
“Cat Nabber!”
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 30
New Flash Drives
from
HAMMERHEAD!
By Katie Wilhite
Smalldog.com has just brought in a new line up
of USB Flash Drives by Vermont’s
HAMMERHEAD!
These are by far my new favorite drives. They
are not only priced well at $19.99 for a 4GB
Flash Drive, but they also are unique and come
with some character!
Available in a Bicycle, Firetruck, Yellow Cab,
TekGirl, Snowboard, iPhone, Vermont, Guitar
shapes, as well as our very own Imelda mascot.
You can find the right USB Flash Drive for
anyone! These are PC and Mac compatible—as
well as USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 compatible. These
drives are also backed up with a 1-year warranty
through HAMMERHEAD.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 31
December 20, 2009
Ping
SNAP AND SEARCH (NO WORDS NEEDED)
By MIGUEL HELFT
THE world, like the World Wide Web before it, is
about to be hyperlinked. Soon, you may be able
to find information about almost any physical
object with the click of a smartphone.
This vision, once the stuff of science fiction, took
a significant step forward this month when
Google unveiled a smartphone application called
Goggles. It allows users to search the Web, not
by typing or by speaking keywords, but by
snapping an image with a cellphone and feeding
it into Google’s search engine.
How tall is that mountain on the horizon? Snap
and get the answer. Who is the artist behind this
painting? Snap and find out. What about that
stadium in front of you? Snap and see a schedule
of future games there.
Goggles, in essence, offers the promise to bridge
the gap between the physical world and the Web.
Computer scientists have been trying to equip
machines with virtual eyes for decades, and with
varying degrees of success. The field, known as
computer vision, has resulted in a smattering of
applications and successes in the lab. But
recognizing images at what techies call “scale,”
meaning thousands or even millions of images, is
hugely difficult, partly because it requires
enormous computing power. It turns out that
Google, with its collection of massive data
centers, has just that.
“The technology exists and was developed by
other people,” said Gary Bradski, a computer
vision expert and a consulting professor of
computer science at Stanford. “The breakthrough
is doing this at scale. There are not many entities
that could do that.”
Goggles is not the first application to try to create
a link between the physical and virtual worlds via
cellphones. A variety of so-called augmentedreality applications like World Surfer and
Wikitude allow you to point your cellphone or its
camera and find information about landmarks,
restaurants and shops in front of you. Yet those
applications typically rely on location data,
matching information from maps with a
cellphone’s GPS and compass data. Another class
of applications reads bar codes to link objects or
businesses with online information about them.
Goggles also uses location information to help
identify objects, but its ability to recognize
millions of images opens up new possibilities.
“This is a big step forward in terms of making it
work in all these different kinds of situations,”
said Jason Hong, a professor at the Human
Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University.
When you snap a picture with Goggles, Google
spends a few seconds analyzing the image, then
sends it up to its vast “cloud” of computers and
tries to match it against an index of more than a
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 32
billion images. Google’s data centers distribute
the image-matching problem among hundreds or
even thousands of computers to return an answer
quickly.
Google says Goggles works best with certain
categories of objects, including CDs, movie
posters, products, wine labels, artwork, buildings
and landmarks. It can read business cards and
book covers. It doesn’t do so well with trees, cars
or objects whose shape can change, like a towel.
And it has trouble recognizing objects in less than
ideal lighting conditions.
“Today, Google Goggles is limited because it
recognizes certain objects in certain categories,”
said Vic Gundotra, a vice president at Google in
charge of its mobile phone applications. “But our
goal is for Goggles to recognize every image.
This is really the beginning.”
For now, Goggles is part of the “labs” section of
Google’s Web site, which indicates that the
product remains experimental. So it is not
surprising that it has quirks and flaws.
Goggles had trouble recognizing the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, for example,
when the image was shot with several trees in the
way of its suspension span. But it did recognize it
when the picture was snapped with fewer
obstacles in the way. Faced with a picture of a
Yahoo billboard shot in San Francisco, the search
results showed Times Square, presumably
because of the huge Yahoo billboard there.
But the service can also delight and amaze. It had
no trouble recognizing an Ansel Adams
photograph of Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite,
returning search results for both the image and a
book that used that image on its cover. It also
correctly identified a BlackBerry handset, a
Panasonic cordless phone and a Holmes air
purifier. It stumbled with an Apple mouse,
perhaps because there was a bright reflection on
its plastic surface.
It’s not hard to imagine a slew of commercial
applications for this technology. You could
compare prices of a product online, learn how to
operate that old water heater whose manual you
have lost or find out about the environmental
record of a certain brand of tuna. But Goggles
and similar products could also tell the history of
a building, help travelers get around in a foreign
country or even help blind people navigate their
surroundings.
It is also easy to think of scarier possibilities
down the line. Google’s goal to recognize every
image, of course, includes identifying people.
Computer scientists say that it is much harder to
identify faces than objects, but with the
technology and computing power improving
rapidly, improved facial recognition may not be
far off.
Mr. Gundotra says that Google already has
some facial-recognition capabilities, but that it
has decided to turn them off in Goggles until
privacy issues can be resolved. “We want to
move with great discretion and thoughtfulness,”
he said.
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 33
Mac Tip of the Week #252
Excerpted from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
Peachpit Learning Series by Robin Williams and
John Tollett
Automatically Add
an Address to Your
Address Book
While you're in Mail (not Address Book), you
can automatically add an address from an email
message you receive. Open the message in Mail,
right-click (or Control-click) the email address
in the From field, and choose Add to Address
Book in the pop-up menu. If the contact
information is already in your Address Book, the
pop-up menu item says Open in Address Book.
Excerpted from The Little Mac Book, Snow
Leopard Edition by Robin Williams
Use Real Accent
Marks
would usually be under them. For example, the
acute accent over the e (é) is Option e; the tilde
over the n (ñ) is Option n.
Excerpted from The Mac OS X 10.6 Snow
Leopard Pocket Guide by Jeff Carlson
Installing Onto a
Clean Slate
When installing Snow Leopard, what if you
want to start over from scratch? Both the Tiger
and Leopard installation tools included an Erase
and Install option that wiped the hard disk clean
before installing a fresh version of Mac OS X.
That approach let you start with a clean slate and
then selectively add your earlier data (from a
backup, of course). Snow Leopard doesn't offer
Erase and Install, but you can still do it: Start up
from the Snow Leopard install disc and use Disk
Utility to wipe your hard disk before installing
Mac OS X 10.6. Note that iLife is not included
on the Snow Leopard disc, so you'll need to
install that app separately (from the iLife disc or
the Applications Install DVD that came with
your computer). Also, if you take this route,
make sure that you first deauthorize iTunes and
deactivate any software, such as the Adobe
Creative Suite, that requires online
authentication.
You can type accent marks on the Mac, as in
résumé and piñata. It's easy to remember that
you use the Option key, and the accents are
hiding beneath the keyboard characters that
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 34
TIME TO PAY YOUR CLUB DUES
It is time to pay your SVCG yearly dues.
SVCG’s new dues structure:
Active members (library volunteer, board
member, etc) = nothing
otherwise
Attend meetings and/or receive newsletters
=
$10 individual
or
$15 family
You can bring your dues
to our January meeting
or mail them to:
SVCG
POB 649
El Verano, CA 05433
= FREE
JANUARY 2010
PAGE 35
Ye
a
r!
POB 649
El Verano, CA 95433
N
ew
Mac Users Newsletter
• JANUARY USER GROUP MEETING
py
Date: Saturday, 1/9/2010
Place: Sonoma Public Library
755 West Napa Street
H
ap
Time: Mac Users 9 a.m.
Topic: PAGES
for Mac and Windows Users

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