| | | The day Windows 7 RC was released, I wanted to get it installed on my MacBook Pro. My MacBook has the power, and I already have a 40 gigabyte partition dedicated to Windows Vista Home. I rarely boot directly in to Vista using Boot Camp, but I do use Parallels to run that copy of Vista in a virtual machine (Parallels lets you use a Boot Camp partition as a disk in a virtual machine).
Having Vista available in both environments has been very handy, it's saved gigabytes of hard drive space by not having to dedicate 40GB in disk space to Boot Camp, and another 20GB to a disk image. In order to get Windows 7 installed, I wanted to make the existing Vista partition in to a Parallels virtual hard disk.
It took a while, but I found the perfect solution. Parallels has an application called Parallels Transporter for Windows that helps you move a real Windows PC to a Parallels virtual hard disk. It's perfect for people that want to move to the Mac, but that aren't yet ready to let their Windows applications go completely.
But for us, this means we can trick Parallels in to moving a Boot Camp based hard drive partition to a Parallels virtual disk. Simply install and run Parallels Transporter for Windows in the running Boot Camp based virtual machine. Run the Mac version of Parallels Transporter - the windows virtual machine looks exactly like a Windows based computer, and does it's job just as well.
The result is a virtual hard disk with an exact copy of your Boot Camp disk.
Thoughts? Comments? | |  |
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| | | | Do you know someone that needs a technology makeover? Someone that hears things like Twitter, iPhone, HD, etc., and really wants to know how to leverage these things in their daily lives? I'm looking for freelancers, CXOs, or simply GSDers that have a strong desire to learn about, and embrace technology.
I'll teach them about latest and greatest in computers and consumer technologies and services. I want to help them become comfortable enough with technology to enjoy it - to use it to improve their lives. They can make the move from technology as a necessity, or even a point of fear, to technology as a lifestyle enhancement.
Over and over again, I'm told that I have the ability to take technical subjects and present them to non-technical people in ways that make sense. Clearly there's a need to help people understand and embrace technology - and it happens to be a passion of mine. Ask anyone that knows me.
Why not send just people to the Apple store or Best Buy? Have a look at just about any store pushing technology (yes, even Apple). Sales people aren't in the business of teaching, they're programmed to sell. And sell they do. What's missing is the desire to help. That I have (to a fault at times).
It's time to bring people in to the modern age, without a hard sales pitch, and without the biased voice of the vendor. People don't want a pitch, they want technology that works.
For help with physical needs, such as installing networks or home theaters, I'll refer work to local business that specialize in those areas when it makes sense. The last thing I want to do is get in the way of local business.
What's my pricing model? I'll accept whatever the client determines the value of my services to be. There's nothing to lose. I'm doing this for fun, not for a living. I love technology, plain and simple, and I want to share my passion.
Do you know anyone that might benefit from my many years in technology? | | |
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| | | | Since my first post on piracy, I've been asked a few times to outline the programs I use day to day. Today I'm covering word processing and notes. I use a mix of online services and desktop programs. It sounds cumbersome, but it is pretty simple as each program has a specific use.
For notes and my blog posts, I use a simple program/web service combination called Evernote. It's a cross platform program with native apps for Mac, iPhone, Windows, and Windows Mobile. It is also accessible through the Evernote web site on any computer. All of these sources sync via Evernote.com, so I'm always up to date, everywhere. Think about that... your notes everywhere you are. The Mac version is my favorite because of the interface design. The built-in spell checking on the Mac is pretty amazing too. The Windows version is fine, but I'm not a fan of interface to the documents. It's like a long sheet with a strange cumbersome slider. Oh, be sure to check out the cool text recognition features of the iPhone app!
While Evernote is great for notes and blogs entries, most people don't use it. When I need to edit Word documents or send them to others, I use either Apple's iWork Pages or OpenOffice. Since all I typically do is read documents, the odd rendering problems I may encounter aren't that important. Compatibility in those applications has come a long, long way however. iWork '09 from Apple is $64.99 at Amazon. It includes Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheet), and Keynote (presentations). OpenOffice is free and can be downloaded from OpenOffice.org. There are Mac, Windows, and Linux versions, all available for free.
For work and when I need to collaborate on documents with others, Google Documents is simply amazing. It's 100% web based, and is great for allowing others to edit and view your docs. There is a revision history so you know who did what and when. It isn't as robust as a stand alone word processing program, but you should at least try it as it will serve the needs of a whole lot of you.
What do you use? | | |
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| | | | Yes, I'm a die-hard iPhone user. I'll try to sell it to anyone that even pretends to be interested in the device - some might even say I go overboard. I even stood in line (OK, camped out overnight) for both iPhones. I was second in line for the first, and third in line for the 3G at the Boulder, Colorado, Apple Store.
I find a lot of value in it and if people knew about the wonderful things it can do, everyone would want one. The app store is amazing, I've downloaded nearly 100 applications, and a lot of them are paid applications. The utility of these apps varies, but it is clear that Apple has set the bar for the industry. Not just in the iPhone's user interface, but in the App Store's purchasing process, and the overall iPhone experience. Each firmware release just makes things better and better.
As great as the iPhone is, it's missing a few features. A big one is copy and paste. I don't have a lot of use for it, but it sure stinks when I want it and it isn't there. The SMS alerts are modal and take over the screen. If you've ever been on a phone call and received an SMS you'll know what I mean. You have to acknowledge the SMS before you can end the call. You can only run one application at a time, and there are no background processes. If you get a new Tweet for example, you don't know until you open your Twitter application. If you get new messages in Facebook, you have to go to the Facebook app to find out. I'd love to see what developers could do if their apps were allowed to run processes in the background.
A term was coined shortly after the iPhone was introduced: "the iPhone Killer." As it has been loosely defined, it is any phone with a "touch" interface, or even more simply a touch screen. The device has to be internet connected and do lots of neat tricks like the iPhone. Several companies have tried to gain mind share with their offerings: Blackberry Storm, T-Mobile G1, Samsung Instinct, and host others. In my experience, these phones all feel rushed to market, as if they were conceived just after Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone. The T-Mobile G1 has gained a lot of attention by being completely open source - any developer can write applications for it, but it has (to date) failed to live up to its expectations.
At CES last week a new phone was introduced. As soon as I heard it was from Palm, Inc. I was quick to brush it off as another "iPhone Killer." A device that the company has put all of its heart and soul in to just be let down in sales and market adoption. The iPhone is the 600lb gorilla, after all. Palm, Inc. has lost everything it gained with the Palm OS, and has even been caught selling Windows Mobile instead. A has been company, looking for one final volley in the modern phone world.
And they knocked it out of the park. World, meet the Palm Pre. This is the first "iPhone Killer" that actually stands a chance at gaining a sustainable piece of the market. Apple might just be caught sweating about this one. Why? Because I (see above for why this is remarkable) want one. And I want it now.
This post isn't about the features and all of the things the Pre can do. For that I'll leave a link at the bottom to they introduction. This post is about me letting the world know that technology is evolving, and Apple is no longer the only player in the wicked smart phone market. Have a look at the video, and you'll be as amazed as I was. Pay particular attention the the charging mechanism and the sync process.
Here's the video: Palm Pre @CES. After you watch that, have a look at the coverage at Engadget. Read the user comments for extra credit: Palm Pre in-depth impressions, video, and huge hands-on gallery
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| | | | Windows Mojave wasn't a marketing campaign for Vista. I believe it was a test. A test to see if the public's perception of Vista was guided purely by pundits and quick witted geeks that weren't up for a little change in their favorite operating system. Once actual end users experienced Vista (Mojave), they actually enjoyed using it. For the record, I believe that Windows Vista is the best Windows yet.
Everyone has heard how bad Vista is, how incompatible, and slow. It doesn't run on your current system without upgrades. But Windows Vista is far and away the best selling operating system.
Microsoft contributed to the poor reception too. There were promises of a new core OS, a new file system, and a lot more. Most of that was left out, but the public's perception was that Microsoft is monolithic, slow, and seemingly incapable of rolling out a new "quality" operating system. Dinosaurs, right?
Maybe. But what they've done by introducing Windows 7 this early is they've moved the focus away from Vista "the failure" to Windows 7, the future. This will give them time to build a new brand around Windows 7. And based on what I've seen in the last few days, it's working.
At CES, Microsoft announced a public beta of Windows 7 to the first 2.5 million users to register. All would receive legal keys to register the software that will expire in August of 2009. The download was to take place on Friday afternoon - just two days after the announcement. What happened on Friday?
Early Friday morning, a link was "leaked" that promised to allow users to download the software before anyone else. I followed the link and was able to register for the key, but shortly there after that all of Microsoft's servers were serving errors. Direct links to download the software (which was good for 30 days without a key) still worked but the key servers were offline.
Today is Saturday, January 10th, and the key servers are online and working. But what did this experience say about the demand for Windows 7? Admittedly, Microsoft horribly underestimated the demand for the download.
Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc had this to say: "We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru January 24th). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit."
Above all else this proves that users, in droves, still believe in Windows. More importantly they believe that Windows 7 will be the start of a new lease on life for the Windows brand. Or, could it be that people just want a free legal copy of Windows 7 because they can get it?
I'm a Mac user, and I love the progress Apple has made in the market. From Mac OS X itself, to the iPod, and iPhone. But I'm not counting Microsoft out of the race by any means. If the change in focus to Windows 7 works, Windows 7 will be able to regain some of the lost confidence in Microsoft. I now legally own four copies of Windows: 1 Windows XP, and 3 Windows Vista. I was able to download two copies of Windows 7, too.
If you haven't downloaded your LEGAL copy of Windows, grab it now. It's free, and won't expire until August: Download Windows 7
What are your thoughts? | | |
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| | | | According to Apple's built-in dictionary, the word integrity means: "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moraluprightness." I also like this definition: "Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking." Over the past four and a half years, I've given this word a lot of thought. Exactly how does one live a life of integrity? As with everything else, you try as hard as you can. Then try even harder.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen this tweet recently: "Finally legit on Windows Vista Home Premium. Nothing pirated now: music, video, software... 100% clean. Booyah!" This was a major milestone for me. I've been working toward this for a while and decided to push through and finish the job. As the tweet says, I have no pirated media or software on my computers.
I made the decision a couple of years ago to forego having all of the latest and greatest media as a part of living a more honest and respectable life. It was an easy way for me to demonstrate that I place a high value on doing the right thing. It started with the erasing 60GB+ of music, and 20GB of movies and video. I set aside the few releases that had been purchased through the iTunes Store, but everything else had to go. I rebuilt my collection by ripping music from CDs I own, and combining that with music purchased digitally. Then came software. Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and a lot more, all gone. Replaced with free/cheap alternatives such as iWork, GiMP, and iLife.
Downloading movies and music, or even software isn't viewed the same way as stealing a physical CD. Why is that? You wouldn't walk out of a Virgin Megastore with a hand full of DVDs under your jacket "for the plane ride" would you? The fact that no one notices when you torrent them doesn't make it OK (see the definition of integrity above).
It is getting easier to play by the rules when it comes to digital media. And if you play, it will get even easier. Check out iTunes Plus, Amazon's MP3 store, the Zune Store, and eMusic for legal DRM free downloadable music. None of them are free (as in beer), no. See Hulu, Netflix, TV.com, and each of the TV network's web sites for streaming TV shows and movies. Try Last.fm and Pandora for free streaming radio stations built just for you.
Why not consider something free instead? There are lots of office suites, and several free or inexpensive image editing apps too. If you're making money using pirated software, then go buy it now, or "may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits."
If price is the reason you pirate media, stay tuned, we'll get to your financial issues soon enough. | | |
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| | | | I believe the days of operating system dependence have finally come to an end, and I'm ready to test it. I know, this is a little strange coming from me, but I think everyone should hear it (and Digg it!).
A new era of technological independence is upon us - either of the two major operating systems will do the job just fine. I left Linux out of of the equation for one reason, and one reason only. iPod/iPhone integration just isn't simple enough for *most* users. It just doesn't get better than iTunes for that, so blame Apple.
Some things may work better with one or the other. And I'm not talking about obvious specialty markets (gaming, platform specific application development, etc.), but the things that matter to the average user. The web, email, office applications, chat, media applications, etc.
Admittedly, I'm a power user, and have been primarily a Mac user since 1987. I've been using computers since 1983 beginning with the RadioShack MC10. I've seen a lot of changes in the computer industry (I actually learned a bit of Cobol, I have used punch cards LOL, and I'm only 40 years old ;-) and I think now is by far the coolest time in the history of technology.
So how am I going to test this theory? I'm prepared to switch full time to Windows Vista Home Premium - for at least 30 days.
I really want to help the average user figure out how to live with either operating system, equally. So if you're on the fence, in either direction, subscribe to the RSS feed
I'm using IntenseDebate for comments, so by all means sign up for an account and comment away. The comments are threaded. :) | | |
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| | | | I've been a Zend Studio user for a long, long time. Being a Mac user has made it interesting at times (we're still a server release behind, for example), but the productivity gains that using an IDE with a debugger gives me makes the occasional "suck" well worth it. There are others out there, but this is the best one I've found for PHP.
A while ago, Zend turned to the Eclipse project for their IDE. Eclipse is an open source cross-platform Integrated Development Environment that supports many programming languages. It provides syntax highlighting and lots of other goodness way beyond the scope of this post. If that stuff geeks out out, look here: Eclipse.
I'm thinking that Zend made this move to allow them to focus on the core Zend Platform instead of working on a custom IDE for the whole thing. It makes perfect sense really, and it makes sense that there would be a few bumps in the road as the product matures.
On of our products uses a feature of the Apache server that allows you to process specific files with a particular plugin. In our case, we wanted the "page" script to be processed as a PHP file. The "page" script has no file extension... it works well, and has for a long time. Zend Studio 5 has always allowed us to edit the "page" script, including PHP syntax highlighting and debugging, with no problems. It turns out that Eclipse doesn't pay attention to the content of the file, but instead uses the extension to decide how to treat the file. Bummer.
Again, Zend Studio 5 is a proprietary IDE made by Zend, and Eclipse is an open-source application, with a whole new architecture to support. Things happen, right? Well no, this was too much of a problem for us, so we've put off moving to Zend Studio for Eclipse until support for no extensions is added.
Kind of.
I sent a tweet: "Zend Studio 6.1 still doesn't let me associate a file with no extension to PHP. Guess we're sticking with 5.5.1 for now." and a little bit later was replied to by royganor from Zend. He mentioned a trick to make it work.
What a trick, indeed. Do this at your own risk. If you bork your install, I'll try to help, but ultimately you're on your own.
1. Go to your Zend > Zend Studio for Exclipse 6.x > Plugins folder and look for org.eclipse.php.core. Mine was actually a .jar file. If it is a jar file, simply rename the .jar to .zip and decompress. The resulting directory will work the same as the .jar file. (keep the .zip as a backup)
2. Search for the string: file-extensions
3. Add a comma inside the extension list. Mine looks like this: file-extensions="php,php3,php4,php5,,phtml,inc"
4. Save the file and start Zend Studio for Eclipse
It turns out that the double comma is interpreted as an empty string, as it should be. But this is dirty, yep. Expect it to be overwritten by your next install, etc. But all files that don't have an extension will now be handled as PHP by Eclipse.
UPDATE for Zend 7.2: Apparently the custom user extensions have been moved to the folder in your home directory. I found it through trial and error here: ~/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings/org.eclipse.core.runtime.prefs The same rule applies... just add an extra comma to the content-types/org.eclipse.php.core.phpsource/file-extensions value, then launch Zend Studio with the -clean option. I've tested it, and it works. Thanks again to royganor for the inspiration. | | |
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| | | | Tonight Microsoft released three new ads meant to answer Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads. The ads start with a John Hodgman look alike, but finish with a a number of real people doing real work with PCs. Business, creative, education, etc... they're all represented.
Nice job Microsoft. I'm a PC could be a hit. | | |
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| | | | After our successful modding of the Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset for use with the iPhone, I realized that there may be others interested in the pinouts for the iPhone headphone plug. I've seen other places that mention the external iPhone plug functions, but to do anything productive you need to know which colors go to the plug itself.
What are the iPhone headphone plug pinouts?
Green is 1st contact/left headphone
Red is 2nd contact/right headphone
Red/Green Combo and both coppers are 3rd contact/ground
White is 4th contact/microphone - the white wire is inside the red/green combo wire
If you would like for us to mod a headset for you, leave a note in the comments and I'll get back to you. The process should work with any headset that uses the 3.5mm plugs for input and output. It is just a matter of determining what the wires do in the headset itself.
I also found that the Verizon stores carry a 3.5mm to 2.5mm adaptor for US $3.99 - it has the same pins in the same positions, though I haven't tested it. The Verizon adaptor option is way cheaper than destroying a US $29.99 pair of Apple iPhone buds. If you try it and it works let me know and I'll update this post. | | |
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