Every week I seem to find something to write about backing up your Mac or PC. This week however I find myself at a blank page for something to write about dealing with backups.
Time Flies
That is when I realized that I have been doing this Friday blog for 6 months now. It was on Oct 30th 2009 that I wrote my first MacNews blog. At that time I did not realize that there would be millions, well maybe thousands, perhaps hundreds, okay dozens, of people reading this religiously every week. Hanging on my every word. Looking for that message, that passage that would keep them on the right path and away from the depths of misery and despair that comes with unhappy times and events with their computer.
Being a Super Hero is tough
Feeling this great weight of responsibility. After all with Great Power comes Great Responsibility. I take on this mantle. I accept this challenge to deliver the word to all "tech kind". To give the people hope. To reinforce the true values that great computing has been built upon. To reach to the very core of my being and bring forth the very words that were first etched into a Syquest cartridge many, many, years ago.
I sailed those seas, I craved my way thru jungles, I climbed that mountain. When I reached the summit, I found a great oracle of strength and wisdom. Oh great Oracle, what wisdom could you possibly place upon me that I can return to my people and share with them. Tell me, Tell me what I should say.
He looked with a wise and knowing eye and said.
“Ye, there are but two peoples in the world today. He whost needs to backup and He whost will wished thou had backed up”
So whost are you?
Wine, Women, and Song. —- Well just song.
This weeks musical selection I pulled because I just like the singer's voice. Another super group from the 80's.
Catch ya on Saturday May 1st 2010 from 5 to 7 PM. Its time again for you to tune into 760 AM WJR for the Internet Advisor Show. Once again attempting to take all of this "geek speak" and put it in an easy to understand format to provide assistance with your computer problems.
We also want to wish Foster Braun the best of luck on his treatments for his battle with cancer. You can send him your best wishes at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/fosterbraun
You can also click this link and download the WJR App to you iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad so you can hear it wherever you have an Internet connection.
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Are you an aspiring Photoshop user? Are you already using Photoshop but want to learn more? Are you looking for a great Photoshop class to take? Want to learn more about Photoshop in the next few weeks than you could venturing out on your own?
Then you are in luck. Schoolcraft College: Continuing Education and Professional Development has a offering of Photoshop classes that may be just what your are looking for.
Registration for Spring/Summer courses is now open and just around the corner, on May 5th, classes start for Photoshop for Beginners (and the Photoshop Series), with Photoshop Level 2 starting June 16th. Each level is 6 sessions in length and meets on Wednesday nights from 6pm-8:40pm.
Some of the topics touched on during classes are outlined below, with much more included. After these classes of seeing what Photoshop can do, you will never think of images in the same manner. Classes are taught by (shameless plug) yours truly. 
Last Monday, the last major manufacturer of floppy disks, Sony, announced they were stopping production. In spite of the fact that the original iMac began the slow decline of the floppy into obsolescence, you may not realize that the floppy disk was one of the reasons for the popularity of the Apple II, the company's first mass-produced hit product.
In those days, most home computers used audio cassettes to save and load programs. If you ever had to load a program from audio cassette, you know what a pain it was. If the volume wasn't just right, you might get most of the way through loading a program when it would abort – and you'd have to try again (and often again and again). This was also the only way to save off your data – so if you wanted to save off a file, you connected up the cassette recorder and dumped it to tape.
Floppy drives might have been an alternative, but floppy controllers were complex and expensive. Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computer, designed a controller with far fewer parts, substituting software for some of the things done by hardware. This less-expensive controller allowed Apple to sell a (relatively) cheap floppy drive to go with the Apple II.
Now, I've had plenty of floppies go bad, but they were never as frustrating as fooling with those cassettes. Moving to floppies felt like moving into the future!
But years later, Apple left the floppy drive off of the iMac, and helped bring about Monday's announcement. At the time, it was considered a radical move, but nowadays it's getting pretty tough to find a new computer with a floppy drive. I'm guessing few will mourn the passing of this once ubiquitous tech. Some of you may never have even used one!
So the next time Apple makes a radical move, making some technology obsolete, pause for a moment before passing judgement and think of the old floppy.
As I impatiently await the arrival of my iPad camera connection kit, I've been playing with some of the available photo manipulation apps, and there are a bunch of free ones.
PhotoPad is the first, and gives you cropping, color adjustments, color swapping and drawing & sketching. It's easy to use, and even has a history palette.
Impression does one thing only. It lets you add a watermark to your photos. Simple to use.
Do you like those ad photos that have the background in black and white and the main object in color that draws you in? Touch FX Lite will let you do that. The $1.99 full version has a bunch of filters that will allow you to apply just about every color variation possible to just a portion or all of your photo. Zoom in for fine control as you brush out your background color.
Want to create your own photo postcards? Check out Bill Atkinson PhotoCard Lite. Use your own photos to create a postcard, then either email it or, for a fee, have them professionally printed and mailed.
There are a bunch of free and inexpensive photo apps for the iPad. Now, none have the capabilities of PhotoShop, but they still can give you basic editing controls. Check them out. You're sure to find something you'll like.
The MacBook Pro i use for work recently got upgraded. If you remember last week's post on "When should you buy a New Mac?" You'll remember that I had just placed my order at work for the newly introduced MacBook Pro 15" Core i7. Well it arrived last week and I thought I would take a few minutes to share my first impressions.
My Config
8GB RAM, 15.4" Antiglare LED Display, 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 500GB 7200 RPM drive
The Design
There's nothing really new with the design. My last MacBook Pro was the 1st generation uni-body enclosure. So I was already familiar with this design and Apple hasn't really changed it much. They replaced the ExpressCard slot with an SD card reader and I was already mentally prepared for that. Otherwise from a look and feel perspective It feels just like my old one. Don't take that as a knock. There wasn't anything wrong with the design (other than I still prefer the older trackpads with a separate button).
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It's Spring Time! About the time to change the oil and rotate those tires.
Many folks I know do backups. Some do them on a regular basis. Some even remember to store them offsite. But a lot do not remember to rotate their backups.
I had an associate who backed up regularly to CD’s and DVD’s. Stored them in a safe place but, there were a lot of disks stored there. Also there were many that were very old and not very likely to be used ever again.
Rotation will keep that sort thing from happening.
First. Use media that can be rewritten. Avoid CD-RWs. My experience is that they are not reliable. Use something like tape, external hard drive or a simple USB Flash drive. You want to have at least two sets. One you keep offsite at all times. The other set at your computer for your next back up. By using this type of media and rotating it, it keeps the data fresh and you don’t end up accumulating a bunch of media that you will need to track. These are backups not archives. Archives are a different conversation.
Follow this method and you’ll find that backing up will be less of a chore. Sure, it’s not the most exciting thing you’ll do with your Mac or PC, but it one of the most important things you’ll do.
Musical selection for this week
This week was Administrative Assistant week. Most of the Admins where I work are women who do a great job keeping the office and the behind the scenes stuff running smoothly. They are truly “Tough Enough”. Let’s also remember that women that are working at keeping house and home together are just as tough.
1986 was the year for “The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Enjoy!
And where will you tune in on Saturday April 24th 2010? Why to 760 AM WJR for the Internet Advisor Show. We will be on the air from 5 to 7 PM giving you the best in geek stuff and assistance. Click this link and download the WJR App to you iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad so you can hear it wherever you have an Internet connection.
Sunday, I will see you at the MacGroup Detroit meeting for Terry White’s presentation of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5!
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In my quest of searching the App Store to find some really unusual apps that are amazing, amazingly functional or amazingly lame, I am never disappointed. Here’s my latest batch of “Theres’ Really an App for That?” list makers.
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Lucky Spell
Do you need some good karma on call? Extra money? Love? Well it’s your lucky day.
Magic Spells Now has an extensive offering of spells to help you get exactly what you are looking for. With the Magic Spell Book just dial up the type of luck you need, follow the instructions and you’re good to go.
If only it were so easy.
$3.99
I ran into a problem about 6 months ago – I didn't have enough room on my 16 GB iPhone 3G to put all my music on. This was partially thanks to upgrading most of my purchased tracks to iTunes Plus – they are twice the sound quality (at twice the size). I wasn't eligible for a low-cost upgrade from AT&T, so getting a 32 GB 3GS was out of my price range.
After removing some larger videos, I was still a couple of gigabytes short. So I used the "convert" feature of iTunes and converted all my higher-quality 256 kbps bit-rate songs to 128 kbps. It's not like you can really tell on the iPhone anyway. But this caused me some new problems.
For one, it meant having a duplicate set of about 1/3 of my music (although at half the size) eating up my disk. (The converted songs are in addition to, not replacements for, your original.) They're also in my iTunes library. Because of this, I had to come up with a Smart Playlist to make sure only the right songs got on the iPhone. That means I can't use any of my other playlists unless I want to substitute all the 256 kbps songs for their 128 kbps counterparts when playing on my Mac (and I don't).
So imagine my surprise and happiness at finding a new option in iTunes 9.1 – an option to automatically convert songs down to 128 kbps for your iPod! This option has been around for a while, but it was only offered up before if you were using an iPod Shuffle (maybe a Nano too?). Apple decided to open it up to all iPods, which is great. This meant I could use my normal playlists, save all that disk space (the songs are converted at sync time and a copy is not kept, like with the manual conversion), and not have duplicates cluttering up my library.
My happiness was short-lived. It seems that the converted songs don't keep the album artwork – you just get a generic music symbol on the iPhone. Now, on a Shuffle, that's a great idea – might as well strip those out, because you can't see them anyway. But it looks awful on my iPhone! I like perusing the album covers sometimes when looking for a song.
So I unchecked the option, recreated my Smart Playlist, and re-converted all those songs. I guess I'll have to wait for the 4G phone now (I was finally eligible for an upgrade for both my phones in March – and I figured I could wait a few months rather than buy a 3GS now).
So if you are temped to use the automatic conversion, be forewarned!
So, now that I've had a couple of weeks with my iPad, it's time for further thoughts. Am I still happy with it? Absolutely. Do I have a wish list? Naturally.
Number one on the list is the ability to connect to my network printer — with every app. ePrint works reasonably well, but it's limited to specific things, like web pages, or photos in albums. Or contact lists from your Address Book. You can print photo calendars, but you can't print them with iCal entries. Come on, Apple. If I can print these things right from my iPad, why can't I print Pages or Numbers documents? Why can't I print my iCal entries? If Microtech can produce a $2.99 app to print some of these things, then why can't Apple give us the entire thing. Yes, I can copy a document and then print the clipboard, but I shouldn't have to go through the extra steps. (Try ePrint Free to be sure your printer works with this app. Works with iPhone, too).
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Buying a NEW anything in technology can be a risky gamble. Timing is everything. As someone who follows technology closely I'm always keeping and eye open and an ear out for when the next gadget might be introduced. Even I get it wrong sometimes, but for the most part I've been quite happy with my "timed purchases." Let's look at the 3 Apple categories that I now buy in regularly. I use a MacBook Pro for work (company purchased). I use a Mac Pro for my video work and anything requiring lot's of horse power or rendering and of course I'm an iPhone user.
Let's start with the iPhone
When it comes to the iPhone I always want the current model. Apple has historically refreshed the iPhone every year in the summer. So that makes it easy to plan. However, the penalty with upgrading the iPhone is the AT&T contract that you sign for 2 YEARS! So how do I upgrade every year? I rotate iPhones between family members. My teenage daughters are always one rev back. So currently they are on the 3G model. As soon the 2010 model comes out (rumor has it in June), then I'll get that one and pass down my 3GS to one of the girls. When you setup a New iPhone, it wants to know your existing account. So I do this for one that is eligible for an upgrade. Then I swap SIM cards and report the new serial numbers, etc. to AT&T so that the accounts are straight. It seems that AT&T doesn't really care where the phone actually ends up account wise as long as you do the 2 year commitment. This has worked for me every year so far.
My Mac Pro
My current desktop Mac is the original Mac Pro (introduced in August 2006)! This is probably the longest I've held on to a single Mac as my primary workstation. My typical upgrade pattern had been every other model, however I just couldn't justify the last couple of upgrades when they came out. I had other priorities. However, NOW I'M READY!
I'm very ready for a New Mac Pro. Why not just order one today you say? Well because the current model that Apple sells came out in March 2009 (the one before that was January 2008. See a pattern here?), a little over one year ago. Although that doesn't really sound like it's that old, it's old in terms of computers. So rather than buy last year's model this late in the game I can wait a little longer until the NEXT Mac Pro is released. I've waited this long, a few more weeks, months, etc. won't hurt me. Also I'd feel really bad if I go out and buy one today and the new one comes out tomorrow with more bang for the same buck. Again, you have to plan.
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