Holiday Computer Updates

Since you are going to be there anyway, now would be a great time to check the computers of your users for updates, security issues and other crazy things that they usually bug you about during the year. Here is a quick list of those things that you can do quickly to save them, and you, headaches for the new year.

Windows

• Put them on OpenDNS. You could use GoogleDNS, but I still prefer OpenDNS for the safety factor and I think, at least for me, it’s faster. Those addresses are:
• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220
• Run Windows update. If they are on XP, make sure you get Service Pack 3 and Internet Explorer v8
• Run a full adware/virus scan with Malwarebytes. It’s free, takes about 20 minutes and will remove just about anything that is bad on their systems
• Check the status of their AntiVirus. Make sure it’s still working and up-to-date. If it’s not a current version, uninstall it and install AVG Free.
• Go into Add/Remove programs. Uninstall Realplayer, MusicMatch and anything else that is no longer relevant and probably not used
• If you are feeling brave, clean up their startup. Check All Users –> Start Menu –>Start Up and delete anything there that isn’t needed.
• Continue with the startup clean up. Open the registry (Start->Run->regedit) and navigate to HKEY Local Machine ->Software ->Microsoft ->Windows ->Current Version ->Run. Delete anything there that doesn’t need to be running when the computer starts.
• You could install FireFox, Chrome or Safari. Make sure to set it as the default browser. There was a zero day problem with IE8 last week, so it’s still not safe.
• **Updated**. If you are sending a PC to the UK, make sure to hit the voltage switch on the power supply to avoid any explosions or fuse blowing.

Mac

• Restart the computer

No matter what, make this the year you really bug your users about backing up. Anymore, external hard drives are so cheap, there is no excuse. Get one and install Crash Plan (Free, Win/Mac/Linux) and set it up.

Start to finish, this should take you about an hour. It’s also going to make your users computer experience better, faster and safer. Not only that, but it will save you from those phone calls later in the year. They will be forever grateful.

5 Apps that should be on every Mac

So you bought a Mac. Nicely done. I’m sure that you have already discovered why your friends and the internet won’t shut up about this damned computer. For me, it’s iPhoto, iMovie ‘08 and Preview, plus the fact that it. Just. Works.

Besides that, there are a few other apps that I think should be preinstalled on every Mac. Let’s call this my list of must have Mac applications.

First up in our hit parade has to be Skitch. Sure the Mac does screen shots out of the box very well, but Skitch takes screen shots to a new level. Easy to use, quick to start, plus you can do all kinds of neat things like add text or graphics to your snaps. Then, when you are done, you can easily share those snaps with the entire world via Flickr or Skitch.com. This is an app that should cost $50 for the Pro version. Luckily, it’s still free!

In the number 2 spot is Quicksilver. It’s an app launcher and much much more. Also free. If you are one that likes to use the keyboard more than the mouse, I highly recommend it. Once installed, set it to launch with a cmd-spacebar key* combo. Feel free to search around for other cool stuff this app can do. It’s limitless.

Coming in at numba 3 is Exposé. Ok, this one comes on every Mac already, but it’s not turned on. Go into System Preferences and do just that. Don’t forget to activate hot corners either. Being able to display all of your open windows with a simple swipe of the mouse if way handier than you think. Being able to show the desktop the same way is even handier still. For the record, I use Top right to display, botton left to show the desktop.

For you Instant Messengers out there, you need Adium. Works with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, gChat and I think ICQ. The only drawback is that it does not support video chat. Get your friends to start using Skype for that.

Of course, you have iChat already installed. It’s basically an AIM client that supports audio and video. Oh, and screen sharing that works. Great way to help or get help from your Mac friends.

If you need light image editing and don’t want to drop $700 for the latest Photoshop, I would recommend Acorn. It’s a great app, and for only $50 it’s a steal! Does almost everything Photoshop does already, is faster and easier to figure out. Sure I still use PS, but for the bulk of the image editing I do, Acorn is my go-to app.

Finally, a browser other than Safari. Sure the Mac fanboi’s are freaking out right now, but lets be honest. Safari isn’t all that and a bag of chips 100% of the time. No browser is. Always nice to have a backup, and you would be very well served by either Firefox or Camino. Unless you are an Opera person. You can run that too.

If you think I missed something, you know what to do. Comments are open! Feel free to ask questions too.

*System Preferences –> Spotlight. Uncheck the bottom 2 checkboxes. Envoke Quicksilver, press cmd+, (comma) and in the Command section, set it to cmd-spacebar.

• Firefox vs. Webkit (safari/chrome) vs. IE
• Windows Live Writer
• Open Office
• Video processing
• Using different kinds of media

Watch this space for more.  and don’t mind the odd uncapitalized word here are there.  especially if the letters come from the left side of the keyboard.

There are still more of you that are using out of date browsers than not. And, not just IE. Over at WRR, the bulk of IE users (20% of the 37.8%) are still using IE6. 3.5% of IE users are still using something older than that, but I have a feeling those might be bots that haven’t updated their user-agent string.

For Firefox, it’s 9.1% of the 11.8% that are using version 3 or better. That’s a little bit better. Opera (less than 1%) does not report it’s version, neither does Safari (5.8%), but Netscape (less than 1%) does. Honestly, Netscape 5?

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but there is a reason internet browsers get upgraded, and there is a reason why you should take the few minutes to upgrade yours. There are patches that keep bad guys off of your system. There are stability improvements. Rendering improvements. UI improvements. All of these things are done to make your internet experience better and safer.

If you are stuck in an office with Internet Explorer v6 or older, you are stuck. You can ask your admins for Firefox since an IE upgrade will probably break an application used by your company. If you are a home user running Windows that is not XP or Vista, then you are also stuck with IE6.

Follow the jump for some suggestions.

Windows Users

Check your browser version. Click Help –> About. If you are using Internet Explorer you want the version number to start with a 7. If you are using Firefox, you want the version number to start with a 3. You Opera users want to look for an 8 or 9. If you are using Safari or Chrome, this does not apply since those versions auto-update.

If you don’t have the version numbers specified above, what version of Windows are you running? If you aren’t sure, right click the My Computer icon on your desktop (or go into Settings –> Control Panel –>System) and choose properties. If the version of Windows starts with the number 4, then you are running Windows 2000/98/ME. Otherwise it will say Vista or XP. If it says Vista, you are good to go and don’t need to read any further (unless you are running Firefox).

For you Windows 2000/ME/98 users out there, you are stuck with Internet Explorer v6 and are unable to upgrade to v7. There are other options.

You can download Firefox or Opera. When you get to either of those pages you will be shown the correct version to download for your version of Windows. Both are a free download. Download and install the browser and start it. Be sure to check the box asking it to be the default. You really don’t want to use IE6 anymore.

If you are running Windows XP, then it’s time to run Windows update. Or click that yellow icon next to the clock that says Updates are ready when you point at it. It’s OK to update Windows. Microsoft isn’t stealing your data or spying on you. Really. Run the update.

If you are running Windows Vista, you are good to go. You aren’t able to run IE6 on that system. However, if you are running Firefox and your version is 2 or lower, then follow the Firefox link above to get the latest version (v3 as of this writing). Once installed, it will automatically update for you as well.

Finally, if you are still running Windows 2000/98/ME, make this the year you upgrade. Those operating systems are no longer supported by anyone. You can get a great computer now for less than $600 (sometimes including a fancy LCD screen too). You could also consider switching to a Mac if your budget allows.

And, whatever you do, please stop using Netscape.

Mac Users

Running Firefox version 2 or lower? How can you stand it? Follow the link above to download the latest version. If you are using Safari, you should be on version 3. If not, time to run system update. You might also consider trying Camino which is a pretty good choice in my opinion.

To find the version of the Mac OS you are running, click the Apple in the top left corner of your screen and choose About This Mac. Leopard is currently at version 10.5.6. As long as you have a 10 there, you are in pretty good shape.

If you are still on System 9 or something that’s even older, then you too should seriously consider budgeting an upgrade to a newer Mac. You G4 users might want to start thinking about that as well.

And, whatever you do, please stop using Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Conclusion

It is up to you to keep your computer up-to-date. It really isn’t that difficult to do, especially with modern software updating automatically. If your computer is up-to-date, then check with your friends and family to make sure their machines are as well.

I’ve been using gmail exclusively since ‘05 to collect all of my email, and it’s been doing a bang up job! I love me the gMail. But, there are times when I’d rather open an app, or compose an email offline (like when travelling) or I would just like to have that information under my control 100%.

At first I thought I would try iMap with gMail. In theory, a great idea. All of the email lives on gmail, and your labels and mail is replicated in your email client. In practice however it doesn’t work that hot, at least not with Gmail. Maybe I have too many rules or labels. Maybe I get too much email. Whatever the reason, it works poorly at best. I was missing emails, or they wouldn’t show up at all in my client. Oh, and the client would almost always crash.

Back to the drawing board I went. Started using Fluid for Gmail and it kinda made it feel like I was using a desktop app. It’s a great app and I highly recommend it especially for Gmail. Watch for a write up that soon.

Let’s hide some of this, since I’ve got a fair amount more to say.

Being a fan of pretty much all things Mozilla, I decided to give Thunderbird another shot. This time not with Gmail IMAP, but with POP3.

It’s an entirely different animal.

Imagine, if you will, your email server. Sitting out there on the internet collecting emails from mom and spammers and sending them all down to your desktop to sort out after they arrive. Yea, ick. This is the #1 reason why I switched to Gmail in the first place. I have yet to find an email program that filters spam as good as Gmail does off the shelf.

Now, imagine if you will that you have a filter between your email server and your desktop. One that strips out the spam, hides it from view and only sends you the good stuff. Boy wouldn’t that be great.

That’s what it is like using Gmail for POP3.

I was a Thunderbird user on Windows for a very long time. In fact, the 2nd app I installed on the mac when I first got it was Tbird, which I was using to read news. This past week I thought it was time to fire it up and give it a shot.

Works just like it always had. Smart search, easy to set up filters and folders, the whole bit. Not terribly fast, but v2, like FireFox v2, has the feel of a Windows program that was ported to the mac.

So, I have decided to give mail.app another try. But, to be honest, I don’t think I have used a crashier piece of software except maybe AOL4.0, Netscape 4 (OMG, do you remember how bad that was?) and, more recently, Cyberduck. That was also mostly with Gmail IMAP, but it’s was pretty crashy with POP3 too. Perhaps it was me? I’m going that route for the next week and see if I can’t figure it out.

Another reason for wanting to use mail is the integration. The address book integrates with mail and iCal. iCal and mail and best buds I read someplace too. Sure would be nice to be an adult with a current calendar and address book.

Any good Mail.app tips or tricks you might have would be greatly appreciated. Don’t bother sending me to any sites with plugins or hacks tho, it’s gotta work out of the box.

I still hate IE

New project I’m working on is coming along nicely. Layout, content display and navigation all working pretty much exactly as the customer wants it too. Sweet.

Because it’s how I roll, all of the dev has been happening in FireFox 3 on the Mac. And everything is exactly where it is supposed to be. Just like Safari. Just like Camino. Then, I fired up windows.

Firefox. Check. Looks exactly (or, as close to exact as you can get for crappy Windows font rendering) like it should. Crossing my fingers, toes and eyes (for good measure), I fire up IE 7.

Epic Fail.

First of all, a p in the header is acting like it’s not even anywhere near the div that it’s contained within. Some of the spacing is a bit wonky too. Oh, and my very favorite part? the horizontal scroll bar that I can not get rid of at the bottom of the page, even when I strip everything out of out the layout and shrink the overall width (body and content containing div) to 50%.

I’m sure I’ll be able to chase this particular ‘bug’ down, but it’s going to take me some time. Time I can’t bill the customer. Time I have to spend trying stuff, signing up for forums that I will never visit again, time that I will never get back.

It would appear I’m not the only one having this problem. A quick check of msn.com in Firefox 3 on the Mac vs. IE 7 shows that they can’t even get the entire page contents to fit within the browser window. See for yourself.

Firefox 3 on the Mac

Not too shabby. I mean, it is msn.com for craps sake. Now, for IE7. Try not to laugh too hard.

Internet Explorer v7 in Windows

For curiosity sake, I ran all of my sites through IE 7 (something I do at least quarterly to make sure nothing is broken) and you know what? They all look exactly the same (again, within reason, see above) as they do in Firefox/Safari/every other browser on the planet.

Not to toot my own horn here, but there is a reason I stay away from complicated layouts. This is reason #1. Sure my sites are fairly boring looking and don’t have any cool tech behind them (other than Wordpress, which is teh awesome), but dammit if they don’t work every time, in every browser. Well, except the iPhone, but it’s a width/wrapping issue that affects less than 1% of 1% of my total viewers, so I’m not worried.

Back to the research. Of course, if anyone has an idea for a fix, I’m all ears. So you know, I have tried the overflow:auto, overflow-x:auto, overflow:hidden and overflow-x:hidden and well as getting rid of all italics. Next will be to have the raw page, without CSS, and I will add each CSS element until it breaks.

I’ll comment with the fix.

Starting with not an app. An external hard drive for Time Machine. You need to backup as often as possible. Might I recommend any of the Western Digital MyBook external drives. Shoot for the dual-interface model if you can (Firewire and USB). Firewire is better on the Mac. And Faster. And, you can boot to it.

If you want a backup solution other than Time Machine, I would recommend SuperDuper. $30 and worth every penny.

We will begin with the free apps.

Before you do anything else, get a copy of Quicksilver (free) and install it. If you used the ‘run’ box in Windows (or many keyboard shortcuts), you will use this all the time. After it is installed, go into System Preference –> Spotlight and uncheck menu keyboard shortcut at the bottom. Then, whenever you press cmd-space, Quicksilver will come up and be ready.

For video, you will need Flip4Mac and Perian. Download and install both of them and you will be able to play any video you come across. Another good one to have is the VLC Player. This app plays everything, but I only use it to play the odd video files that quicktime won’t (high def .mkv files in particular). And, if you are one that likes to rip your DVD’s to your machine, Handbrake is the only way to go.

For IM, iChat works very well, but it is limited to AIM users mostly. If you need to use Yahoo, MSN, gTalk or Jabber, you are gonna need Adium. If you need to video chat with Windows users (yahoo or MSN) you can’t. But, you can with Skype.

As for browsers, you have many many choices. The Mac does come with Safari, but if you are switching from Windows you will hate it. Likewise you will hate Firefox 2 because it is very slow on the Mac. If you are downloading today, I would recommend Firefox 3 RC1 RC2 and get the full version when it comes out next month. You could also try Camino, but you might get laughed at. Oh yea, Opera runs here too, as does Flock.

For email, everyone swears by mail.app, but I’m not a fan. I’m also a gMail user. But I have tried Mozilla Thunderbird on the Mac and it works like it does on Windows.

If you have to log into a windows machine, I would highly recommend Remote Desktop. Sure it’s a M$ app, but it works very well and it’s free. You get file transfer and clipboard access, plus remote printer access as well. If you need to use VNC, you are stuck with the horrible Chicken of the VNC. I say horrible, but I’m used to the much more feature-rich VNC clients on Windows like Ultra (not available for the Mac).

For FTP, there are a bunch. Filezilla on the free tip is popular, as is Cyberduck which I’m not a fan of. Beside the avian icon it brings, I found it to be less than stable. If you don’t mind paying a few bucks, I will highly recommend Transmit by the good lads at Panic Software. $30 and it works great, plus integrates with Quicksilver nicely.

Finally, unless you absolutely have to have Microsoft Office, try to get ‘08. ‘03 will be cheaper but it’s slow. If you are thinking OpenOffice, don’t. They are working on an official port or you can try NeoOffice for native support. But it’s slow and cumbersome. If you don’t need office, for sure go with iWork. It’s cheaper, faster and works quite well. You will have to do a bit of re-learning like everything else on the Mac, but you will find it’s worth it.

If you are going to do any video editing or need to convert from one video type to another, you will have to get QuickTime Pro ($35) from Apple or Visual Hub. I recommend VH here because it supports a wide range of files and it’s fast.

Of course this is far from a complete list. But it should be enough to get you going. Of course you are going to want to keep an eye on the comments since I’m pretty sure the other w(t)f readers are going to want to chime in.

Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours – it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.

Before the day (which isn’t posted yet), they are looking for users to ‘pledge’ a download, which requires your email address so they can notify you when Firefox 3 is ready to go.

Being a Firefox user since the aught-point-seven days (called Phoenix if memory serves), I went ahead and signed up. Nice to know I’ll be, a very small part of, a Guiness Record.

via

Gmail.

Huge fan of the Gmail I am. In fact, it’s the only thing that I have found that can actually manage the volume of email I have to sort through. Including the over 15K pieces of spam I receive every month. Nothing else even comes close.

Well, Google, in their infinite wisdom, has been making changes. Changes that are actually pretty cool but, and you probably saw this coming, don’t work with Safari. The big one is auto-complete.

I use auto-complete exclusively for filling in the To:, CC: and BCC: boxes. Without fail. 100% of the time. But one of the changes in Gmail has made that feature no longer work in Safari.

That’s ok, since I’ve been using IMAP and Mail.app, right?

Not so much.

IMAP in concept is a great idea. All of your email stored on a server and you can access it with a client on your desktop. Bonus with Gmail is that you can access with a kick ass web client as well. The problem, for me, is that is too slow. Or I have too many labels (folders for you desktop app users). And Spam is handled weird.

I can deal with the slow. But when I’m not notified of a new message because it is in the bottom of my label list, that is a bit of a pain in the arse. But, I do now exactly how many spam messages I have, always staring at me from the dock. Sure, I could turn that off and only have notifications about messages in my inbox, but what about the labels? This is problematic for me.

So, what I have done, is turned firefox into my web-based application running app. I’m still using Safari for general browsing, but for email (Gmail), news (Google Reader) and FTP (leave me alone about anything because I have tried them all and they all suck), I’m using FireFox. All set to tabs that open when it starts.

Now if the Mozilla guys could make FF run as fast as Safari under Leopard I would be a VERY happy guy.