I spotted this over at Gizmodo and think it's just fantastic. I can't believe nobody has done this before. USB and docking outlets to mount in your desk. Story here.

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NTFS-3G for Mac OS X is a great utility if you have the need to write to flash drives greater than 4GB in size.

It uses MacFuse and NTFS file system on the Flash Drive to make it happen, the behind the scenes on this one is "more than I need to know" just know that you can do it, and it works.

Check it out here.

Now when you see that smoking deal on an 8GB USB Flash drive, you'll have no reason to ignore it.


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Microsoft Mac Office 2008 is now in private beta and will be shipped sometime after July. I'm pretty happy with NeoOffice and very much looking forward to OpenOffice Aqua, but admittedly Office is a pretty good package.

You can see a gallery of Office 2008 pictures over at AppleInsider.com

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As reported a week ago, the AppleTV was hacked in no time at all. Progress is being made, the guys figuring it all out have figured out the menu structure, they even have added a file browser. The USB port can be enabled for Keyboard and Mouse (no external storage just yet), of course other video types like XviD are playing.

AwkwardTV.org is a great spot to monitor progress on all the work.

The state of the hacks is all pretty heavy developer type stuff in my opinion. But fortunately people are working towards making all these mods something that you'll be able to do without ever even cracking the case open.

Speaking of cracking the case open, Engadget has a great DIY page on how to upgrade the harddrive in the AppleTV.

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When OS X 10.4.9 seeded the other day, my method of updating my iCal calendars to a standard web server broke. More specifically, a utility that made it possible was no longer compatible. Pygmy Software has just updated Scalp, and all is good again.

This is a terrific way to have read access to your iCal calendars when you're away, at work, or just not at your main computer. Here is the tutorial.

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Uno makes your Mac look unified and gorgeous. Now it's updated for the first time after iTunes 7.1 was released.

Head over to their site now to download.


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I was following this thread today, some guys have figured out how to play XviD and some other video formats on the AppleTV. It would seem that the AppleTV has not been locked as many of use would have expected.

Also, the Roque Amoeba guys realized that any TV with component inputs will work with the AppleTV, it doesn't have to be a widescreen TV.

And lastly, somebody has already upgraded from the 40GB drive to a120GB drive.

Interesting developments for the first day or so.

Tell me that it's a fully functioning DVR and I'll be a happy guy.

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Lately I have been thinking about computer based DVR systems, and to a larger extent Media Servers. I have been using Microsoft Media Center Edition (MCE) for several years now to serve my AudioVideo system TV, Movies, Music, and occasionally pictures.

As AppleTV is now shipping, this seems like a good time to bring up this topic. I've talked about AppleTV in fair depth previously. To sum it up, I think it is a neat product if you want to bring your iTunes Music and your iTunes TV Shows and Movies to your TV. My main issue with AppleTV is something it doesn't do, and that is DVR function. I'm a single source kind of guy. Meaning that I prefer a single source for my Live TV, Recorded TV, movies, music, etc.. This is something that Media Center does very well. 

I'll talk more about music another day, but I'm looking at my Media Server more from a TV and Movie perspective now, not so much music. Currently my main source of content is Cable TV, standard definition (SD), DVD's, both disc's and ripped to my MCE. My TV is a 1994 35" tube TV which does a pretty darned good job with SD content. With my SD TV, and my SD Cable TV I've been hesitant to move to the realm of HDTV until it became more ubiquitous. It damn near kills me when I go into Costco about every week and have to walk past that huge area now devoted to flat panel TV's. But an HDTV necessitates HD content to benefit from it's capabilities. HD Content means I've got to either record HDTV from Over The Air (OTA) which is all the main broadcast channels for free in glorious HD with my MCE2005 based system, or go with a new DVR / Media Center solution.

The options. Tivo, I don't like it, for one thing I don't like the subscription, and the cost of a Tivo3 is high enough to make me want to stick with a computer based solution so that I can also have Movies not just TV. Cable Company DVR has about the worst GUI that I've ever encountered (at least the offerings from my Cable provider.) AppleTV has no DVR but it does do movies. Then there are other PC based solutions similar to Media Center. The next gen of MCE on Windows Vista does HD via CableCard. My two problems with that solution is 1) you can't use commercial detection and skipping software with CableCard recorded media, this is a function that I'm not sure I can live without after having it for so long now. (Tivo lacks this too.) 2) There are no version 2 Extenders for VistaMCE yet (Xbox 360 works as an extender, but I have no interest in a 360 or it's price.) Moxi by Digeo has a new retail DVR solution coming out this summer if all goes well. One variant will be CableCard based, the other an OTA based setup. This is interesting as I've always thought the Moxi GUI was beautiful.

MythTV is a Linux based solution which has some interest to me. It can operate on a Server / Client mode, where a Server does all the recording and can store all the media, then a client pc, even a Mac Mini running an OS X MythTV front end can be used to access everything including Live TV. This has a lot of appeal to me. I would consider this solution and even consider dropping my Cable TV altogether and just going with OTA HDTV and DVD's. I can always snag a show I miss from bittorrent if I'm really jonesing something that isn't available OTA.

Ideally I'd prefer a native Mac Solution. There are some projects and applications to this end, such as Media Central, XHub, and Center Stage. But they just simply aren't to the level of something like MCE is today. One reason I really like my MCE Extender is that it is an appliance, not a computer, that is great. I like a 10 foot experience, not a computer in my family room.

I've decided to stay where I am for now. With my MBA program I don't watch as much TV as I might otherwise be inclined to watch anyway. I'm hoping that better computer based DVR solutions may crop up in the next year or so. Maybe MythTV will progress even further than it currently is. Maybe Apple will shock us all and enter the space. Maybe third party solutions like from ElGato will improve.

There is always hope, but I need some more working solutions.

It shouldn't be that hard to come up with a kick ass Media Server solution that is affordable with today's technology.



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Here are two deals worth mentioning, both from Buy.com, both look like Mac products.

First is the Logitech S530 Mac desktop set. I use this set myself and am very happy with it after many months of daily use.

Only $39.99 including shipping.

Second is the NetGear GS605NA gigabit switch. You can use this in conjunction with your WiFi router to allow for speedy gigabit speeds on your LAN. I ordered one myself.

Only $22.99 including shipping.

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mypublisher offers a neat service. They have a plugin for iPhoto that allows you to order photobooks from them, which are nicer quality and less expensive than ordering directly from Apple. I've used them and have been very happy with the product and price.

They have now instroduced BookMaker for Mac which doens't require iPhoto, so if you aren't an iPhoto user you can now easily use MyPublisher.

Currently there are some discounts for orders, they often have discounts so wait to order something until you get a discount in your email after signing up with them.

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The Linksys Tomato Firmware released an updated firmware to version 1.05.

Enjoy the goodness that is known as Tomato Open Firmware.

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We ran a HowTo on publishing your iCal Calendars to any website a while back. Click here for the full story.

With the recent upgrade of Mac OS X to 10.4.9 iCal had an update which causes one of the programs necessary for the iCal publishing trick to no longer function. Hopefully the author of Scalp will be able to update it so that it works again.

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A month ago I bemoaned the fact that the new Airport Extreme didn't have gigabit ethernet, thus not so Extreme...

I've now got my new Linksys WRT54GL tuned to Extreme now with the Tomato firmware upgrade that I talked about.

This is a great setup to consider if you don't need N wireless. It's a lot cheaper than the Airport Extreme and has more configuration options. The interface is much nicer than the Linksys provided firmware, and the features are never ending.

Here are some screenshots of before and after. I'm not going to shoot all the pages, it would be many, but this will give you an idea of what it is like.

Here are some images: 1) Original Linksys router homepage, 2) Upgrade to Tomato 1.04 is successful!, 3) New Tomato router homepage, and 4) Tomato Last 5 Hours Bandwidth Usage.

The image below shows the bandwidth usage activity for the past 5 hours. Tomato allows you to view real time usage, a graph of the past 5 hours, daily, and monthly.

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SlimDevices was kind enough to send us a brand new all Black SqueezeBox so that we can review it. The review will be several weeks out, it will be a non-traditional review in that it will be two people doing the write up on the unit. And we may not see eye to eye.

audioengine USA was kind enough to send us a pair of their AudioEngine5 powered speakers. A review will be coming on these as well.

I just got the new NeoOffice 2.1 which supports Macros from Microsoft Word and Excel. I'll report on this after I have time to test it out better. I can say that NeoOffice got a sprucing up and it looks much more modern than it's stodgy by comparison version 2.0 variant.

Also I just received a copy of the yet un-released Aqua OpenOffice (no X11), this isn't prime time yet and there is some terminal work involved in getting it to run. After I figure that out I'll give a quick report on it's progress. I'm very curious to see how Aqua OpenOffice and NeoOffice compare with each other.

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Daniel has made some updates to WebExport, his already great export utility iPhoto.

WebExportWebExport is a universal exporter for iPhoto 5 and 6. It is geared for the production of low to high end photo galleries on any kind of website. I developed it to produce the galleries on my website, and in all likelihood, it will work on your site. It is a semi-derivative of CustomHTMLExport, with new features, a new look, and a redone basecode. Templates are not cross-compatible.

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I've gone off on StuffIT previously, suffice it to say I'm not a fan of it and it's proprietary compression formats.

The Unarchiver is a great lightweight file unarchiver. It can even do SIT files, but not SITX. That is the one quasi-common format it can't handle. I can live with that.

Hop off the bandwagon, say StuffIT and try out nice alternatives like The Unarchiver which just released a new version recently, 1.5.




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Check out Previous posts on MacSeven.com

MacSeven Posts from February 2007

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