Mon - June 7, 2004

In the AirPort Express lane




Apple's AirPort Express looks like an awesome little 802.11g Swiss Army knife for any traveling Mac user (or PC user, for that matter). I'd love to have one just to have a pocketable wireless access point for traveling. I hadn't expected that they would kill off the modemless AirPort Extreme Base Station, but it makes sense given the feature sets that they would.


AirTunes- now that's just really damn cool. It's a simple way to go toe-to-toe with all of these digital audio boxes without a lot of added complexity and interface design. I could definitely see this technology popping up in other devices in the future- wireless speaker systems, stereo receivers, etc. Maybe TiVo will code it into their Home Media Option so it'll finally be able to play iTunes Music Store files. I had not expected that the AirPort Express would have an optical digital audio output, especially in this clever dual-purpose jack. I suppose it's a boon to the audiophile types who drooled over Apple Lossless Encoding, but to those of us without The Golden Ears™, the analog jack should do fine.

I could definitely find a use for this in my network. When provided a wireless network connection from an existing wireless access point, you get a remote Ethernet jack perfect for that game console, old computer, or other device that doesn't do wireless, a USB printer port perfect for liberating a USB printer from tyrannical control by one particular computer, and of course an audio jack to stream music to a stereo, speaker set, or any other audio device with a spare input jack. I'd put one of these on my desk to give me a spare Ethernet jack, to share an additional USB printer, and to stream music into my stereo. Could put another one down behind our big screen TV to stream music out the TV's speakers. Of course, if we end up moving to a house that lacks Ethernet jacks (Horrors!!), we'd need a pair of these to get the iMacs connected to the network again.

My only question is what kind of protection is there to keep unauthorized users from sending their own music to your AirPort Express? Given that this will work with both PCs and Macs, uses Rendezvous to announce its' presence, and seeing how most people don't protect their wireless networks*, it might be fun to check for these when wardriving. Give someone a musical interlude that they weren't expecting.

Oh, and here is a great "how it works" article from the fine folks at MacWorld. Bummer side is that you can't play to multiple outputs at once this way, but there is also a really neat little tidbit: apparently the optical audio out means that the AirPort Express can handle multichannel (5.1, 6.1, 7.1...) audio if you can play it in iTunes. Which currently you can't (to my knowledge) but who knows what the future holds...

*(The AirPort Setup Assistant prompts for a WEP password on an AirPort Extreme Base Station by default, so Apple might have this set up the same way.)

Posted at 10:47 PM     Read More  

Sat - March 13, 2004

Pretty pretty pleeeeeaseeee....


You know, I'm still stuck with the same PowerBook. It's headed towards failure at some point in the near future- the battery life is shrinking smaller and smaller, the hinges are starting to go, and the pink screen problem has returned. I need a new machine, but the money's just not there.

So, to that end, I've set up the "Get Dan a G5 Fund". Just click on the Paypal donation button in the sidebar over there and toss me a couple of bucks. I'll keep the sidebar updated with the current balance and names of donors- assuming I get any donations, that is. :-)

(Yes, I know that PayPal is evil. But they're the 800lb. gorilla in that space, and I don't have much other choice.)

Posted at 11:25 PM     Read More  

Fri - October 3, 2003

Software I like


First of all, I like free software. But not necessarily Free Software™- just software that doesn't cost me nuthin'. If a piece of software costs money (i.e. shareware) it had darned better be worth that shareware fee, otherwise the author won't see a cent from me and their software will get an all-expenses paid trip to here:


Second of all, I hate ugly software. A piece of software could end world hunger and cure all known diseases, but if it's got an ugly interface and it's clunky to work with, I won't use it. Apple's UI guidelines exist for a reason, people!

So, I present my pick of the litter in Mac OS X software, in no particular order:

SubEthaEdit
Fans of BBEdit Lite, take heart! It's heir apparent has arrived. Formerly named Hydra, SubEthaEdit's claim to fame is it's network collaborative editing feature. You and several other people can be editing the same document over the network and see each others' changes live as they happen! It works over Rendezvous on your local network, or over plain ol' IP. I don't even use that feature too much; I mainly use it because it's a very light, fast, well-designed and written text editor. And of course, it's freeeeeeeeee!

iRC
Let's face it: historically, IRC software for the Mac OS has just plain sucked. The only decent IRC client for OS 9 was ShadowIRC , and that's been more or less abandoned. So I began searching for alternatives when I moved to OS X. Ircle was just as clunky as I had remembered it in OS 9, and most of the other clients were just as bad. Thankfully, I stumbled across iRC- written in Cocoa/Obj. C, clean, fast, simple, perfect! It's still technically a beta (v.0.09) but it's the most rock-solid beta I've ever seen. I gladly paid the $15 for it, especially since the shareware stuff is very light- a nag screen when you first start the program, and "iRC is shareware, please register" dropped occasionally into your text stream. (So you can get away with not registering it for a good long time if you want, but I highly encourage you to register it)

Transmit
Unfortunately, the FTP-as-drive functionality built into 10.2.x isn't quite there yet (yes, I'd classify causing kernel panics as "not quite there yet".) I could use FTP from the Terminal, but why should I have to play with the CLI; I'm a Mac user damnit! Fortunately, Panic Software's Transmit is a real class act when it comes to FTP. Fast, clean, and polished until it's blinding, Transmit shows that those folks over at Panic Software have really studied their Apple human interface guidelines closely. It's $25 well spent if you have to deal with FTP.

MacStumbler
You don't know what techie fun is until you've driven around with a laptop using your wireless card looking for open wireless access points. That is precisely what MacStumbler does- it looks for and logs 802.11b access points. It tells you the signal strength, whether or not encryption is turned on, the manufacturer of the access point, it's MAC address, and, if you have a GPS connected, it's geographical location. Oh, and did I mention...it's free!!

Posted at 03:57 PM     Read More  

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