Tech DC » Software

Keynotes – Amazon and Apple

Rick — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:34:23 +0000

It’s been an exciting week of product announcements from Amazon and Apple. Decide who does a better Steve Jobs impersonation.

Amazon Kindle Press Conference – September 28, 2011, New York, NY

Apple Special Event – October 4, 2011, Cupertino, CA

Mac Eject Key for External Disk Drive

Rick — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:57:24 +0000

Apple keyboards have an eject key in the upper right corner that works with built-in Mac DVD drives. If you have a new Mac Mini without an optical drive, you might want to use a 3th party external disk drive. The problem is that the eject key doesn’t work for these drives.

Thanks to tjb1 at MacRumors who gave instructions on how to make the eject key work.

Download and install KeyRemap4Macbook. Restart is required for use.
Open System Preferences > KeyRepma4Macbook
Make sure you are on the “Change Key” menu and click in the search bar in KeyRemap4Macbook, not the search for System Preferences.
Type “eject” in the search bar and check the box next to “Eject to Command+Control+Option+Shift+E”
Exit System Preferences and open Automator.
Choose the template “Service” and hit “Choose” at the bottom right.
In the search bar at the top left, type “Run Shell Script”
Drag “Run Shell Script” from the left to the Workflow Area.
At the top above “Run Shell Script” click the arrows next to “Service receives selected text” and pick “no input” at the bottom of the list.
Next delete “cat” from the Shell Script and type this “drutil eject”
While in Automator go File > Save As > Eject
Close Automator and open System Preference > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts
In Keyboard Shortcuts choose Services in the left box.
In the right, scroll down to “General” and you should see “Eject” listed.
Make sure the box beside “Eject” is checked and double click on the right side, left of the scroll bar. This should open text box where you hold down Command+Control+Option+Shift+E. This will enter those keys as shown here.
Restart the operating system.
Close System Preferences and the Eject key should now eject your external cd/dvd/blu ray drive.

My New Spotlight in Lion

Rick — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:57:46 +0000

Here’s a funny glitch that eventually corrected itself. After installing Mac OSX Lion, spotlight initially thought it needed 5 years to index all my files.

Make a Linux Boot USB Key

Rick — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:21:04 +0000

If you want to install Linux or just try it out, you can make a USB key that is bootable into Linux with UNetbootin.

UNetbootin is a simple program that allows you to choose from over 40 Linux distributions. My favorites are Linux Mint (which is probably easiest for folks used to Windows) and Ubuntu.

Once you create the bootable USB thumb drive, you can select it in your computer’s boot options or enable USB booting in the BIOS.

This is a great way to try a new operating system that might speed up your old machine.

The Flaw of Software Patents

Rick — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:53:40 +0000

The radio show This American Life has a great show When Patent’s Attack about the terrible state of US software patents. Patent holding companies (like Intellectual Ventures and Lodsys) sue and extort money out of small developers. Good stuff. Hopefully some people in Congress hear this.

Speed Up PC

Rick — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:41:32 +0000

I was recently asked to speed up a slow laptop. Here are the steps that I took:

Apply Windows Updates: The computer had downloaded lots of updates (including Vista Service Pack 2) that were just waiting to be installed. This was a multi-step process since not all the updates could be updated in one package.
Run Spinrite: This checks for and automatically fixes hard drive problems
Remove Browser Toolbars: Google, Yahoo, and other toolbars in Internet Explorer and Firefox just slow down and junk up the browser without any real benefits.
Remove Google Desktop: This is a redundant desktop search tool that just slows down the computer.
Open Windows Task Manager, search for processes, and remove unnecessary applications and start-up items. This is done from Add/Remove Programs, from the startup folder and from msconfig.
Turn off Windows sidebar: This feature available in Windows 7 and Vista by default just loads pictures and a clock which people don’t use.
Remove some Windows features, as mentioned in 12 Ways to Speed Up and Slim Down Windows Vista.
Update Firefox: Firefox 4 has significant speed improvements.
Remove paid Antivirus and install Microsoft Security Essentials which typically uses fewer system resources and is a good and free Antivirus.
Run Disk Defragmenter
Update Power Settings: This laptop’s settings were to run the CPU at a max of 50% both when unplugged (to save the battery) and also when plugged in. The max CPU should be set to 100% when plugged in unless the computer is having overheating problems.
Install Foxit Reader: This is faster and less annoying than Adobe Acrobat which I removed.

Microsoft Safety Scanner

Rick — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:23:58 +0000

Microsoft recently released Microsoft Safety Scanner, a simple on-demand virus scanning tool that works happily alongside other virus protection software. For example, you can use it alongside the always-running anti-virus offered by Microsoft Security Essentials.

See your iPhone Travel History

Rick — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:39:43 +0000

iPhone Tracker is a new desktop application that allows people to see where their iPhone has logged it’s travels. My iPhone has kept it’s entire travel history, going back to June 2010 when I got my iPhone 4. iPhone Tracker uses the data from your iPhone backups in iTunes.

It’s a little buggy, but still an interesting way to see your travels.

iPhone Tracker is can be downloaded for Mac and Windows.

It appears that the iPhones (like other phones) keep this data to provide GPS applications with your last location and make it easier to quickly attain your current location. If you want to protect your iTunes backup from divulging this information, go to your iPhone Summary page in iTunes and check off Encrypt iPhone backup.

Print From iOS To Any Printer or PDF For Free

Rick — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:17:39 +0000

While Apple has technically enabled the printer function on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, printing only works currently on 18 specific models of HP printers.

AirPrint Activator

To enable printing to any printer attached to your Mac, use the free AirPrint Activator (formerly AirPrint Hactivator).

It’s a simple program. I’ve been using a beta of version 2 without problems.

PDF Printing

You can print to a PDF by downloading and installing the CUPS-PDF Installer. Share that printer for it to show up on your AirPrint Activator list.

Automator to Move the PDF / Dropbox

The CUPS-PDF Installer prints to your folder:
/Users/Shared/CUPS-PDF/[your account]
or, for iOS devices, to:
/Users/Shared/CUPS-PDF/ANONYMOUS

Those aren’t easy places to find your PDF, so we’ll automatically move those files when they arrive.

Open Automator (Applications – Automator), then select the “Folder Action” template. This will allow you to choose the CUPS-PDF folder where your printed files go by default. Then drag over the library action “Move Finder Items” and choose where you want the file moved to. You might want to move the file to your desktop. I chose to move the files to a Dropbox sub-folder called CUPS Print Jobs, automatically backing them up and making them accessible to me through the Dropbox app or GoodReader app on my iPhone and iPad.

I set up this Automator action for both my CUPS folders that are printed to, the folder from my user account (used when printing to CUPS-PDF from my Mac) and the ANONYMOUS folder (used when printing to CUPS-PDF from iOS devices).

In order to allow Automator to move files from the ANONYMOUS folder, you need to go to it in the finder (/Users/Shared/CUPS-PDF/ANONYMOUS), CTRL-click on it, select Get Info and add yourself to the permissions for that folder.

Other Options

If these instructions are too much for you and you have $19.95 burning a hole in your pocket, you can do the same thing with Printopia 2.

These features also should be appearing in updates from Apple at some point in the future.

Recover Deleted Files

Rick — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:01:50 +0000

A recent client accidentally deleted several important files and removed them from the recycle bin. Another client had done a system rollback that effectively removed important files.

Happily, deleting a files does not remove them. Only the references to the files are gone. Usually some files can be recovered if you know what file type you’re looking for and if the file location on the hard drive hasn’t been overwritten by new files. This is why it’s important to not install a program to recover files. Just the act of installing something will overwrite the data you want to recover.

I like Recuva Portable, available for free here:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds

The Portable version can run from a USB or CD and does not need to be installed or be copied onto the main hard drive.