I think I first heard about the Pogoplug on on TWiT a while back. At the time I really did not have a need for a device like this and all my hard-drives were being used for backup and archive storage. Recently Tim Verpoorten over at The Mac Review Cast covered the Pogoplug and given the upgrades that he mentioned I decided to buy one. I had already had a letter out to Cloud Engine  the  makers of the Pogoplug for a review unit,  but this one (full disclosure) I paid for in cash $127.00 U.S. at my Amazon store.

+ = Yum

 Standard Podcast [00:33:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tonight’s show is brought to you by:

Ambrosia Software

This show is a member of Friends In Tech

Show Notes:

MacSpeech Dictate

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Speech Recognition @ Wikipedia

Download iMovie HD 6

Asus eee PC 1000H

 Standard Podcast [00:41:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A bunch of us got together on Ustream to listen to the WWDC, Keynote. This was a live show I pulled together to get some of your opinions immediately following the Keynote. My goal was to get this out fast and have your voices heard.

Call the Listener Hotline 951-281-6332 Tonight’s show is brought to you by: Ambrosia Software

This show is a member of Friends In Tech

Show Notes:

iPhone 3G

iPhone 2.0 Software Update

MobileMe

QIK

Google Earth

George Stacher

Bart Busschots

We received a very nice external drive unit from OWC (Aka macsales.com). It is the Guardian MAXimus RAID 1 drive enclosure. You can order either just the enclosure itself or with a variety of drive sizes. The unit holds two drives and sets up a mirror between them. Mirroring across two drives ensures your data is still accessible if one of the drives fails. It is also kinda fun watching the synchronized drive activity lights when dumping large amounts of data onto the unit.

(more…)

Today I received a review unit of the OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0 2.5″ Portable SATA hard drive. My love for hard drives of all kinds is no secret to all of you. However this is the first time I’ve owned an FW800 drive. Below are some un-boxing pictures for you to enjoy. I will partition this baby and try it out for several weeks. I’ll then provide a full review on the podcast sometime in April.

Here are the pictures

by: George Starcher, Associate Editor

My dad couldn’t think of what to get me for Christmas. So he asked for a suggestion. Well I had a 250GB Sata drive sitting idle in a cheap compusa sata USB carrier that had a tendency to corrupt any data going to the drive. So I wanted to be able to use the drive to clone my iMac 24″ internal drive. That way if I have a failure I can reboot my iMac on the external clone until I can get a repair done.

Today I received Part#OWCMEFW924AL1K It looks great. It is very well tooled aluminum. It uses starheaded screws so they have to include a startipped tool so you can open the unit. They also include usb, eSata, firewire 400 and firewire 800 cables.

The case is so well fitted that it took me a minute or two to slide the cover off and another minute to get it back on. No shoddy loose fitting work on this chassis. It has no fan since the chassis itself serves to dissipate the heat. Let me tell you. Once you plug in a firewire 800 cable and kick off Carbon Copy Cloner you will laugh at the idea of using USB2 ever again. Can we sum it up with 53GB is just over an hour? I like the chassis so much I may actually have to buy a new Sata hard drive, keep the clone in a bag in a safe just so I can use the chassis all the time not just when I clone my iMac.

The unit ran $110 USD. Sure you can get external hard drives complete for that price or less. But if you have a good drive and want a solid enclosure with a quality chipset and your choice of interfaces you should consider this unit.

by: George Starcher, Associate Editor

I talked a while back in the show about the Airport Extreme. One of the issues was by default the IPv6 was not blocked. The v7.1 latest firmware fixed that. More importantly to me I found that it fixed another issue I was having. At random times I would lose authentication to the shared USB drive I have on the Extreme. Ever since I performed the firmware update that problem has gone away. Now if they will just come out with one for the AppleTV to fix the sporadic problem I have of it losing my place in podcasts.

If you are interested in seeing how I used a combination of Airport Extreme’s, AppleTV and even MS Media Center in my home you can check out my home network diagram over on the Friend’s in Tech blog.

by: George Starcher, Associate Editor

I just got back from Europe. While I was there I saw the AppleTV in the Regent Street Apple Store in London. I knew I had to have one as soon as I got back home. Sure enough I picked up one yesterday (the day after I got back). It was as easy to setup as everyone says. But here is one thing I have run into. I have the Harry Potter audiobooks I purchased through iTunes. But I also have an Audible subscription. None of my Audible audiobooks show up on the AppleTV. I guess even though audiobooks purchased through iTunes come from Audible, ones directly from Audible are considered third party unsupported files. This does make sense once I thought about it since they are in Audible’s format if you get them straight from Audible and protected AACs if you get them from iTunes.

Ok so I check to see the status of my “New iMac” and notice that they have not shipped it, but they are building it. Then I notice that instead of building a 2.33GHz like my old one, this new one is a 2.16GHz.

<INSERT DRAMATIC MUSIC HERE>

So. . . I call Apple and let them know. Shanon was very sorry to hear about my problem. She tells me unfortunately the new machine has been ordered and is in an order state where it cannot be canceled. I will have to wait until I receive the new one (with the wrong processor), then return it. They will build my machine for me again.

<INSERT UPSET VICTOR HERE>

So , I explain to Shanon that this just won’t do (ok maybe not my exact words). I ask for an escalation. Shanon puts me on hold and comes back and explains that they are transitioning to a new computer system (of course I wonder if they are Macs), then she says in the old system the order was still pending so she canceled it and will order a new one.

<INSERT VICTOR STARTING TO GET HIS BREATH BACK HERE>

I then tell Shanon that I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to buy this mac and that I really feel some compensation is in order. I ask that I be upgraded from 2gigs of Memory to 3gigs. Shanon tells me (very nicely) that this is a $500 request, and it will not likely happen (ok I’m paraphrasing her words here too).

I then request that I at least get upgraded to a 750Gig HD. Shanon goes off line and returns with the approval. She writes the new order (perfectly) and puts it in the system.

Shanon was excellent, graceful and took a very unsatisfied customer and turned me around. I asked for her supervisor, and gave her a commendation. I also told her that I was going to blog about this here.

Thanks Shanon for doing a great job. By the way folks, I’ll have that new iMac in about 4 days according to Shanon.

So the new “Lesson learned is. . . no one (even Apple ) is perfect. We take the next step, and we do the best we can. In this case I’ll feel better only after I turn on my new iMac and hear the start-up chime.

<INSERT HOPEFUL VICTOR HERE>

See pics below for examples of the order error:

Original order

Replacement order with error

Latest order (this one is right, thank’s Shanon)

 Standard Podcast [24:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

DIGG this Podcast

Show Notes

Technorama Podcast

Scott McCloud

Killer Keyboard Shortcuts

Avoiding Image Persistence

Terminal command to make icons translucent when they are hidden: defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes

Tinkertool

Apple’s podcasting hints

Yummy FTP

Transmit 3 from Panic

Cyberduck FTP

Captain FTP