Kathleen and Jimmy looking at the iPhoto
book that we ordered for her mom. The
second copy arrived today. [ Photo: Dave
Aiello on Flickr. ]

Kathleen and I took advantage of an iPhoto Custom Photo Book promotion that Apple ran for Mother's Day. We ordered Kathleen's mother a hard cover photo book. We made sure we ordered before the April 30 cut off date for standard shipping.

Something happened to the order while it was in production and it didn't ship in time for delivery last Friday. When we realized this, Kathleen called Apple Customer Service.

Kathleen told the Apple customer service agent that we ordered before the deadline and that FedEx was reporting that the shipment was not going to arrive in time for us to give it as a gift on Mother's Day.

Here's what the person at Apple Photo Services Support wrote back after receiving a message from the main customer service group:

Dear Kathleen,

Thank you for your recent Apple photo order.

I understand that you submitted your order to us in time to be received by May 11th. You may have noticed that the tracking information for your order indicates the estimated delivery date is after May 11th.

To ensure that your order is received by May 11th, your order is being reprocessed free of charge and will be sent via expedited shipping. When it ships, you will receive a separate email with the tracking number for your duplicate order. Please accept both orders as a goodwill gesture.

I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. I hope you continue to enjoy using Apple Photo Services for your creative projects. If you have any questions or concerns, please reply to this email and we will assist you further.

Thank you for being a loyal Apple customer and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Sofia
Apple Photo Services Support

http://www.apple.com/support/photoservices/ww

The replacement package arrived on Friday, overnighted from Elk Grove, CA. Kathleen's mom got the gift on time and she was thrilled.

The original iPhoto book arrived via FedEx Ground on Monday. Kathleen and I get to keep a beautiful book of photos of Jimmy and us, courtesy of Apple.

The photos books we ordered are truly first rate. The service we got is unbeatable. Kathleen never mentioned that I write a blog about computer technology, or that we know anybody who works for Apple. I think we got the service that Apple would give to any customer who had the same problem.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been using Twitter for several weeks, because there are things that friends of mine might be interested in hearing about that will never make it into an email or an Operation Gadget post.

Twitterific vs Spaz: These two desktop Twitter
clients that run on the Mac are competing for
space on my desktop. Only one will survive
the week. [ Screenshot by Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

It only took a few minutes of serious Twitter use for me to realize that I wanted a desktop client. It's easy to see which client friends are using, just visit http://twitter.com/daiello and look at one of my latest tweets:

The link to the word "Spaz" indicates that I used the Spaz client to post that tweet.

The two clients that I've tried so far are Twitterific and Spaz. Both run on the Mac, but take pretty different design approaches when you look at them closely.

Twitterific has been around longer, and it's a classic Cocoa application. This means that it runs only on MacOS X. It's closed source and ad supported unless you pay the $14.95 fee that the publisher wants you to pay.

I actually like the ads that are inserted periodically in my twit stream. They come from The DECK, the same ad network that is used on 37signals' network of web sites.

Twitterific is nice if you are a Mac user because of how well it integrates with all the other applications that a Mac geek like me is going to have installed. It integrates seemlessly with Growl, a kind of a notification manager that lots of Mac applications tie into.

Twitterific also configures itself as a Heads Up Display (or HUD). It does this by setting itself to float above the windows in front of it and using CSS opacity to allow windows underneath it to be viewed. That's a cool effect, and is particularly useful when used in conjunction with Leopard features like Spaces. When it's in this mode, it removes its icon from the Dock, which is nice because it makes the Dock a bit more concise.

Spaz is the newcomer. It's an open source Adobe AIR application. It looks nice, but doesn't have some of the MacOS X-specific features that Twitterific has. It's free and has no ads.

Continue reading "Twitterific vs Spaz: The Twitter Client Face-off on My Desktop" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a music video that's making the rounds of web sites I read:

The movement away from Windows and toward the Mac is still in it's early stages, so lots of people haven't seen all of these Mac applications before. My question is, does it make more sense as a music video or an ad for Leopard?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the best techniques for using an iPhone with a large iTunes library is to use Smart Playlists to automatically select tracks from your library according to logical rules. I discussed this in Use Smart Playlists for Endless Combinations of Christmas Music. I wanted to provide an update because I see a problem with this technique.

I have some Smart Playlists for rock music that I listen to sometimes when I'm running. However, I picked up some music as part of the Lance Armstrong: Run Longer workout (available from ) that's actually part of the "Alternative" genre that I want to include in these playlists.

The problem I ran into is that Alternative and Rock music go together in my mind, but they didn't end up together according to the way I had my rock-related Smart Playlists defined. The rules for my "Rock Favorites" Smart Playlist were:

• Match all of the following rules
• Genre contains Rock
• Rating is greater than ***
• Limit to 25 items selected by most played

If you want to add the Alternative genre, you can't just add a second genres rule in iTunes without changing the selection criteria to "Match any of the following rules", and then you lose the rating criteria.

The only way to choose two or more genres and include rating criteria is to exclude every other genre but the ones you want. This was discussed by Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com in 2006 in an article called "Music Only" for your iTunes playlists.

• Children's Music
• Classical
• Soundtrack
• Vocal
• Country
• Jazz
• Easy Listening
• Holiday
• Folk
• Miscellaneous

You might have to exclude more genres if your iTunes library is more diverse than mine.

I can see why Apple would design iTunes so that there is a simple one level logic to selection criteria for Smart Playlists, but the problem of how to combine music in closely related genres is made more complicated by iTunes' simplicity.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• How to Eat Healthily at Top Chain Restaurants on Lifehacker: "The food experts at Health magazine have scoured the menus at popular restaurant chains in search of the healthiest foods on the menu, rounding up several healthy menu options at otherwise unhealthy chains."

  They found reasonably healthy choices at Denny's, Ruby Tuesday, and P.F. Chang's, among others.
• AT&T Providing Free Wi-Fi Access to iPhone Users - Mac Rumors on MacRumors: "A couple of readers have reported that AT&T hotspots are now offering free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users. Barnes and Noble, Starbucks and presumably AT&T's 71,000 other Wi-fi hotspot locations are now offering iPhone users a custom portal to access free Wi-Fi. A special iPhone formatted page asks for your mobile phone number. Once entered, you can access the Wi-Fi access for free."

• The "missing" iPhone ringtone on TUAW: "We've all seen the iPhone ads.... None are identical, but most have something in common. Namely, that peculiar ringtone. We call it peculiar because it isn't actually included with the iPhone. Luckily, most of us have it installed on our computers already."

  The article goes on to explain how to convert the Apple Loop that comes with GarageBand (part of iLife '08) into a ringtone for your iPhone.
• In search of a GTD solution on TUAW: Brett Terpstra's take on different ways you can integrate Mac apps and utilities into a Getting Things Done system. ".... This round of solution-searching began with a post by Dennis Best titled Getting things done (simply) in Leopard. It outlined a system where iCal calendars are your contexts (or areas of responsibility), To-dos are created in Mail, Mail Notes become projects, and Smart Mailboxes were used to interesting ends. It even had a tagging system, allowing for great flexibility. This was highly appealing to me given its close integration with my primary source of tasks and information: email...."
• Interactive GTD Software Comparison Table on Priacta.com: "102 Researched GTD Software Titles and Counting. Software listed here has been verified to support Getting Things Done and related systems...." Solutions on the web, Windows, Mac, handheld, Linux, and Python are documented. I'll have to look at why they breakout Python separately.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I bought my MacBook Pro at the end of February, it was one of the first Macs shipped that didn't include the Apple Remote. This meant that I would have to buy one for $30 at the Apple Store or less if I shopped around.

Remote Buddy iPhone Interface: one of the unique features
that sets Remote Buddy apart from other Mac remote
control software.

I decided that I would start using the MacBook Pro and see if I missed the Apple Remote.

Over the past few weeks, I've thought about buying an Apple Remote but not pulled the trigger. I haven't needed to make any Keynote presentations, and I don't use iTunes locally on my Mac enough to make it worthwhile because I use my iPhone so much.

One thing I hadn't counted on was finding a Mac application that made my iPhone into a remote control for my Mac. Remote Buddy provides a framework in which remote control actions for many Mac applications can live. It supports a number of remote control devices including:

• Apple Remote
• iPhone and iPod Touch
• Griffin Airclick
• Nintendo Wii Remote

This makes Remote Buddy quite similar to Salling Clicker, a program that has existed for a long time and has many of the same features.

What makes Remote Buddy different is the mini Ajax-based web application that ships with it. You can install this app on your Mac and use it to present a remote control user interface on a non-jailbroken iPhone. This is a really cool idea if you ask me.

I'm sure that lots of people who use a MacOS X-based computer and an iPhone won't need something like Remote Buddy. However, if you are using your Mac as an automation hub, you may find Remote Buddy very useful.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On our trip to Buffalo this weekend, Kathleen, Jimmy, and I stayed in two Marriott properties that had public WiFi networks. The thing I didn't like about them is that they are wide open networks which means anyone can join and do pretty much anything they want locally.

I have my MacBook Pro setup the way I want to use it when I am on my home office network. This means that I have iPhoto and iTunes sharing enabled, and a public folder available so that my wife can grab files from me or give me files without my intervention. I don't want these services to be advertised an available when I'm on a foreign WiFi network.

I turned off iPhoto and iTunes sharing manually when I went on line at the hotels. This only took a minute or two, but I don't want to have to remember to do it or to think about it. I'm almost positive that I'll forget to turn these services back on in many cases when I get home.

In order to batten down the hatches on my Mac, I need a couple of discrete pieces of software:

• Software to make my Mac "context-aware". The leading choices seem to be Marco Polo and Home Zone. My personal preference is for Marco Polo at the moment.
• Rules to identify when my Mac is at home and when it isn't at home. The easiest way to do this is to detect the MAC address of our Airport Extreme base station.
• Scripts to turn on and off the iTunes, iPhoto, and networking services, based on the context. I probably also want to step up the aggressiveness of the software firewall running on my Mac.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog reports that Apple spent $844 million on research and development in 2007, significantly less than competitors Microsoft, IBM, H-P, Sun, and AMD. This is interesting because everybody and their brother has been touting Apple as a uniquely innovative company.

I think Apple succeeds so prolifically because it is especially focused on innovation in its core competencies. Lots of its competitors invest in research that doesn't make the same impact on their product lines as Apple's research does on Apple's products.

I think people have a tendency to criticize Apple for the wrong reasons. A lot of people complained about Apple delaying the release of OS X Leopard, and waiting until recently to release the iPhone SDK. Could they have shipped those products faster if they hired more engineers?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was one of the people who bought a Mac in the fiscal quarter that ended March 29. The last time I bought a Mac for myself was over 10 years ago. I guess wasn't alone, because The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple's quarterly earnings rose 36 percent, largely on the strength of Mac sales. Revenues grew 43 percent overall to approximately $7.42 billion.

There were some aspects of the Mac sales figures that I found hard to believe. Apple reported that it sold 51 percent more Macs in the quarter than in the same period a year earlier. They sold nearly $3.5 billion dollars worth of Macs in three months. Overall PC market growth was only 12 percent, so Apple is clearly stealing a significant share of the U.S. market from PC makers.

Apple sold 1.7 million iPhones during this period, which is about what analysts that follow the company had expected. The article goes on to say:

Apple executives said a 'significant' portion of its iPhone sales continue to involve consumers who 'unlock' the iPhone to work on unauthorized wireless networks, especially overseas in countries such as China, where the iPhone isn't yet available from Apple.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ars Technica published a terrific article by Peter Bright that illustrates why the Mac platform is growing at the expense of Windows. According to the article:

Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it—that's the argument. The truth is that Windows is hampered by 25-year old design decisions. These decisions mean that it's clunky to use and absolutely horrible to write applications for. The applications that people do write are almost universally terrible. They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them. Microsoft—surely the company with the greatest interest in making Windows and Windows applications exude quality—is, in fact, one of the worst perpetrators.

The author's perspective is not unique. What makes this article more interesting is his next conclusion:

The unfortunate thing about this is that there is a company that's not only faced similar problems but also tackled them. Apple in the mid-1990s was faced with an operating system that was going nowhere, and needed to take radical action to avoid going out of business. And so that's what Apple did.

This article goes on to discuss this history of the Mac and Windows platforms from 1997 on, and fairly concisely explains how Microsoft squandered what appeared to be an insurmountable architectural lead over Apple. It also explains how the third-party Mac software community rose from shareware roots, riding the momentum of MacOS X from about 10.3 on.

There's a reason why practically every thought leader on the Internet is a Mac user in 2008: the quality of the user experience. This is not marketing hype. You can see little examples of it everywhere when you look over a Mac user's shoulder. What Apple started with MacOS X and continued with its iLife, iWork, and Professional-series applications, has been continued and driven forward by the third-party developer community and its full scale embrace of the Cocoa application framework.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is April 15, a date that quite a few different tax authorities in the United States have picked as the deadline for filing annual tax returns. I had to file several returns today, including:

• U.S. Federal Income Tax for my wife and me
• Pennsylvania State Income Tax for my wife and me
• Pennsylvania Local Earned Income Tax for my wife and me
• New Jersey Corporate Business Tax for a company that I partially own

Due to slightly higher than expected income in 2007, my wife and I owed a small amount to the Federal, State, and Local tax authorities. I paid these taxes using my credit card through Pay1040.com, a payment provider closely associated with H&R Block and the TaxCut tax preparation program, and Official Payments Corporation, the payment provider most commonly used by tax authorities in the United States.

Pay1040.com successfully processed my Federal Income Tax payment using the Safari browser that is installed on my wife's MacBook. She is still using MacOS X 10.4, but all of the software updates have been applied so she is on Safari 3.1. That's good news, because this is the first time I have used Pay1040.com and I didn't expected a relatively small provider to have a Safari-friendly payment process.

TaxCut's Pennsylvania Tax Preparation Software didn't even offer the option of paying by credit card, so I had to file on paper and use the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue's website to initiate a credit card payment. Their chosen payment partner is Official Payments.

At Official Payments' website, I found that I couldn't make a payment with Safari at all despite the fact that there was no indication that Safari was not a supported browser. I could never get to the page where I could confirm my payment details on either my wife's MacBook running OS X 10.4 or my fully updated MacBook Pro running Leopard.

I had to switch over to Firefox on my Mac in order to pay what I owed the State of Pennsylvania.

I took advantage of web-based electronic filing offered by the local tax administrator serving my town-- a company called Berkheimer Tax Administrator, Inc.. Berkheimer performs this service for lots of towns, school districts, and emergency services districts within Pennsylvania.

Safari didn't work for interacting with their electronic filing site, and I had to use Firefox to complete the forms. When time came to pay, however, I was warned that the interaction between Berkheimer's electronic filing solution and Official Payments would only work in Internet Explorer. So, I had to save my session, fire up VMware Fusion, launch IE 7 in Windows XP, login to Berkheimer's e-filing site, pickup my session where I left off, and make the payment. Forcing someone to use a PC for any step of a tax filing process is simply unacceptable in 2008.

Surprisingly, The New Jersey Division of Taxation had the most Safari-friendly payment system I experienced. They also use Official Payments, but they created their own front end to it. This front end is very simple and apparently had none of the browser-specific JavaScript that is present on Official Payments' own site. I was surprised because other aspects of the New Jersey state government are pretty IE specific.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Ode To A Burrito -- Chipotle Mexican Grill on Fast Company: "Good food wrapped in a socially responsible message has created legions of Chipotle fans -- and a superhot business. Acquired by McDonald's in 1998 when there were only 14 Chipotles, the company went public in 2006 with 500 stores and watched its stock rise from $22 to $110 in 18 months. The now-independent outfit is enjoying an 80% revenue run-up over three years....

  "Chipotle has achieved these impressive stats by spurning fast-food orthodoxy. Workers make each burrito by hand, which leads to long lines of customers waiting far beyond the four-minute industry standard. Turns out, that's not a problem for many customers." There aren't many Chipotles in Pennsylvania, but one just opened in Warrington, in the same complex with one of our two closest Wegman's. Why can't we eat there more often? [ via 37signals SVN ]
• Forwarding voicemails? on 37signals SVN: "Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is a huge step forward for voicemail, but it still feels a bit last generation. It’s still about the static message that sits in your box. You can’t forward it along, you can’t email it to yourself, you can’t even play it to someone else who’s on the phone with you." Great points.
• 15 Features of the Perfect Work Space on LifeDev: "8. No clutter - Clutter is an aesthetic problem as well as a mental problem. Cluttered work spaces give create cluttered thinking. Your mind will never be as clear as it could be with a messy, unorganized environment. This also includes your desktop clutter as well." My only question about the article is: why is "no clutter" feature number 8 and not higher on the list?
• Household: De-Clutter with a Six-Month "Maybe Box" on Lifehacker: "I can vouch for the power of hidden non-necessities. My garage has served as a de facto "Maybe" space for most of this winter, leading my house toward a serious garage sale this spring."
• The Cost of Working In a Digital World on LifeDev: "A very important article has been written by The New York Times showing the hazards of being a web worker. Without boundaries and carefult attention to our Internet usage, we can quickly find our health declining. Prolific blogger Om Malik, who suffered some life-threatening health problems late last year, shares some insights his doctor gave as to why web workers have health problems."
• #1 Song on This Date in History from Josh Hosler: "What was the #1 song on ... the day you were born? the day you graduated from high school? the day you were married? the day your child was born? the approximate date you were conceived?" Awesome site. [ via Pogue's Posts and Alltop Gadgets ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day I was looking forward to watching NHL playoff games, and started thinking about how much fun it would be to watch Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC instead of Versus.

I went over to CBC.ca and watched the HNIC Playoff Preview Show on the CBC Sports Video Player. The player is a Flash-based application that sits in your browser of choice. After a brief video introduction, the Hockey Night in Canada Opening was shown. This is a series of highlights playing over the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The opening sequence lasted about 45 seconds.

Occasionally I hear people talking about trying to buy the Hockey Night in Canada theme as their ringtone for their mobile phone. Nobody I know has it as their ringtone on their iPhone. I decided to try to use Mac software to create an iPhone ringtone of the actual Hockey Night in Canada Theme as broadcast by the CBC. I had no idea how easy this would turn out to be.

Before I describe this technique, I want to warn you that distributing copyrighted material such as the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song is probably illegal where you live. However, no one can stop you from making an iPhone ringtone for your own personal use using the following technique.

The software I used to make this ringtone was Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba Software ($32 direct from the developer) and GarageBand '08 which is part of the iLife '08 software suite from Apple.

Audio Hijack Pro allows you to intercept (or hijack) the audio output of any application running on your Mac, and save it as an MP3 file. I hijacked the audio output of Safari and captured the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song in about as much time as it took to locate the Opening in the program and then watch and listen to that opening.

Once I had the MP3 file, I brought it into GarageBand '08 and did the following:

1. I positioned the MP3 on the timeline so that the beginning of the song was at time 0:00.
2. I clicked the button called "Cycle Region" in the second set of controls below the timelines. That button needs to be clicked to "on" before a ringtone can be created.
3. I clicked and dragged the region of the time bar representing the music I wanted as part of my ringtone. I learned from Googling around that the sound had to be 40 seconds or less in duration, so I made sure that I only selected that amount of time in the time bar.
4. I chose "Send Ringtone to iTunes" from the "Share" menu.

This last step automatically exported the music clip as a ringtone and caused iTunes to import it. The next time I synced my iPhone, the custom ringtone was automatically transferred to it.

Once that was done, I could designate my Hockey Night in Canada ringtone as my default ringtone. Better yet, I decided to make it a ringtone unique to some of my friends from hockey and hockey officiating.

The true power of this technique is that you can capture and convert into a ringtone any sound that your Mac can play for you. This means the entire repertoire of YouTube is at your disposal, as well as things like Hulu, current programming from all of the major networks, and things like CBS Classic TV episodes.

I'm thinking of making a ringtone of the Hawaii Five-O Theme Song or the Love that Good n' Plenty Jingle from the 1960s next. [ Hat tip to The Mac Observer for their article Making Custom Ringtones with GarageBand ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• For the Phinney Family, a Dream and a Challenge on NYTimes.com: This story came out last week, right before Taylor Phinney raced in the Individual Pursuits at the Track Cycling World Championships. Taylor finished eighth. His father, Davis, is a legendary U.S. cycling champ who has struggled with Parkinson's Disease in recent years. This article summarizes their recent struggles and successes.
• ScreenFlow: The Killer Screencasting App on MacTips: "ScreenFlow is the application I've been waiting for on the Mac. I've been using it recently for the MacTips Videos and I love it! It's saves me so much time because I'm able to focus on creating valuable content rather than editing videos."
• Dash’s Car Navigator Gives Smart Directions, if Others Participate, Walt Mossberg on AllThingsD: "As smart as in-car navigation devices are, they could be smarter. They could talk to each other via the Internet and share information on how fast traffic is moving on the roads they have just traveled.... Starting this week, just such a smarter navigation box is hitting the market. Called the Dash Express, this $400 product looks a lot like units from better-known firms... But, unlike any other in-car navigation device I’ve seen, each Dash Express... becomes part of a network, connected to the company via the Internet. "
• Windows XP: Going, going ... gone? on Computerworld: "The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000."
• Coming Soon to a Phone Near You on WSJ.com: This article summarizes forthcoming developments in mobile phone voice control, improved web browsers, enhanced storage, and video sharing. [ Subscription may be required to read this article. ]
• How To Use Nokia’s Sports Tracker as a Photo Tracker on The Gadgets Page: "Ms. Jen was part of Nokia’s Urbanista Diaries Relay, which means they sent her to India to promote the Nokia N82 in all its glory. While on the trip, she realized how well the Sports Tracker (a typically exercise related feature) could be used to track the geo-locations of your photos"
• Note to readers: Today would be my grandfather James M. Lynch, Jr.'s 95th birthday. He died in 1982. He is one of the inspirations for this site, since he bought and tried every important electronic gadget that existed in the 1970s. He owned the first digital watch, desktop calculator, and personal computers I ever saw.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I uploaded a favicon for Operation Gadget a little while ago. I used a program called Pixen to make it on my MacBook Pro. Pixen is donationware.

The "Operation Gadget" title on the Alltop Gadgets Page looked naked without a favicon on its left. I felt like I had to step up and get something reasonable in there quickly.

It's hard to create something original and memorable in a 16x16 bitmap. So many of the most obvious gadget designs are taken already.

I have a really good one on CTDATA.com, but that's because CTDATA's logo is professionally designed, and we just scaled it down to fit the favicon image size.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I needed to come up to speed quickly on IBM WebSphere MQ, a complex piece of enterprise software so I could discuss it with a senior manager at a potential consulting client. The easiest way to do this was to read an introductory whitepaper on Websphere MQ that would provide me with a very high level understanding of the software and some applications of it.

The problem was that I didn't have time to read the whitepaper because it's a 32 pages document and I needed to be at the client's office in less than two hours. I decided to take a few minutes and try to use my Mac to convert the text of the document to an audio file that I could listen to on my iPhone while driving.

I based my solution on the idea published by Ben Waldie in Automator Power: Variables and Looping that was published in the February issue of Macworld. Ben's solution has two limitations:

1. It's Mac-only, which is not a problem for me.
2. It's intended to handle articles from RSS and Atom feeds, and what I needed was to read the text contained in a PDF file.

My adaptation neatly extracts the text out of the PDF file and uses the same suggested MacOS services to create the audio file. Here's how I did it:

Before I began writing my Automator workflow, I needed to install PDFtoText, a shell program that converts PDF documents into plain text. Carsten Blüm built a DMG installer for this open source utility.

My Automator workflow is as follows:

1. Internet: Get Specified URLs to retrieve ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/integration/wmq/WS_MQ_Messaging_Backbone_for_SOA.pdf.
2. Internet:Download URLs to the Downloads directory.

3. Utilities:Run Shell Script on the following script using the "/bin/bash" shell:

   /usr/local/bin/pdftotext
   /Users/.../WS_MQ_Messaging_Backbone_for_SOA.pdf
   /Users/.../WS_MQ_Messaging_Backbone_for_SOA.text

   This invokes the utility to read the PDFtoText converter and extract the text from the PDF file. The text above is one continuous command statement separated by spaces. Substitute your home directory and "/Downloads" for the ellipsis in the previous two lines.
4. Files & Folders: Open Finder Items to open the text file created above.
5. Text: Get Contents of TextEdit Document extracts the text out of the file.
6. Text: Text to Audio File reads the extracted text into an AIFF file. I store it that file in the Downloads directory to be consistent.
7. Music: Import Audio Files brings the file into iTunes. I use the AAC Encoder and delete the source AIFF file after I've encoded it.
8. Music: Add Songs to Playlist to add the new audio file to a playlist I call "Technology Reading".

This workflow worked incredibly well for me. It should work well for you too, assuming you can fast forward through things that aren't meant to be read like tables of contents, page numbers, and the text that is contained in tables and charts.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

• Stuff We Like: The Dave Laptop Stand on Lifehacker: "The Dave (oh Ikea, you and your names!) features adjustable height and angle, and can double as a TV tray or simple end table when you're not computing. If you've been looking for a better way to surf the internet from the comfort of your couch, the $25 Dave might be just the ticket."
• Optimizing File Sharing on Your Home Wi-Fi Network on Web Worker Daily: "A lot of people who have successfully put in a Wi-Fi network neglect to optimize the way files are shared between computers in a home or workgroup. You can choose ways to organize shared files, and ensure that files are shared securely or not visible to other users on your Wi-Fi network very easily...." Good instructions on how to do this whether you have Windows or Macs
• StrechCordz Short Resistance Training Belt on Cool Tools: "The StrechCordz resistance training belt makes expensive, complex, "endless" pools obsolete. At one end of a 4-foot, black rubber tube is a nylon belt with a simple plastic snap-clip that slips around my waist. On the other end is a loop I attach to the deep-end ladder of our modest home pool. That's it... just tether up and start swimming. Swim as hard and fast as you like yet stay in place."
• Cycling Photography Tips: Shooting Head On on Spare Cycles: "Shooting head on is both difficult and easy: difficult in that the rider is moving at you very fast so your margin for error is very little, but easy in that you don't have to move your camera very much at all."
• Easter's early this year. Deal with it. on God Plays Dice: "...the cycle of Easter dates repeat themselves every 5,700,000 years. The cycle of epacts (which encode the date of the full moon) in the Julian calendar repeat every nineteen years. There are two corrections made to the epact, each of which depend only on the century; one repeats (modulo 30, which is what matters) every 120 centuries, the other every 375 centuries, so the air of them repeat every 300,000 years. The days of the week are on a 400-year cycle, which doesn't matter because that's a factor of 300,000. So the Easter cycle has length the least common multiple of 19 and 300,000, which is 5,700,000." [ via Slashdot ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Holy Saturday on Wikipedia: Lots of names exist for the day before Easter. I had no idea that so much thought had been put into this day over the years. Sorry if you consider this a sacrilege.
• Sk*rt: "Digg for Chicks" on How to Change the World (blog.GuyKawasaki.com): "I love Sk*rt. You can think of it as "Digg for chicks" (in the words of QueenofSpain), and it features the user-selected stories in topic such as Arts & Entertainment, Design & Crafts, Family & Parenting, and Food & Home."
• View higher quality videos on YouTube on MacOSXhints: "Many people are using a trick to view any YouTube video in high-quality -- simply append &fmt=18 to the end of the URL. This is a job for AppleScript! Here are two simple versions; the first, for for OmniWeb... and the second, for Safari...."
• Lemnis Pharox LED Bulb on CoolTools: "I have been dutifully buying the various LED bulbs being marketed as home incandescent replacements for a year or two. Up until now, all have had that weird, blue flickery LED light, and all have been expensive. The Lemnis Pharox is the first one that actually delivers as a home bulb replacement. It sips electricity pulling down a mere 4 watts, will last for 35 years, and replaces the light of a 40 watt incandescent."
• Adventures in Rechargeable Batteries on CodingHorror: "I've been a rechargeable battery user for years. It seems the frugal thing to do in the long run, and it's also healthier for the planet when we aren't discarding mountains of single-use batteries into landfills." Author Jeff Atwood provides a lot of tips on getting the most out of modern rechargeable batteries. [ via LifeHacker ]
• PimpMySafari.com, recommended by Merlin Mann on MacBreak Weekly. This is the reference site for all plugins and bookmarklets for the Safari web browser.
• First Look: Safari 3.1 adds speed and HTML 5 features on Computerworld: "With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn't enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It took me about half a day to convince myself that MarsEdit is a must have for blogging on Operation Gadget. Here's why.

Operation Gadget talks a lot about electronic gadgets, computers, and software. I often provide links to these products that point to a place where you can buy them, such as Amazon.com. Links like this tend to make the blog a few dollars which pays for hosting and what not.

Building these links takes time. In the half day since I downloaded MarsEdit, I figured out how to adapt an AppleScript that came with MarsEdit to lookup on Amazon.com the selected text in a post I'm writing. I select the text of a product name in the post I'm writing, invoke the AppleScript, and quickly find a page referring to that product on Amazon.

From there I find the Amazon Standard Identifier (ASIN) which is the way to uniquely identify a product in the Amazon catalog. The ASIN is always in the URL of the product's page on Amazon.com. Once I have the ASIN, I can build a link using a MarsEdit markup macro that I wrote for myself.

I haven't had a chance yet to benchmark the actual time difference between writing an Operation Gadget post in the Movable Type web interface and locally on my Mac in MarsEdit, but I'm guessing that I cut my editing time down by two minutes per story using the AppleScript and the macro that I described above. That's well worth the $29.95 licensing cost of MarsEdit, so I'll be paying for my license this weekend.

I can see other opportunities to develop AppleScripts and MarsEdit macros for similar productivity improvements on the RinkAtlas Blog. I'm sure I'll think of other uses for this technology as well.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm trying out MarsEdit, a MacOS X blogging client, for a few posts to see if it improves my productivity. It's been recommended by higher beings in the blogosphere like Andy Abramson and John Gruber-- two people whose blogs I read every day.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up on NYTimes.com: "The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit." Doing push-ups is a habit I've been trying to get into. This article is a good reminder of why.
• Your Story: Throwing new tools at a communication problem? on 43Folders.com: "...The anecdotes I hear from worker bees often focus on the frustration they felt when a wiki, a new CMS, a mailing list, or some other tool was introduced into an ecosystem that was suffering from a more fundamental communication problem. A lot of people tell me that this makes matters much worse all around, often amplifying the complexity of the original problem, in addition to piling on burnt cycles that were committed on getting everyone up to speed on the new 'silver bullet....'" Oh the stories I could tell about a Wiki I once used....
• ExpanDrive on Daring Fireball: "ExpanDrive 1.01 is a new $29 file system extension for Mac OS X, based in part on MacFUSE, that lets you mount SFTP servers as volumes in the Finder. I’ve been using ExpanDrive for a week and it is extremely impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it for the Mac. Magnetk, the company behind ExpanDrive, has a similar product for Windows called SftpDrive that’s been around for a while."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Topeak Mini 6 on CoolTools: "This incredibly compact, bike-oriented multi-tool has five different sizes of Allen wrench plus a Phillips screwdriver head, all of which folds up into a little pod about the size of a walnut. Sometimes I'll carry it in my pocket or toss it in shoulder bag; mostly I keep it in the under-seat pouch of my bike. It really comes in handy for quick adjustments...."
• Tapping Your TiVo's Hidden Talents on The Mossberg Solution in the WSJ: "... like any old friend -- or spouse -- who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist."
• 1Password. It’s All I Need…And This Remote. on Apple Phone Show: "If there is anything I love more than software that works, it’s software that helps me save time and having to type on my iPhone’s keyboard. This is especially significant when having to type my uber-strong passwords into a login password field. I’ve been using 1Password since Macworld, and I really find it helpful...."

• iPhone SDK, Apple's Touch Platform, and The Next Two Decades on 37signals Signal versus Noise: "What we saw today {at the iPhone Software Roadmap Event} was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth."

  "What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile...."



• Behind the scenes of the old school HBO intro, a video on YouTube noted on 37signals Signal versus Noise: If you have time to watch any of this 11-minute video produced by HBO about the filming of an introductory film clip that HBO used as a lead in to a feature film presentation, you will be amazed at the amount of time put into building scale models of a city, town, and countryside. Yes this was state-of-the art technology in 1982. But think of how differently it would be done today.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first book I bought to try to get new ideas on how I could better leverage my iPhone as a multimedia Swiss Army Knife was iPhone Fully Loaded by Andy Ihnatko. I have been really impressed by this book because it has some really excellent tips and techniques that go beyond many of the ideas I've seen discussed on iPhone-related blogs and websites.

Andy Ihnatko is a freelance journalist who writes a technology column in The Chicago Sun Times and appears regularly on The Early Show on CBS. He hit my radar screen through his regular gigs on The Apple Phone Show and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Some of the concepts he discussed on those programs, such as using Smart Playlists to fill your iPhone with a constant amount of music that you like but haven't listened to recently (mentioned previously on Operation Gadget), and using Handbrake to convert chapters of DVDs that you own to clips that are playable on your iPhone, are prominently featured in this book. However, there are a lot more ideas that go far deeper into Mac and PC technology to pull together content that you have access to, package it in a form that's storable on your iPhone or iPod touch, and get it transferred on to your device.

There are also ideas that didn't appeal to me personally, but were interesting to read about from a general knowledge perspective. Andy is a big fan of comic books, so he includes an entire chapter on finding comics on the Internet and transmogrifying for your iPhone. He also talks about extensively about electronics and software that can be used to record radio programs for later playback on your iPhone. I used to listen to a great deal of radio myself, so this is interesting to me, but podcasts have largely replaced my radio listening habit since I got my iPhone, and I can barely keep up with the podcasts that I'm subscribed to now.

There are a number of other good iPhone-related books, such as The iPhone Pocket Guide by Chris Breen of MacWorld Magazine, but few are as jam-packed with ideas for filling your iPhone with content as iPhone Fully Loaded. This book always seems to be sitting near my MacBook Pro, and I think it will stay there for some time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the applications I was dying to try when I got my MacBook Pro was Pixelmator. This is a low-cost image editing application for the Mac that aggressively integrates MacOS-specific features such as iSight camera input, an integrated Photo Browser, as well as integration with OS-level technologies like Automator and the Quartz Graphics Layer.

Pixelmator is not really a poor man's Adobe Photoshop as it might appear at first glance. This is a better integrated, more Mac-specific image editor than Photoshop.

A Pixelmator license is $59 after a 30-day trial period. I like the program and consider it worth the money. The issue is that I expect to be able to use the application and its output during the trial period. When I tried to use it on the day I downloaded it, the program watermarked my images with "Created with Pixelmator".

I think Pixelmator Team has used the watermark trick too aggressively. It makes more sense to me to have a trial period where output is true, and have the watermark present only in the images created after the trial period is over.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)