Ed's Tech Tips

Last week I received a new device, the AMOD AGL3080, that I think will really enhance our travel photo galleries. It is a GPS Photo Tracker that assist you with geotagging your pictures so that you can show exactly "where" you took a picture by recording the GPS coordinates or longitude and latitude of the location of where the picture was taken.

The device is relatively inexpensive considering what it does. It costs about $70 from Amazon. Not only is it one of the cheapest trackers, it is one of the few that is Mac compatible. It is the size of mobile pager, if you remember what those are. It takes three AAA batteries, has three LED lights on it and two buttons, a power button and a flag button.

To use it, you simply power it on, wait for the satellite icon to blink, clip it to your belt and then start taking pictures. Make sure that the clock on your camera is set correctly. You then come back to your computer and download your photos. In addition to iPhoto I like to use a free photo management application called JetPhoto. I use JetPhoto for all of the Alumnae Association photo galleries and use it to upload pictures to Fickr as well. There are versions of JetPhoto for Windows and Macs and it supports geotagging manually or with a device such as the AMOD AGL3080. After your pictures are imported into JetPhoto, you then connect the AMOD to your USB port and import the GPS file, which is a text file that contains line after line of time stamps and coordinates. No drivers are required and if you are using JetPhoto, you do not need to install any additional software.

JetPhoto synchronizes the location data with the time stamps on the pictures. You can view the photos on a map and easily tweak the locations which are for the most part accurate within a few feet or yards. You can press the flag button to flag a location where you shot a picture, but you do not have to and just let the software match the photos with the locations.

Jetphoto can export your geotagged photos to a Google map photo gallery or to KMZ or KML files which can then be imported into Google Earth. I took a walk around campus on Thursday and shot photos of various dorms, academic buildings and some buildings just off campus in South Hadley. Within minutes I had the images in a Google map photo gallery. The satellite photos are out of date. Since the images were taken, the new dorm has been constructed, the soccer fields and track have been rebuilt and the tennis courts by the lower pond no longer exist.

The purpose of buying the device is to use it during some of the Alumnae Association travel programs. In the past I have tried to get staff to manually map where photos were taken, but they could usually only generalize where they had been, whereas the AMOD will be able to pinpoint thier location down to the street corner they were standing on. By being able to map the photos, it will make them more interesting. I would anticipate that once camera manufacturers reach the practical limit of th enumber of megapixels they can squeeze into a photo sensor, they will start including GPS into their cameras, along with WiFi and Bluetooth. There are a couple examples, one from Ricoh and another from Navman, which is a combination GPS navigator and camera.

FLOSS stands for "Free Libre Open Source Software" and is one of many regular podcasts that are part of the TWiT network produced by Leo Laporte and friends. Leo was a host on the now defunct TechTV Screen Savers show and hosts a wide variety of weekly tech orientated podcasts. My favorites are This Week In Tech, MacBreak Weekly, Jumping Monkeys (tech and kids), Windows Weekly and FLOSS. You can easily subscribe via iTunes, which is what I do and I listen either while I am working or at home doing various chores around the house with my iPod.

The shows are both informative and entertaining, although I do get annoyed sometimes with all of the talk about Twitter which I think is really only popular among the commentators and pundits on the show and not with real people trying to get real things done. Who has time to read inane chatter? But when you talk about getting things done I think wikis (may favorite is Deki Wiki) are a great tool and the inventor of the wiki is Ward Cunningham. He wrote the first wiki in Perl  to help keep track of and share ideas with is co-workers back in 1995. Since then wikis have been written in almost every computer language and have given birth to one of the most popular web sites on the planet, Wikipedia. 

Not only is Ward the father of the wiki but is heavily involved in the extreme or agile programming movement. It is a software engineering methodlogy intended to lead to a development process that is more responsive to customer needs ( "agile" ) than traditional methods, while creating software of better quality. Deki Wiki is developed with the "agile" programming approach and features an update or release almost every month.  

Besides all of that, Ward comes across as a real down-to-earth humble nice guy. 

If you are interested in technology and like to listen to hour long conversations (ala Charlie Rose style) then check out TWiT. 

Apple released the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone/iTouch last week. It is a pretty much a complete package. It is based on Xcode the same development tools used for Mac OS X. It gives you access to all of the hardware of the iPhone including the camera and accelerometer - the device in the phone that responds to tilting the phone. There is even a iPhone simulator so that you can test your apps on a virtual iPhone which allows you to develop for it without having to own one. It even allows you to simulate the pinching touch feature. This opens the device to some cool gaming possibilities.I won't go into detail because other sites have done that, as well as, Apple's own pages dedicated to the SDK. I'll just relate some issues from my personal experience.

First, why is this cool or important. Well, initially it appeared that Apple was not going to open the platform for outside developers, but now it has and it opens the door to thousands of applications. If you have used a Palm you know that there are many possibilities for small applications on a portable device and even more so on the iPhone because of it is screen resolution, multimedia playback capabilities, touch interface and connectivity to the Internet. Applications will range from currency converters to pharmacological encyclopedias and beyond. ReadWriteWeb offers some more sophisicated possibilties.

Also, the cost of entry is fairly low. The SDK is free. It is a 2 GB download that expands to take up 5 GB of space. It is not compatible with PowerPC processors, which I'm a little miffed about. It  only works on Macs with Intel processors. Like other features in Leopard, the PowerPC processor is not fully supported, but that was inevitable with the move to Intel's dual core technology. The G5 and lessor PowerPc chips just cannot keep up with the demands of the newer software. But, I'm on a tangent...

While the cost of the software is $0, the developer program cost $99 and $299 for proprietary, in-house developers. Applications can only be made available through Apple's App store which will be available on the iPhone and iTunes.  The developer sets the selling price. Apple takes it cut of 30%, but handles all related costs of distributing the application, including credit card processing and bandwidth.If you are giving away your application there is no cost beyond the developer fee. I think it sounds like a pretty good deal, especially for small developers to get their products in front of thousands of potential customers.   (More)

Webkit is the open source engine used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail and many other Mac OS X applications.  You can download nightly development builds of the project. The current version is the fastest browser avilable on the Mac. Even beating Firefox 3. Some tests indicate that it is two and a half times faster than the current version of Safari.

Keep in mind that this is a development build and may not be entirely stable. If that is a concern then wait for the official software update from Apple. But if you cannot wait then you can download it now. It looks and feels just like Safari, except it is called Webkit. It is available for Mac and Windows.

While it does not have the add-ons that Firefox offers it has the speed. So much so that if I do not need a Firefox extension or compatibility and just want to browse the web I turn to Safari/Webkit.

I just cannot afford it for her yet and that's my biggest complaint about the new slender notebook from Apple. Initially I had more complaints, such as, a battery that you cannot remove, a small hard drive, a lack of an optical drive and a shortage of external ports (there are only three: USB, headphone and video.) Many computer pundits shared my original point of view. I thought of the Air being suitable only as a secondary computer for the well off.

However, after some reflection and reading some other blogs on the subject I have since come to a different conclusion. While the MacBook Air may not be for me, a power user that dabbles in video editing, running multiple operating systems, programming, web development, running virtul machines, creating DVD's and the such. The Air is perfect for my wife.

Her main computer tasks are reading email, browsing the web, watching episodes of her favorite television shows when she misses them (Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives) and sometimes working from home via the Citrex remote Windows client for her office computer. She'd rather not sit at the desk preferring the sofa or bed. So wireless is a must and a backlit keyboard and reduced weight are nice options.

She does not need a large hard drive and she would never remove the battery. While the processor is the slowest in Apple's computer line-up it is still many times faster than Intel's Pentium processor which many people are still using for basic computing tasks. 

So, while the Air has it's detractors, my answer to them is that Air was not meant for you, just the way the iPod is lacking in features (FM radio, voice recorder, support for OGG, etc.) for some while the simplicity is more appealing to many others.

As another blogger put it, the Air is like a sporty convertible coupe. It is not practical for everyone, but for some it gets them from point A to point B in style and comfort. Now, when Apple lowers the price it will become even more popular, like the Mazda Miata. I suspect that the price is due in part to the processor that Apple had Intel custom build for them. 

We have a G4 and a couple G5 PowerMac towers in use by the Quarterly and communications staff of the Alumnae Association. The Macs are still running strong. I recently upgraded them to Leopard and installed Microsoft Office 2008 without a hitch. Unfortunately , the offices are up on the third floor of Mary Woolley Hall where  they still have a 10 Mbps network. Because we are located in a College owned building and share the network with the Development offices the 10 Mbps switch or hub is beyond my control.

The cabling and switch were upgraded on the first and second floors when the offices were renovated last year. The networking department told me that they were going to upgrade the cabling and switch last summer along with the addition of some more outlets. However, that has not occurred yet. It is now February.

What was upgraded over the past year was the College's wireless network. There are now access points in every dorm and throughout the campus, except on the third floor of Mary Woolley but there is a signal that ranges between 20-40% in strength depending on where you are located.

With the wireless upgrades I thought the solution would be to install some Airport cards in the Power Macs and pull the computers off of the wired network, thinking that even with the reduced signal strength, going wireless would be faster.

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One of the coolest features of Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 is Time Machine, the automatic file backup utility. This is the perfect tool for the person who does not regulary backp their system. You just need to purchase an extra drive and then set and forget Time Machine. By default it initially performs a full backup and then backs up your changed files every hour. Usually you do not notice that it is doing anything in he background unless you have a older Mac.

At work I use a dual core MacBook with an external Firewire drive and I only really notice that a backup is occuring when I am ready to leave and disconnect the drive. At home I have a single CPU 1.8 Ghz G5 Power Mac with 1 GB of RAM. I bought an extra sata 320 GB internal drive that I configured Time Machine to use. Even with a internal SATA drive I noticed when files were being backed up. It can be a drag on the system. I can imagine it would be much more noticeable on lesser systems.

I do not use my home computer as often and really do not need it backed up every hour, but Time Machine is so streamlined (som may say "dumbed down" that there are no options to adjust when a backup occurs, at least until now.

I found the Time Machine Scheduler. A free simple utility that allows you to schedule backups between one and 12 hours. It was easy to install and set up. I scheduled it to backup evey six hours which is a lot more  often than I use to and is a lot less painful. I still get my files backed up, although not as often, but there is less of a drag on my system which I appreciate. Even with the scheduler, Time Machin eis still the easiest means of backing up your files.

Apple briefly stole the spotlight from CES (the international Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas) again this year, although not to the extent it did last year by announcing the iPhone. This time around the announcement was  about an update to the Mac Pro model which now features as standard equipment dual Intel Xeon quad core processors which adds up to 8  CPU cores.  This is a whopping  amount of power for a desktop tower computer. However, it is a large tower and you would need a large desktop. It is probably more suitable for the floor. Dual quad core processors have so far been regulated to servers for Windows PC's.

In addition to the increased CPU power you can now slide up to 4 terabytes of storage in four drive bays. There is also an option for the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of graphics memory for an additional $2,850 - slightly more than the recommended configuration of the Mac Pro. 

This is a machine designed to do some heavy computational lifting including high definition video rendering and encoding and is overkill for most folks.  

At the same time Apple updated the Xserve with the same dual quad core cpu's which is targeted to small and medium businesses, however for the small businesses of under 10 people in a office the new Xserve would be  overkill unless your small business involves decoding DNA, video broadcasting, digital animation or similar tasks. Many small business need a server than can store office documents, connect to a printer and maybe host a web site and act as a mail server.

So, instead of the Xserve or Mac Pro I suggest you consider the Mac Mini as a possible server. You'll have to add an external firewire drive or two, but over-wise it could handle the job and you would not even need to install server version of Mac OS X which cost $499 for the 10 user license. The standard version of Mac OS X can easily handle many of your basic server needs.

The Mini consumes very little of everything: space, power and the knowledge needed to run it. Would a Mac mini be reliable enough? It does not have redundant power supplies or hardware RAID, but then again it costs much less, so much less that you could by two Mac Minis, one as a back up of the other - a Mac Mini cluster. Some web hosting companies are offering co-location services using Mac Mini's, such as, Macminicolo which would attest to it's reliability. There are instructions for setting up your Mac Mini as a web/mail server. Another blog, Nerd Vittles, boast 50 projects centered around the Mac Mini. 

Here is a nice example of Mac Mini server setup on the top shelf of a closet in a home office:

For the external firewire drives I would consider the models from Newertech which are the same dimensions as the Mac Mini and feature additional Firewire and USB ports for daisy chaining additional drives or connecting other accessories.

Firefox gets all of the cool plug-ins and is the browser I use most often. However, if I am simply browsing the web and want the fastest possible response, I pick Safari on the Mac. It is noticebly faster than Firefox. There are a few add-ons for Safari. A cool must-have add-on is a little free program call Inquisitor. It's like Spotlight for the web. Just start typing and links to websites pop-up immediately along with ideas to refine your search. It'll autocomplete your words and you can add more search engines to Safari with customized keyboard shortcuts.

To the left is a search I started for Mount Holyoke College. As you can see it shows you some of the top results, most popular related search queries, how many results and then links to other search engines or sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, IMDB and Dictionary.com. This is a fantastic tool for research.

I discovered a new game (at least to me) I've been playing at night recently at home. It's called Urban Terror (which is commonly abbreviated as UrT)  and it is a complete total conversion mod (short for modification) of id Software's popular first person shooter game Quake III Arena. Urt introduces a number of elements in the tactical shooter genre featuring team driven game play with realistic weapons and environments. You play a terrorist or a counter-terrorist SWAT team member. You can only carry so much, you have limited ammo and stamina, you have to reload, you are less accurate when running, if you get hit  and you are not fatally wounded you will slow down and eventually bleed to death if you don't see a medic. You can still do some super human jumps, but if you jump too far you will either cause damage or kill yourself.

Yes, I know violent first person games are usually a guy thing, but I know there are a growing number of female gamers who appreciate a good first person shooter. For those that are squeamish, there are settings to reduce the amount of blood or gore that is displayed.

By computer gaming years, the game is old. A beta version of the game was first introduced in 2000. However the latest release, version 4.0, was published April 2007. I was not aware of the game in the past, because it required that you had Quake III Arena which I did not because the demo was enough for me. The latest version however is completely stand alone, because id open-sourced the Quake III game engine. It is called ioquake3 and there are versions for Macintosh, Linux and Windows.

While the game may not have today's level of graphic realism, it is still a very fun game to play. There are numerous game options to configure. Plus, it is completely free and you do not need the latest hardware to play the game - a five or seven year old computer may work fine. There are a wide variety of extensive maps. You can still find many games online. There are many different game modes:

• Free for All (FFA, DM)
• Team Deathmatch (TDM)
• Team Survivor (TS)
• Capture the Flag (CTF)
• Capture and Hold (CAH, C&H)
• Follow the Leader (FTL)
• Bomb Mode (BM)

For more details check out the article on the game in Wikipedia.