“Free” Apple Laptop Recovery Solution Available

This is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop (Mac, Linux and Windows) that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go – there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop.

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner’s laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

The Mac OS X version also has an option to capture pictures of the laptop user or thief using the built-in iSight camera and the freeware tool isightcapture.

NY Post raises Steve Jobs health scare

The New York Post has set out more concern this morning at the health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.  Market manipulation?  You be the judge.  Apple’s stock is significantly down on the news.

Apple will reveal its quarterly results during a conference call this afternoon at 2pm (PDT), but, according to the report, people meeting him in recent weeks appear concerned at his “thin appearance”. “Apple’s hedge fund investors are very worried,” a Wall Street source who has spoken with some of the company’s stakeholders told the newspaper.

Concerns at the health of the Apple co-founder emerged last month after a thinner-looking Jobs took to the stage at WWDC to introduce the iPhone 3G. Responding to these concerns, Apple later said Jobs had been suffering from a “common bug”, from which he was expected to make a full recovery, blaming his weight loss on the antibiotics he had to take.

Free 3D Solitaire for OS X

There is not much to say here. This is a screen shot of a very nice 3D Solitaire game for the Macintosh.

Keep Track of Everything with a FREE Application

I hate keeping pieces of paper around with notes on them. I also hate stuffing notes in my wallet. Wallets fat with paper hurt to sit on. I found a FREE application that you can keep in your Doc. You can Copy & Paste anything you want to it. User Names and passwords, Google Maps with directions, draft documents,etc. Basically, almost anyting that you can see on your computer screen can be copied and saved for quick and easy retrieval with this program. Did I say it was FREE? You can sort, categorize, color code, drag and drop and export to you Ipod if you like. Everything lives in a single window.  XPad

PDF Power

When you using a Windows computer you must install a program to read PDF (portable document format) files. Adobe created the format and it is now a standard. Their reader has become gigantic and harder to use on older computers. I recommend Windows users turn to Foxit. It is light weight and that means it works with older and new Windows computers.

On the Macintosh side, there is is all kinds of PDF goodness. First and foremost, PDF manipulation is built into OSX. That means you do not need a separate program to read PDF files. If you click on a PDF, it will open in “Preview.” The other feature that many users don’t see is that you can create PDFs very easily in OSX as well. Anything that you can print, can be turned into a PDF. From any application that can print, select File/Print. You will see the dialog box on the right. Select the PDF button and select “save as PDF.”

Burning CDs & DVDs Made Easy

Burn, as you might have guessed, is a disk burning program. I’ve used it only for burning data disks, but it’s capable of burning audio and MP3 disks and video disks in a variety of formats (DVD, VCD, SVCD, DivX). It’s even able to burn disk images.

I like Burn because of its ease of use and reliability. I’ve used it for burning both CDs and DVDs at high speeds (CDs at 52x and DVDs at 16x) with no errors. Of course, the quality of disk media is also an important factor in disk burning reliability, so high-speed burns might fail with poor quality media.

The Burn window has panes for data, audio, video and copy options. Files can be easily added to the Burn window with the plus button at the bottom of the window or by dragging and dropping files into the window. After files are added, you’ll see the total size for all the files at the bottom of the window.
If you plan on making CDs or DVDs often, keep burn in you Dock. Remember to save a program in the Dock. Run it, and then right click on the icon and select “keep in dock.”

Add More Space!

With only 13.3″ screen, you can run out of space pretty fast on a Macbook. The new Leopard operating system has a neat feature that gives you more space to store running programs. Spaces has the ability to add up to 15 more screens to your system. 16 total screens is overkill, but two or three more screens can help you get work done faster without the need to minimize and expand. Multiple screen has been around for some time. Users of Linux operating systems have had this feature built in for many years. Popular operating systems have not adopted this layering system until now.

BPS users will have to look for Spaces. Spaces was not placed in your Dock by default. You can startup spaces from your application folder or (command + space bar) and type spaces. Once activated you can select the number of rows and columns (in system preferences). The default is two rows and two columns. I find it easier to limit to one row and two or three columns to start. Once you have become used to the feature you can go wild. The best way to keep Spaces ready to use is to add it to your dock. When running, right click (control+click) and select “keep in dock.”

Once Spaces has been activated and configured you can slide application to the side of your screen or click on Spaces in the dock and drag application where you want. Moving from one screen to the next can be done in two ways. Pressing (control) and either the left or right arrow key will switch your view to the next screen. You can also add a Spaces icon to the Menu Bar in Preferences. The Menu Bar Icon will allow movement with a click. Spaces allows you to change your mind and move applications from window to window whenever you like. Spaces preferences also allows you to specify which screen an application will load in (press + to add applications). This is a nice feature once you get used to using it. Spaces comes in handy with Parallels. You can run Windows XP full screen in one space and other applications in the rest. One caution, using several applications at once will reduce your memory resources. Try not to over do it.

How to Delete Applications

If you are new to Macintosh, you may wonder how to delete programs from your computer. Deleting programs in Windows XP required you to go to the Control Panel. Then you found your application and deleted it. Pretty simple once you got the hang of it. Some users made the mistake of throwing the application into the Recycle Bin. They then discovered that this was a bad move. In some cases, remnants of the program would remain and in other cases XP started to act up. Windows programs often copy important files to several different parts of the operating system. If you just delete the program folder, there could be many files and settings that are left behind. OSX does not work this way. When you install a program, most of the time, you just drag it to the Applications folder. To delete a file, you can grab that same icon and drag it to the trash to remove it from your system. You can do this, but there will be files left behind. These files will not harm the function of your computer, but they will add up over time. There are applications available that will give you a clean sweep. I have been using AppZapper since the beginning. Using AppZapper is very simple. You grab that icon and drag it to the AppZapper window. You will then see all of the application files. When you click on Zap! all of the program will be sent to the trash can. AppZapper is not free. For $12.95, I think it is a good investment. There is a FREE program available that works in much the same way as AppZapper.
AppDelete is a free alternative. AppDelete is started by dropping an application onto the AppDelete icon. You can drop either the application or the folder that the application is in onto the icon. Once you do this you will get a confirmation window displaying the name of the application you dropped.

Google Calendar and iCal

I’ve been burned by Outlook failures too many times. For quite some time I did not use a calendaring program. If you are not in the business world, you can live without a calendar program. When a bought my first Macintosh I started to use iCal. I liked the simplicity of the program and the features it offered. The problem was that I was often on a Windows computer far away from my Mac. Then I learned about Google Calendar. The beauty of Google Calendar is that it can broadcast your information to other applications over the Internet. Now, I use Google Calendar as my primary calendar program. After I complete a scheduled task it automatically sends it to iCal. Google Calendar also sends be an email every day with my itinerary. To get started you must have a Gmail account. The accounts are free and it opens the door to many of the other free Google programs.

Automatic Backups & Time Machine

Get yourself an external hard drive! A portable hard drive powered by the usb port is what you want. They travel very well with your computer, and you can find them at any retailer that sells electronics. Make sure that you purchase one that is larger than the 120 gigabyte hard drive in your Macbook. A 160 gigabyte version of the the Western Digital drive pictured will set you back $94. WD Passports are available in several colors.

Setting up Time Machine under Mac OS X Leopard includes plugging in a hard drive, opening Time Machine under System Preferences, and clicking the large virtual switch to ‘On.’ Users then select the drive they just plugged in and don’t have to think about backups again. Time Machine silently and automatically tracks each version of every file, allowing users to metaphorically go back in time to retrieve any version of a document desired.

Apple’s software performs incremental backups to ensure all changes are saved between backups, and includes a Time Machine menu in the System menu bar that allows users to see the backup status or elect to back up on the spot. Restoring requires users to select the desired files or folders and click restore, causing Leopard to place the files exactly where they were previously.