Why Windows 7 Will Suck Less Than Vista

It’s my feeling that Windows 7 will be to Vista what Windows 98 was to Windows 95, or Windows XP was to Windows 2000. They didn’t seem to add more features, but rather made the OS more usable in real ways while improving on stability and the user experience.

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The Unofficial Senator John S. McCain iPhone Application

Officially rejected by Apple, but fear not! Through the magic of Jailbreak, now you too can have your very own pocket John McCain. Why should Obama have all the fun? Checkout the video demo after the jump.

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New Brain-Machine Interface Reactivates Paralyzed Muscles

A monkey learned to use the output of just one brain cell to move its wrist. And if a monkey can do that with just one brain cell imagine what you can do with your entire brain!

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Geek Out Time: DIY Setup For Running Repair Permissions Automatically

Running Repair Permissions Automatically

Repairing permissions in Leopard or Tiger is an important part of keeping a your Mac running smoothly. Doing this on a regular basis will help avoid problems and improve the stability of your Mac. The procedure below will work for Tiger as well as Leopard.

What Repair Permissions Does: Repair Permissions is part of the Disk Utility application that is installed on every Mac and is in the Applications/Utilities folder. Leopard has an internal database that it uses to keep track of the proper permissions for the System files and folders. When you install or uninstall a program, the System permissions might be left in a state that is not correct. It might not cause problems immediately, but later on applications might have trouble saving preferences or updating or just have instability issues.
Now you can startup Disk Utility and select your main system disk and click on the button to run Repair Permissions but you have to remember to do that on a periodic basis. It’s a good idea to run it after you have installed or uninstalled a lot of applications. It also a good idea to run it before and after a Mac OS X Update (i.e. updating from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6)

Built-in Periodic Tasks:
Leopard already runs periodic tasks, daily, weekly, and monthly. The are normally run in the middle of the night, if you leave your Mac running overnight. If you turn off your Mac at night, the tasks still get run, they are just run the first few minutes after you turn your Mac back on.
We are going to take advantage of this built-in feature to run Repair Permissions on a weekly basis. If you don’t install or uninstall applications on a regular basis, you could easily change the procedure below to run Repair Permissions on a monthly basis instead.
We are going to create a one line script that will run Disk Utility and Repair Permissions, The script will also have a special name that will allow Leopard to recognize it automatically. Leopard runs multiple tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and has these scripts predefined. We DON”T want to change these scripts to include our command line because the predefined script might be over written by a Mac OS X update in the furture and our modifications would be lost.

The Local Boys:
Apple has enabled a way to allow custom tasks to be done right after the predefined tasks are completed. This allows you to create any script and run the commands in that script on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, just by naming the script appropriately and putting it in the correct folder. To enable the script to run on a daily basis, just make sure the name is daily.local, on a weekly basis, weekly.local and on a monthly basis, monthly.local. The .local extension tells Leopard that this is a custom file for this installation of Leopard.
The file needs to be placed in the /etc directory of the system disk and set with the appropriate permissions to execute.

The Gory or Geeky Details:

This is going to require the use of the Terminal application, so be warned, if you’ve never used Terminal before it’s probably not a good idea to do this yourself.

1. To do this procedure you need to have administration rights on your Mac.
2. Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder.
3. Enter the following commands:
   • sudo pico /etc/weekly.local
   • enter your login password to allow you to create this file
   • In the pico editor enter the following single line of text.
     diskutil repairpermissions /
   • Press control-x and then the y key to save the file
   • You should now be out of the pico editor and back to your command line prompt. Enter this command.
   • sudo chmod 755 /etc/weekly.local
   • You might have to enter your password again. This command sets the execute permissions for the script.
   • Note: Name the script file monthly.local if you want Repair Permissions done monthly.
4. Quit the Terminal program
5. You are done!

Now Repair Permissions will run on a weekly (or monthly) basis. The output of the script will be saved in the weekly.log or monthly.log file. You can see this log file by running the Console application in the Utility folder. To see the log file make sure you can see the log list by clicking on Show Log List, and then open the LOG FILES list. In this list open the /var/log section. Scroll down and click on weekly.log or monthly.log depending on what you setup. You should be able to see the output of the Repair Permissions command. You will have to wait a week or a month to see the output depending on the date the last tasks were run.

Leave a comment if you find this helpful or have any questions.

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Use Your iPhone to Trip Out Digitally with RjDj

Experience the sensations and mind twisting perceptions you get by ingesting psychotropic drugs – without the harmful side-effects – using a cool new app from Reality Jockey, Ltd.

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Macworld | Mac 911 | Etiquette and the BCC field

Here’s a great article from Macworld that helps you understand about proper email etiquette when it comes to the CC field in your emails. Sending out or forwarding emails to other people and putting your friend’s email address in the CC field can violate their privacy.

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Sharing File Between Computers Running Different Operating Systems

Ever wanted to share files on your Mac with people using Windows or even Linux? I know, eventually they will switch to the Mac, but in the meantime you need to easily send them a files. Well, Dropbox is a great way to do it, and they will give you 2GB of storage for free.

Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online.

• Works Like You Do. No complicated interfaces to learn. Dropbox runs in the background on your desktop.
• Easy Sharing. Sharing files with your friends and family is just two clicks away.
• Worry-Free Syncing. Sync your files automatically to your computers and the web.
• Photos. View your photos in a gallery and share them easily with anyone.
• It’s Everywhere You Are. Sign in and access your files from any browser or mobile device.

It’s really easy to share files between your clients, friends, or family. On my Mac I have a little icon in my menu bar that tells me how much space if left on my Dropbox and lets me go directly to the web interface so I can create invitations to allow access to my shared folders. Dropbox has a very clean interface and is easy to use, both qualities that I admire in a software solution. Give it a try.

If you need more space you can get 50GB for $9.99 per month. But the 2GB space is fine for me.
Go over to http://www.getdropbox.com

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Tags: MacOSX, Files, Sharing, Linux, Windows

All You Need To Know About The 2008 MacBook Event

New MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and probably an updated MacBook Air are coming up next week, at the Apple MacBook 2008 event. The MacBook and MacBook Pro are long due for a case redesign but, beyond that, little is known for sure. Here we have collected all the pieces of information we have about them

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Apple Says Some MacBook Pros Affected by Faulty Nvidia Chips

Apple said this week some of its more recent MacBook Pro models may contain faulty Nvidia graphics chips that produce distorted video or fail completely. The company is offering free repairs and refunds for customers who may have already paid for a repair on their own. Apple is not happy with Nvidia, who initially denied a problem existed.

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Hotspots

Hotspots is a GPS diary for your iPhone.

With Hotspots you can:
* Tag important locations by pressing one button.
* Attach photos and notes to a tag.
* Get directions to and from a tag. You can also get directions between tags.
* Email tags to friends.

Hotspots is perfect for:
* House hunters: tag houses, attach photos and jot down some notes. Then browse when you come home.
* Street parkers: never forget where you parked again.
* Travelers: remember that new pizza store you discovered in Chicago.
* Lovers: cherish where you had your first kiss forever.

Tip: For the GPS unit to find you accurately, you need to be outdoors with a view of the sky.

For more information and to download go to http://appshopper.com/navigation/hotspots

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