Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. And it’s free! We will report back on how the system performs as we get approval for further sites we control.
At Big Trousers we have been trialling the offline backup and storage solution provided by Amazon S3. Jungle Disk works very much like the iDisk, a service offered by Apple.
A hard drive icon appears on your desktop with the server based files at your disposal from any Mac or PC.
The backup application costs $20 but you need to set up an account with Amazon as well. The Backup utility is quite straight forward to set up so that files are automatically uploaded at some predetermined time at a frequency that suits. For our purpose we have the files we print photographs from and also the current working files for graphics projects backed up every night.
You can leave older files versions on the server as a backup of versions if you choose and have them deleted after a predetermined time if you wish.
The best news is that this is a no contract service and you only pay for what you use.
In fact there are no limits to the size of the backup and you pay 15c per Gig per month.
Data is stored at multiple Amazon.com datacenters around the country for high availability and security. Your data will then be available via any computer that has the appropriate login details. This feature also gives distant co-workers not on your network a way to collaborate on projects just as if they were on the same local server.
“On Halloween, professional Ukranian online criminals were found using Trojan-horse software to target, for the first time, computers running Apple’s OS X operating system — just as they have been doing for years on the more ubiquitous flavors of Windows.” Wired news.
This on the surface sounds like the first of what could be a flood of Windows type security concerns on the Mac. It is however an example of how the Mac is a very different beast when it comes to this type of exploit.
Firstly one must be looking for porn online, then one must see the link for a new Quicktime codec and download the dmg. One must then double click to mount the disc image and install the application. Also you need to type in your admin password as you do for all new apps.
Once installed, the Trojan hijacks the system’s domain-name service. Internet-connected applications use DNS to translate the domain part of an URL, such as www.Wired.com, into the numeric IP address of a server. By hijacking the DNS, the attacker is able to replace search results with links to sites that he controls, in hopes of making money from online purchases.
Now this sounds like a security issue but it is more an issue for users to be aware of, not a security flaw that Apple can do anything to fix. So be warned, security is mostly a user issue not an OS problem. OSX has always been as secure as could be managed but until now Mac users have not been targeted specifically and this is an attack on users not the operating system.
Apple has announced the release of Leopard and will be made available through Big Trousers from around 26 October at $158.
From time to time I will be picking out new features that may be of interest.
The first installment is of interest to us at Big Trousers and may well be useful to you.
Font Auto-Activation
Automatically activate fonts as you need them. When an application requests an installed font that’s currently disabled, Leopard activates that font and keeps it active until the requesting application quits.
Now that will save some time in the design office.
The great Photoshop killer Pixelmator was released on Tuesday this week and it packs a punch.
As a 20mb download for $59 US, you can experience how Photoshop should have been made or how it may look in the future. As the worlds first GPU image processor it applies filters almost instantaneously in an interface that looks like something from the future. It is almost identical in layout to Photoshop with a few interesting surprises.
Listen to us discuss pixelmator at PhotoGeek and download the trial now. Available only for Mac OS X.
This week I am going to test the new features of “MarsEdit” as a desktop writing tool for the various blogs I write for.
So far so good but if you have content to write have a look at the 30 day trial from Red Sweater software.
Apple today released Safari 3 for both Mac and Windows.
The first thing that struck me was Safaris’ ability to render text properly, at least a hell of a lot better than IE or Firefox.
The big difference however is speed.
Safari is twice as fast as IE and certainly faster than Firefox.
Get Safari 3 now and see what the web is supposed to look like… on a PC.
From Fontifer a new online service that lets you create a font for Mac or PC from your own handwriting.
I wish they had this when I was at school, I could have forged a heap of letters from my mum about not being able to attend.
Simply print out the fontifer template, write your characters on it, scan the template and upload back to fontifer.
Through the magic of online application voodoo you can then preview your font and purchase it if you wish for $9.00 US.
Great for Christmas cards and birthdays too.
Having read about the details regarding Apple Final Cut Studio 2 and looking at some of the video online I have to say it was a surprise that this suite has moved so quickly to embrace new controls and new formats.
The impressive videos including the Cohen brothers talk about “Color” shows the new color matching tools that looks to me to combine well with FCP and Motion to give total freedom in a color sense to any filmmaker.
Most surprising was the format for 4K, REDCODE by new camera manufacturer Red. Described in a piece online, Red provides a digital format for film makers that is definitely not video, much higher res than HD and much more flexible than high end film. The future is in this format and has been adopted as the standard for the future. Even though I have yet to see a “Red” camera working, the tools to edit are now in Final Cut Pro.
Jen Hawley of Siren music rang the other day after having inadvertently deleted a piece recored through Logic Pro on her MacBook. It was a classical piano piece recorded some weeks ago and when it was not found on the Firewire back up she wondered if it was still on the local drive. It turned out it was deleted with out going to the storage drive for back up.
A disaster in the making as it would be a little embarrassing to have to re-record that session.
The answer turned out to be Data Rescue for OS X by ProSoft Engineering.This software does a number of things including restoring files that have been deleted.
To retrieve files lost the application can be loaded on another computer and the MacBook booted in Firewire mode and connected. The MacBook is kept as is, and retrieved files are transfered to the second machines’ hard drive.
After a few hours it was apparent that there was around 15 GIG of audio files that could be retrieved and sent to an external drive. That process took a further hour or so but now we are waiting for Jen to go through all that audio to see if the aiff file she wants is there.
Good luck Jen
Interesting, we just got a call from a company offering to host content management sites for $250 a month.
In the last month or so we have been experimenting with an Open Source content management application, WordPress.
We have found it to be extremely powerful and flexible. A large number of paid for content management is based on open source and generally is not good value for money, especially if you are a web developer. If anyone wants content management we install WordPress, a free application based on php and mySQL and apply a custom designed template. It is no more complex than a site designed in XHTML CSS. We build static pages and navigation as content to be managed as well as user feedback, and RSS blog type pages as subscription feeds. This is a normal web design fee plus normal hosting. Some training may be required for client generated editing but as a browser based system it is very straight forward.
Too many times we have had clients call to say that under a monthly fee system, their contract term has expired prior to getting enough time to get their content in order. They did not have time to learn how to set up the pages and navigation let alone the text or images. Good content management is supposed to allow clients and or their employees to add content as required as soon as possible so that their site is current and reflects any change that occurs. For those clients whose content is updated on a daily basis this can save a lot of money. For sites that are basically static apart from the odd alteration $250 a month is a rip off.
$250 a month is 10 times what our normal hosting fee would be anyway, so beware the content management scammers.
So the final is complete of the 3D view of the Big Trousers office in Footscray. We hope to get this file uploaded to Google Earth but it may be a little too intricate.
In the meantime to see the 3D image make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth and download our locater file.
P.S If you have a previous version of our locater file remember to delete it first.
A big thanks to David of RMS who did the 3D research, rendering and debugging. His account of “Sketch Up” verses “Autocad” would make for interesting reading here.
Here is the model in SketchUp.
Download the file for Sketch Up from Google 3D warehouse
Well this is the first image in location with some detail.
The next step is to work on optimized png images for the surface detail.
UPDATE:
If you downloaded the first file, delete from Google Earth and download again to get the next one.
Like this:
This comment from Apple is the best explanation of the current state of affairs within the music download industry I have read. The last paragraph puts it right back up the nose of European ( an especially the French ) government agencies who are now making iTunes illegal in those countries.
“Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”
According to Apple, iTunes users should delay an upgrade to Vista if they want to maintain their iTunes functionality.
Apple says that there were “compatibility issues” which would create some problems like a failure to play music and video purchased from the iTunes store; poor animation performance; and a failure to automatically synchronise media, contacts and calendars.
Seems the Inquirer has used this a smack at Apple under Anti-Trust legislation.
An anti-trust court might take a dim view of the fact that Apple had been spending a fortune trying to get users, who might be thinking of upgrading to Vista, to change to OSX instead.
However according to Biz Tech they are not alone.
Some MP3 players are experiencing glitches with computers on which Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista has been installed. MP3 players acquire music files by connecting to the computer, but the new operating system fails to recognize some players…..Korean MP3 players were also found to be incompatible with Vista. A Samsung Electronics spokesman said that the company’s new music devices are compatible with Vista, but that older models like the YP-20S don’t function well. ReignCom said that its H10 and an MP3-playing electronic dictionary are incompatible with Vista. A ReignCom spokesman said that the firm is developing a program to resolve the problem and that it should be ready this month. Facing a similar problem, other MP3 player maker like COWON are also testing to find out if their products work with Vista.
