Macgasm

Parents rejoice! iKidNY ($2.99) is a handheld encyclopedia of venues in New York City that are kid friendly, which is especially helpful for geeky mommies or moms (and even dads) on the go. Got a 2-year-old who needs some playtime but it’s raining? Check out the “indoor activities” option, then narrow down to the neighborhood in Manhattan (and even in the southwest Bronx for parents like me, in addition to Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens) to find the places most suitable for your child.

iKidNY also features outdoor activities (primarily playgrounds), restaurants that are kid-friendly and public locations with changing tables, since you most likely will need to change your child if you choose to venture out into the streets of New York for a long fun-filled day. I also really appreciated the “subway elevators” feature, showing you exactly which subway stops are stroller-accessible. Let me put it this way: on Tuesday night, I’m going to have a real hard time going up the stairs with baby and stroller in tow. (There’s no alternative either.)

Each location features a map (using Google Maps, pinpointing your location and showing it in relation to the specific venue you’re seeking out) and lets you “favorite” frequently-visted items. You can also get directions, also using Google Maps.

I really like iKidNY. It’s usability is simple and it gives you clear-cut locations to choose from. It’s got no frills, just a ton of resourceful data, and is a real easy-to-use app.

I love the Apple Store in NYC, it’s one of the first places I wanted to visit the first time I visited the city. I’ve just come across this 7:53 minute video, a short making of the now famous landmark Cube at the edge of Central Park. The video features the people behind the idea and construction of the Store, worth the watch if you like these kind of things. I’d personally like to see a longer one though!

Photo credit Thomas Hawk

Many news sites have been comparing the new Zune HD and the iPod lines. I will not argue that they have their own opinions, yet the thing that bothers me is that almost all of them have a review unit so they did not necessarily spend their own money on the Zune HD. I’m calling this an objective comparison because I did take my own money to purchase a new 16GB Zune HD.

I have owned an iPod since March of 2005 and over that time I have owned seven different iPod devices. They list includes: One 1st Generation 4GB iPod Mini, two 4GB 1st Generation iPod Nanos, one 4GB 2nd Generation iPod Nano, One 30GB iPod with Video (5.5 Generation), one 4GB iPhone, one 16GB iPhone 3G, and my current 32GB iPhone 3GS. With all of these purchases I am heavily invested in iTunes and the Apple Store with quite a few purchases of DRMed content, so moving MP3 Players is not something most would readily do. Me being the odd one out, moving MP3 players is something I don’t mind doing.

Since I have invested so much into music, whether it be purchased digitally or using old analog CDs, my media library has grown to quite a collection. In order to save space, and since it seemed logical, I decided to use the same media for both iTunes and the Zune 4.0 software. Using the same media library is great on space, however there are two downsides to using this method. The first is that the Zune HD does not support already embedded artwork. This means if you’ve spent hours upon hours finding and putting album artwork into your iTunes library (like I have) it will be stripped out. This only happens if you allow the Zune soft to update the meta data within your media files.

On the subject of MP3s the other item that can potentially be an issue is the amount of time you spend having to move your music around. The beauty with iTunes is that you can store your music absolutely anywhere and just drag and drop. The Zune software works in the exact same way. However, when you’re going from one platform to another permissions can become an issue so storing all of your iTunes content in your /users/username/Music/iTunes Music/ folder may not be accessible from Windows without some finagling. There is one feature within the Zune 4.0 software that iTunes does not currently have. The Zune Software will monitor a folder and automatically add new music copied to that folder to your Zune Library. This is a definite plus if you are ripping your CDs to MP3s.

Over the past year iTunes growth has exploded with the addition of Applications. This is a definite win for the iPod, however it’s not every iPod that is capable of running the Applications, only the iPhone OS based devices the iPod Touch and iPhone. As of right now there are only a handful of applications available on the Zune HD. They are currently available for free but might include some advertisements. There are also many more to come in the future. Despite the obvious market for applications on hand held devices, Microsoft has stated that they are not going to do a third party application store.

One of the biggest hurdles in moving over from the iPod to the Zune is exporting your playlists. If you’re moving from an iPod to a Zune on a windows computer this is not too terribly bad. There is some software to do just this task. It was developed by Eric Daughtery and can be downloaded from his website. It is an application that will export your current playlists to .zpl Files. There are only three steps to this process. The screenshots are shown below.

The hard part comes if you have music all over the place that is not necessarily local. If you’re running music off of your local computer you should not have to change anything. All you should have to do is copy the playlist to your user directory. For Vista or Windows 7 the path should be C:\users\username\music\zune\playlists Folder. If you’re still running Windows XP the path should be C:\documents and settings\username\My Music\Zune\Playlists. The playlist should show up in the Zune Software automatically.

If you are running a Mac and a Windows computer be prepared for updating the playlists before putting them into the Zune Playlists folder. Since I have my mp3s running off of my iMac I had to map to the folder that the MP3s are located. If you put all of your mp3s into one folder this is not difficult. The ZPL files are just standard XML file that can be edited with TextEdit or notepad. I recommend using the Find & Replace options when replacing text.

There are a couple of features that the Zune HD has that none of the iPods have. The first is a subscription music service called Zune Pass. With Zune Pass a user is able to go ahead and download almost any content they want for a monthly fee. This fee in the US is $14.99 per month. With the Zune Pass you get to also keep ten of the songs each month, which effectively reduces the price of the subscription to $4.99 per month.

The second feature that the iPods lack is the ability to sync your device with your music library wirelessly. You can connect the Zune to the internet if you want. The browsing experience is no where near the iPhone OS browsing experience. The only way that the Zune HD could get something similar is by putting a full fledged web browser on the device. You can browse the Internet using a computer provided that you are connected via USB and have the Zune software closed. Obviously the Zune device driver has support for creating a proxy of some sort. This is quite convenient if you need to browse the internet yet cannot connect to wireless for some reason.

The third feature that the Zune HD has that the iPod line is missing is the ability to individually select how many podcasts to keep for each individual podcast feed. For instance, let us *say* you listen to a daily podcast but do not necessarily have time to catch up except one a week. You can set that podcast to retain anywhere from one to ten to all the previous episodes. Also, let’s assume you have the Apple Keynote podcast feed you can keep only the latest one automatically. This is a definite plus in terms of overall media management.

Another feature, we’ll call this feature 3.1, is that you can have the podcasts retain partially listened to podcasts instead of having an all or nothing setup like on the iPod. This type of setup means you will have more space on your device should you finish listening to a podcast.

The final feature that the Zune has, that the iPods do not, is the ability to automatically transcode files upon syncing. Let’s postulate that you subscribe to a video podcast that is 720p. The Zune cannot do 720P video. But you, as the user, have the option to go ahead and allow the Zune software to transcode the file to a format the the Zune can understand. This works quite well, however the only downside is that the syncing process takes quite a bit longer to finish because of this transcoding.

There are some very similar features between the Zune HD and the iPod line. One of these differentiated implementations is song ratings. Within the iPod / iTunes world a user can rank a song between zero (unrated) and five stars. Within the Zune planet there are only three states a song can be within; blank (unrated), full heart (like), broken heart (dislike). I’m not sure if I would want more, although it would be nice if you could put a ‘somewhat like’ but not totally like option.

Despite the benefits of the Zune there are definitely some issues. The first and thing that almost made me return the Zune was the fact that neither the Zune HD nor the Zune 4.0 software supports already embedded artwork within media. What this means is that if you spent several hours embedding all of your artwork in iTunes when you go to put it into the Zune the artwork disappeared from your music. This is absolutely ridiculous and should never be allowed. I can see updating artwork for items that are not there but re-doing all of my work is not something I want to do. With that, he Zune HD cannot support individual track artwork. I subscribe to a couple podcasts that update their track artwork to the current item that they are discussing, so instead of getting that artwork, I just gee the generic artwork for the podcast. This isn’t a deal breaker. It would be nice to see this feature added since when I listen to a gadget podcast I generally want to see what gadget they are discussing.

The second annoying item is the inability of the Zune to support lyrics on music. I have yet to be able to find a way to display the lyrics of a song on the Zune HD even if they are embedded within the MP3. I hope this gets fixed in the future.

Wireless on the Zune is lacking. While it can connect to a wireless network you better hope it’s an 802.11B or G network because you want to connect to an 802.11N network you’re out of luck. The Zune HD only support 802.11B/G networks. While there is no chipset for 802.11N I cannot see why it shouldn’t be able to connect to the 802.11N network since N is supposed to be backwards compatible, per the specifications. My iPhones can all connect to both 802.11B/G/N networks without any issue. This is purely a bad decision on Microsoft’s part.

One of my biggest peeves with the Zune 4.0 Software lies in its lack to re-establish a connection if one is lost. I run the Zune 4.0 software within Parallels and instead of shutting down my MacBook I just put the whole laptop to sleep, thereby not having to spend several minutes booting both the MacBook and subsequently Microsoft Windows.

The Zune Software works wonderfully for media management. When you search you receive results for both items within your own collection (already owned or downloaded Zune pass items) as well as Zune Marketplace items. This way if you already have an item in your collection you will be able to find out quickly, versus having to do multiple searches within different places to be able to locate the same information.

Some of the features that the iPod and iTunes possess, but are not in the Zune HD or the Zune 4.0 area, include the ability to have the iPod halt playing a song if you only want to listen to a particular section. By this, I mean let’s say an artist has a hidden track appended to one of their other songs and you only like the first song. iTunes allows you to set the playback and end times for that song. The Zune software does not have this option in anyway shape or form.

There are some hardware concerns that I have in regards to the Zune HD player. The first of these concerns is that the controls for volume are all virtual, and cannot be modified without looking at the screen; or having a really good sense of judgement. This is unlike the iPhone OS based devices which will adjust the volume up or down without having to look at the screen.

Overall the Zune HD is not a bad music player. Yes, you have to have Microsoft Windows, but the Zune Pass is entirely worth it. I’ve been finding songs left and right that I want to hear again but do not warrant purchase. Of course, some of the songs definitely do get the purchase consideration. But we will see which ones actually win out in the end. If you know anybody who doesn’t like Apple or doesn’t want to pay the ‘Apple Tax’ the Zune is a good alternative, as long as they want music.

I figured that since 1Password has gone to version three that now would be a good time to re-evaluate the password managers out there before I decide to settle in on 1Password again. It’s a good practice, and I’d recommend everyone does it before the re-purchase an application of any kind. I got a recommendation from Brady Valentino on twitter about Acrylic’s Wallet application (That’s twice in one week. I should ask him to write for us.) It does a lot of what 1Password does and it also has an iPhone app, just like 1Password.

I’ve been stating the benefits of syncing data a lot lately, so the fact that Wallet also lets you sync your database across Mobile Me (Boo!), and WebDav (Yea!) doesn’t fall on deaf ears for me. I can’t wait for a time when all my applications are syncable across my machines, hopefully it’s sooner than later.

Anyhow, Wallet is a password manager, a credit card manager, and a serial key manager. That’s just out of the box, they do give you the ability to set up other categories for you to manage information as well, which seems handy, even though I have absolutely no idea what else I’d want it to manage.

It has 256 AES encryption on your information, so you can be sure that someone’s not going to get at that information unless the work for the CIA or have access to a Crate super computer. It’s worthy of a look, and as it stands it’s seriously tempting me as a full time option.

Thanks goes out toBrady Valentino
Image Credit: -sou-

I pod, you pod, we all pod… Podcasting has become a huge avenue of content in the past five years. The iTunes Store is a great way to find podcasts, but it isn’t perfect. In fact, some people would prefer not to use it at all, but they’d still like to use iTunes for podcasts. This is not a problem. all you have to do is go to the Advanced menu in iTunes, and then click Subscribe to Podcast.

Now enter the podcast feed URL into the text field. For example, our podcast feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/macgasm.

That was simple, but what if you prefer to download podcast episodes manually or with third party apps, and then move the files into iTunes? You can mark those files as podcasts, and they will look just like any other podcast in the iTunes and iPod user interface. Right-click the file, click Get Info. Go to the Options menu, and change the Media Kind drop down menu to Podcast.

Now you can have all of the syncing goodness of iTunes without having to deal with the iTunes Store.

Photo Credit: Wheat_in_your_hair

Sounds like some management types over at AT&T have gotten their panties all in a bunch about the consumers prospected release date for tethering. Sigh. So the fine folks at 9to5 mac are getting harassed by AT&T because they re-published some of the end of year expectations echoed by some of the other heavy hitting blogs, most notably CNET.

Normally I’d feel bad for a company who has their words twisted to imply something that they never intended, but I have no sympathy for AT&T. They can’t say or do anything right these days, it’s not because consumers are misinterpreting what they say, it’s because consumers can’t differentiate what the heck they’re saying anymore. Plans designed to confuse you, an increase in bill amount because of fees that border on illegal, the outright thwarting of innovation because they’ve failed to innovate, is there any real doubt here that everyone’s confused because for the last decade AT&T, as well as others, have put forth their best effort to confuse us about what we’re actually getting? This summer turns into sometime in the fall, this year could likely mean sometime in the next two years. It’s a precedent they’ve set, so they only have themselves to blame.

I can’t think of any other industry that have so poorly failed to innovate with technology, and instead of maybe getting a new network to help them hold down the fort, they do everything in their power to stop the innovation instead of innovating along side it. Actually, I lied, both the MPAA and the RIAA are probably right up their with the AT&Ts of the world.

It doesn’t matter what the fine folks at AT&T said about a release date. What matters is that we’re now going on a 4th version of an iPhone and somehow these smart phone users are the only ones who can’t seem to get tethering love from their telcos. That’s the real story here, a company’s complete failure to handle a handset that for once has been the cause for an evolution in an industry, go figure that AT&T is fighting it with every ounce, and delaying its release. It’s what they do–nothing. Instead they collect your monthly bills and hope that the telecommunications market stagnates so that they don’t have to spend a dime on infrastructure issues.

I had purchased Mobile Me during July of 2008 when I purchased my iPhone 3G. I figured I would go ahead and use it for backup, storage and a way to sync my Macbook and iMac. I was one of the groups who got a free 90 days out of Apple for our initial issues with Mobile Me’s launch. Despite all of the hopes and dreams of Mobile Me, I never really ended up using it, nor did it ‘wow’ me enough to continue paying the prices.

I did end up using Mobile Me to backup all of my documents and important files; however, other than that, I never really used it. I could never get back to my mac working with OS X Server, so that was useless. I did try the ‘find my iPhone’ feature when it was introduced, but it was never really all that handy.

I made the decision not to renew and decided I wanted to have a copy of all of the items on my iDisk, just to make sure that I had everything before my account expired. In order to facilitate this backup, I connected to my iDisk, and began copying everything. There weren’t any problems except for the fact that EVERYTHING in my Documents Folder on my iDisk was GONE. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING was gone in the Documents folder.

Can somebody explain to me what the hell is going on at Apple so that this type of thing can happen. Granted, it is not the end of the world because I follow the Alex Lindsay theory of documents. “Data doesn’t exist unless it exists in two [or more] places”. Of course I have other backups of all of the documents but that’s besides the point. The point is that nobody should have to worry about their backups not containing all of their backup files, unless you are a Sidekick user.

I would be more angry about this but I have other backups in place. In addition to the possible loss of my backup files, the cost of Mobile Me is way too steep. For the standard amount of space, 20GB, the cost is $99 per year. With this, you get an email account, back to my mac and not much else.

For that $99 you could get Carbonite, which is about $4.58 a month, or approximately $54.95 a year. That’s a saving of $44.05 and you get unlimited data backup. Despite the unlimited storage, you do not get an email address nor back to my mac, but you do get the ability to access the files from any computer.

Another option is to use Amazon S3, which could possibly cost more than $99 per year depending on how much data you store and how much you transfer per month. However, I have spent about $80 in the last year to keep all of my Documents on Amazon’s S3.

I’m not sure what the point of this article is, other than to complain about Mobile Me, or maybe it’s to remind you to do backups so that you do not lose data that cannot possibly be retrieved. So remember to do your backups. Not just local backups, but remember to have an offsite backup plan. I would also suggest making sure that those backups are available from anywhere. Just in case you need to retrieve a file while on the road or at someone else’s house.

You must remember that this feature means that if you wanted something encrypted the company that allows you to access your files from anywhere has the ability to decrypt your files. If you really want to verify that your private files are private you can use something like trucrypt to create an encrypted volume and store items in there. If you want use an Apple product instead of a third party, there is always encrypted sparse image.

By using Amazon’s S3 storage, Amazon cannot read your encrypted backups, they do not possess any ‘master’ symmetric key to decrypt any of your data, which can be handy if you really want to keep your files private. Just remember, if you do this, and you forget your master password, you cannot decrypt any of the files contained within your encrypted backups.

Additionally, in the wake of the reports of the Sidekick user’s data being lost, relying on a single company to house your data is not necessarily in the best interest of anyone. One last thing, remember to test your backups. Try restoring information just to verify that you do not have any corrupt backup files. Nobody would want to try and do a restore of their backups only to find that they cannot due to corruption or something having gone massively wrong.

About once a year I do some major spring cleaning on my Desktop. I re-evaluate all the applications in my work flow, and decide if I’d be better off with a replacement for some of them. Things usually stay close to the same, but the one service that seems to get a overhaul year after year is my Twitter clients.

I guess it’s more of a key indicator in that no application seems to have everything on lock down. They all do something great, but none of them seem to do everything great. I’ve been relying heavily on TweetDeck this year to help me track some keywords related to the site so I can keep my finger on the pulse of the Mac community, but outside of that TweetDeck doesn’t really do it for me any more. I’m starting to wonder if I need two clients. One to track keywords, and one for personal use.

I’ve been messing with a new application lately and I’m a bit torn about it. Echofon seems light weight, and it has some nice features, but ultimately I can’t get beyond the user interface. I understand that it’s completely a personal opinion type of thing, but I get really confused on how to use it. I’m a purest at heart, and use twitter like it was originally intended, mentions, DM’s, and tweets. I throw up the occasional link, but I’m not a big fan of posting all kinds of other information to twitter. Echofon is pretty good at that, I have to say. It’s a streamlined client that keeps things to a minimum, which is a huge plus for me, but the funny thing is that it has other features as well, hidden features. If I didn’t “accidentally” click on an avatar (evidentially, you can also click the username) of one of those hot spammers I never would have known that a bunch more information was available for each user. Sleek is good, but there needs to be a better way to let people know that other features exist without making them have to stumble on it.

Once the accidental click happened I got access to that particular individuals timeline, a list of their followers, and a list of who they were following. All pretty handy features, but it also lets you unfollow people right from that pane, so it came in really handy when I realized the spammer was just trying to get me to buy fertility drugs by using a suggestive pose.

It has built in search, but from what I can tell, no way to save that search at all. That makes tracking trends pretty difficult. In todays twitterscape (lame, I know!) having access to trend tracking is 60% of what twitter is used for, not having the ability to save those settings is a major oversight.

But, lets cut them slack. Echofon is in Beta, and they certainly could fix a lot of these things up in the future. If they manage to work out some of these GUI problems and get saveable searches implemented this application could find itself not only on my machine, but also being used full time over the other Twitter applications.

Props goes to @bradyV for making the suggestion.

Image Credit: TarikB