Family's best iTunes Friend - Mojo

Like more and more people I have a household of internet connected devices and a family sharing those devices. I've long used iTunes to acquire and manage music and until a few years ago having all iTunes activity concentrated on one computer was convenient enough. These days I need the library to be available on each computer. 

iTunes has a music sharing feature which works quite well if all you want to do is listen to the library from a "secondary" computer. However Apple has intentionally crippled library sharing by preventing you from burning a CD using shared songs (in fact you can't even create a playlist of your own using a shared song). My level of frustration from the inconvenience of having to buy music and burn CDs for the rest of my family finally reached the threshold to make me do something about it.

The key use cases I wanted to address were:

1. Ability to log into any computer in the house and burn a CD with music in the library
2. Ability to shop for and buy music from any computer in the house and have it accessible to all the other computers

It took quite a bit of searching to find a solution but I finally found a tool called Mojo by Deusty. Mojo has a free version which provides some nice sharing features. However it is the Pro version which caught my eye because it solves both use cases at a cost of only $11 (3 licenses). 

On each computer I have created a iTunes smart playlist that includes all music added in the last two months. I installed Mojo on each computer and used the Pro version's "subscribe" feature to subscribe to the "recently added" playlist. This means Mojo will monitor changes in the playlist on each computer and automatically download new music. The end result is a "hands off" method of making our music available to everyone in the house. It is working flawlessly and I couldn't be happier (well, if this was a feature of iTunes I'd be happier...).

One caveat - at this point virtually none of our music has DRM. When Apple announced almost all music would move to the Plus format, and have no DRM, I chose to update songs I had previously purchased. I had done some tests and found the audio quality improvement in the "iTunes Plus" versions was significant. If your songs are DRM'd Mojo will not download them.

Now know one has to be frustrated that Dad doesn't have time to get all the music files onto a single machine to burn their CD for them and Dad doesn't have to listen to whining :-)

From a security standpoint no one outside of our network can get to our libraries since our router blocks connections to the Mojo port. 

Getting VNC and the VPN to play nicely together

I work from home regularly but have always found my work laptop's display to be difficult to use for long periods of time. When my laptop wasn't on the VPN I had been using Microsoft's RDP to make use of my incredibly beautiful iMac 24" display to proxy for the laptop display. However this doesn't work when the laptop is on the VPN since incoming RDP connections are blocked by my employer.

As I worked from home more and more I finally got irritated enough by RDP's inability to display a full resolution version of the laptop's display and the inability of any of this to work when on the VPN to do something about it all. At least for now I don't want to have a separate monitor or try to go to a KVM setup.

I had already implemented the ability to SSH from my Windows laptop to the iMac using public key authentication. This allowed me to use VNC from the work laptop to the iMac and ensured I could keep all personal info off of the work machine. This capability is required in order to do the next steps (well, the public key part isn't required, password authentication would be OK but isn't recommended for security reasons). There are a lot of sites with info on setting up SSH and VNC to use from a work machine to a home Mac. I'm not gonna duplicate that info here. Once you have that working the rest should be trivial for you so the exact details have been left as an exercise for the reader :-) But here's the overview...

• I copied my original SSH script to create two more on the laptop. One for use when the laptop is on the VPN (in which case I use the public domain name of my iMac) and the other for when the laptop is off the VPN (in which case I have to use the IP address of the iMac). The scripts are identical to the one I use to SSH from the laptop to the iMac for accessing the iMac except the "-L" is replaced by a "-R" with the "R" telling SSH to set up a reverse mapping. Also the port is changed from 5900 to 5901 (see the note below for why).
• I run RealVNC's service mode server on the laptop. Once the reverse SSH connection is established I can then use Chicken of the VNC to display the laptop's "screen" on the iMac (other VNC viewers should work too).
• Since the iMac accepts incoming VNC connections on the default port 5900 the "Display" number must be "1" (i.e. port 5901) when accessing the laptop's display. Otherwise CotVNC will try to display the iMac's screen in it's window resulting in a cool but useless and frustrating recursion. For an address have CotVNC connect to localhost.

The main point of this blog entry is to let you know this is possible. If you have a question shoot me a message but note I can't provide detailed support. Also, FWIW, the reverse SSH technique is not Mac-specific and can be used on other flavors of OS.

Skype is Approved

Skype just came out with an iPhone version of their app. It allows calls over Wifi - i.e. it doesn't use up your mobile phone minutes. Calls to other users on Skype are free and there are low cost plans for calling landlines. The international calling rates are especially low compared to other long distance options.

The iPhone app is great for a 1.0 app. It's existence prompted me to set up an account and install the Mac and Windows versions as well. Calls on the iPhone are very clear. The one call I've done on my iMac was very good as well (even using the builtin microphone).

I'm a believer. This thing has legs :-)

Space on Mac OS Leopard

I think it is true that many Mac users aren't aware of Spaces. I saw this blog entry today on TUAW which gives an introduction. Since some relatives recently saw me using Spaces while looking over my shoulder and gave immediate ooohs and aaahs I thought it worth doing a post on how I use Spaces. Please read the TUAW post first as I'm not going to duplicate the info here.

I changed the default key to reveal all the spaces to F5 (from F19). This places it right next to the Dashboard and Expose hotkeys. I chose to run with 4 Spaces and use them thusly:

1. My main Space - Mail, Twhirl, Safari
2. Reference Space - iCal, AddressBook, iTunes
3. Secondary work Space - usually just has FireFox but I sometimes park others there
4. Multimedia work Space - usually Aperture but also other photo and video apps open here

I use the Spaces controls to force the named apps into the desired Space. I have DragThing set to appear in all Spaces since it is my main app launcher.

N.B. This blog is not as active as it was. I'm doing quite a bit of posting on FaceBook right now. We'll see how that works out...

Kind of a pun, for this blog, but I added Snap Shots

I added a tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more. Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

You can disable Snap Shots by just clicking the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Nikon D90

When I bought my Nikon D40x last year I don't recall receiving many comments or questions. However since buying my Nikon D90 I've been getting quite a few so I thought I'd bore you with my opinions/experience. Email me with any questions, arguments or juicy rumors about your love life.

Unlike lenses, digital camera bodies follow the rapid depreciation curve of other electronics as technology makes rapid progress. If you can wait to upgrade your camera you will surely get a better one in the next generation - quite likely at a lower price. If you're debating better glass vs. a new camera body I'd go with the glass unless your current camera actually prevents you from accomplishing something important.

I have an engineering mind so I do a lot of spec and review comparisons for major purchases. Nikon has a very handy spec comparison for its current models. I used dpreview's evaluation of the Nikon D90 as my primary review. From these I came up with a longish list of advantages in the D90 vs. D40x. Here's my list along with my brief comment based on my usage. The first group, in green, are the ones that have proven of real value in practical shooting.

• Much improved CMOS sensor [shared with D300, great high ISO at this price]
  
• Built in dust removal system [so far no visible dust on real or test images]
  
• Exposure and white balance bracketing
  
• Records HD video with audio [a bit tricky but can produce some cool video]
  
• 12 MP vs 10 MP [more is better...]
  
• 4.5 fps [didn't realize how much faster 4.5fps is compared to 3fps until I tried it...]
  
• Can autofocus lenses lacking built in focus motors [wider choice of used lenses]
  
• 3" high resolution LCD [provides great in camera review]
  
• More buttons and other methods to quickly changes settings [handier than I expected]
• More autofocus points (but still only 11) [don't see much improvement in practice]
  
• High speed flash sync
  
• Wireless commander for flash
  
• Custom Picture Controls (can save and export)
• Live View for composing via LCD
• Depth of Field preview button [haven't had much luck with this one]
  
• Active D-Lighting to help with shadow areas [don't use it]
  

From all this the tipping point in my decision to upgrade so soon was the video capability. It is well known the D90 will not replace a camcorder. Lack of autofocus while shooting is one of several major limitations. However I got tired of juggling cameras at kid events. My main love and vehicle of visual communication is photography. But there are definitely times as a parent I want to capture motion and audio. Last year this meant taking two bulky devices (D40x and camcorder) to concerts etc and trying to juggle between them. Cumbersome, makes you look a bit like an obsessed fool, and in the end results in missed shots/video. With the D90 it is possible to instantly switch between photography and videotaping plus you can take advantage of the variety of lenses available on a DSLR.

As a photographer there are definitely things to love about the D90 (over a D40/40x/60). Near the top of the list is the high ISO performance (i.e. ability to take good looking photos, low in noise, even in darker conditions). I created a set of simple shots over on Flickr to illustrate the camera's capability. The D40x was OK up to 800 and pretty marginal at 1600. The D90 looks very good at 1600 (as long as you're not planning poster prints) and up through 6400 is still definitely usable. This sort of performance really opens up the world of indoor natural light photography. This is a great thing for me as I love using natural light for indoor candids and portraits. When you couple the high ISO performance with a fast prime lens (in my case the 50mm f/1.8D) you have a powerhouse on a budget. I think this is a feature even casual users can take advantage of (though they may not know they want it...).

Hope the above info and insight into my twisted decision process is of help to someone. Now back to having fun!

Twitting on Twitter...

... or whatever the verb form is! For my peeps (ha!) I now have a twitter account. twitter.com/road_fun. Giving Twitterific a try as a iPhone client.

First discovery, Twitterific doesn't necessarily update its location info when you ask it to add it to a post.

Anyway, this is at least today's shiny new toy.

PCalc - a free version available now

Awhile back I wrote about a great iPhone utility called PCalc. I wanted to let everyone know that JT has put up a Lite aka free version of PCalc. Don't let the fact there is now a free version fool you. It also packs a ton of functionality and is the best iPhone calc app out there. And don't let the "RPN" in the title of the full version scare you either. PCalc works great as both a traditional and RPN calculator. If you don't know what RPN is you'll be just fine. Check it out!

Storming Pogue aka Blackberry Cult

My previous post was on the Blackberry Storm which has been marketing as oh so much cooler and better than an iPhone. As a BB user it was pretty obviously desperation marketing and I saw today that Pogue wrote a negative review in the NY Times. (This is the link but you can't get to it unless you sign up for free access).

Turns out on his blog today Pogue writes that a lot of folks commented in firm agreement with my (er his) conclusion. Not surprising since I'm always right. The amusing part is he has discovered there is a virulent strain of fanboy much stronger than the Apple variety - the Blackberry adherents. Apparently this new strain has never even used the Storm but is quite certain his review was fundamentally (and fundamentalistly?) wrong. Poor David...

N.B. oh, and the iPhone share tripled last quarter (via TUAW).

Storming the iPhone

RIM is introducing the Blackberry Storm to (finally) counter Apple's iPhone line. Years ago I thought BB's were da bomb. Problem is even the Storm is still a yesterday model.

E.g. they are hyping that it can play mp3s. Big whoop. That is ancient functionality at this point. Part of the greatness of the iPhone is the ability to do so many things effectively. iTunes brings with it movies, videos, video podcasts, etc. I can sync family photo albums - no more dealing with crappy wallet photos. And all this is so easy and for syncing is completely automatic.

Bored in line or some other twiddle-thumbs situation? Play a game. Don't have one you want to play? Fine, download one. 

The RIM browser totally sucks...

For those completely committed to RIM, or stuck with it because of corporate rules, Storm is a minor step forward. For the rest: skip this one.

A huge advance for Civilization...

In a huge advance for civilization and peace and understanding for the world, Monty Python now has a legit channel on YouTube that includes high quality images. They are still getting started adding content but I just saw one of my all  time faves, Black Knight, is already there. Killer Rabbit is too. I'm laughing just thinking about it :-)

Go forth and waste time laughing. Oh, wait. Laughing isn't a waste of time at all!

iPhone Takes over the Earth

Great news for my iPhone peeps! Google has released it's Earth application and in fine fashion indeed. It takes advantage of the motion sensors built into the iPhone to adjust the view as you move your iPhone around.

Read all about it at TUAW.

Google Reader

Following Harald's lead I too want to note that in addition to seeing a few shared headlines on my Facebook account and here on the blog there is now a page available via Google Reader. I tend to share technical tips, some humorous items and some others I consider generally useful. In other words whatever I feel like :-) Click here to visit and/or subscribe to the feed.

I've been using Google Reader for a few years now. I switched to web-based reading since I keep a pretty solid partition between my work computers and home computers. Since the blogs I follow are a mix of work, personal, and in-between I want access to all my feeds no matter what hardware I'm using. I used Bloglines are first but switched to Google Reader as its features, and integrations, improved.

iPhone Life (battery, that is)

I've had my iPhone 3G for several months and read a lot of complaints about its battery life. Most of the complaints seem to be - if I use it a lot the battery doesn't last a day and that makes me cry. Wah wah...

I've had Crackberry and Smartphones/(aka dumb Windows Mobile) for years and I can assure you the iPhone's battery life is in reality best in breed when used like a BB or WM device.

But I can also confirm if you use it "for all it's worth" the battery won't make it to bedtime. In my case "for all it's worth" would mean a number of phone calls, checking email on it regularly, and running applications requiring net and location signals. Also throw in some podcast/video watching to the mix. When I do all this I come up an hour or two short on battery life.

I needed to travel to San Jose for several days of (boring) meetings and knew I'd make heavy use of the iPhone on the plane and to entertain myself while there. I needed extra battery power and after searching around selected the Richard Solo DX001 for the trip. I'd heard good things about the item and the price wasn't too bad (though more than the old AA battery pack I used to use to extend my iPod's life).

Having had the DX001 for a few weeks I can say that it has worked without issue and as advertised. If not for the trip I probably would have tried to wait a few more months as I expect more aesthetic solutions will eventually make their way to market. But if, like me, you need something now I do recommend the DX001. Not only does it work but also the customer service response to my pre-sale questions was very fast. Non-expedited shipping brought it to my door in 2 days == happy camper :-)

How Escalation Really Works

As you know I manage Software R&D. I thought I'd break an illusion some customers seem to have about their efforts to escalate an issue they may have with their deployment or a software product. This never happens at my employer but I've heard about it other places ;-)

Customer's conception: I escalate an issue up the Vendor's management chain and they will assign more people and better people to help resolve my issue. The more I escalate the faster my issue will go away (even if it is self-inflicted).

What really happens: Higher management sees the escalation and yawns "ah, another one" and forwards it on to the same people who have been dealing with it all along. Those people already know the situation is hot and have already assigned anyone useful even if it means taking them off of something else. Vendor agrees to provide more frequent status to customer. This means that the extra resources assigned end up briefing field support, sales, product managers and the janitors on status instead of actually making progress. Customer demands hourly updates. Vendor agrees to a daily conference call to update the progress which robs the resolution team of even more time to solve the problem. Customer resolution time takes one step backwards. Vendor higher ups want to be kept informed so internal status updates are required and daily internal conference calls are scheduled. After a day or two higher ups lose interest and no one other than the resolution team bothers to attend. Customer resolution time takes two steps backwards. Eventually the problem is fixed but only after consuming more people and taking more time than if the customer just relied on the Vendor to do their job responsibly. The over-use of time and resources means other Customer's problem resolutions start to lag so they hit the Escalate button. So the cycle goes...

Parenting and the Internet

As a parent of a young daughter with one more on the way I've long intended to do something about protecting them from the darker side of this wonderful thing called the Internet. I had searched around for a product to install on my network of Macs at home and every time I looked over the reviews for the candidates the number of problems reported stopped me in my tracks. So far my daughter is young enough I've been able to get by with using the draconian methods that are part of Leopard (10.5). But the sweetheart is growing up and we also have older kids visiting regularly who want to use the computer so I recently took another look at options.

I had heard of OpenDNS a number of times but the only feature association in my head was it's claim to providing faster resolution times. I've never had a problem in that area so tended to always skip over any mention of the service. However in my recent search I found several blog entries on its usefulness to parents. Moving at the Speed of Creativity had one of the most direct discussions.

In my case I changed my 2Wire router to point to OpenDNS rather than using the ISP's servers. Once done I selected the Customize option to allow me to set some site filters based on a categorization of the site content. All of this setup took less than 5 minutes and has worked flawlessly. I like the fact I can customize the filters as well as "vote" on categorizations for various sites. I haven't needed to but you can block or open individual sites as well.

This scheme doesn't provide the same level of filtering and control as some commercial products but it is also less intrusive with essentially zero overhead. For my particular situation and approach to controlling Internet access this is an excellent free solution.

Note we do not allow children access to a computer in a "private" location in our home. The only one they can use is adjacent to the kitchen in full view. If this weren't the case I would probably opt for one of the more draconian commercial products.

Clouds

No, this isn't another photography post :-)

Cloud computing is in it's nascent stage. As a SW R&D and products guy that means it is exciting, rapidly evolving, ill-defined, and with uncertain profitability. Which added up means lots of folks are going to throw millions of dollars in trying to capitalize on the theme. The only sure winners are the "experts" and evangelists who will claim to be able to give you all the answers. For the rest there is hard work ahead.

Unfortunately I'm not in the middle of this one but wish I was! This post by James Urquhart provides a good background on some recent announcements and key facets of this nascent product/service area.

iPhoneApp Winners

I've gotten questions from several newer iPhone 3G owners along the lines of "I'm too lazy to browse the App Store, just tell me which apps to look at." Well, actually none of them admitted being lazy :-)

Rather than continue to answer these one at a time I think a blog entry is in order. So without further delay here is the list. Click the app name for more details:

• Klick - best Flickr companion
  
• PCalc - best utility belt for anything involving numbers
  
• Jott - best to-do and list application
  
• WeatherBug - multi-locations, radar, alerts and more
  
• Bloomberg - world wide market indexes and news
  
• Facebook - missing some key features but still convenient
  
• Where - finds events, friends, cheap gass, etc nearby based on GPS
  
• 2 Across - crossword puzzle app, a free lite version also available
  
• Wikipanion - guess what, this is a Wikipedia front end. Surprised, aren't you ?
  
• Now Playing - find movie times, theaters etc near you
  

All are "Ron Approved" and receive near daily use. Oh, did I forget to mention all but one of these is free? :-)

I got a bunch of others I use less frequently. I'll get around to posting on those soon.

PCalc - a great iPhone utility belt

I've long been a user of PCalc on the Macintosh. I love it's feature set and most of all the elegance of its implementation. James Thomson, its author, has shown great commitment to his products and so I was very interested when I heard a iPhone implementation was available.

PCalc for the iPhone exceeded my expectations and has earned a place on my iPhone's home page. I'll first cite one of the coolest innovations and that is James' undo implementation. To undo an entry you simply swipe your finger right-to-left across the display area. To redo simply reverse the motion. Multiple levels of undo are of course available. Very natural and efficient since no screen space is needed for buttons or menus. Another innovation is the use of the shake "operation" on the iPhone. Simply shake the phone twice to clear and three times to do a clear all.

Some of the other features that set it apart from Apple's version, and the iPhone app crowd in general, are its support for RPN, operations in a whole range of bases, a simulated tape so you can see the history and result of interim results, and finally a very convenient and comprehensive set of unit conversions as well as constants. 

Highly recommended! Check it out here or look it up in the Apple App Store.

Another thing to love...

When you downloaded an app update on the iPhone it used to always dump it in the first available spot on the first home screen page with available space. This meant I was constantly having to move updated apps back to the desired page.

I did some app updates this morning and lo and behold they were updated in place on the desired page (although the download still shows up in front while it is in progress). One small step for users...