Macgasm

It was only a matter of time before we got another Apple event. I’m giddy just writing those words. The Financial Times has started reporting that Apple has rented out the Yerba Buena Centre in San Francisco for a couple of days in late January.

Cue the Tablet, iPod Touch, seconding coming rumours now, because as soon as we get through all the holidays this month, it’s all we’re gonna hear about.

I’ve got my money on a new Touch, and a preliminary look at a Tablet, but, I’m rarely right when it comes to these things. So if you work at Apple Inc and have some insider information please feel free to drop it our way. All kidding aside, I think the safe bet is on a new Touch. With rumors that the Touch was ready to be released months ago, but had been sent back to factories because of some hardware kinks, it’s only a matter of time before they roll out a line with Cameras.

Outside of that, it’s all speculation, anyone wanna gander a guess?

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In this episode, we talk about the ethics of in-app purchases.

[02.1 MB] [00:06:20] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

This week we chat about one of my favourite games, World of Goo, an amazing iPhone game (33rd Division), as well as the Magic Mouse, and some holiday wishes.

It’s been a great year, and we’re excited about what’s coming in 2010. If you like what we’re doing here with the videocast you’ll want to sign up to our podcast feed in iTunes. We do audio, video, and screencast episodes. Macgasm indeed.

Happy Holidays from the Macgasm team. Party hard and party safe.

Episode Numero Four.

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If you’ve been around for awhile you might know that we take our backup schemes pretty seriously around here. Both Grant and I are super anal when it comes to ensuring our data’s integrity is intact, and being backed up to multiple locations. For me, I use SuperDuper, Time Machine, and Clone my drives.

Well I now have another options that helps me take my backups one step further. Parachute lets me automate some offsite backups. They also let me run multiple local backups. It’s pretty handy if you’re looking into backing up just now. You get a free 15 day trial, and if you’re sold on it’s backup prowess then you’ll pay about 40.00USD.

Some Pluses

They give you the ability to backup over sftp, ftp, WebDav, and MobileMe, all of which is extremely handy. If you want to get your data out of your house and on to some server somewhere else then this is a great place to start.

It’s pretty simple to set up, which is an obvious plus. All you have to do is create a new task, select the local folder you’d like to backup, then chose the destination, schedule, and click backup now. That’s it, and that’s all.

Some Limitations

There are some limitation with the software that make this an application that should be used in conjunction with other options. First, it doesn’t let you do full drive, bootable backups. That makes it pretty difficult to rely on the application to clone a drive. It also doesn’t zip up archive, which isn’t a deal breaker, but it’d be a nice little perk. If none of these things are a concern then you’ll want to try this program out.

On thing I’d love to see implemented is a reverse remote backup. It would be amazing if we could connect to an FTP server and backup the files there locally. It’d certainly help with the small web hosting business I run, and it would also make backing up Macgasm.net less of a chore.

There’s a number of times you might need to access a file on your filesystem that another user has in their user folder. It might be that they quit the job and left all their files locked up, it might be that you’re trying to sync your significant others files across multiple computers but either way, you’re locked out of the files.

If you need access to a file and all you see on the folder is a red circle with a line through it, then you’re going to need to change its permissions. As long as you have access to an administrator account, you should be able to fix up the permission error in no time at all. Here’s how you  change a file or folder permission with the Finder in both Snow Leopard and Leopard.

1. Navigate to the folder in the Finder.
2. Right click the folder and select “Get Info.”
3. At the very bottom of the “Get Info” window you’ll see a Sharing & Permissions section. Make sure it’s maximized then click the little lock in the bottom right corner.
4. Input your Administrator login and password information into the new dialog box
5. The greyed out section should now be fully accessible, and you should be able to add an account to the folders permissions so that you can access the folder.
6. Click the plus button,
7. Select the user you want to add to the folder’s permissions,
8. Click the select button,
9. Now click beside the new user name where it says ‘Read Only’ and change it to ‘Read and Write’.
10. Click the lock a second time to re-lock the folder.
11. There you go, permissions are changed.

At this point in the process you should be able to now open the folder and access the files where ever you need be.  It’s pretty handy to be able to do this through the finder, and it’s even handier to be able to do it from the terminal you’re forced to do it.  The terminals a little bit trickier and we’ll save the tip for another day.

Of course everyone wants to take Television to the IP realm, but it seems like we’re about to get a rash of set-top boxes, and frankly, that really irks me.

I guess it makes sense that television networks want to control their content from end to end, but it makes very little sense to have a bazillion ugly boxes plastered across a TV stand. First it’s the Apple TV, then Boxee has teamed up to give us a set top box, and now rumours are swirling about the BBC receiving approval for its own set top box to deliver media content.

Chalk one up to “just don’t get it”

Techcrunch posted an article today about some missteps made by startups this year, and how they can be avoided in the future. It seems like the Joomla misstep can be directly applied to these set top boxes. Mike Butcher writes,

“Joost was born in a time when everything thought TV would end up porting wholesale to the Internet. The trouble was, Joost was another download in a sea of downloads. It seems amazing, but the browser – and even HD video playing inside a browser – won the day once more. No-one needed this P2P video platform and few were bothered about the rather dull content”.

On that note: Dear Television studios, we don’t need a set-top box for your crappy television station. We don’t want to pay for them, and we’re certainly not going to be lining up to buy five or six of these crappy devices just so we can watch your crappy content.

Signed, Josh

PS.

So here’s the deal. Either you get together and license your music to one box, create a set top box together, or put your content on the web so that we can get the shows any way we want. Outside of that, we won’t be happy, and you’ll just be wasting R&D funds on some hardware that’s going to flop.

I’ll willingly pay Apple, or another third party for your content, but I won’t pay each of you individually. It’s too much of a hassle, and frankly, I don’t watch that much television to begin with. If you want my dollar, or anyone else’s money, you’re going to have to make this as easy as possible. A bunch of set top boxes isn’t going to work. We don’t need another format war, and we certainly don’t want to have to choose between NBC, CBS, Fox, Showtime, BBC, or any other competitor.  We just want everything in one place, heck, we’re even willing to take ads to get it.

Thanks for listening.

Everyone’s favorite video transcoding tool is Handbrake, right? Right. Well, there are a TON of different configurations in Handbrake for your video. Luckily, they have done some house cleaning recently. Now there are two containers to choose from: MP4 and MKV. If you plan on using iTunes, an AppleTV, an iPod, or an iPhone, stick with MP4.

I consider myself an expert when it comes to digital video, but even I can’t keep track of every single nuance of each encoder. There is no need to bother with that anyway. Handbrake has presets. Presets are your friend. If you don’t see them, press the “Toggle Presets” button in the upper righthand corner of the main Handbrake window.

Now, we have to pick out which preset to use. Since this is an Apple-based website, I say we stick with the “Apple” section of the presets. Unless you’re REALLY, REALLY pressed for hard drive space, don’t bother with the “iPod Preset.” It squeezes the file until there is almost nothing left. Instead, try encoding video files intended for mobile devices with the “iPhone & iPod Touch Preset.” The “AppleTV Preset” will give you a nice looking file, but won’t play on all mobile devices. As long as hard drive space is not an issue, I recommend that you use the “Universal Preset” whenever possible. It will give you a snazzy finished product that works on pretty much any Apple device that plays video.

Provided that you started with a source that isn’t jacked up, you should now have superb copies. If not, take a quick look at the Handbrake Documentation. It will quite easily explain how to fix most any problem you come across.

Photo Credit: gemstone

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In this episode, we talk about the merits or hot corners and Exposé.

[02.1 MB] [00:06:10] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]