O'Reilly Digital Media Blog - Mac

A Newbie Looks at Podcasting Tools: Garageband, Audacity, and Levelator

2008-07-02T11:00:00Z

The idea of creating brief regular (weekly or bi-weekly) podcast has appealed to me very since I first heard Adam Curry's Daily Source Code and Adam Christianson's Maccast in the early days of podcasting. The problem was I was just too lazy to really spend time with the tools available (many of them free) to be able to create podcasts quickly and minimal pain. However, my day job ended on Monday (June 30). So, I decided to spend Tuesday learning more about a few tools and create my first formal podcast (I've created a bunch of test-casts in the past). I really want to make podcast creation painless for myself. So, here's the criteria I've adopted: 1. The tools must be free, inexpensive, or already in my toolkit 2. I don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with controls and tweaking things 3. The audio recording and audio assembly process must be simple and reasonably fast 4. Be able to use audio recorded from a variety of recording devices including my smartphone 5. The process should NOT feel like work 6. The process should be reasonably enjoyable

The first thing I tried was Garageband '08 which came with my iMac (I also updated my older Macbook to iLife '08). Garageband has a podcast project type which I tried. But, it didn't seem to do much more than set up the initial tracks using a couple of presets. It does have a couple of nice podcast friendly features like ducking background music (reducing the track's volume) when you speak. But, I didn't feel really comfortable with its interface from a podcasting perspective.

I was, however, comfortable enough to use Garageband to create the brief intro section with a bit of music. A friend of mine had just mentioned that he got a kick whenever he heard a familar Garageband loop in a podcast. I noticed this myself over the past few months and decided to create something simple instead of using a loop. However, I was too lazy to get my M-Audio keyboard out of its box, set it up somewhere, and plug it into the iMac to play just a few notes. So, I brought up the Musical Typing keyboard instead to peck out those few notes. You can bring up this tool either by bringing down the Windows menu and selecting the Musical Typing option or pressing Shift-CMD-K. I exported my little ditty with a voiceover to an MP3 audio file and shifted my work to Audacity.

Audacity 1.3.5 beta is an Open Source audio editor. The project provides a pre-built installer that you can download and use to quickly install the applicaction. The first thing I needed to do was bring in the two WAV audio files I created with my Windows Mobile smartphone and Pocket PC devices. I snipped segments from each recording and spliced them in a single track to demostrate the volume recording difference between the two. I saved this track out to an AIF format file so I could use it with...

...the freeware Levelator utility from The Conversations Network to level the volume differences between the audio recordings from the two Windows Mobile devices. This process is really simple: I simply dragged the AIF file created by Audacity and plotted it on top of the Levelator windows. That's it. No button to press, no menu to drop down, no options to set. This created a volume leveled output file that I imported in to Audacity.

At this point I needed to learn how to move these bits and pices of audio files I had together. After spending a few minutes wandering around the menus and not finding what I wanted. I checked the online Audacity documentation and read about the Time Shift Tool which had eluded me while looking at the UI. This was all I needed to move audio segments around and arrange them quickly and easily.

The end result was an Audacity project with 9 audio tracks. I created a separate audio track for each segment between the pre-recorded audio sections recorded on the Windows Mobile device as well as the individual topic sections. This let me edit audio in bits and pieces and didn't force me to say everything in a single recording session. I exported this to a final MP3 audio file and uploaded it to the free Blogr web service... OgasaWalrus Podcast 20080701 on Blogr.com If you go to the web page linked above, you can listen to the short (less than 8 minutes) podcast using Blogr's web embedded podcast player. You can find the podcast's show notes on my personal website at... OgasaWalrus Podcast July 1, 2008 Show Notes

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 2 for Mac is Available

2008-07-02T10:00:00Z

Well, it finally happened... Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 2 for Mac finally left beta testing and has been released as a production product. You can read the details over at the Mac Mojo (Microsoft Mac team) blog... RDC 2 is out of beta and available today!

iPhone and sync services

2008-07-01T19:52:59Z

As some of you may have deduced from my previous, rather negative entry about Google's SSL practices, I have spent a great deal of time investing their services as of late. Overall, and despite the aforementioned disappointment, I am extremely impressed by the quality of the offering. Most iPhone users using Google Calendar, however, will inevitably hit a roadblock when it comes to getting their phone, which uses iCal, and Google, which uses, well, itself, to communicate. That roadblock was lifted a little while ago by the absolutely stellar BusySync, that features direct integration between Mac OS X's sync services and Google Calendar. In fact, I am planning to roll out BusySync across the office very soon. By direct, I mean that BusySync integrates remarkably well with the general synchronization system in Mac OS X and provides a local experience akin to that of an Apple application — if not a better one. Most interestingly, the application also foregoes the use of a third-party or intermediary server and offers to directly contact Google through SSL. Today, I noticed something relatively strange in the way iPhone syncing was handled. Indeed, the system seems built around the action of "docking" the phone instead of truly "syncing" it. Every morning, when coming into the office, I dock my iPhone, which triggers the usual iTunes extravaganza: launch, warning dialog, barber pole, sync, more barber poles, more sync (*). Immediately, BusySync kicks in and automatically updates my Google Calendar. By the time I open my Google Calendar instance in Fluid, the events I added on my iPhone are already there. Now, the reverse, of course, is trickier. While I would love to see Fluid hook into BusySync, that is not going to happen any time soon, and triggering a BusySync update manually is inevitable. What, however, about the last step? Once the sync is triggered, the sync services are aware that my data has changed. What's more, iTunes knows my iPhone is still docked because it still displays it in its source list. Sure enough, however, no sync happens back to the iPhone until I manually sync it again. Like most office workers, I update my calendar dozens of time a day: adding this and that, inputting reminders, etc. Yet, I dock twice a day on average: upon arrival in the morning and, of course, upon returning from lunch — OK, and dinner, and supper and breakfast the day after before finally going home. MobileMe offers over-the-air synchronization, and I assume the wired syncing process will no longer be streamlined or improved much, now that there is a commercial incentive not to do so. Plus, after all, it works "well enough." I am surprised, however, that the iPhone's reliance on iTunes prevents it from being made aware of updates more smoothly. Maybe the phone would be better served if it were hooked directly into sync services and could sync without the application launching — even if, of course, buttons and controls were kept within iTunes to keep up appearances. (*) Can you sense the slight annoyance creeping up? Bring back iSync! (OK, kidding…)

Dude, You Get a Dell IM Service Now!

2008-07-01T15:00:00Z

> This is a revised version of an earlier post about the Dell Video Chat application for the Macintosh. Because of a problem during the installation, the user interface displayed by the software on my Mac was different from the one actually used by the Dell Video Chat service. This post now covers the proper UI. With a little help from their friends at SightSpeed, Dell have launched their own video chat service, aptly named: "Dell Video Chat." It's a nice touch that a Macintosh client for this service is available. But is there a compelling reason to use Dell Video Chat on a Mac? ### First, the facts Besides plain-text and streaming audio/video chat, the Dell Video Chat package also offers recording and emailing 30-second video messages as well as a Skype-like call-out feature to connect to regular phone lines. New Dell PCs ship with the Dell Video Chat client pre-installed and pre-configured, and their users get to enjoy advanced features --- four-channel video chat, extended-length video messages (3mins max.), and unlimited storage of these video messages -- for free, plus five minutes of free talk time to get started with the call-out feature. For those who don't plan on purchasing a new Dell machine anytime soon, the client is also available for download in both Windows and Macintosh flavors. When using the downloadable client, activating the advanced features listed above will set you back $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year. Doesn't sound too bad, really, but what is it like to use Dell Video Chat on a Mac? ### Installation hiccups The Dell Video Chat client for the Macintosh is distributed on a 16.7MB disk image. Download it, open it, and just click the DellVideoChatInstall.pkg file to start the installation process. If you need any help with this, though, you're out of luck: the disk image does not contain any documentation files, so the naked installer package is all you get. Which is a bit odd, as the installer only contains the very application. Distributing it as an application bundle to drag-and-drop onto the Applications folder would have been more Mac-like, but maybe this is an indication of the Windows roots and related attitude of the developers. The installation itself goes smoothly, though.

Something's missing...

There is something special about the way the Dell Video Chat client software works, and the fact that the system requirements expressly list "Safari 3" indicates what this is: this is a piece of hybrid software that pretends to be a full-blown native application while its main window is based on a Web view that is loaded live from the 'Net. While this has certain benefits for the development and distribution processes, it can have some nasty side effects if something goes wrong. E.g., if you are not connected to the Internet when launching Dell Video Chat, the main window just remains empty and there is no error message telling you why that is. In the case of my test installation, this went even a bit further astray.

This should have looked very different!

After the very first launch, the black registration screen appeared, but I closed the app without registering an account. Next time I launched it, the main window was _almost_ empty, so I re-installed the app, because, unlike a regular web browser, there is no way to force the software to reload the "page." Which brought up the (non-functional) window shown on the right. After a few more re-starts, the client eventually presented a user interface that was completely different from the one shown on the download website. Very strange. Yet another clean install brought back the proper, glassy black theme, but "re-installing" the blue'ish UI is as simple as exchanging the old and new preferences files. Should you experienced the same problem, just close the Dell Video Chat application, trash the file 'com.sightspeed.Dell Video Chat.plist' from the Preferences folder, and relaunch the app. (The engineers at SightSpeed are looking into this, and I can't wait to find out what, exactly, went wrong here.) ### Chats in black satin Assuming that the installation was successful, Dell Video Chat is launched automatically for the first time, showing a sign-up screen. Register for an account, sign in, and you'll be taken to the main dialog screen, listing your contacts on the right and what I'd call a "media view" on the left whose contents you choose by clicking on one of the three tabs at the top. Next to each entry in the contacts list, you can see which capabilities that contact's computer provides, and you initiate any type of chat by clicking on the respective button.

The overall experience with this user interface is a bit peculiar, as the software stands out due to its main window not resembling any standard OS X software in the least. Also, part of the functionality of the dialog boxes is even partially buggy.

The dialog box that is shown when adding a new contact is just an overlay over the actual contacts list, as shown below, and the layout of its widgets shows, shall we say, creativity on the designer's part, where conforming to standard guidelines would have been a better choice.

Some text boxes -- specifically the subject and message fields for sending a video message -- would not even accept more than a single letter, as if the text fields were just one character wide: type in a longer text string, and each character would replace the previous one. In the resulting message I sent, both subject and text message did contain just a single, lonesome letter. For text chats, the software resorts to using standard dialog boxes which, compared to the slick, polished look of the main window, have a painfully bland appearance. ### Beyond skin-deep All criticism of the user interface aside, Dell Video Chat provides solid performance. Logging into the service goes smoothly, maintaining your contacts is a no-brainer, and the video quality is excellent. But how does it compare to the native competition on the Mac? With the exception of the call-out features, Dell Video Chat doesn't offer anything you won't find on a Mac equipped with OS X 10.5 already: iChat provides on-par text and multi-user A/V chat, supports the AIM and Jabber instant messaging services, as well as ad-hoc connections via Bonjour, and also provides tight integration with the OS, e.g., for drag-and-drop file transfers. And for sending video messages, look no further than PhotoBooth. Both iChat and PhotoBooth are fine specimens of Mac(-only) applications and, in my humble opinion, their (mostly) true Macintosh look-and-feel clearly beats the user experience with Dell Video Chat. Oh, and they won't cost you a dime in service fees, either. So, unless you have friends or family who have opted for this service and you need a compatible Mac-client to stay in touch with them, I don't see a compelling reason why Mac users should need to run this software on their machines or even prefer it over what's shipping with their Macs already. If you do want to give Dell Video Chat a spin, here's the [download page][]. [download page]: http://www.sightspeed.com/dellvideochat/downloadquicksteps

Widget Checks Your Apps for Updates

2008-06-30T16:47:00Z

Here's something I've missed since OS 9: a wee program that checks if your other programs are up to date.

The App Update widget compares your programs against the listings at Apple, Version Tracker, and MacUpdate, and then offers download links to the programs that are outdated. It generated a few "false positives," but also reminded me of a number of programs I'd downloaded and then never really checked out.

App Update has joined the tiny group of widgets I actually use. Which ones do you like?

EyeTV, the paperless office, and more

2008-06-30T12:00:00Z

This week, let's tie up some loose ends from previous articles in this series. Firstly, following up on One Week with EyeTV, I'm happy to report that the EyeTV 3 upgrade was everything that the commenters promised it would be. Better performance and very useful features. Which brings me to one of my favorites, since it addresses a personal pet peeve. It always annoys me when I see a standard TV image (4:3 ratio) stretched to fill a widescreen TV. I do understand that people want to use all those pixels they paid for, but distorting the image so that everyone looks short and wide is just silly, in my opinion. EyeTV offers the perfect solution, turn on "automatic display ratio" and the TV window will smoothly resize itself to the correct dimensions for the video being displayed. Although I was initially satisfied with the 22 channels I received sans antenna, a link at El Gato's website led me to Antennas Direct's Picture Frame Antenna. My office is part of our living area so a traditional, and ugly, antenna was out of the question. But the Picture Frame Antenna is almost undetectable as anything but a standard picture frame. (Except for the RG6 cable that runs up the wall and terminates behind the frame.) I can attest that the SAF (spousal approval factor, a key measurement of smart home success) is very high for this antenna, and it works really well. Without the antenna I received 10 digital channels; with it I receive 28. It also helped with analog reception too, boosting my choices in those from 12 to 21. Wow! Next, Macworld's review of the Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner is worth reading if you'd like to eliminate the paper clutter in your home or office. As they note, the OCR software bundled with it isn't the best, but see my article My Paperless Office for my solution and others offered by commenters. Finally, if the high-end home automation system from Savant caught your eye, and you have money left over, you'll want to read about the Integrated Theatre Console from SE2 Labs. It combines a lot of different components, including an Apple TV, for a hefty price. It's a good thing to keep in mind next time you're questioned about your smart home budget; you'll look thrifty in comparison. I've been blogging at O'Reilly sites for about four years now, and writing about smart homes here every week for the last seven months. It has been great working with Derrick and the staff. I thank you very much for reading and all the great tips you've given me. A change in circumstances requires that I take a break from here for now, but I invite you to visit my personal blog, Nothing Up My Sleeve, where I'll continue to write about smart homes and other topics. So long, and thanks for all the clicks!

Timing is everything

2008-06-26T18:11:10Z

A friend IM'd me this morning exasperated at a co-worker who looks at bugs found during QA as being the same as bugs found in earlier testing. Traditional metrics* show that the cost of fixing bugs found early in development is much less than the cost of fixing bugs found late -- like during Q A. Keep that in mind as you read the memo from Bill Gates that was Slashdotted today. The memo is shown on Gizmodo and is pages and pages of Gates explaining what is wrong with an experience of using a Microsoft product. He describes a lengthy experience that begins when he just wants to download some software and is told that they didn't expect anyone to want to download the software from the download page. So he has to download a ton of software through the update mechanism and reboot his machine only to find that he still doesn't have the software he wanted in the first place. Towards the end of Gates' memo he writes "The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind." The article ends with a note that Gates is asked about this memo and reports that he wrote something like this every day. That part is good -- that's part of Gates' role at Microsoft -- or at least it was. So I was thinking about one of the last MacHack's. A member of the iPod team told stories about the development of the device. He said that Steve Jobs took the prototype home each weekend and on Monday they got a bunch of notes on what was still wrong with the device. Jobs caught little things. Things most of us would never notice. The engineer described one bug where the time elapsed and the time remaining would not always add up to the same number. There were times when they didn't quite move in sync. Jobs noticed and it was fixed. So although I know better than to generalize from single data points, I'm going to. Both leaders are paying attention to details and the user experience in important ways. One key difference is that Gates is catching problems with software that's already shipping while Jobs is catching problems with a device before it ships. ===== * This is the moral equivalent of "it can be shown" and means that my first cursory glance through some books didn't turn up the actual studies with the accompanying numbers. I think the curve is exponential with fixing bugs found at development time being about one tenth the cost of those found during QA which are in turn one tenth the cost of those found after the software is released. OTOH I could just be making those figures up.

SSL on Google means Semi Secure Links

2008-06-26T06:39:51Z

After much debating, we decided to enable Google Apps Premier Edition for in-office use. SSL had always been a sticky point for us, and Google Apps are notoriously lacking in this regard, but probing around various newsgroups and sites seemed to show behavior had been improved across the board. Unfortunately, things are still very hit and miss and I fear they're getting worse. The biggest sell of Google Apps Premier Edition is that blanket security can be brought to organizations through a "force SSL" checkbox located in the Admin control panel. This box is mentioned in Google's own security PDF document and referenced by hopeful users in the Apps support forum. That box, of course, is nowhere to be found. Google, replying to a thread in which a user pointed out they were not living up to their promises — and contractual agreements — replied that accessing an application through the SSL URL would not only encrypt the entire session — as it used to — but also carry the SSL protection to the links to other applications featured within the interface. The promised checkbox was apparently still being worked on, with no ETA. Surprise! The recommended method works. Log securely into Google Calendar and the session will stay encrypted — nothing new here. Click on the Mail link at the top left and you securely access GMail without a drop of cookie-evaporating HTTP in sight. Yayy! It's not nearly as good as a dedicated SSL box that would force such behavior but it's a step closer to true protection. Gone are the most dangerous links. Don't relax too soon, though… Now, try logging into the most sensitive site of all, the Domain's control panel. Are you there? Good. Click on the "Help" link at the top right. Still using SSL? You bet! Google is really getting good at it, aren't they? Now, go back one step and click on "Inbox" right from your admin panel. Boom! That link was HTTP. Game over, your admin session has now been hijacked and your corporate web site is now dedicated to a "tits on toast" fetish. (A tit being, as you know, a small songbird, which probably means your hackers are interested in gourmet sandwiches.) Google has made one big step forwards by fixing the most glaring problem of its SSL security, the cross-application linkage. They've also proven they don't care much by making the holes sneakier and placing them in more sensitive areas. I really appreciate all the tremendous efforts required by the maintenance of a suite like Google apps, but is it too much to ask from the world's web application authority to hire an intern to click on links and report on the protocol they use? As users, shall we choose between MobileMe's no-SSL policy or Google's SSL-surprise extravaganza? Most users just spend their days leaking information in the wild. The few who care (a lot) manage to lessen that to a few times a week. Meanwhile, Google is blurring photos of empty fields of grass on demand to avoid violating the privacy of cows and Apple is focusing on remote-wiping iPhones… Two very laudable initiatives, that goes without saying, but maybe not carrying the highest impact on the daily life of the average user. While I am at it, here's an anti-leak trick for us Mac users. Encapsulate your Google applications within a Fluid instance and use Little Snitch to deny outbound access to anything but port 443. Not ideal but definitely lighter than installing a browser extension for a few sites. (Especially since logging into Google Apps in the very browser you use to update your MySpace page is asking for trouble.)

Free Statistics Package for Your Mac: The R Project for Statistical Computing

2008-06-25T11:00:00Z

If you search for the letter "R" in Google, the first hit that comes up is the R Project for Statistical Computing. R is a full statistical platform that provides a statistical programming language, a computational window, and programmable graphics output. It is an Open Source project that provides ready to run installable binaries for Mac OS X as well as Windows. If your spreadsheet's basic statistical functions fall short of your needs, you might want to take a look at this powerhouse statistical package. The R Project for Statistical Computing R is an implentation of S (An Interactive Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics) from Bell Labs. I recall get S on a reel of tape for installation on a DEC VAX running Ultrix in the ancient times (1980s). Installing R from a DMG file is much simpler and faster.

Some of you might be amused to note that part of the R installation suite includes GNU Fortran. The installation process is completed automated, simple, and fast. By the way, the project just released R 2.7.1 on June 23.

Although you can run the old text shell interpreter from a Terminal window or the X11-based graphical interpreter, most Mac users probably would prefer the Mac friendly R Console.

If you, like me, keep a Terminal shell window open all the time when using your Mac, you will probably feel very comfortable with R Console. Using the up and down arrow keys moves you through your keyboard history. You can also press the ESC key for command completion. As you can see from the screen capture near this paragraph, the Mac R Console displays a list of possible commands in a drop-down menu.

Although you can manually enter data from the R Console, I prefer bringing data from other sources. I tend to enter a lot of data into spreadsheets since my Windows Mobile phone has Microsoft Excel Mobile built-in. Although R is capable of reading Excel XLS files directly, the R documentation recommends exporting data from Excel to a CSV file and importing data from a CSV file to R. I've been keeping a log of my automobile gasoline fillups for years now for two consecutive cars. My spreadsheet consists of the following columns: Date, Miles (driven), Gallons (of gas), Price (in US$), MPG (miles per gallon), and Station (the gas station name). Here's how I imported this data from a CSV file named GasMileage.csv). gas = read.csv("GasMileage.csv", header=TRUE) The header=True parameter tells the read.csv function that the first row in the sheet are labels for the column. The histogram of the MPG data column displayed in the graphic here was generated using the command: hist(gas$MPG) The gas$MPG tells the histogram (hist) function to use only the data from the MPG column. You can save all your work in a workspace when leaving R. This workspace (you can have more than one) can be loaded the next time so you can pick your work up where you left it.

I also have electricity usage data for a building with a data center in it for fiscal years 2000 through 2006. I imported the table of information from a CSV file using: kal = read.csv("buildingpower.csv", header = TRUE) I created a plot of the kilowatt hours used for each fiscal year and connected the dots with lines using these two commands: plot(kal$Year, kal$KWH) lines(kal$Year, kal$KWH) The dip after the year 2000 can be attributed to replacing hundreds of light fixtures and lights. But, as you can see, the ever increasing number of servers eventually took its toll over the years.

Don't let my simple examples make you think that R is limited to simple calculations and plots though. Type demo() in the R Console to see a list of R demostrations. The shaded perspective graph here is part of the examples called by demo(persp). The statistical features start with simple descriptive ones, move on T-Tests, ANOVA, and linear regression, and then lets you move on to more complex multivariate statistical functions. If none of the packaged functions meets your needs, remember that R is a statistical programming language. So, write what you need.

Open XML Converter for Office 2004 and 12.1.1 Update for Office 2008

2008-06-25T10:00:00Z

The wait is finally over for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac users. Microsoft released... Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0 ...which lets you read the new Microsoft Office 2007 (for Windows) and Office 2008 (for Mac) file formats from Office 2004 for Mac apps. Microsoft also released... Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update ...which includes performance enhancements (much needed! Office 2008 components seem to run slow on my iMac), stability fixes, and plain old fixes. I noticed that it also installs Microsoft Silverlight in this update (didn't it do that in the SP1 update too?).

Another Round of "Next Action" Hide-and-Seek With OmniFocus

2008-06-24T15:00:00Z

Two weeks ago, I [complained][] about something not being quite right with the way [OmniFocus][] -- a task management application based on GTD -- handles repeating actions, which may cause most of a project's actions to be hidden from you. In the comments to that blog post, a reader suggested three possible workarounds. Here's how useful those workarounds turned out to be, plus an official view on the topic by the OmniFocus developers. [complained]: http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2008/06/when-omnifocus-plays-hideandse.html [OmniFocus]: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/ As a quick refresher, here's the problem again: you've created a project in OmniFocus and set the actions in that project to repeat. When you check off the project's top-most (repeated) action, OmniFocus creates a new iteration of that action with updated due dates, but the new iteration is created in place of the old one, so it remains top-most in the project and, thus, the "Next Action." Consequently, when working in OmniFocus's Context View set to show only Next Actions, you will never get to see any of the other actions in the project while chugging away at your daily dose of tasks. Let's see whether the suggestions provided by reader _lucas_ help work around this issue. ### Workaround #1: Repeating projects instead of repeating actions By repeating a whole project instead of its individual actions, checked-off actions are properly moved out of your view, as the Next Action status is advanced to the top-most non-checked-off action in the project. However, to make OmniFocus create the next iteration of the project once an iteration is completed, you need to go into Planning View and check off the whole project. Generally, this makes sense, as you would check off completed (non-repeating) projects during the weekly reviews. Still, for repeating actions, I'd prefer not having to go through any additional user intervention beyond just checking off the actions themselves. What's more, when you do check off the project, OmniFocus creates a completely new project just like it instead of re-using the old one. This, also, is just as it should be, but, as a result, the project will vanish from your view if you are using the "Focus on Selected Projects" feature. Finally, and very obviously, this only works when all actions in the project share the same repetition and due date settings. So, for projects with actions that should repeat with different time intervals, this solution can't be applied. ### Workaround #2: Grouping repeating actions Grouping repeating actions and setting the repetition for the group instead of the actions it contains does work -- but only for the actions inside the group. If you have several groups in a project, it fails just as if you had used individual, non-grouped actions. And there is another, more general, problem with how OmniFocus handles groups that falls into the "This Needs Fixing" category: in OmniFocus, groups behave a bit like actions, but, then again, they don't. Let me explain. Like actions, groups have a check box. Unlike actions, they do not appear in Context View; only the actions contained in the group do. So, to make OmniFocus create a new iteration of a repeating group, you have to go to Planning View and check off the group, then go back to Context View and continue with your work. Which totally breaks OmniFocus's -- otherwise totally ingenious -- concept of having separate views for planning and executing your projects. ### Workaround #3: Using Start Dates Unlike the previous two approaches, resorting to using start dates instead of due dates will actually cause OmniFocus to reliably assign the Next Action status not only to the top-most action, but to the top-most action _whose start date lies in the past_. When an action is checked off, its start date is advanced according to its repeat settings. As soon as the updated start date lies in the future, the action is hidden, and the next action in line that is not yet hidden (because its start date lies in the past) is made Next Action. The only condition for this to work is that the project type is "parallel." (For "sequential" projects, the top-most action remains Next Action regardless of due date, and all that happens in this case is that this action, and with it the complete project, is hidden from Context View.) If you can live with that minor limitation, using start dates does, indeed, provide a way to make repeating actions work. ### And, yet, I yearn for more Using start dates comes very close to how I think OmniFocus should handle repeating actions. And yet, I find using start dates rather unintuitive. Most task management systems I have seen so far use due dates in one way or another; but start dates? Also, I don't like the fact that this causes actions to be hidden until that start date. Although this is just what the start date feature is supposed to do, it makes for an annoying side-effect if all you really want to do is "just" re-order repeating actions by due date and seeing the next action in line as soon as you check off its predecessor. By the way I'm [not the only one][] who struggles with this. [not the only one]: http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2008/06/when-omnifocus-plays-hideandse.html#comment-2017917 ### The "workaround" that does work Thankfully, the good folks at the OmniGroup have an open ear for their customers' wishes, and they were kind enough to provide The Official Developer's View on this issue: > This is the intended behavior. Action order is of the utmost importance in project planning, particularly in the methodology on which this application is based. If it was the entire project that was meant to be repeated, then the repetition should be set to the project - not the action. If it were not the project, then various groupings might be in order. (Really, it varies from project to project and person to person.) As you could see, repeating the project or using action groups will not work in all cases. > However, you're the only one who didn't expect this behavior which means, while we do feel that there might be solutions more inline with the methodology, we probably could have done a better job clarifying how to accomplish this. It is for this reason that we'd like to add an option that allows repeating actions to be inserted relative to its peers instead of its original, intended place in the project. We will be making this option available as soon as possible. I have a feeling that there's a "not" missing in the first sentence of this paragraph. If not, I would wonder whether I should be seriously embarassed or feel flattered in an out-of-the-box-thinking kind of way... Anyway, by adding this option -- I expect a new checkbox in the Project inspector pane, saying "Sort repeated actions by due date", or somesuch --, OmniFocus's behavior will not change at all for users who think the current method by which OmniFocus picks out the next Next Action is just fine. And for those of us who think that said method needs fixin', the real "workaround" will be just one mouse-click away.

High-end Mac-based Home Automation

2008-06-24T05:54:51Z

Last week at WWDC 2008 I got the chance to view the Savant home automation system in action. It's certainly impressive—it offers wide-ranging and sophisticated support for a variety of different devices—but it's not normally a system I'd consider. You see, the Savant system is decidedly high-end (starting costs are north of $10,000) and it requires professional installation and programming. The results of which, as you'd certainly expect, are impressive. But I'm definitely a "do it yourself" kinda guy, as Smart Home Hacks demonstrates, so why did Savant catch my eye? Not only were they recruiting Mac OS X-savvy programmers at WWDC, they were demonstrating a system that is entirely Mac-based. That, my friends, is indeed an exciting development. If you want to dive into high-end automation, you'd normally have to spend plenty of cash on specialized embedded controllers or Windows-based systems. With Savant, you get a controller built on a Mac mini, touch screens based on MacBook computers, and a Mac OS X native programming interface to configure it all. (Although, as with most systems of this nature, you'll likely have your consultant or installer do all the hands-on programming.) Also of interest to home automation enthusiasts is that Savant eschews most wireless or powerline controller (PLC) interfaces in favor of hardwired control. That helps explain the installation costs, but also provides the high-reliability that an investment-grade system must deliver. If you're building a new home, and you're in the market for a robust and feature-rich professional automation system that uses your favorite computer as its backbone, you'll want to consider what Savant has to offer. The rest of us can just wipe the drool off our chins.

SIM ejector tool

2008-06-20T22:32:53Z

One of our office iPhones recently had to return to Apple for "service" — read replacement. For some reason, the phone started complaining at random intervals that a mysterious phantom accessory was incompatible and kindly suggested we enable airplane mode to avoid any risk of interference. Judging by the sympathetic smiles we got at the Apple Stores in both Chicago and San Francisco, that problem is well known. Even more telling, Apple France did not even try to blame the issue on us and promptly offered a return — which is an occasion we celebrate with champagne and the finest chocolates. The whole extravaganza, from shipping the phone to Apple to inserting our SIM card into the brand new one shipped back to us took 72 hours. Impeccable service all the way, I have to say. What made the whole operation easier, however, was the "SIM ejector tool" kindly provided by Apple in the package. See, AppleCare got its share of laughs for the previous version of the instrument. Not being one to be laughed at, Apple designed a custom tool that does just the same, has the same shape and weight as a paperclip but is not a paper clip. You can see it in all its splendor below:

So, how does it work? Remarkably well actually. It's definitely one terrific "SIM ejector tool." My only complaint is that it does not provide a firm grip while pressing downwards, due to the lack of a transversal bar within the "loop" that acts as a handle. All we need now is fancier packaging for the thing…

Science on the Mac

2008-06-19T14:08:31Z

This year I talked to a bunch of scientists at WWDC who can't wait to use Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL to get the most out of their apps. For now, those discussions are under NDA but it pointed to a trend in what is bringing some scientists to the Mac. They are taking their *nix apps and bringing them over. There are hard core Mac developers who have been writing their science applications on Macs since the OS 7 days. There is more computing power on the iPhone than on the devices these people started on. Many of the scientists I interviewed this year for Apple's Science group are targeting the iPhone for some aspect of their application. Display for some, notification for others, control of the app running on a cluster, or running a smaller version of the application. So, why bring your *nix app to the Mac if you're a scientist? For some, they wanted to run their existing applications on the same machine that had the consumer apps that they used. They were just combining their two worlds so that they could have iTunes, and a browser, and mail on the same machine that ran their UNIX or Linux science applications. There were also a set of developers who moved their applications over to Mac OS X and then used the performance tools that ship for free with every Mac to improve the performance of these apps. Even for those who ended up porting the apps back to Linux or UNIX boxes, they benefitted a lot from Shark and other tools (this was pre-Instruments). Some of the developers took existing apps and glued them together using Python, PHP, or AppleScript. Others added a GUI front end to them. Suddenly, you have attractive easy to use front ends on traditional command line applications. The next step is to integrate Apple technologies. Soon these developers added Spotlight and QuickLook plugins. The dedicated and experienced Mac developers are creating some incredible applications like last year's ADA winner Papers or this year's ADA winner Macnification. But others are creating quite interesting applications by integrating existing applications and providing hooks into other parts of Leopard. The 2008 Science posters aren't up yet but you can look at the 2007 Science posters. The ones with the speaker icons include my imitation of a Robert Krulwich style piece.

VectorDesigner 1.3

2008-06-18T11:00:00Z

I got TweakerSoft's VectorDesigner 1.3 as part of the recent MacHeist bundle (VectorDesigner normally sells for US$69.95). Its unlocking timing was perfect since I was just thinking about creating a new graphic or two with my meager design skills (if you can call it that) for a new personal "fun" web site I'm launching next month called TechOnABudget.com. I wanted something that could take a photograph or hand drawing and turn it into a reasonably clean vector line drawing of some kind. VectorDesigner 1.3 seemed like the right tool for the job.

I scanned in an old photo probably printed about 8 years ago on an inkjet printer. You can see the colors have faded quite a bit and probably was not that accurate to begin with. I should probably hunt down the original digital photo and use that as a source. If memory serves me correctly, this photo might have been taken using an old Canon Elph APS film camera and converted to digital using the old Kodak Picture CD service. My HP Officejet 5610xi multifunction printer/scanner is not natively supported by Mac OS X. So, VectorDesigner could not directly import it. I used HP's scanning software to save the image to my desktop and imported it into VectorDesinger from the JPEG file.

After adjusting the contrast, color saturation, and other settings quite a bit, I used VectorDesigner's bitmap to vector conversion feature to create what I think might be a good starting point for a graphic image I might be able to use in my little project. But. this photo is obviously way too complex to really use as a vector drawing.

So, the next thing I did was grab a quick sketch my daughter made a while back (last year I think) to see what I could do with a simpler line drawing. I had to play with the Gamma Function and Contrast settings quite a bit to get the scanned image of this pencil sketch to the point where I could get a usable vector drawing.

The converted vector drawing consists of, well, a really lot of points. So, this image isn't exactly simple either. I need to play with VectorDesigner a bit more to see if there is something analogous to an audio quantize feature to simplify hand drawn images or photos. The answer may be that I need to process the photos using a bitmap graphics editor like Pixelmator (which is what I use all the time these days) to created a simpler bitmap image for VectorDesigner to convert.

Still, the resulting vector line drawing again seems like a decent starting point image for further work. I used a gradient function to produce the color change you see in this image. I haven't tried using a vector drawing program in many years. So, I tend to have bitmapped ideas and need to switch gears when working with VectorDesigner. This adjustment is probably going to take a long time. Fortunately, TweakerSoft has a great series of bite sized (everything much less than 10 minutes) video tutorials that really helped me understand the basics of its operation. VectorDesigner Video Tutorials I still have a hard time clicking on a line (vector) to add a point though. And, I think there is a missing step in the tutorial explaining how to convert a bitmap image like a scanned drawing. The video seems to just use the Convert Raster to Vector and Edit Path functions. However, I had to apply theUngroup function after the conversion in order to use (un-gray) the Edit Path option. VectorDesigner looks like a good affordable tool for people like me who aren't graphics professionals but need decent tools for personal projects. I'm planning to use it to create an image or two for my new web project. Don't judge VectorDesigner by the quality of my output though :-)