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Spotlight

This week saw the dawn of the first episode of MacBreak, which has taken on the face of the first true independent television show that is published under the guise of a podcast. This is a relatively major development, regardless of previous weekly, near 30 minute video broadcasts such as CommandN thanks to not only the hosting talent but also the behind the scenes backing which the show has brought.

Many people are talking about the show and it’s hosts Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Alex Lindsay and Emery Wells; but few are talking about what it says for the future of web based media. Of course, with their connections and experience there are many positives on paper which have long pointed at a great production; however, this hasn’t become the case.

MacBreak has long had the backing of Pixel Corps, a media based “guild” that provides high quality media and is currently specializing in web distributed content such as TWiT (This Week in Tech). With the specialists, equipment, studios and knowledge that Pixel Corps brings to the table, the tech minded presenters of worldwide fame should have little trouble getting out a quality show on time, on a regular basis; but this is not what is transpiring.

Over the past months there has been very little in the way of development from the MacBreak team with only promises of “coming soon” being posted on their website and forums (which have since been removed) and a handful of short “MacBreak Minutes” coming mainly from those outside the mainstream tech presenting team. With such little in the way of information it has been expected that the first show would be some kind of special and really impress beyond the publics already soaring expectations.

The first show was released last week through the iTunes Music Store and was not advertised on the website MacBreak.com, but rather on the so-called “sister-site” TWiT.tv. No where else was there any indication that the first episode was available and this remained until just yesterday when the main site was “updated” to release this information only. It’s an interesting way to get the word out; not telling anyone.

Of course the news spread like wild fire among the tech and Mac communities and soon everyone was draining the life from the Apple servers to see for themselves what the first show brought, and I have to say that that was also a bit of a disappointment. Using rather short and simple intro graphics, no OSD graphics and very little in the way of production values for the show. Overall the camera work achieved nothing but migraines, the sound quality was appalling and the news was weeks old (which isn’t a terribly good idea for a show designed for a tech community which is well structured and always on top of the latest news, especially in it’s beloved environment).

That said, and with all the negatives aside, I don’t want to sound like I am mindlessly bashing MacBreak or the people/companies involved. I am well aware of the circumstances under which the film was shot (on the show floor of one of tech’s biggest conventions), the time made available to the main players and the high expectations of the audience. It’s a tough cookie to crack; hitting the nail of event the best TV shows at a minimal cost and with a final file size downloadable by the masses on a shoe string budget of financing and donations. I look forward to the next show which will no doubt bring about a more familiar feel with a digital set in a stage studio which promises not to produce any symptoms. Still, I wish I had been a little more impressed.

Could this however prove a point that Apple among many other supporters of citizen based media have been making for years? Could it be that media designed, created, and distributed by the masses, to the masses could actually outweigh the media that professionals are struggling to get right? More and more we are seeing shows such as the One Minute Tip, the MacCast and TikiBar TV registering much higher subscriber (especially long time subscriber) figures than the likes of the BBC, CNN or other major traditional media players as well as putting out professional shows, on time, and regularly. Now we are seeing a not-so-traditional media player, one designed for todays market produce a show easily rivaled by people sat in their bedrooms late at night with no more experience than the local paperboy.

It’s a fact that people are getting better and better at knowing what they want, and better and better at knowing how to deliver that to other like minded folks. Some large corporations such as Apple, AOL and Google are picking up on this idea and bringing podcasting, vidcasting and blogging to the mainstream, giving people the tools, services and support to create such an uprising; but how long can this last?

My point here is not about MacBreak, or any of it’s rivals. I believe MacBreak will deliver on all it’s promised between the lines and it’s competitors will continue to do so; but what part will todays mainstream media content providers play in the future of productions just like these? Ad free, distribution and subscription cost free, publicity free and royalty free shows which do nothing but deliver the content people want and do so without causing coffee breaks of complaints about commercials, corporate bias and content lacking are not readily on the agenda of these “players” in todays market.

However, just as blogging and podcasting have come back to bite the industry in the ass, it’s more than possible that non-commercial video will also; so what are they going to do about it?

[Editorial Opinion: This article is the ub grounded opinion of it's author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the website owner or any other contributor to the website or podcast.]

One of the most annoying aspects of iTunes as a Podcast aggregator was it’s “Auto Delete” Feature for podcast.

If you had not listened to a show after five days, it would simply delete that show.

Well I sure as heck don’t have time to constantly be caught up on 30 to 40 podcast, therefore I found this feature annoying at best.

Happy to report that as of iTunes version 6.02, this has been fixed. As usual Apple listens to their users and has now added a “Do Not Auto Delete” menu.

To use it just go to the podcast sections of your iTunes, highlight the podcast you want, right click and in the contextual menu select “Do Not Auto Delete.”

Enjoy
Victor

After talking about the rumor a while back, I today found a story on TUAW about a technology I am very excited about. Best of all; Apple are filing for the patent.

It occurred to me that while the iSight in the MacBook Pro was very “cool” and inevitable; it was quite frankly…. ugly. It needed some work because while it was incredibly small, it didn’t do much for the look of the product overall. Having that small black dot there (almost as bad as the IR sensor) threw the display off center of the frame which was very unbalanced and not at all aesthetic.

It looks like the technology to solve this issue, and many more, may well be coming to a Mac near you soon. Apple have filed for a patent that would enable them to effectively double the amount of pixels on a display, however; every other pixel would in fact be a miniature camera. That would give the screen both input and output capabilities. In effect, the screen would see you as you see it. Kids are smarter than us after all.

Apples “Integrated Sensing Display” Patent

This technology would mean that we no longer need web-cams, we no longer need “built-in iSights” and we no longer have to have off center displays. This would also mean that you are actually looking into the eyes of a person you are video conferencing with as opposed to at the screen and you each seeing the others forehead and eyelids. Of course, it doesn’t end there. It would almost certainly bring a clarity and resolution unmatched by traditional web-cams and be much lighter also.

What about the downsides? Well, I am sure many of you are thinking about being “filmed” while going about your business and the like, but it just doesn’t work that way. I am sure there would be people writing malware for these changes, but I doubt anything would get very widespread before being crushed. It would, I should imagine, higher the cost of the displays and thus the Mac overall, but as it becomes more widespread, it will certainly become less costly as is always the case. I am confident that Apple would make best use of this and bring potential that we haven’t even thought of yet.

I for one am very excited and can’t wait to see the benefits brought to life in a year or two.

It’s been a long standing wish of the tech community that those forced into using Windows at work and their choice operating system at home could one day use the same computer for both. For years the question has been asked; when will be be able to natively dual boot Windows and Mac OS?

Well, today the answer is worth over $6,000. Colin from Delicious Monster and Uneasy Silence which means the total prize fund currently stands at a whopping $6,702!

For those who have no idea what I am talking about, Macs have used PowerPC processors for years, and with the birth of the first Intel powered Macs this month there has been discussion of making your Mac able to boot either Mac OS X or Windows XP at will. This has been made theoretically possible, but with clauses of the Basic Input Output System (or BIOS) being different on new Intel Macs, support of this through some new Intel motherboards and lack of drivers for such an event. It’s been a debate that has raged in the land of the tech this month more than ever, and finally someone has laid down money to find the answer.

If you think you can do it, or you have already found the mysterious answer, then please visit WinXPonMac and claim your prize. Good luck to all entrants and power to the geeks!

If you want to donate to the cause then please send via PayPal to this address.

You get up in the morning, you shove in your earphones and fall into the car looking like something from a science book. You hit play on your “Morning Call Playlist” and you are able to make it the 15 feet in your car to the nearest Starbucks. You buy your “Short decaf cap” or “Tall mocha latte” or “Grande low-fat regular”, wake up and then…

Your mind switches on, your senses actually become aware of more than the sweet smell of coffee in the morning and you realize you have listened to this same playlist on the way to work for 671 working days in a row. You need more music. What do you do? Head home, log onto your computer and apologize for being late? Head to the office and call the tech. guy to unblock iTunes? Pass out?

This is where Starbucks plans on solving your problems for you:

A lot of our customers are asking for [music] device fill-up, and going forward we’ll do that

said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, at the Midem music industry conference in Cannes.

The obvious music device would be the incredibly popular iPod using the market share leading iTunes Music Store. There is no date set yet, but it’s expected sometime in 2006 or 2007. Filling up your iPod at Starbucks, what next? At gas stations?

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Show Notes
Evo Terra and the Dragon Page

Activity Monitor for the Mac

The Dock

George Starcher and Personal e-mail certificates

Thawte.com for digital e-mail certificates

Terminal Tips (Unix and Darwin)

Wikipedia definition of Unix

OS X based on Unix

OS X Terminal Commands (be careful and use at your own risk)

John Chambers and the One Minute Tip

One Minute Tip Podcast and John Chambers

An interesting article caught my eye earlier today from CNet. It was all about how iPod hard disk drives write the entire drive before overwriting it and that has lead to several criminal investigations due to the iPods ability to store contact information and not actually loose it.

How does this refer to Macs? Well, I assure you this isn’t going to turn into an iPod binge, but it certainly relates to Macs. There is in essence a list of files the operating system (Mac OS X and previous) can access buried in your operating system files. As with Windows file systems, when you delete a file from your Mac the filename is simply deleted from this list, but the file remains. This does not cause inaccurate readouts of disk space, but it does pose a potential security risk.

When you delete files from the trash, you can either “Empty Trash” or “Secure Empty Trash” from the Finder menu. If you “Secure Empty Trash” then you are overwriting that file data with zeros (nothingness). Secure? Not yet. This only overwrites the file once and it can still be accessed by an expert.

If you really want to be secure with deleted files then you can address the issue much more securely by once again accessing the Disk Utility application either from the Finder window, under Applications>Utilities or by simply doing a Spotlight search for the term “Disk Utility”. Once the application is open, choose the hard disk drive you want to secure from the list on the left and then choose the tab “Erase”. Don’t panic.

Next you will want to Erase Free Space… and then choose the number of passes you wish to make. The more passes you do, the more securely and permanently deleted your files will be, but the longer it will take. In addition, you will find that more available disk space (as listed at the bottom of the window) the longer the process can take; and it can take a long time.

You will not loose any un-deleted data during this process. That said; if you really want to secure your unwanted data (such as when you come to sell you Mac or otherwise destroy your Hard Disk Drive, you don’t want to just hit it or “Zero” it; you will have to take a drill to it (and replace as necessary). This is a little over the top for the typical user, but if you have financial information stored on your drive or something similar, it’s an option worth taking when you come to upgrade (after transferring the data you want to keep, obviously).

[Inspiring Article from CNet.com]

Over the past months there have been a lot of discussions over Apples new iPod connectivity and more recently the Intel based Macs connectivity. So this bows down to USB vs. FireWire then… Well, let’s “corner ‘em up”.

The origins of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface is complicated; so let’s start this article by looking at it and simplifying. Originally, there were two ways of the USB hardware to interface with the software which were both HCIs (Host Controller Interfaces). Compaq made the OHCI (Open) and Intel made the UHCI (Universal). Sadly, there was a battle and that forced hardware manufacturers to test on both systems.

Intel won the battle. Intel were more processor intensive than Compaq in this model because they were more software driven. This was not so great, but then… Intel make the CPUs. Of course, it meant that it worked out cheaper to make UHCI devices than OHCI. Overall, this was good for Intel because people would invest in the cheaper technology which pushed for faster and faster processors; something Intel was delivering.

So what about FireWire? FireWire (or IEEE 1394) is an Apple technology. Technically it is slower than USB2.0, however it is more expensive to manufacture because it’s more hardware based. FireWire 800 is faster than USB 2.0 (significantly with large amounts of data) and far more established in the industry for just this reason. It’s commonly used for video camera connectivity and other media based products; a field that Apple specializes in. The important note is that it is faster than USB 2.0 only because it does not fluctuate in transfer rate like the technically faster USB 2.0 does.

There is a twist to the tail though. Intel significantly aided in the design of FireWire 800. There was a falling out of Steve Jobs and the Intel camp over a Job’s proposal of a $1/port licensing fee. Intel used this as a reason to drop FireWire and create USB 2.0 instead. This is interesting when taken into account over the new “move” of Apple dropping FireWire and incorporating USB 2.0.

Perhaps this is a backlash of this argument, dating back to 1993? As everyone knows, PCs are more commonly associated with USB than FireWire, even if it’s an inferior product. Intel are moving in a direction that will please the majority of non-technical people however; they are adapting USB to be wireless, where FireWire is currently static and if anything heading for speed instead of “wirelessness”. Why would you want faster when you can have wireless right?

Draw your own conclusions, but to me it looks like Mac is heading in the direction of switchers and the non-tech minded… perhaps this is a big deal, but is it a big change?