InterNetWorkingSolutions Support Site

SPACES
Quickly switch between groups of windows to make your desktop much less cluttered.

I’m a fan of this, because I tend to work with certain groups of applications at the same time, while ignoring the others. It will be so nice to have separated sections such as a “design group,” which could consist of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, or a “web group” (Dreamweaver/Coda, Fireworks, Flash), without having to have all of my applications in the Dock at the same time. (Let’s face it, I don’t always have access to my wonderfully large display at work, so I would love to conserve screen space!)

Plus, Spaces allows for you to customize your workspace ‘til your heart’s content. You can add rows, rearrange windows, set different actions with function keys. You will be able to toggle back and forth between different work areas, so you’re only looking at what you want to see, and nothing more. It looks like Spaces will have the look and feel of all your favorite OS X features. Sure, it’s eye-candy, but when it’s functional, who could complain?

See more features here.

One of the great features of the iPod touch 8GB and 16GB models is the product’s ability to connect to an available and authorized wi-fi internet connection. This is great for Safari browsing and YouTubing, but it also makes it easy to buy music via the built-in iTunes Store. Talk about instant gratification—with only a few touches you can purchase any of the millions of songs available from the iTunes Store.

While demoing one of our beautiful iPod touch units recently at our flagship South Burlington retail store, I noticed that the iTunes Store on the unit was set up and ready to buy music. I was curious whose credit card would be charged if customers decided to test-drive a song purchase. I was surprised to see at the bottom of the screen that my personal account (and billing information) was registered to this unit. Obviously this concerned me from a fiscal and privacy standpoint, so I began researching how to log an iPod touch out of the iTunes Store.

The Apple Support pages only had information on how to switch iTunes Store accounts, not on how to disable or log out of an account. These documents noted that the iPod touch will automatically pull the account information from whichever account is logged into the iTunes Store on the computer at the time the iPod is synchronized with the Mac or PC. After some trial-and-error, I discovered that by simply logging out of the iTunes Store on the computer then syncing the iPod, I was able to disable the song purchases from the iPod touch. Only the purchasing option on the iPod will be disabled, so the iTunes Store can still be browsed. Perfect!

I love to use tabs in Safari. I find it much better then having 10 or 20 windows open for each website I am using. In Safari 2 there was a checkbox in the Safari Tab preferences, but it’s now missing from there. A quick Google lookup turned up a nice hint on MacOSXHints.com. According to the hint you have to find the Safari property list and hack around a few strings. Sounds like fun, huh?!

Fortunately someone left a comment with a much easier solution. Just go to the View menu and select ‘Show Tab Bar’. Now that sounds a lot easier!

Here’s Hapy carrying two rocks with a combined total of more than 650lbs! He got about 43 feet with those beasts… nice work!

He says, “Hey all – here is a good pic of me carrying over 650lb of stones at the Maine Games. The one on my right weighed 345 and the one on the left weighed 315. I think I got 43ft with them when I stepped in a divot and lost my grip.”

Mollie got a mention in today’s Burlington Free Press regarding their iTunes story. Yay Mollie!

To read the article, click here.

Hapy Mayer competed in the 31st annual Longs Peak Scottish and Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park, Colorado over the weekend.

The festival is a three-day event which draws a crowd of about 75,000, and this is Hapy’s second year as a contestant.

The Boulder Camera newspaper features an article about the event, as well as a gallery of images. Sounds like a good time…

Click here to read about it!

Thanks to Small Dog customer Doug Grinbergs for the link!

Team manager Ryan Littman benefited from an outstanding 3 touchdown game by Giants receiver Plaxico Burress to grab the lead in the Small Dog football league.

1.Killer Donkeys129.25
2.Chucksberg Pirates109.50
3.4thn2104.00
4.CawCawCaw92.50
5.Hap’s Hitters91.50
6.Barre Bombers90.25
7.Tymber Wolves84.25
8.Jolly Mothras77.25
9.Heavy Hippos73.50
10.The BURNiNATORs71.25
11.Lafuma66.75
12.Katie’s Killers66.00

If you’re not aware of FaceBook yet, well get out from the rock you’re under and have a peek at FaceBook.com. It started off as a website where students could come together, make new friends, and talk about classes. It was the intelligent-internet users MySpace. Now FaceBook is open to pretty much anyone and everyone, we even have a Small Dog Electronics group. Hopefully you have an idea of what FaceBook is…

FaceBook seems like a pretty open platform, for example, people can create applications that work with photos you’ve uploaded, or you can have an application that shows information from another website that you belong to like Last.FM, Digg, or even YouTube.

Today I found a really nifty application that will allow you to view your photo albums and your friends photo albums without having to go to the FaceBook website. There are multiple views, so you can either view all photo albums (friends and yourself) or you can view just friends or just your photo albums.

You can also view a slideshow of photos or add photos right into iPhoto. It definitely feels like a Mac-app.

One thing that would be neat to have would to be able to comment on the photos right from the application. It would also be great if you could create and upload photos to albums.

You can visit this page to download PhotoBook, it’s FREE!

The following is a blog from Sophie, who is living abroad in Chile for the next year, and is Small Dog’s current foreign correspondent! She will be checking in with us periodically to let us know how she and her MacBook are doing…

Hola! Things in Chile are much brighter as I have started to truly settle in. I have been spending most of my time in school getting to know the students who are very warm and friendly. A lot of my time on the weekends this month was at the homeless shelter and hospital in my area. We handed out bread, coffee and played with the youngsters as part of the missions and scouts groups I have joined.

One important thing about the Chilean culture is the food, they love to eat meat! Last weekend my family had a BBQ and spent most of the time roasting four different kinds of meat in the backyard. Last night I ate my first hot dog in two years; needless to say, I have been consuming my fair share of animal.

I am sad to report that I have seen only a miniscule amount of Macs or Apple products around on this end of the planet. The only Mac was for heavy duty music equipment at a disco birthday party. There are a select few that carry around iPods to jam to but other than that most people own small MP3 players. I have been using my MacBook often, mostly iPhoto and iTunes. Tonight I am using it to watch Grease before I go to bed!

Solving Synchronization Connection Problems

This is an excerpt from the troubleshooting appendix of Michael E. Cohen’s “Take Control of Syncing in Tiger,” a $10 ebook published by Take Control Books and available through the Small Dog Web site at:

http://www.smalldog.com/tcebooks/control_syncingtiger.html

Syncing involves a variety of different programs and devices all working together. Any one of the actors in this syncing drama can, metaphorically, forget or flub a line or miss an entrance: when that happens, syncs won’t work right.

To sync two or more devices, you have to connect them, so when a sync fails, the connection is one of the first things I check. As I describe in more detail in “Connect Your Gear” in the full ebook, connections can be wired or wireless, and they can be direct between devices or established over a network. Adapt the following advice to the way you connect your syncing devices.

First question: Is everything plugged in? Cables, whether Ethernet, FireWire, modem, or USB, sometimes magically pull loose just enough to cause all sorts of havoc. Even when you know in your heart of hearts that everything’s plugged in, take the time to check the cables: sometimes your heart can be wrong.

Second question: Is everything turned on? Yes, this is a no-brainer. Check anyway. I once spent half an hour wondering why I couldn’t sync my Mac with my mobile phone until I realized that I had turned Bluetooth off on my Mac a few days earlier. (Yes, the Bluetooth status menu was visible; no, I didn’t notice it was dimmed.)

Third question: Is everything operating? Even when everything is plugged in and turned on, that doesn’t mean that everything is working smoothly. The following list describes some common potholes you might encounter on your own personal information superhighway:

• Network hubs and routers: Wired network connections usually run from your Mac to a router or Ethernet hub. Check to make sure that these network devices are receiving power and operating normally. Check the lights: most network devices have lights for each port, and those lights usually blink when they receive data. If the lights aren’t blinking, it could indicate that the device’s built-in software may be hung up. Restarting the network device often fixes the problem.

• Wireless routers: These devices, such as Apple’s AirPort Express Base Station, also run built-in software that can hang, just like wired routers. Check the lights on wireless routers, too. Restarting a wireless router may be all it takes to fix things.

• Service outages: When you sync over an Internet connection, sometimes everything where you are works fine—the problem is far away. Not too long ago, I spent an afternoon laboriously rebuilding my iDisk because I thought I had fouled something up while I was experimenting with iDisk settings for this book. It turned out that .Mac, in fact, had a brief outage that afternoon. If I had just waited until Apple fixed the problem, or even checked Apple’s .Mac Web site, I could have avoided my iDisk rebuilding efforts. The moral here is simple: when you have a problem with syncing over the Internet, confirm that there isn’t a service outage before you start taking more drastic measures.

• Bluetooth: If you use Bluetooth to connect, make sure the devices that need to be paired are paired, and that the ones that need to be discoverable are discoverable: Connect with Bluetooth describes discovery and pairing in more detail.

• USB hubs: Ports on an external USB hub can sometimes become inoperative, leaving the device you’ve plugged into it unable to communicate with your Mac. Reasons for this can vary; I’ve seen hubs go deaf when I’ve woken a Mac from sleep or restarted the Mac, and I’ve seen hubs go deaf after running particular programs. Whatever the reason, in many cases simply unplugging the hub and plugging it back in brings everything back to life. Occasionally, powering a connected device down and then starting it up again does the trick.

I enjoy all of the Take Control ebooks. They are among the best instructional books I’ve used in any format. Take Control titles are mainly Mac-related, though a few non-Mac topics sneak in too – for example, “Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner.” The experts who write the Take Control ebooks seem to totally understand what real-world Mac users want and need to know. The writing is clear, direct, and easy to absorb. Also, these ebooks are cleverly formated to be easy to read on a computer screen. The ebooks are extremely affordable – only $5 to $15 – and are packed with information.

There are free (and useful) excerpts available from most Take Control ebooks. The excerpt below comes from “Take Control of Syncing in Tiger.”

Check out our selection of Take Control ebooks here:
http://www.smalldog.com/takecontrol.html

Check out the entire catalog here:
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/catalog.html

Enjoy the excerpt which follows above!

by Matt, matt@smalldog.com

What do you do when you suspect your Apple remote is broken, and you have only one Mac to test with? All Macs, except the Mac Pro, now ship with Apple Remotes, and very few remotes have required battery replacement in my tenure as a repair guy. However, some remotes have simply ceased to function.

The surefire way to tell is to fire up Photo Booth, point your remote at the iSight, and hold down any button. If your remote is working properly, the on screen image will show a flashing red dot on the black face of the Apple remote. This is the infrared transmitter in your remote, and if you see this dot it is safe to assume that the remote works properly. The remote acts as transmitter, of course, but there is a separate board in all these Macs to receive the signal. It’s a fairly common part to fail. No Apple Remotes have come in yet for battery replacement, as the remote is so energy-efficient. I managed to drain my Mini’s remote battery, though: it was wedged between couch cushions and engaged long enough to drain the battery.

The human eye is not able to see infrared light, but for some reason the iSight can, and converts it to visible light on the screen. I do not purport to understand how a simple iSight can convert infrared into visible light. Anyone out there know how this works?

by Matt, matt@smalldog.com

Along with the rest of the iPod announcements yesterday, Steve delivered the news that the iPod as we know it was actually getting a formal title: iPod classic.

The original iPod has always been known as just that—save for the occasional dabble with iPod video, or iPod color monikers. Steve seemed happy just to call it iPod (especially without “the” in front of it!). To him, it was the music player that started the digital revolution, and it needed no other fancy name.

However, with all of the incarnations of the iPod since its inception in 2001, it has evolved dramatically; most notably with the introduction of the iPod touch. Now the iPod classic, as it is known, has kept the look of iPods past, but the white color that the iPod was known for has morphed into a sleek, aluminum enclosure.

Apple has made a shift away from the white plastic enclosures they made famous in the past few years, and the recent release of the aluminum iMac signaled that there was more to come. I, for one, never liked the white plastic, but everyone can agree that it became a signature look for a revolutionary device.

iPod classic comes with both 80GB and 160GB hard drives, and retails for $249.99 and $349.99, respectively. Nice price, same tried-and-true iPod design—Apple has deemed the newest metal iPod a “modern classic”.

And as for the name… the iPod will always just be “iPod” to me; there’s no need to distinguish it as iPod classic. Maybe it’s all about the marketing, though somehow I think its successor, iPod touch, will be a tad more successful than say, new Coke!

Apple announced the iPod touch today, and it looks hot. Kind of like something we’ve seen before… Well, it seems like the heart and soul of the iPhone, sans phone.

It boasts a touch screen that functions in the same way as the iPhone, and a beautiful (well, it looks that way on our computer screen!) 3.5” widescreen display. One can only assume that it’s the same glass screen used for the iPhone; we’ll keep you posted.

The touch screen needs no stylus, of course, and it uses the sliding lock function of the iPhone, and same interface. Cover Flow, the eye candy album art feature, is there, as well as WiFi built right in.

You’ll be able to browse the web using Safari, check your iCal events, flip through your contacts in Address Book, download content from the new iTunes WiFi Music Store, use YouTube, and of course, listen to your music using the iPod touch.

There are two models of the flash-based iPod touch:
8GB: $299.99
16GB: $399.99

(In other news, it looks like the 4GB iPhone has been quietly discontinued…)

More to come, of course!

iPod nanos have gotten a far more interesting revision: they now have “a little video for everyone,” per their new tagline. The new nanos are a shorter and stockier version of their predecessors.

They play video, just as the full-sized iPods do (more on those here shortly…). The 2GB size has been dropped for the 4GB and 8GB only. The colors are a bit softer, much like the shuffles. They’ve stayed aluminum, which is a great trend to stick with, I think. Fewer scratches!

4GB: $149.99
8GB: $199.99

What do you guys think?

More info coming soon…

Check ‘em out here.

One of the new and exciting things to come out of todays event is the WiFi iTunes music store. It’s essentially an application that can be found on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. It allows you to browse the iTunes music store on either of the devices and you can purchase music and download it right to the device. Should your download be interrupted you can resume or when you connect your iPod or iPhone to your computer it’ll sync across to the computer and finish. Any songs you purchase through the WiFi store will sync to your computer. Prices will still be the same as they are in the normal iTunes music store. The store should be available later this month to iPod Touch and iPhone users.

iPod shuffles have softened-up a bit, color-wise. The new shuffles will be available in silver, turquoise, light green, a product (red) version, and of course, Don’s favorite: purple.

The capacity has stayed the same, with the 1GB size at $79.99. They’re still aluminum and the same super small size (nice alliteration!) we love. All existing accessories will work with the new iPod shuffle!

Image credit: Engadget.

Steve Jobs is at it again, ready to announce new products at the Moscone West Center, the largest convention complex in San Francisco. Such fanfare usually means big things… we’ll keep you updated with all the new product releases. Stay tuned!

Being that we live in pretty much the middle of nowhere we see lots of different types of wildlife. Today Eric and the retail guys in Waitsfield found this giant caterpillar.

After snapping a few shots, I hopped on to Google and found this very useful site which helps in identifying caterpillars and it turns out this big guy is a Cecropia moth. it’ll eventually turn into something that looks like this:

Pretty cool, huh!

Hard drives are made out of tiny electromagnetic platters that spin at 4200, 5400, 7200 and even 10,000 rotations per minute. It’s amazing that this works at all. Here is a video of a hard drive in motion. Remember, this is where all your digital photos, movies, emails, documents, etc are stored – so back up your data often!