A Single Graphic Card to Control 8 Displays
My Clippings November 12th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from Google Starred
Most likely annoyed by the new Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity, able to manage 6 displays, and by AMD strategy to take shares of its niche markets, Matrox fired back with a new graphic card: M9188.
This card scored a new record as it is able to manage simultaneously up to 8 displays. I features 1 or 2 GB of VRAM and is installed on a PCI Express 16x slot. Matrox does not plan to compete on the market of graphic cards dedicated to games, but develop solutions allowing simultaneous management of several displays as used in airport, stock exchange places, video-controlled operation centers, etc.
CrashPlan – a cross-platform, affordable, powerful backup solution
My Clippings October 22nd, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from Google Starred
Time Machine is good, but sometimes glitchy, with remote disks connected to AirPort Extreme behaving erratically, and other limitations to what you can do – not least that you can’t back your data up online. And that’s where new cross platform backup solution, CrashPlan steps in.
Developers, Code 42 Software offer the solution, making it available free to consumer and small business users, with the more powerful and robust CrashPlan+ service introduced yesterday for enterprise users (which costs $59 US for real-time backup and web restores). In other words, this easy-to-use solution scales for every user, from individual to enterprise users.
The software will automatically back your data up to other computers, external hard drives or even the company’s eminently affordable online back-up service. (And it’s all protected by hardcore security protocols – CrashPlan+ offers 448-bit encryption).
Online service, CrashPlan Central, offers unlimited online backup/storage and costs from as little as $3.50 US per month for individuals and under $5.00 for a family plan (there’s a free 30-day trial, also). You're not required to sign up to CrashPlan Central though, because CrashPlan can back up to friends’ computers for free.
The software is widely compatible – Windows, OS X, Linux or even Solaris platforms are all covered. Users can backup in multiple ways: locally, remotely and online. CrashPlan also offers automatic backup, which the company claims to be so efficient users won’t even be able to tell it’s going on.
The solution reduces file size by using advanced compression technology. It identifies duplicate files and parts of files and stores them only once. When files change, only the new information is backed up.
Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, it fixes them.
CrahPlan+ offers version retention – the ability to specify rules for removing versions and files from your backup after you no longer care about them. It’s also pretty easy to set the frequency of backups and the number of versions to keep, using slider controls to specify versions to retain over specific periods.
The user can set the frequency of backup, for example: hourly for the first week, while a file is being worked on, then retaining fewer versions as the file gets older.
Related posts:Tags: Airport, backup, Google, Information, IO, Linux, ma, Mac, security, way, wind
Make the Most of Office Coffee [Coffee]
My Clippings September 24th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from Google Starred
Unless you’re very lucky, you’re likely stuck in an office that has coffee somewhere between “drinkable” and “intestine-wrenching”. Use this guide to increase the quality of your office-coffee experience. Photo by Stephen Cumming.
Office coffee is generally pretty awful. Purchasing a quality coffee machine, quality coffee, and orchestrating the two in any semblance of order is apparently quite low on the list of priorities for most managers. The following tips will help you take the “stock” setup and make the most of it and provide alternatives if the stock setup is just too awful to even salvage.
Clean the Coffee Maker: This is your absolute first order of business. Have you ever actually seen someone clean the coffee maker? No, you haven’t. You must operate under the assumption that the coffee maker has never, ever been cleaned. If it looks old enough to have been cranking out caffeinated slurry to jittery Cold War-era workers, then you must assume it’s still got the funk of rancid Reagan-era coffee oil upon it.
How do you clean a coffee maker? There are two principle enemies to good flavor hiding in an uncleaned coffee machine. Minerals from the water and oil—which turns rancid—from the coffee accumulated in the machine. You need an acidic fluid to purge the nastiness. You can purchase a cleaner made specifically for coffee makers but in all but the most horrifically neglected coffee machines it should suffice to use vinegar which is much cheaper.
Mix 1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water. You’ll need to mix enough to fill the reservoir of the machine. Throw a filter in the machine and run the solution through. You’ll need to do this at least once, but we’d recommend running a fresh batch of cleaner through until the water in the pot is clear. For a particularly dirty machine you’ll end up with a few pots of nasty tea-colored water. Follow up the cleaning procedure by running clean water through the machine until the water no longer has a vinegar smell, usually two cycles should do the trick. At this point a once-a-month rinse with vinegar should keep things funk-free. With a clean pot we can move onto the actual coffee production. Photo by pvera.
The mighty mini, take two: DIY video baby monitor
My Clippings July 13th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Filed under: Video, Cool tools, How-tos, Mac mini, iPhone
What do you get when you combine a new parent on maternity leave with a love of gadgets and Apple products? Why, you get “baby monitor overkill!”
In response to Dave Caolo’s recent ode to the Mac mini, I figured it was time to step up. I had two things gathering dust: my old standalone iSight, a gorgeous example of Apple design sadly idle since the advent of built-in iSights, and a lovely new Intel Mac Mini that was recently scored on sale at MicroCenter with plans to set it up for my older two kids once I could get my hands on a small LCD monitor.
I figured in the meantime it would serve nicely as a baby monitor, since I couldn’t find a matching transmitter/receiver pair among the various baby monitors I had accumulated over the years. My idea was that it would live discreetly, headless and tailless (monitor, keyboard, and mouse-free) in the baby’s room, and broadcast both locally on my network and also wide-area so grandparents could tune in remotely.
For the initial setup, I needed a monitor, but fortunately my TV has a PC (VGA) port, which I used to configure the mini. I set it to login automatically to the main account and join my Airport network. In System Preferences, I enabled screen sharing and added iChat as a login item. In iChat, I enabled Bonjour and instant messaging, added myself as a buddy, and restricted chats to preapproved users under security preferences. Because I didn’t want to connect via screen sharing every time I wanted ot initiate a chat, I typed the following into Terminal so that it would auto-accept any incoming video chats:
defaults write com.apple.ichat AutoAcceptVCInvitations 1After that, I set it adrift on the network. From my main computer, I watched the mini pop up on Bonjour after reboot, and we were off and running.
While this worked great for my own local use, it had some inherent restrictions: remote users (aka “grandparents who love to watch sleeping grandsons”) couldn’t join the chat easily. Spouses at work had issues with company restrictions on AIM. Plus, it was iPhone-unfriendly; the holy grail for me was turning the iPhone into a video terminal that followed me around.
Related posts:Another turn by turn app with voice for the iPhone
My Clippings July 7th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review
Many months ago I received a review copy of G-Map for the iPhone. It had its own maps and turn by turn directions, but no voice guidance, and North was always up. Apple was limiting nav apps at that time, and I had real trouble with G-Map. I couldn’t load it on my iPhone. It kept locking up about halfway through the process. Extensive back and forth with the developers in Japan came to nothing, so I gave up. Finally, last April, my colleague Steve Sande was able to load it, and reviewed it for TUAW.
Now, with iPhones having new hardware and new software, G-Map [App Store] works and is certainly a competitor to the subscription-based AT&T app. You buy G-Map in one of several editions. G-Map West, at US$34.99, covers the Western States, and G-Map East covers, you guessed it, the Eastern U.S. It is also priced at 34.99. It gets a bit tricky, because some states like Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee and Wisconsin are split. If you travel all around those states you will probably want both editions.
There is also a California edition for $19.99, and one at the same price for New Jersey and New York. Versions for Canada and Europe are coming. All the G-Map modules require iPhone software version 3.0.
So how does it work? Pretty well, but with some caveats. It’s accurate at getting your position. The voice directions are quite audible, especially compared to the distorted AT&T app. The on-screen display gives you your speed limit, distance to your next turn, distance to destination and time to destination. It also plots major intersections in a very detailed 3D view, which is helpful. This works in the largest 185 metro areas.
Another plus is that all the maps are on your phone. If you slide out of AT&T’s service area the maps are still there; in contrast, the Telenav-based AT&T Navigator app will not work if you don’t have data coverage, as the maps are downloaded on-demand.
Related posts:Wind U100 Hackintosh w/ 407159-001 native Airport
Uncategorized May 8th, 2009 by Shai Perednik
I have an MSI Wind U100 and installed a 407159-001 and no airport.
Following the posts @ Mac Rumors I removed each service one by one, added Airport, restarted, and it works!
Remember to hit apply after removing the services. Then add Airport. Hit apply again. Restart the computer. And it should work.
I noticed that I have to have the hard wifi switch set to on when the computer is starting. Not sure if this maters, but just a note.
Related posts:Tags: Airport, Hackintosh, HP WiFi, Leopard, Mac, MSI, MSI WIND, OSX, wind
