MacBites - Episode 0012

In this episode, we discuss all things audio and Elaine rants about software activation. We also discuss Evernote, anti-virus software for the Mac and iPhone (iPhone iPhone) BackBites - Quicksilver - Dave Verwer's solution to re-indexing problem - use Cmd + R to refresh the Quicksilver catalog ChatBites - Mike swaps his envelope for Evernote - http://www.evernote.com - Mikes photograph saga - http://mthomas.co.uk/we-all-have-our-crosses-to-bear/ - Super Monkey Ball - http://www.monkeyballworld.com/ - AdobeTV crashed our router - http://tv.adobe.com/ Switchers Corner and Software Review We discuss audio capturing, audio editing and audio converting and look at a number of applications that can be used to peform these tasks - Capture: - Audio Hijack Pro - http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro - Tape Deck - http://tapedeckapp.com/ - Editing: - Amadeus Pro - http://www.hairersoft.com/AmadeusPro/AmadeusPro.html - Sound Studio - http://www.freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=5012 - Fission - http://rogueamoeba.com/fission/index.php - Capture and editing: - WireTap Studio - http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/ - Garageband - http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ - Conversion: - AudialHub - http://www.techspansion.com/audialhub/ - SoundConverter - (and Elaine's rant) - http://www.dekorte.com/projects/shareware/SoundConverter/ Comments and Feedback - In response to GazMaz's audio question, we discuss anti-virus software for the Mac (and Windows)

MacBites - Episode 0011

In this episode, we review the new version of Firefox and Mike reveals how Bill Gates crashed his computer. We also discuss how to keep your Mac up to date and how to make sure your documents can be read in years to come. BackBites - Spotlight as an application launcher - Spotlight as a calculator - Mike's Dock goes minimal ChatBites - Firefox 3 creates a world record for downloads - http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ - Features include Personas - http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/personas-for-firefox/ and the AwesomeBar - http://ed.agadak.net/2007/11/smartbar-to-awesomebar - Opera has a new look too - http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/06/05/looking-sharp - Elaine lists her 10 browsers - without the need for a script! - Fennec - http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/FennecVision - Prism - http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism - Weave - http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave - The Fox Gets More Fire - http://elainegiles.co.uk/2008/06/23/the-fox-gets-more-fire/ - Bill Gates crashes Mike's browser (nothing new there then ;-) ) - http://mthomas.co.uk/bill-gates-interview/ - Downloading Apple Updates - http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/ - Troubleshooting Apple Updates - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1394?viewlocale=en_US Switchers Corner and Software Review - Keeping track of the latest versions of all your installed applications - MacUpdate - http://www.macupdate.com - VersionTracker - http://www.versiontracker.com - AppFresh - http://metaquark.de/appfresh/ - Logicielmacupdate - http://www.logicielmac.com - Elaine explained how to future-proof your documents Comments and Feedback - Thanks to Jack at http://macfever.co.uk/ - Jack lives near Brighton where Mike once interviewed and Elaine photographed Eric Cantona - http://www.beachsoccer-online.com - Thanks also to GazMaz - who now has his own spot on the For Mac Eyes Only podcast - http://formaceyesonly.blogspot.com/

MacBites - Episode 0010

In this episode we reviewed the major announcements from the WWDC and discussed Application Management and App Switching ChatBites  - WWDC 2008 - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc08  - iPhone - http://www.apple.com/iphone  - Snow Leopard - http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard  - OmniFocus - http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus  - GTD - http://www.davidco.com  - MobileMe - http://www.apple.com/mobileme - BusySync - http://www.busymac.com  - Elaine's blog post on app switching - http://elainegiles.co.uk/2008/06/15/lose-your-dock-recover-your-mind/ Switchers Corner / Software Review  - QuickSilver - http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy - Launchbar - http://www.launchbar.com/products/launchbar/index.html  - LiteSwitch - http://www.proteron.com/liteswitchx  - Witch - http://www.manytricks.com/witch Events - NWAG - Mission Control - Lightroom andÂBridge - http://www.nwag.co.uk

MacBites - Episode 0009

Surprise! We're back will a shiny new design for our shownotes and lots of good stuff coming your way ;-) In this short 'getting back into the groove' episode we discuss what we've been doing while missing in action from MacBites and the imminent WWDC, together with details of several exciting tech related local events coming in the next few weeks. ChatBites - Munich58.co.uk - http://www.munich58.co.uk - Duncan Edwards - http://www.duncan-edwards.co.uk - Apple - one-to-one training - http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/onetoone/trial/ - Photoshop Express video demo - http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p33526168/ - WWDC - http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ - Speakapedia - http://shinydevelopment.com/ Events - NWMUG - Toast 9 - http://www.nwmug.co.uk - NWAG - Mission Control - http://www.nwag.co.uk - GeekUp - http://geekup.org

MacBites - Episode 0008

ChatBites - MacBook - Back to my Mac - VMWare Fusion - http://www.vmware.com - VMWare Disk Driver - http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/guest_win_scsidrv.html - Private browsing - Trackpad settings - Toolbar Toggle Â- MacBites Shortcuts - Demise of Navigator - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7163547.stm Switchers Corner/Software Review - PaintShopPro - http://www.corel.com - Portfolio - http://www.extensis.com/en/products/asset_management - iPhoto - Adobe - Bridge, Elements, Lightroom - http://www.adobe.com/ - Aperture - FotoMagico - http://www.boinx.com - PulpMotion - http://www.pulpmotion.com/ Calendar Sharing - BusySync - http://www.busymac.com/ - Elaine's how-to for sharing calendars on a single Mac - http://elainegiles.co.uk/2007/12/31/sharing-calendars-in-multiple-accounts-on-a-single-mac/ Screen Capture - Additional features to built in screen capture in Leopard - http://www.macworld.com/article/131404/2008/01/screencapopts.html

MacBites - Episode 0007

ChatBites - iCal Exchange - http://www.icalx.com - Web Snapper - http://www.tastyapps.com - SWF & FLV Player - http://www.eltima.com - BusySync - http://www.busymac.com/ - Adding Calendar Content to your Application - http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/calendarstore.html Switchers Corner/Software Review - Notepad - WordPad - NoteTabPro http://www.notetab.com - EditPadPro http://www.editpadpro.com - Acetext http://www.acetext.com/ - Powergrep http://www.powergrep.com - RegExBuddy http://www.regexbuddy.com - TextEdit - TextWrangler http://www.barebones.com - BBEdit http://www.barebones.com - TextMate http://macromates.com Screen Spanning - Screen Spanning Doctor http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html Bundles - MacHeist http://www.macheist.com/ - MacSanta http://www.macsantadeals.com/ Order Tracking - Tracking online orders http://www.apecode.com/appletrack/

MacBites - Episode 0006

iPhone Special - Experience the launch at The Trafford Centre - Activation - Synchronizing contacts and calendar - iTunes - managing with only 8mg - Making calls - sound quality - Messaging using the keyboard - Email - Camera - verdict on the lowly spec'd camera Web apps directory - http://www.apple.com/webapps/ - UK Traffic news - http://iapps.co.uk/traffic - Connection speedtest - http://inetworktest.com - Translation tool - http://ultralingua.com/mobile - Talking phrasebook - http://coolgorilla.com/iphone/translator/languages.html - Jivetalk - enables use of ichat and other chat clients for text chatting - www.beejive.com/iphone - free to use for iphone and ipod touch users Accessories - headphones. These V-Moda ones are on my wish list - http://www.v-moda.com/collection/modaphones/vibe%20duo.aspx - Belkin headphone adapter was a must until I can get the V-Moda's - http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=380841 - should I get a case for my new iPhone? Tips - Saving multiple images as a PDF in Preview - Using the Scrollball to control Spaces

MacBites - Episode 0005

Leopard Special - Part 2 - Living with Leopard - "One week in" - MikeT relates his experiences of the Leopard install. - It's been said before, but Backup Backup Backup and MikeT prefers SuperDuper - So Mike, any issues with the new Cat? - All three of us our now running with Leopard - We share some of our likes and dislikes. - We'd all love a dual monitor setup - Leopard does too. - Safari 3 - what's new? - Transferring Mail Networking - airport - screen sharing - back to my Mac Spaces Time Machine The new Finder, featuring - Preview - Coverflow - Quicklook Comments and Feedback - So Gazmaz have we tempted you yet? Let us know how you get on - What about everyone else? Upgraded yet? & how did it go? Next week - It's finally here - iPhone has landed

MacBites - Episode 0004

Leopard Special - Live recording from The Apple Store, Trafford Centre, Manchester - Interviews with those in the queue and a member of staff from the store - Sample the excitement of the build up to the launch Leopard - The MacBiters First Thoughts - Installation experiences - Clean vs Over-the-top The Dock - DockSwitcher - http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/26070/dockswitcher - TigerDock - http://riotgames.se/riotgames-se/tigerdock.html - Dockgawk 1.0 - http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26111/dockgawk - DockDoctor 1.0 - http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26114/dockdoctor Transparent Menu Bar - OpaqueMenuBar - http://www.eternalstorms.at/utilities/opaquemenubar/ - LeoColorBar - http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26081/leocolorbar Adobe CS3 and Leopard - John Nackâs Blog - http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/10/adobe_apps_on_l.html - Adobe Support for OS X Leopard - http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf - Lightroom - http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/ Blue Screen of Death - The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/27/leopard_install_problems/ - MacMerc - http://www.macmerc.com/news/archives/4260 - MacFixit http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=200710261517596 Aperture and Time Machine - Apple - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306853 - MacRumors confirm - http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/28/time-machine-aperture-bug/

MacBites - Episode 0003

In the news this week: - Leopard launch 26th October. Apple retail stores will close at 4pm. They will re-open at 6pm and remain open until 10pm. Apple premium resellers will also commence selling Leopard at 6pm - - Apple and its wireless partner in France, Orange, will sell an unlocked version of the iPhone - http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/10/17/unlockiphone/index.php?lsrc=mwrss - Third Party applications on the iPhone - Open letter from Steve Jobs on www.apple.com/hotnews - iTunes Plus DRM free tracks reduced by 20p to Â0.79 ($0.99 in US) - The Good: Apple releases Leopard guided tour video - The Bad: Some reviewers are knocking the iPod Touch as just a crippled iPhone - The Ugly: The Barbie iPod dock - http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/21/the-barbie-ipod-dock-yes-its-pink-and-flowery Switchers Corner - Address Book and iCal - Using O2M for importing contacts and calendar items from Outlook - http://www.littlemachines.com - Useful features include multiple calendars, calendar sharing and publishing, colour coding, easy to backup - Price: $10 Software Review - Typinator - http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/ - TextExpander - http://www.smileonmymac.com/textexpander/ - TypeIt4Me - http://ettoresoftware.com

MacBites - Episode 0002

In the news this week: - Intrepid hackers have brought Appleâs shiny new menus to older models - http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/entertainment/mp3_player/old_ipods_get_new_features?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=T3-Standard-RSS - Apple Launches WebApps DirectoryApple has launched a directory of web-based applications designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch at http://www.apple.com/webapps/ - Apple to Announce 3rd Party iPhone App Development? - Apple iPhone 2 for Macworld Expo? As confirmed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in September, Apple is already working on the development of the second-generation iPhone. - The Good: T3 - Apple cleans up at T3 Awards - http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/general/apple_cleans_up_at_t3_awards?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=T3-Standard-RSS - The Bad: Royalty demands may have kept Valve's Half-Life 2 off the Mac - The Ugly: The new iPhone adds on the US site - http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad10/ Switchers Corner - Using Mail - Reasons for transferring for Outlook to OSX Mail - Using O2M for importing mail from Outlook - http://www.littlemachines.com - Price: $10 Software Review - SpamSieve - powerful spam filtering for Mac OS X - http://c-command.com/spamsieve/ - Requires: Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later (10.4.0 or later recommended) - Works with: Apple Mail, mailer, Entourage v.X through 11.x (2004), Eudora 5.2 or later (Sponsored or Paid), GyazMail, Mailsmith (bundled with Mailsmith 2.1), Outlook Express 5, PowerMail (optional bundle with PowerMail 5), Thunderbird - Free Trial: fully-featured (30 days) - Price: $30 - Tip of the week - taking screen shots

MacBites - Episode 0001

The MacBiters introduction - Elaine, MikeB and MikeT - and have their first gab! A brief insight in to how & why we switched to the Mac platform. News Items Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is coming Macworld.co.uk news is reporting that rumours are rife that we can expect Leopard to land on the 26th of October. Amazon.com launches mp3 download store - currently in Beta for US customers only.. Is iPhone launch for France delayed due to French unlocking laws? Switcherâs Corner - This weekâs feature covers Browsers Software Review - Saft v8.3.11 This weekâs Cool Tool scores a coveted 5 Golden Bites

Friendfeed v. Twitter: Half The Followers In Five Months

Twitter is still far larger than its much younger competitor Friendfeed in aggregate terms. But an interesting trend is developing - many longtime Twitter users are noticing that the number of followers they have on Friendfeed is growing far more rapidly than on Twitter. And the conversations at Friendfeed are better, too. I joined Twitter when [...]

Webaroo Raises A $10 Million Round For SMSGupShup

Webaroo Technology has raised a $10 million round of funding for their product SMSGupShup, an SMS-based community site in India, according to Plugged.in. The round, the third for the company, was co-led by Helion Venture Partners and Charles River Ventures. SMSGupShup is a community site that enables users to join groups according to [...]

Plus ça change

Holiday weekends, especially the ones that bracket the summer months, tend to be stress tests for the tech media. With the proliferation of smart phones, social media aggregators, and of course the Twitter clonestakes, it’s now trivial to get a snapshot of what is going on throughout the “time off.” Is nothing going on? Has the [...]

Think Before You Voicemail

Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it. When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems - which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, [...]

Yahoo’s Helpful Shortcut To Pictures Of Underage Girls

Yahoo Shortcuts automatically finds and underlines interesting items in articles and provides additional information via a pop up window (Yahoo Shortcuts also refers to shortcuts in Yahoo Search for common things like travel search). “People, places, organizations, and other things of interest are underlined,” says the FAQ. One blogger is pointing out, though, that the tool [...]

Joey Chestnut Beats Kobayashi Again in Hot-Dog Eating Contest

It’s not the 4th of July without the Coney Island Hot-Dog Eating Contest (that’s how we celebrate in Brooklyn, by stuffing our faces with as many hot dogs we can fit). This year’s winner is defending champion Joey “Jaws” Chestunt, who won in overtime from six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi. Both ate 59 hot [...]

The Problem With Identi.ca Is That It Is Not Twitter

The launch of Twitter clone Identi.ca earlier this week caused a bit of a blogstorm because it appears to have a solution to Twitter’s all-too-regular downtime. (That problem has reached comical proportions, with the familiar Twitter Fail Whale now appearing on T-shirts and kitschy art). Identi.ca’s answer to Twitter’s scaling issues is by [...]

Follow Animal Migrations On Google Earth

Google Earth is turning out to be a great resource for scientists to visualize and communicate the phenomena they study. You can see the migration patterns of endangered and other threatened animals, based on data collected by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. (The image above shows the range of both the Northern spotted [...]

Independence Day

Tomorrow we celebrate July 4th, and a week later our long National Nightmare is over. On the 11th we deposit our 2G iPhones in the FriendFeed donation bins and officially hook ourselves up to the Enterprise iPhone. The ePhone will change how we work and play, and in the process free us from the tyranny [...]

Regator Wants To Be A Blog Reader For The Masses

Regator, a new blog aggregator that hopes to reduce the blogosphere down to consumable chunks for the average user, has launched today in private beta. The site acts like a combination between Digg and a standard RSS reader, allowing users to vote on the most popular stories drawn from 3,000 blogs that have been [...]

Google, You Can Eat My Cookies Anytime

Google has just released a lengthy blog post to announce that it has finally put its privacy policy on its homepage. The search giant has been repeatedly questioned over the last few months over its lack of a readily available privacy policy, which until now has been buried in the “About Google” section of [...]

This Week on CrunchBoard

Here are some of the jobs listed on CrunchBoard over the last week: Fulltime Senior AJAX/PHP Web DeveloperDriverSide - San Francisco, CA QA EngineerGx5 - Anywhere Software Support SpecialistK&L Wine Merchants - Redwood City, CA GoodBarry .NET Web Development NinjaGoodBarry - San Francisco, CA Head of Web Design & Front-End DevelopmentGlobal Campus - London, UK Quality Assurance CowboyJanus Health - San [...]

Department of Civil Disobedience: Google Should Deliver Its YouTube Data to Viacom in Paper Form

The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can. [...]

Streamzy: A Fresh Face For Seeqpod’s Streaming Music

We’ve seen a number of music sites like Seeqpod and Grooveshark that leverage user-uploaded music scattered across the web to offer free, on-demand jukeboxes. These services manage to skirt legal repercussions by only serving content that is hosted on other sites, which makes them harder to sue (though some have tried). Streamzy, a [...]

James Dyson Tells Us What He Thinks About The iPhone

While at Dyson HQ, I had the pleasure, once again, of interviewing the man himself. I had to ask what his thoughts were on the iPhone, and James’ answers were both entertaining and interesting. I have an iPhone and a BlackBerry. And I have to confess that I use the BlackBerry more. But I really wanted [...]

Did the “Enron of Norway” Pull a Fast One On Microsoft? More Details About the Mess at Fast Search & Transfer

Even back in January when Microsoft agreed to pay $1.2 billion for enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer, it was mired in an accounting scandal and trading in its stock had been suspended. Its aggressive accounting for phantom deals that never materialized earned it the moniker the “Enron of Norway.” But more [...]

How To Build A Web App in Four Days For $10,000 (Say Hello To Matt)

In this post, guest author Ryan Carson goes through some of the lessons learned from building a Web app in four days. Carson is the co-founder of Carsonified, a web shop in Bath, UK. They’ve built four web apps, created ThinkVitamin.com and run events like Future of Web Apps. If you’re bored you can [...]

Google Talk For the iPhone: Not What You Think

Google has announced an iPhone version of Google Talk which is simply an iPhone-ized browser-formatted version of the Google’s text chat application. This means you can’t talk over the Interwebs but you can tap out halting messages to your friends on the iPhone’s screen and, thanks to Safari’s tendency to clear pages randomly, you probably [...]

Normal-sized business cards at last from Moo

Just as The Governator tries to pursue green policies, like keeping Tesla’s electric production car local, you’ll now also be able to hand out full-sized “green” business cards with Flickr images, courtesy of the same guys who brought us those cool little mini-cards, Moo.com. They are launching full-sized business cards with a new partner, LinkedIn, [...]

Flowgram Reinvents The Screencast (1,000 Beta Invites)

What you see above is not a video or a slide show, it is a Flowgram. If you click on it, you will be taken to a full-screen player with what appears to be a screencast with a voiceover. Except that you can control the pages by scrolling up and down, watching any [...]

Judge Protects YouTube’s Source Code, Throws Users To The Wolves

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle. Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United [...]

Europe’s Mobile 2.0 startups come together

Europe is a hotbed of mobile startups right now, so appropriately enough the Mobile 2.0 event which started in San Francisco is putting on a one-day international event tomorrow in Barcelona which focuses on mobile startups, dubbed Mobile 2.0 Europe. I’ll be moderating a panel there, hosting a TechCrunch networking party and we now have [...]

Combo Wants to be the Social Network Hub for Your iPhone

Many of the startups we come across are “beta” in name only - they’re feature complete, with thousands of users and only a few (if any) bugs. Combo, a new startup that is looking to offer users a central hub for communication across their social networks, isn’t any of these things. Combo is [...]

Massively Me Working on Kiwi Heroes, A Socially Responsible Virtual World for Children

Massively Me, a stealth gaming company, has announced the upcoming launch of it’s MMOG for kids and young teenagers, Kiwi Heroes. Scheduled for release later this year, Kiwi Heroes will be a Flash-based game that attempts to strike a balance between a virtual world and a traditional MMOG (like WOW). Massively Me claims [...]

No XMPP: What Is Twitter Protecting?

It turns out the battle for control of Twitter rests almost exclusively in the unique value proposition of XMPP-served track. As Twitter strips away various features of its service to rebuild a scalable fail-whale -proof version, the one remaining hurdle is restoration of a fully-functional Track over IM. For the last two weeks, a one-way [...]