Tag: google

Our Current Methods

Attached: Our Current Methods
Message from info@j2mac.com:

http://bit.ly/j2currentmethods I am inspired to create a doc that has all of our current methodologies. I'm going to update it from time to time, and rely on Google Docs to keep revisions.

Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Google Docs logo

The Usual Scenario

Client buys a new Mac

Typical Purchase

Single CPU for home or small biz. Client should walk out of the Apple Store with at least:

  • Mac

I think everyone should have a laptop as their main computer, buy maybe they really want an iMac.

  • AppleCare

Maaaybe someone wants to buy at Best Buy and get their extra coverage, but I want every Mac to have AppleCare. Businesses can negotiate for custom AppleCare quotes.

  • External hard drive
    (See the section on Backups for current software selections.)

This can be a 1TB or 2TB Time Capsule, but if they already have a wireless router, then an external drive with FireWire is essential. In San Antonio, the 3 brands that both are available and don’t suck completely are LaCie and G-Tech (Apple Store) and Seagate (Best Buy). 

The number of LaCie d2 Quadra drives we have unpacked and installed has probably entered 3 digits: FireWire 800 is now standard on every Mac except the MacBook, and the extra option of eSATA rocks. Until recently, we spec’ed the 500GB model, but since the 1TB unit is $154 on Amazon, that size has entered the sweet spot of price-per-gigabyte.

 

Email

  • Consumers

If a client uses an email address given them by their ISP, we immediately start pushing them to sign up for a Gmail address. If they don’t want to do it, fine, but it’s easy to assure them that the process, described below, is quite easy and painless.

So, obviously you sign ’em up http://gmail.com. Then we turn on forwarding in the ISP’s webmail, and the vacation responder as well, to say, “Thanks for writing me. Please know that, from now on, you can find me at yaddayadda@gmail.com.” Also, in Gmail settings, we configure a filter that “labels” any mail sent to the old address as, for example, “satx.rr.com” or “sbcglobal” or whatever.

Other Gmail settings to tweak are: keyboard shortcuts ON, IMAP enabled, and HTTPS/SSL enforced.

Obviously, we are usually going to configure Apple’s Mail.app. See this hint for a good tweaking of Google’s recommended config for Mail (I am going to comment on that hint with a couple of amendments that I have found useful). But I want people to get familiar with the Google webmail interface. Show them filters and labels. Consider showing them Docs, Calendar, and Buzz, and even Wave if they’re a bit nerdy.

  • Businesses

Business clients are always asked who their email host is, if any. 

New Mac setup

  • Run Software Update.
  • Next, System Preferences:

    1. Desktop & Screen Saver: Turn off “Translucent menu bar,” and demo RSS screensaver.
    2. Security: Turn on the Firewall and enable Stealth Mode. Consider “Require password to wake from sleep.”
    3. Keyboard: Turn on “All controls” for a tab-able interface.
    4. Trackpad: Turn on “Tap to click.”
    5. Sharing: Anonymize computer name. Consider File and Screen Sharing for desktops, but turn off every service on laptops.
    6. Accounts: Configure second admin account called “Administrator,” with the same password as the primary user. On laptops, turn off “Automatic login.” On any Mac, turn on “Allow guests to log in,” and turn off “Allow guests to connect to shared folders.” Consider additional user accounts and fast user switching.
    7. Date & Time: Make sure network time service is enabled.
    8. Time Machine: (See section on Backups.)
  • Next, install freeware: See this blog post for Things I Download on Every Mac. Direct links are included.
  • Safari: Turn on Autofill for “User names and passwords,” and “When a new tab or window opens, make it active.” Set new windows and new tabs to open to “Empty Page.”
  • Mail.app: Bold unread messages. See above for configuring Mail for Gmail.

Backups
  • On-site
1 Partition on external hard drive. SuperDuper backup will live side-by-side with Time Machine.
Time Machine
SuperDuper (Carbon Copy Cloner is great, but just not as clean, and not anywhere near as FAST as SuperDuper. Also, CCC can’t co-exist with Time Machine backing up to the same partition.)
  • Off-site
MobileMe Backup is fine for basics. If they don’t have MobileMe, consider MozyHome (free) or Carbonite ($5/month and unlimited, use coupon code TWiT.)

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

Netflix on iPad! Wheeeeee!

Pardon the long URL below, but streaming netflix is so freakin huge. And Apple has posted a list of HTML5-compliant sites: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ready-for-ipad/ . Sorry, Flash, but you’re no dealbreaker.

We just left Best Buy. It’s as good as I need it to be for now.

iTunes link to netflix app:
http://www.google.com/m/url?cd=4&client=safari&ct=res&ei=d463S8jfAo27twf96vK-…

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Project management and Google Apps Marketplace

I’m looking for another project-management solution. Basecamp just seems to confuse clients, consultants and staff. Definitely not a file-sharing solution. The only benefit I get is a task list with reminders. Whoopee. Their customer service is argumentative and unhelpful, and the workarounds too time-consuming. 

Have you played with Zoho Projects? 

Also, Google Apps Marketplace has just come into play. They’ve put a compelling new twist on the relatively-new-itself “app store” idea. Now, whenever I think “I need an online service that does [insert ingenious time-saving mechanism here],” I going straight to Marketplace.

I did a search for “project management”, and came up with a list of options — some free, some not. (Mind Meister Mind Mapping, recommended recently by a friend, was in there.) Then I saw the “Project Management” category in the navbar, which oddly came up with a differently sorted list with some different items.

Marketplace is interesting. The obvious immediate upside is “single sign-on,” i.e. signing into any of the listed services with your Google Apps login (in your case, the sitenb.com ID). They also list the benefit of “Google’s universal navigation.” I am definitely looking forward to imposing a consistent, extensible look between my cloud-based application — but I don’t know if that’s what “universal navigation” means yet.

I’ll admit I’ve had some problems getting a couple to work, especially with existing accounts at the respective services like Freshbooks. But I think it’s gonna be cool. By the way, I’m starting to see that Chrome should become one’s centre for all of this software-as-service, online app, cloud-tastic, web-2 stuff. Now I do all my research and reading in Safari, and all my mail, docs, invoicing, task management, and dish washing in Chrome. It’s just so springy!

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iPad … ?

LG wrote:
So, about the iPad.

Can’t wait!
Can you back up the data, same as with a lap top?

Most of the data on my iPhone is synced either over the internet (email, contacts & calendar, notes, passwords, clipboards, bookmarks) or over a cable with my Mac’s iTunes and photo management app (music, photo, movies, voice memos). Beside that material, iTunes backs up all my phone service settings and app data whenever I plug in the cable. So I just need to make sure my Mac is backed up.
What are the biggest cons?

Right now, this is mostly anybody’s guess. I could list the major gripes of Apple’s not including Flash support, which I have resolved not to miss, or a bloody camera, which decision Apple can roll up and choke on.
Cost?

Less if you wait a few months. I don’t think they’re gonna make the mistake of dropping the price in 3 months like they did with the iPhone, but eventually used and refurbished models models will be on the market.

2010 is set to be pure mobile fun. The recent massive success of Google’s Android operating system, now proliferated on dozens of phones, means that the iPad won’t be the only decent tablet for very long. New features, lower prices … good times!
Protecting the screen?

Don’t click on this pretty funny link if you’re easily offended. There are going to be enough cases on the market to make your head spin, but any i-anything owner needs to be ready to pay for screen repair. 

In other words, good luck!
I’m thinking of one for my college student.

I wish I had had one in school. I’d go for the $499 one. It’ll be plenty. (I’m going to buy the $629 model with wifi and 3G.)

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Online sketching & painting

I'm no artist, but since the iPad announcement, I have gotten excited by the creative image-manipulation possibilities opened by touch-on-a-tablet. What a cool portable canvas! 

I addition to mobile apps, some very impressive browser-based applications have come online, so to speak. All of these options give us the chance to express ideas digitally without necessarily having a computer around, or an expensive program whose myriad features we might barely tap.      

So I just wanted to name some of the good ones I know and see if anyone wants to add to the list:

Brushes has been on the iPhone for a little while, and was made famous by the artist who created a cover for the New Yorker on his phone. 

Sketchpad – Online Paint/Drawing application: My browser couldn't do this before. And it ain't Flash. 

Aviary.com: Just heard about this on This Week in Google. Aviary used to cost, but they just slashed the price clean off. Image editing, video effects editing, vector drawing, image markup, sound editing… None of the individual components of this incredible suite of tools would, by themselves, replace their desktop-installed competitors. They're kind of sluggish, and lack ergonomics like shortcuts. But it's a boon to have them available whenever, wherever. And they have a plug-in for Google Apps. 

SketchBook Mobile [iTunes] by Autodesk: Looks like the best sketching tool for the iPhone. I like the layers feature a lot. Autodesk is the developer most entrenched among architects, and SketchBook comes in way handy for marking up drawings in the field.

There are tons of photo-manipulation apps for the iPhone, like Photoshop Mobile and TiltShift Generator (both of which, by the way, also have web apps here and here), but I'll just leave off here or I'll be hunting and testing all night.

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Glowing Apple MacBook skins

Robert Marcus wrote:
Like my new mac sticker?

Just kidding. Have you seen this and others? If not here's the link from Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/amazing-iron-man-macbook-sticker/

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jonathan Marcus <jjmarcus@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: Like my new mac sticker?
To: Robert Marcus <joggernut@gmail.com>

That's sweet. First one I knew of that took advantage of the Apple is this:

CreationOfAdam.jpg

From http://www.pvpstuff.com/skins.html (heard about on MBW episode 156: http://wiki.twit.tv/wiki/MacBreak_Weekly_156). The glowing Apple's not in the shot, but it's right where the fingers touch.

(BTW, I'm putting this on the blog.)

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Up close and personal with the iPad

Photo by Karl Mondon / Bay Area News Group

Link to slideshow at the Contra Costa Times

My pal Karl, a Bay Area photojournalist, took this about 10 minutes into Steve Jobs presentation yesterday. We texted afterwards:

Karl: So…what’s the verdict? I tried to rub one on my thigh to see if I’d hear violins, but it was too loud in there, and security was starting to eye me.

Me: Heehee! I’m sure there’ll be an app for that. Jobs knows, the porn industry is thrilled by this thing. Well, I’m psyched, of course. Wish it had a camera, and I wanna hear if heavy reading brings eye fatigue, but, shoot, it’s clearly a game-changer.


Karl: Sweet. Hope it’s a bonanza for the J2 MacWhisperer.

Me: Thing is, these devices are so bloody easy, people just do what they want with ’em, and they just work. Once we set someone’s iPhone up, we get very few calls afterwards asking us how to use it. It’s ridiculous. That’s why they design them without the fancy stuff. You want a tablet with two cameras, front and back? (c.f: Jason Calacanis’ predictions at http://twitter.com/jason/.) Somebody’ll make one, probably with Android, and it’ll be good. It may not be as baby-butt smooth as the iPad, and it will owe an elephantine debt of gratitude to Apple’s Platonic ideal of “tablet,” but it will do things the iPad won’t. So goeth evolution, which I guess means they won’t get to use iPads in Kansas.
Other friends wrote in:

Not a problem if they would just make Bluetooth tethering actually do something. GD AT&T. I’m glad it doesn’t have 3G. Love the Kindle Whispernet!

>Jobs certainly did not deign to mention that one can run Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone on this thing, adding tons of purchasable material to whatever deals Apple has made with publishers.

Very happy with iWork and Camera Connection Kit. Those were deal breakers for me. I’m gonna be looking real hard at some of these replacing laptops for some of my folks. Put a server-managed iMac on their desk and one of these ZERO support beauties in their hands and I’m a happy IT guy.

There’s little question to me that the iPad and its ilk will be replacing laptops and desktops for many people. So many of our clients don’t do anything beyond email, web surfing, and document processing with their computers, and while they love their Macs, the Mac OS is clearly too much and too confusing for many folks, who wish their computer would “just work.”

I’m very pleased, not just because it was one of my predictions, that they highlighted the creative possibilities the iPad presents. It’s a great canvas, and I am going to be happily doing presentations and proposals and spreadsheets on it. Yet I still don’t have a sense of how you save files on it, or whether you can open, say, a Word doc attachment from an email into the Pages app. Google Docs support, pleeeeeeeeeeease?
Also, I was very amused and beaming that, last night, my 9-year-old daughter said, “It would be cool if it could be a keyboard and a painting pad for your computer.” Woah, I hadn’t even thought of that! I’m already using Touchpad Elite [iTunes link] to control my Macs over VNC. The iPad might very well take the place of a Wacom tablet, sans the pressure sensitivity.

Prices seem great without 3G, pricey with. I’m sure most of that addition $130 has nothing to do with hardware. Probably $4 hardware, $126 profit for Apple, AT&T, etc.

I was thinking the same thing. It’s really a jerky gouge, especially considering how much he was touting their pricing. And I’m gonna have to buy the 3G version; I probably won’t pay for the service every month, but I it could be handy, and I think it will be more attractive in resale.

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Password change

I changed my password in Google Mail yesterday.  This morning, Mail.app was not able to access nor was my iCal.
So obviously there is another step that I did not know to take.

You just need to plug the new password into a few places:

  • Apple Mail (Mail menu > Preferences > Accounts > Incoming Mail Server settings, and also click “Edit SMTP Server List” in the Outgoing Mail Server drop-down)
  • iCal (iCal > Preferences > Accounts)
  • iPhone (Settings > Mail, Contacts, and Calendar > tap on your account, change the password in Account Information and also in Outgoing Mail Server > Primary Server).

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type management input needed

From: Marina
Date: January 12, 2010

We are trying to get industry feedback on why type management is an essential tool in the day-to-day business and production of graphic design. Why is type management important to your business? What type management tool do you use? We need validation for our argument that type management should be incorporated into any graphic design curriculum.

Well, I can't begin to imagine why someone would pose an argument against font management (I'll point out that "type management" doesn't google well in place of "font management"). How could one possibly deal with, evaluate, and compare thousands of fonts without management software? If you load them all into your Mac's font library all at once, you'll crash your user account — hard. OS X's built-in Font Book lets you turn fonts off and on, but they sit in your Library, clogging up your system. 

For a couple of years now, designers have been able to by pass the roughly $100 expense of the well known Suitcase and FontAgent with the free FontExplorerX by Linotype. It worked very very well, all the way through OS X 10.5, but last year, Linotype released FontExplorer Pro and announced discontinued support for the free version, left without OS X 10.6 or Adobe CS4 compatibility at v1.2.3. Ah well, all things must pass. At least it's $20 less than the competition.

So, we're kind of back where we started, with a few expensive options, but at least they have all matured into full-featured, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing packages, which have great tools for helping you pick the right type for the task. This AppleBlog article has a basic comparison of the apps. I have an old bias against Extensis Suitcase, which put designers through all kinds of bugs and crashes and incompatibilities through the evolution of Mac OS X. FontAgent has had an edge on Suitcase, but now the two appear neck-and-neck, with FontExplorer Pro taking a bit of a lead. The post makes the smart recommendation to kick the tires on all the trials.

Meanwhile, trying to design without one of these tools would be well nigh impossible, or at least mind-numbingly inefficient, and students should learn to get a handle on their font collection, even before they start trying to crank out their first document.

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