Interrupt19

Using Microsoft Project Files with OS X

David Balogh — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:00:15 +0000

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

Microsoft’s Office 2008 for Mac suite doesn’t go application for application with it’s Windows counterpart. Like Microsoft Access, Publisher, Sharepoint and Visio, one of the applications Office 2008 doesn’t include is Microsoft Project. Kind of annoying, but here’s what you can do to work with Microsoft Project files in OS X.

Projity’s OpenProj:

OpenProj is an open source project management application. Created as an open source replacement for Microsoft Project, it will open and allow you to work on existing Microsoft Project files. In addition you can create projects and save them in Microsoft Project 2003 XML format. Installation is easy and it’s a powerful program.

Download: OpenProj.

GanttProject:

Another open source solution for project management and scheduling that’s cross platform is GanttProject. Like OpenProj, it’s a full on replacement for Microsoft Project that can import / open Project files as well as Export / Save them in either Project or CSV. One difference with GanttProject is the ability to share projects using WebDAV.

Download: GanttProject.

OmniGroup’s Omniplan:

Lastly, OmniGroup’s OmniPlan is a commercial solution with a reasonable price that will import and export Project’s .MPX and .MPP file formats. In addition, OmniPlan exports to iCal, .CSV, HTML and other OmniSuite applications such as OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle.

Download: OmniPlan.

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5 Easy Ways to Adjust Firefox 3.5 for Privacy

David Balogh — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:48 +0000

Photo courtesy of Mozilla

The latest version of Firefox was recently released. Featuring improvements, new features and fixes, we looked at 5 ways of securing Firefox 3.5 in Part One.

Now, for Part Two, here’s 5 easy ways to adjust Firefox’s settings to maintain your internet privacy.

Why is internet privacy important?

Internet privacy is a two-sided argument. On one side, companies want to track your behavior to better market to you, making ads and pages more relevant to your interest. When sites remember you, it makes for a more personalized experience and with Firefox 3.5’s Geo-Location features, sites can be custom tailored to your location.

On the other side, it’s pretty creepy to think that companies you know absolutely nothing about, let alone trust, are building databases and remembering everything you’ve done on the internet for the past few years. They may not know your name or address.. Unless you registered with them, but it’s creepy nonetheless.

Even worse, nothing is stopping those databases from being sold to other marketers and business partners which are unrelated to the sites you frequent. Your interests, preferences, how often you visit a site, who you order, what site you came from, how you react to different advertisements, and more. It’s all in these databases.

5 Easy Ways to Adjust Firefox 3.5 for Privacy:

1. Private Browsing:

A feature new to Firefox 3.5 is Private Browsing. When Private Browsing is engaged, it will not remember or save Cookies, Cache files, your Download List, Passwords, any Form or Search Bar entries, and Visited pages.

To turn on Private Browsing:

- Select Tools from the Menu Bar.

- Choose “Start Private Browsing”.

This must be done manually, each time you begin using Firefox.

To start Private Browsing automatically whenever you open Firefox:

- Open Firefox’s Preferences and choose the Privacy tab.

- Check the box next to “Automatically start Firefox in a private browsing session”.

Private Browsing is great, but if it’s a bit too much for you, and you’d like to manually control Firefox, follow the next tips.

2. Clearing Cookies:

Cookies are little files sent to you from almost every website you visit. They’re basically for allowing site to know who you are. Most are harmless, but some can be used by the ads embedded in a website to track where you go.

Since many ads are on many different sites, but served up by only a few companies, they can use this data to track you as you bounce from site to site.

Unfortunately, denying all cookies will severely impact your web experience. Many sites will refuse to work properly.

How you handle cookies without breaking anything:

- Open Firefox’s Preferences and choose the Privacy tab.

- Check the checkboxes to Accept cookies from sites, and third party cookies.

- Set Firefox to “Keep until I close Firefox”.

Now, Firefox will behave normally but whenever you quit, all cookies are dumped. If you start Firefox back up and visit the same site and it won’t know who you are.

Remember, If you’re a fan of sites remembering you without logging in, you will have to make an exception and add the site to this list. Do this by clicking Exceptions in the Privacy tab.

Note: As backwards as it may seem, without accepting third party cookies, many sites won’t work right. This is because larger sites use other domains to store and serve portions of code to you. YouTube.com sends formatting information via ytimg.com for example. Technically, these are third party cookies.

3. Controlling your cache:

The cache is a dated feature mainly for dial-up users because loading sites used to take a long time. What it does is store elements of websites so that they don’t need to be downloaded each time you visit a page, drastically reducing page-load time with dial-up.

Let’s face it, many people use broadband connections and while a cache can be useful, it really doesn’t need to be as large as 100MB.

Privacy conscious individuals know that your entire browsing history can be rebuilt via your cache and depending on how many sites you’ve gone to, a large cache can contain sessions from weeks or months ago.

To control that cache:

- Open Firefox’s Preferences and choose the Advanced tab.

- Click on the Network sub-tab.

- Enter 5 in the box underneath “Offline Storage”.

4. Turn off Location Awareness:

Location-Aware browsing is a new feature with Firefox 3.5. Before Location-Awareness, a site would read your IP and grab the location from your ISP. This would result in a vague location such as what state / country you are in. Now, with Location-Aware browsing, information from your ISP, nearby wireless APs and a random identifier from Google, all combine to give a very accurate location (within 200ft) of where you are currently sitting.

To turn Location-Aware Browsing off:

- In the Address Bar, type about:config

Note: Firefox will warn you about voiding a warranty. just ignore it and click the button.

- Type geo.enabled in the filter bar.

- Change the Value to false by double-clicking.

5. Location Bar Suggestions:

Firefox will use your bookmarks and history to suggest sites as you type into the address bar. This can be useful, yet it can also compromise privacy especially if you type in something while doing a presentation and an embarrassing URL shows up. Personally, I find this feature to be more annoying than embarrassing and I’m glad Mozilla makes turning it off easy in Firefox 3.5.

To turn off Location Bar Suggestions:

- Open Firefox’s Preferences and choose the Privacy tab.

- Under Location Bar, select “Nothing” from the drop down menu.

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5 Easy Ways to Stay Safe by Securing Firefox 3.5

David Balogh — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:00:59 +0000

Photo courtesy of Mozilla

Firefox 3.5 was released this week. With features such as Private Browsing, Location awareness, speed improvements and miscellaneous bug fixes, it’s well worth the free download. Now that Firefox 3.5 is out, this two part post will look at securing Firefox and maintaining your privacy on the web.

For part one, let’s look at five easy ways to secure Firefox to keep you safe on the web.

Securing Firefox:

Securing Firefox, or any other browser, is not just the developer’s responsibility. With increasing features, multimedia rich web sites, plug-ins and add-ons, it’s also your responsibility to make sure Firefox won’t be compromised.

Note: While this article is written for Firefox 3.5 with OS X in mind, it contains tips and advice that apply to the Windows and Linux versions as well. If you’re running an older version, the next paragraph is for you.

1. Keep it up to date:

Like any other browser (and OS) in time, exploitable vulnerabilities will be found and attack code released. In the old days, you used to be safe by not going to unsavory sites. Not anymore. Now, the easiest way to attack a browser is to exploit a vulnerability by hacking a legitimate web site. You could go to a totally benign web page and be compromised.

How to defend against this? By making sure Firefox is always running the latest version. Mozilla takes security seriously and is quick to provide patches and fixes for Firefox.

To set Firefox to automatically check and download updates:

- Go into Firefox’s Preferences and choose the “Advanced” tab.

- Click on the “Update” sub-tab.

- Make sure at least the “Firefox” and “Installed Add-ons” boxes are checked.

- Select “Automatically download and install the update”.

Firefox will now periodically check for updates, download them if found and install them automatically. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

2. Securing your saved passwords:

If you use Firefox to save and remember passwords for you, make sure you set that Master Password. Did you know that if you didn’t, anyone can walk up to your computer (if it’s running and logged in), and with just a few clicks, Firefox will show them all of your passwords and what sites they are for? With a Master Password, Firefox will require it before showing any of it’s saved passwords.

It’s easy to set the Master Password:

- Go into Firefox’s Preferences and choose the “Security” tab.

- Check the checkbox next to “Use a master password”.

- Firefox will walk you through setting this password.

3. Disabling Java:

Firefox gives you the option of turning Java off and in the interest of security, you should. Now, before you freak and think you’ll never be able to do anything on the web, I’ll tell you that I’ve had Java turned off for years and haven’t had any problems at all.

Why do I recommend this? Java allows downloaded content from the internet to run within Firefox as an application. If there is a vulnerability (and there are), your system could be at risk.

Like all security minded developers, Sun releases updates for Java and that’s awesome. Except for the fact that when you’re running OS X, Java and it’s updates are the sole responsibility of Apple. And just recently, a nasty exploitable known vulnerability went unpatched for SIX MONTHS. Remember, Java works cross-platform and the vulnerability that went unpatched for six months affected both Windows and OS X.

According to ArsTechnica, “The reason the vulnerability was a threat was because an exploit could be written in pure Java and would work on all platforms and browsers. That means visiting any website with a specially crafted Java applet could easily take down your machine no matter what software you were using. Needless to say, this is bad.”

What happens if a site needs to run a Java applet? Simple, it will either tell you to install/turn on Java or will show a blank box with a little coffee cup icon inside. If that’s the case, just turn it back on for that site. Don’t forget to turn it off when you’re finished.

To turn Java on / off:

- Go into Firefox’s Preferences and choose the “Content” tab.

- Uncheck the “Enable Java” box to turn it off.

4. Keep the defaults:

Luckily, in Firefox, simple security features are turned on by default. Without even thinking about it, it’s pretty secure already. With that in mind, you’re going to want to keep them that way.

Here’s what NOT to change:

Under the “Security” tab in Firefox’s preferences, make sure there is a check next to the following boxes:

- “Warn me when sites try to install add-ons”.
- “Block reported attack sites”.
- “Block reported web forgeries”.

Under the “Advanced” tab in Firefox’s preferences, make sure there is a check next to:

- Under the Network sub-tab, “Tell me when a website asks to store data for offline use”.

- Under the Encryption sub-tab, “Use SSL 3.0″, “Use TLS 1.0″ and “Ask me every time”.

5. Use NoScript:

For the more advanced security conscious user, I recommend installing the NoScript Add-on. It will selectively block JavaScript from all sites unless allowed by you. It’s a good method of securing Firefox if there’s an unpatched exploit running around.

In part two, we’ll look at what you can do to maintain your privacy on the web with Firefox 3.5

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What to do when your iPhone / iPod Touch has problems

David Balogh — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:00:39 +0000

Photo courtesy of Johan Larsson

The iPhone and iPod Touch are mini computers running a specially tweaked version of OS X. They can browse websites, compose emails and with the App Store infrastructure, they can do pretty much anything - as long as it’s approved. In addition to the great things iPhones can do, they can also have problems and go bad - just like any computer. So, what do you do when your iPhone or iPod Touch doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to?

iPhone and iPod Touch Issues:

Since the iPhone and iPod Touch are similar, yet different, many of the issues they face are common. I’ll deal with these first and then move on to iPhone specific and iPod Touch specific issues and how to fix them.

iTunes won’t recognize the iPhone/iPod Touch:

Usually you plug in your iPhone and it pops up in iTunes. What do you do if it doesn’t?

- Check the display on your iPhone/iPod Touch. If it says “Charging… please wait”, this means the device’s battery doesn’t have enough power. Let it charge for 10-15 minutes and try it again.

- Try a different USB port, preferably one directly on your Mac (not on the side of your iMac’s keyboard).

- Restart your iPhone/iPod Touch by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button on top. When the Slider appears, slide it and it will shut down. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button to turn it back on. Try again after its finished restarting.

- Restart your Mac. and try again.

- If it still fails to sync / be recognized, reinstall the latest version of iTunes.

- Reinstall the Apple Mobile Device Service by deleting the following two files:
1. /System/Library/Extensions/AppleMobileDevice.kext
2. /Library/Receipts/AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg

You’ll be prompted to delete them both. Choose “Authenticate” and enter the Administrator name password. Then, empty the trash and reinstall the latest version of iTunes.

Your iPhone / iPod Touch is frozen:

- Force quit the stuck application.

In 3.0 firmware, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button. When the slider appears, release the sleep/wake button. Do not slide the slider. Instead, press and hold the Home button for 6 seconds. If it doesn’t return to the home screen, restart the device.

In 2.2.1 or earlier firmware, press and hold the home button for 6 seconds. If it doesn’t return to the home screen, restart the device.

Resetting your iPhone / iPod Touch:

If your iPhone still won’t respond, you’ll have to begin resetting it.

- Press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for ten seconds until you see the Apple logo.

- If it still doesn’t respond, and you can get into it’s Settings, choose General, then Reset and Reset all settings. This will reset your preferences but will not touch any music or data.

- If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to reset your iPhone back to the beginning. Open up iTunes and follow the next section.

Restoring your iPhone / iPod Touch:

When all else fails and your iPhone / iPod Touch is just so messed up it won’t work right, you’ll have to reset it back to factory settings. Now, this will overwrite everything on your iPhone / iPod Touch. However, iTunes will let you create a backup of your settings. Be advised though, there’s always a chance you’ll lose settings / data.

- Open iTunes and make sure it’s the latest version.

- Connect the iPhone / iPod Touch.

- Select the “Summary” tab in iTunes.

- Select “Restore”.

- When prompted, choose “Backup”.

- After it’s finished backing up, choose “Restore” when prompted.

- The iPod Touch / iPhone will restart once it’s finished.

- With the iPhone, it will begin activating.

- To restore your data, iTunes will give you a message that this device has been previously synced.

- Choose “Restore from the backup of:” and select which backup you’d like to use.

WiFi Problems:

Sometimes the iPod Touch and iPhone have problems connecting to WiFi networks. Here’s what you do to kick them back into working:

- Renew your DHCP Lease by opening the Settings app, choose Wi-Fi Networks and click the little blue arrow next to the network you’re on. In the DHCP pane, choose Renew Lease at the bottom.

- If you are using an iPhone and it’s connected but when you visit websites, it reverts back to 3G or Edge, check your Airport/Router to make sure MAC filtering is either off or the iPhone’s MAC address is entered correctly. This may also happen if you’ve entered the wrong WEP key. Note: If this is your network, you should not be using WEP, it’s worthless. Use WPA or WPA2 instead.

- If you’re getting the “Unable to Join Network Failure (error -3)” error, make sure the network’s SSID (Name) and passwords are correct. Make sure MAC filtering is either off or set up properly. If the error persists, go into the Settings, choose Wi-Fi and Choose a Network (Other..). Then enter the name and password for your network.

- iPhone only: Make sure Airplane mode is off.

- If you can’t connect on your Mac as well, restart your Airport / Router.

Hardware Issues:

If your iPhone / iPod Touch won’t turn on at all and the battery has sufficiently charged or the device has suffered damage from dropping / liquid spills, you’ll need to make an appointment at the Apple Store / Service Center. You can also call AppleCare to set up a service call. Just remember, in cases where it’s physically damaged, you’ll have to pay for the repair.

All other issues:

At times, different issues may pop up that aren’t addressed here. Your best bet is to follow this procedure:

- Restart the device.
- Reset the device.
- Restore the device.

And as always, make sure your Mac is up to date with the latest version of iTunes and OS X.

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Create your own Apple TV with any Mac

David Balogh — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:00:06 +0000

Photo courtesy of The Artifex

While AppleTV is nice, out of personal preference, I’m not a big fan of iTunes, iPhoto and other Apple media solutions. Let’s look at how you can take any old Mac and turn it into something better than the AppleTV can even think of becoming.

What makes Apple TV special:

First off, AppleTV has a slim form factor and looks nice. It has embedded HDMI, and Component video ports as well as Optical and Analog RCA audio ports. In addition it has a 40GB or 160GB hard drive, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n Wireless and one USB port.

What AppleTV doesn’t come with is - a TV / Monitor, cables for connecting your a/v gear and an internal DVD drive for playback. Also, Apple doesn’t specify what processor is in the AppleTV which is a red-flag indicating its not much. Granted, powering video for viewing doesn’t require heavy lifting but it’s a red flag nonetheless.

Basically, it’s a low power computer with built in ports for A/V equipment that’s built on the premise of using iTunes store content for your media needs.

Want it to do more? Don’t feel the need to be bound to the iTMS? Let’s see what else we can do..

Choosing a Mac to use:

A great use for an older Mac, especially one with a nice display is for it to become a Media Center machine. With a nice TV though, even an older Power Mac will work fine. Our only requirement is that it’s a Mac that’s able run OS X 10.4.11. If it’s a newer or slightly better Mac, 10.5 Leopard.

One major limitation of an older computer with a slower processor would be dealing with 720p and 1080i HD TV Tuning. You’ll need at least a Core 2 Duo processor for that.

You’re also going to want one with a graphics card. What you choose for a computer will depend on you budget, what you have lying around and what you can get your hands on.

Upgrading your Media Mac:

For this project, upgrade the RAM as much as you can. You aren’t going to like stuttering video as the Mac pages back and forth from the drive during playback. Seeing that media files take up a ton of space, you’ll want the biggest Hard Drive you can find.

If you have an iMac or Mini and upgrading the hard drive is beyond your technical ability, an external drive is an easier choice.

Additional A/V Gear:

Depending on what you have already, your A/V needs may differ. We’ll look at dealing with the interfaces you’ll need for a typical setup (Watching/Recording TV, DVDs and Video files).

TV Tuning:

You’d think that with a name like AppleTV, it would have a TV tuner inside. It doesn’t. Apple wants you to buy shows through iTunes, not watch them for “free” with your cable subscription. Some highly recommended TV Tuners are:

- Elgato’s EyeTV Hybrid TV Tuner.
- Hauppauge’s WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid TV Tuner for Mac and PC.

Video Ports:

Most older Macs are going to have VGA out. Some will be DVI (Mac Minis, Power Macs). What you’ll need really depends on your TV. If you have a digital DVI port on the back of your Media Mac, all you need is a HDMI-to-DVI Video Cable. Unfortunately, VGA and HDMI aren’t compatible and VGA has a lower quality but many TVs do have VGA ports on the back of them.

For component video, you’ll need either a VGA to Component Video Cable or a DVI to Component adapter. Here’s one for ATI specific video cards.

Of course, it your Media Mac happens to be an iMac, skip the video needs, as you’ll probably be using the iMac’s display. If not, you’ll need the appropriate Mini-DVI to VGA or Mini-DVI to DVI adapter.

Note: Before running out any buying everything, make sure your TV and Mac will be compatible with each other. Know the limitations of the Mac as well as your TV. With an older machine, don’t expect 1080p HD running HDMI perfectly.

Audio Needs:

If you have an Intel iMac, Mini or Power Mac, you’re all set in the audio department. You’ll just need the appropriate Optical Toslink to 3.5″ Mini Toslink cable. If you have an older Mac without the built-in optical port, I’d recommend the inexpensive M-Audio Transit.

Software:

Now that we’ve tricked out our Media Mac hardware-wise to resemble an AppleTV (and more), we’ll need some Media Center Software to make our experience complete. Which software you choose is entirely up to you - I recommend you try them all before deciding.

Some recommended Media Center Software Applications are:

- XBMC Media Center.
- Boxee.
- Plex Media Center.

Note: You can even just use Front Row, Quicktime/VLC, DVD Player and Elgato’s EyeTV software if you like.

Transferring Data:

Lastly, the subject of getting the media onto your Media Mac. I’d recommend just simply using a shared folder using Apple File Sharing. Just make sure your internet connection is behind a firewall. If you have an Airport Extreme, you can attach an external drive to it and use that for storage.

One advantage your Media Mac will have over an AppleTV is that most iMacs and Power Macs have Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) built in. AppleTV only has the slower 10/100 Ethernet. Sure you can use 802.11n but even that doesn’t touch Gigabit speeds. Even FireWire 800 doesn’t hit Gigabit speeds.

Have you built a Media Mac?

If you’ve built a Media Center Mac, by all means share your experiences and what you used in the comments below.

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Ten Awesome Automator Tricks

David Balogh — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:07 +0000

Photo courtesy of OS X

Do you do the same tasks over and over again during the course of your day? Or do you have some project in OS X that you’ve been putting off because it involves doing some menial task over and over again?

After a while, repetitive tasks can get.. repetitive. Fortunately OS X includes the brilliant Automator which lets you automate pretty much any menial task you can think of. Here are ten awesome pre-written tricks you can do with Automator.

AutomatorWorld:

The following ten tricks and tons more can be found at AutomatorWorld. A user contributed site dedicated to the Automator application, it contains hundreds of useful pre-written Automator Workflows and Actions.

Workflows and Actions:

In Automator, a completed and ready to go task is called a Workflow. Workflows are made up of Actions. Some of the following Automator scripts are Actions and others are Workflows. If it’s a Workflow, it will run right out of the box. If it’s an Action, you will need to build your own Workflow using it.

1. Copy Spotlight Items: (Workflow)

Do a Spotlight search and Copy Spotlight Items will copy those files to a folder of your choosing. Great for hunting through a folder containing thousands of pictures.

2. Dashboarder: (Workflow)

In the quest for more speed and using less resources in OS X, a recommended tip is to turn off Dashboard and it’s RAM gobbling widgets. Dashboarder makes turning Dashboard off and on easy.

3. Batch Rename: (Workflow)

At least once a week someone will ask me if there’s a way to rename more than one file at a time. If you’ve ever had to do this manually, you know what a pain this is. Batch Rename makes this painless on selected files and everything within selected folders.

4. Convert images to combined PDF: (Workflow)

Need to combine a bunch of images into a PDF file? That’s exactly what Convert images to combined PDF does. Select the images and they will be combined into a single PDF in ascending name order. This is awesome if you’ve just manually scanned in about 100 pages of something and want to turn a folder of .JPGs into a .PDF. Just remember that the resulting PDF needs to be saved manually.

5. Download URLs as PDFs: (Action)

The internet has so many incredible resources, I like to save as much as I can for further reading or to archive for later use. Download URLs as PDFs makes this simple to do.

6. iTunes Ringtone: (Workflow)

Creating your own ringtones is a nice way to customize your phone for free. iTunes Ringtone will take a song from iTunes and convert it to .mp3, mono and 64kbps then restore it to AIFF and the full song duration. You’ll have to either mark the start / stop times under Get Info in iTunes or just create a custom edited version.

Note: Just to be on the safe side with this one, I’d make a backup copy of the iTunes song you want to use so nothing happens to the original.

7. Bluetooth File Transfer Suite: (Workflow)

Once you have created a custom ringtone and want to send it and other files to your phone, you can do it manually.. or you can automate the process with Bluetooth File Transfer Suite. You’ll need the Bluetooth Object Push Action installed for this to work.

8. Movie to iPhone: (Workflow)

Movie to iPhone will convert movies into iPhone format for use on your iPhone (or iPod Touch). There’s a few files in this one, the easiest one to use is the standalone app. It asks you for the movie, converts it and drops it into your iTunes library for syncing to you iPhone or iPod Touch.

9. Attach to Mail: (Workflow)

Attaching files to emails is incredibly easy with Attach to Mail. Just select the file(s) and run the Workflow. A new email will be created with those files pre-attached.

10. Create Disk Image from Files: (Action)

The Create Disk Image from Files Action allows you to build Workflows that let you select files and instantly create a Disk Image with them inside. You can also set compression and encryption options. Add a copy Action to this and you can build a workflow that will take files, sew them up into an encrypted disk image and copy that image on to a USB drive or upload it to a server.

Automator isn’t easy:

I’ll admit, while Automator is great, it has a bit of a learning curve. Once you get how it works, it’s pretty useful though. Here are some resources for you if you want to learn more about how Automator works and using it.

- Ben Waldie’s Mac Automation Podcast.

- Mac 101: Automator.

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No Internet? Troubleshooting your Network Connection

David Balogh — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:00:46 +0000

Photo courtesy of Diongillard

Being forced offline isn’t easy. It’s like being in a blackout, only worse because your computer works fine. Especially if you need to be online for something such as responding to emails, working from home, etc. I know, it seems strange to write an online article on what to do if your internet isn’t working but save this one, it may help you quickly fix your problem and avoid a lengthy customer support phone call.

Steps to troubleshooting a network connection:

It’s easiest to break down your connection into pieces or steps to look at. Following these steps is important because you’ll save yourself time and aggravation. There’s basically three parts to your internet connection:

- The outside network.
- Your Cable/DSL/FIOS modem.
- Your computer.

You want to troubleshoot in that order because if the outage is with the network or your cable modem, fiddling with settings on your computer for hours won’t help you at all.

First Step: Examine the problem.

First, before we start actual troubleshooting, we need to gather some information about the problem.

- Open up Firefox/Safari and go to a website - What does it say?

- Go to a different website such as Yahoo! or Google. - Does it say the same thing?

- If you use Wireless, look at your Airport symbol in the upper right corner. - Are you connected?

- Go to System Preferences and click on Network. - On the left, are the buttons next to Ethernet (Wired) or Airport (Wireless) Green, Yellow or Red?

- Do you have an address that starts with 169.254.x.x? - This means you are not receiving an address from the modem/router.

- Is anyone else having problems? - If they are, it’s likely not with your computer. If they aren’t - it is likely your computer.

- Look at your Cable/DSL modem - Note the lights, are they the same as when everything is working?

Second Step: Look at the information.

In Safari or Firefox, when it says Page Can Not Be Displayed, its pretty self explanatory. However, if it says “Server can not be located” it may be something with DNS, not your connection. If it’s with DNS, we’ll look at that in a bit.

If other websites work such as Yahoo! or Google, chances are it’ with the site in particular and not your connection. Believe it or not, sites go down pretty often or get jammed up with too much traffic. Always check a major site preferably one with a constant stream of new information, so you know it’s not cached. CNN, BBC, Google News, New York Times are good sites to try.

If you’re wireless and the little bars in your airport symbol are grey, you’re not connected or poorly connected if one of them is black.

In your Network preferences, a green light means you are connected, yellow means there’s a problem and red means either the cable is disconnected or your airport is off. If could also mean there is a hardware problem if it’s red and says something like “No Airport” or “No Ethernet”.

Looking to see if others have the same connection issues is very important. You can easily eliminate your computer as the source of the problem if everyone else is having trouble.

Take not of those lights on the DSL / Cable modem. Usually there’s a light for Power, Activity, Link and Connection to your computer / router. There may be one or two more depending on the model. Usually, all lights are on, solid and green. The Activity light normally will either flash, be solid or off depending on what’s going on. Check your DSL or Cable modem right now and note what lights are on when everything is good. If the lights aren’t in that pattern when you have a problem, you immediately know it’s with either the Cable modem or it’s connection to the network.

Third Step: The Network.

- Check that Cable or DSL modem. What are the lights? Are they normal? Are they all dark? Is only the Power light on?

- Check all cable connections to / from the modem. As stupid as it may seem, just do it. Is the power plugged in? Is it connected to the cable? Connected to the telephone line? Connected to your Router or Computer?

- Unplug the power to your Cable / DSL modem to force it off. Wait about 10-15 seconds and plug it back in. Give it about a minute for it to start up. Check and see if your internet works again. 60% of the time, it will.

- If the lights are normal and restarting the modem didn’t help, continue on to the next step. If the lights aren’t normal and restarting still didn’t help, call tech support - It’s likely a problem with the network. Try to stay calm when they ask you to restart the modem and check to see if everything is plugged in. It’s actually very common for people to call with the modem unplugged, in standby or without resetting it first.

Fourth Step: Network devices.

Do you use a router? If you’re wireless, you do. If you’re not, does the cable go straight into the modem? For security reasons, I hope not. Just like with the modem, we’re going to unplug the router’s power, wait 10-15 seconds and plug it back in. Remember, 60% of the time this solves the problem. If that doesn’t work, bypass the router by plugging your computer directly into the modem.

Note: When switching what is plugged into the modem, turn it off and back on again. Cycling the power ensures that your modem sees your computer right away.

Fifth Step: Your Computer.

Ok, so everything works fine on another computer but not yours. Here are some things to look do:

- Restart the computer. You’d be surprised how often this fixes things.

- Check those cables. It’s silly but they do come unplugged. Try reseating them if they aren’t.

- Make sure your network settings are right - 99% of the time DHCP or “Automatic” is all you need.

- If you need to put in your own custom settings, make sure they are right.

- Check OS X’s firewall and turn it off temporarily - Select “allow any connection”.

- If you’re using Little Snitch, turn that off too.

- Try Safari if you use Firefox or Firefox if you use Safari.

- If you have an address and are “connected” but get the “Server not found” DNS problem, manually add the following Open DNS addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

- Boot from the OS X Install DVD and see if it connects. If it does, it’s a software related problem.

- If it still doesn’t, it’s likely hardware related. I’d recommend taking it to an Apple Store / Repair Center.

Note: The preceding troubleshooting steps are for when you can’t get any internet whatsoever. If you can visit pages, you have a connection.

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Memory Usage in OS X Explained

David Balogh — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:00:20 +0000

Photo courtesy of Gustav H

Tweaking OS X to get the best performance out of your Mac can be worth your time and money if it allows you to extend your older Mac’s life another year (or a few months until Apple releases that new model). Blindly following tutorials and tips can help but if you really want to get the best performance, you’ll need to know some theory. Let’s decipher OS X’s memory usage in Activity Monitor and look at how it affects your system.

First off - start up Activity Monitor and follow along. If you’ve never used it, it’s located in your Utilities folder (inside your Applications folder).

Activity Monitor by default shows only your processes. That’s great but it shows a very small portion of what’s going on in your Mac. So, look up top for the tab that says “My Processes”. Click on it and choose “All Processes”.

Memory Usage Explained:

We’re going to focus on memory usage, so at the bottom of Activity Monitor, click on the “System Memory” tab.

Activity Monitor now shows some statistics on your Mac’s memory usage. What does all this mean?

Free: This is the memory amount that is currently unused by the system. It’s free and available for applications and processes to use.

Wired: Wired memory is memory that’s in use by the system and can not be written to disk - it must stay in memory. Wired memory depends on the applications running and how many of them.

Active: Active memory is the amount of information currently being stored in RAM that’s being used or recently used.

Inactive: Inactive memory has been used by the system but not recently. It’s being held in RAM in case it’s needed again but if another application or process needs the memory, it will take it from the Inactive memory and OS X will swap the unused information to disk. If the memory is called again, it will be moved back into Active status.

Used: Used is the total amount of memory currently in use by OS X.

VM size: VM size is the hard disk space being used as virtual memory. Virtual memory is when your system needs more RAM than it has, it used the hard disk as memory. It will store inactive memory there, freeing up more space for Active processes.

Note: If you find yourself running low on free memory, the system will rely heavily on virtual memory and cause a noticeable slowdown.

Page ins: The process of writing information held in RAM to hard drive (virtual memory) and back is called paging. Page ins are when virtual memory is brought back into actual memory (RAM) from the hard drive.

Page outs: Page outs are the opposite of Page ins. When actual memory (RAM) gets full, OS X will Page out the inactive memory to the hard drive.

Swap used: If you noticed the incredibly large number for VM size, and thought “that’s an awful lot of my hard drive”, don’t worry. It’s the limit of how much space OS X can use if it needs. In reality, Swap used is the actual amount of space that OS X is really using for virtual memory.

How memory usage affects OS X:

Memory is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get an older system to perform better. As the years go by, applications (and OS X) use larger and larger amounts of memory. It’s almost as if OS X “outgrows” your system. When your Mac uses more and more virtual memory, it really slows down.

Looking at the System Memory portion of Activity Monitor can help you decide if more memory will help or not. Look for the following:

- A low amount of Free Memory (under 50mb).
- A large number of Page outs.
- A large amount of Swap used.

Also, keeping a good amount of space free (at least 2-5gb) on your hard drive will ensure that virtual memory works properly. If not, then things really become slow and unruly.

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Tame Your Multiple Gadgets with doubleTwist

David Balogh — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:00:32 +0000

Photo courtesy of doubleTwist

With the ever increasing pile of iPods, PSPs, Blackberries, mobile phones, mp3 players and other gadgets, managing them becomes unruly. They all seem to have their own software, their own way of doing things and laugh at the thought of interoperability. OS X support? You’re lucky if the device will even work with your Mac. So, how to tame the mess of different devices? Using doubleTwist, I’ll show you how to handle multiple devices without breaking a sweat.

About doubleTwist:

doubleTwist was created to solve two problems with major device manufacturers.

1. Each device has it’s own software and format and aren’t interoperable.
2. The manufacturer provided software quality is disappointing.

Think of doubleTwist as a “one media player to rule them all” type of solution, being able to manage your media cross-platform and cross-device.

Supported Devices:

As of this writing, some of the major devices that doubleTwist supports are:

- Apple iPod / iPod Touch / iPhone.
- Multiple Blackberry models (including Curve, Bold, Flip, Storm and Pearl).
- Sony PSP.
- Nokia N and E series phones.
- Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 devices.

For a complete and up to date list, visit doubleTwist.com.

Using doubleTwist:

Now that we know what doubleTwist is, let’s jump in and see how it works. Since I’ve got a supported Sansa e280 and an iPod Touch, I’ll use them both as test subjects.

1. Download and install doubleTwist.

2. Create and Activate a doubleTwist account.

3. When the application opens, it looks like a stripped down version of iTunes.

4. To add music, videos and pictures, just drag and drop them into the device.

Perceptions of doubleTwist:

It’s pretty simple to use and due to its extensive device support, doubleTwist is worth the download. However, there’s a few minor annoyances.

Dragging a folder full of music onto a device is not permitted and the music view only shows the title, artist and track length. There’s no ability to add in other important tags like “album”. Perhaps in a future release these features will be implemented.

Personally, I won’t be using it to replace my main media player Cog but I like being able to use it with my Sansa e280 and the software has great potential.

Note: For iPhone / iPod Touch and possibly iPod users

1. To allow doubleTwist to see your iPod Touch / iPhone / iPod you must enable the “Manually manage music and videos” and “Sync only checked songs and videos” checkboxes within iTunes.

2. It seems with the release of the latest iTunes last week (8.2.0.23), doubleTwist doesn’t see iPhones and iPod Touches even if you have the appropriate checkboxes checked. This is a known issue and the development team is working on a patch.

Unfortunately, I have the affected iTunes and couldn’t see how doubleTwist works with my iPod Touch, but I’ll assume it works similarly to the Sansa.

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The Easiest Way to Broadcast Streaming Video with QuickTime Broadcaster

David Balogh — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:18 +0000

Photo courtesy of OS X

Want to broadcast videos to anyone, local or distant? You can easily do this with the magic of QuickTime Broadcaster. Broadcast lectures to far away students, live video feeds of a family barbecue to relatives across the world, or use it to broadcast in-house video to local terminals. Whatever you need to broadcast, QuickTime Broadcaster makes it easy. Let me show you how to set it up.

Get QuickTime Broadcaster:

Before you even start broadcasting, you’ll need to get QuickTime Broadcaster. Don’t worry, it’s actually a free application! If you have OS X Server, it’s probably already located in your Applications folder.

Download: QuickTime Broadcaster.

Wait, there’s a catch:

Now, before you get too excited about broadcasting video to the world, there’s a little detail to discuss. QuickTime broadcaster will only allow you to stream video directly to one client. Streaming video, especially high quality video, can be a bit much for your computer and connection so in a way, this may be a good limitation.

If you only want to stream to one specific person / computer, then don’t worry about this and continue on. If you did plan on streaming to larger amounts of people (more than one), read on..

To get around this limitation, you’ll have to use either a multicast enabled network or use QuickTime Streaming Server. Luckily this streaming server is part of OS X Server, which you should be using anyway if you’re planning to broadcast en masse.

Set up your video feed:

Now that you downloaded and installed QuickTime Broadcaster, let’s set up your feed. As soon as you run the program it will grab video from your built in iSight webcam and unless you are using the QuickTime streaming server, it will promptly fail and give you an error when you press the Broadcast button.

This is how to set up the video feed:

1. Click on the “Show Details” button.

2. In the details portion, Click on the “Audio” tab at the top.

3. Select your audio source from the “Source” selector:

4. If you know what you are doing and want to tweak audio settings, this is where you do it.

Note: You can also disable the audio feed if you’d like to send video only.

5. Click on the “Video” tab at the top.

6. Select your video source from the “Source” selector if you aren’t using the built in iSight.

7. Notice the “Preset” selector at the top. This sets the appropriate video settings for your connection.

Note: Remember - the higher the quality, the better network you will need.

8. You can also tweak the video settings here if you know what you are doing.

Set up the Network:

1. Click on the “Network” tab at the top.

2. Select “Manual Unicast” from the Transmission selector.

3. Important! In the address field, type in the IP of the receiving computer.

4. Once your settings are set, click File on the Menu Bar and “Export”.

5. Choose SDP and save this to your desktop.

6. Copy the SDP file onto the receiving computer.

7. Click Broadcast from QuickTime Broadcaster to start your stream.

8. Double click on the SDP file from the receiving computer.

9. If all goes well, you will see your stream!

Note: There is a few seconds delay between the broadcast and the receiving video. This is normal.

Just remember that if you want to stream to more than one computer / person at a time, you’ll need to use QuickTime Streaming Server which comes with OS X Server. If you don’t have OS X Server and won’t plan on using it, you can also use the open source Darwin Streaming Server.

Note: I only recommend using Darwin Streaming Server if you are a more advanced user.

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