Inc. » Shai Perednik.com

Tags: Apple, email, Google, Humor, Inc., ma, Mac, man, Microsoft, video, wind

With a rebel Dell, Psystar tries more, more, more

My Clippings October 22nd, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Hacks, Mods, Snow Leopard

Psystar, that pesky little thorn in Apple’s side, has released Rebel EFI. According to Psystar, the app, available for $49.99 through the company’s site, “allows for the easy installation of multiple operating systems,” including Mac OS X, on a vanilla PC. Besides bypassing EFI requirements, Rebel EFI can also detect for Mac OS X compatible and incompatible hardware, and automatically download appropriate drivers. Skeptical? No worries: the app is free to try (as an ISO download), with a two hour time limit.

To each their own, and if running Mac OS X on non-Apple specified hardware floats your boat, then you should also be aware of the risks involved. In other words, back up your data if you are attempting such a thing. Second, and more importantly, there’s the issue of licensing: Apple prohibits the installation of Mac OS X on non Apple-branded machines.

Psystar giveth and Psystar must also taketh. One wonders how Psystar will react when people illegally use Rebel EFI, just like Psystar is allegedly misusing Mac OS X, as pirated versions inevitably circulate around the Interwebs.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

[via The Loop]

TUAW With a rebel Dell, Psystar tries more, more, more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tags: Apple, email, Google, Inc., IO, ISO, Leopard, ma, Mac, man, Snow Leopard

Mockflow: web-based, real-time, collaborative wireframing

My Clippings October 21st, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Design, Developer, Web services, Web

Mockflow: a web-based, real-time, collaborative wireframing tool

A key part of interface design is an exercise known as “wireframing.” In this design phase, elements of an interface are blocked out roughly to show relative placement, interaction, and functionality. It is a rapid way to talk through functional requirements of a project and get buy-in from stakeholders without having to waste a lot of time on visual design that won’t remain in a finished product.

Mockflow is a flash-based, online, collaborative wireframing tool for Web and Software designers. It contains a fairly complete set of wireframe elements and icons for use in your wireframe with flexible customizability of all the elements. The killer app of the tool is it’s ability to collaborate in real-time with other team members online. Very, very useful for distributed teams.

I tend to use Adobe Fireworks for all my wireframing (and everything else) but a coworker pointed me toward this tool and it captured my attention. I find flash-based tools distasteful, they always feel slow to me, but this one was simple enough, with enough features to make it compelling to use. Definitely the right tool for the right situation.

The basic version is free, but ad supported and you are limited to two collaborators. Upgrading (introductory price of $49 / year) grants you unlimited collaborators and projects, is ad-free, and gives you 500 MB of storage. Definitely worth a look for distributed Web teams.

Mockflow: web-based, real-time, collaborative wireframing originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sponsored Topics:
Adobe Fireworks – Download Squad – World Wide Web – Web service – Design

Tags: cli, email, flash, Google, Inc., IO, ma, man, MSI, php, way, XP

US Army video surveillance powered by Apple

My Clippings October 17th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Hardware, OS, Software

Security System News is reporting today on the US Army’s decision to use Mac OS X and Apple servers to run four video surveillance systems. When reliability and security are paramount, says Chris Gettings, Mac OS X is the choice. Chris is the CEO and president of video management software manufacturer VideoNEXT.

“You’re not going to have some of the memory-leak issues that seem to plague different versions of the Windows systems,” he says. “And mission-critical customers appreciate that.”

Additionally, Mr. Pat Mercer, who has actually installed Mac-based systems for “…[a] large government entity” notes that low bandwidth, security and reliability are what those IT departments demand. “That’s where the Mac conversation begins,” he notes.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the US Military using Apple products. In May we saw a story of soldiers using the iPod touch as an in-the-field translator. In December of ’07, we published a post about more wide spread military adoption of Apple hardware and software. Of course, we can’t forget the life-saving iPod.

[Via AppleInsider]

TUAW US Army video surveillance powered by Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tags: Apple, email, Google, Inc., IO, ma, Mac, man, security, video, wind

And there was much lawyering.

Psystar, Apple file motions for summary judgment

My Clippings October 17th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Hardware, OS

Apple and Psystar have been embroiled in litigation for quite a while now. At the core of the dispute: Psystar modifies Apple’s operating system software so that it can run on its clone machines. It then sells its computers with Mac OS installed to, well, anybody who wants one. As you can imagine, this does not make Apple happy.

Anybody familiar with The Great Clone Crackdown of 1997 will tell you that Apple likes to keep a very tight grip on any device that presumes to run its software. Apple points out that Windows machines are a mishmash of often conflicting hardware and suffer from quirks and errors and incompatibilities that such a set up can bring.

So Apple’s cadre of lawyers descended quickly on Psystar. In July of last year, the company sued Psystar for copyright and software licensing violations, quickly amending its lawsuit to additionally charge Psystar with violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

More than a year later, now that discovery has been completed, the two parties have each filed for summary judgment, which, in effect, asks the judge to rule in favor of the filing party because enough evidence has been shown that either makes or breaks the lawsuit.

Psystar’s argument, and the one covered in its motion, somewhat relies on the “first sale doctrine” which says that any purchaser of a copyrighted product can then take that lawfully-made copy and sell it, so long as no additional copies can be made. For its part, Apple says that when one “purchases” its OS, you are only purchasing a license to use the product. Its Software Licensing Agreement (SLA) quite clearly states [PDF link to Snow Leopard SLA] that the user cannot modify the software to run on a non-Apple system.

The idea that what you are purchasing is a license to use the product is pretty commonplace among software manufacturers, because, the argument runs, you can cut any software company’s profits off at the knees if every purchaser became an owner with free rein to redistribute the software. Apple states that no software company in its right mind would put the money into research and development of any software product at all if that were the end result of bringing its product to market. Groklaw suggests this could have ramifications for FOSS and and the GPL.

Continue reading Psystar, Apple file motions for summary judgment

Tags: Apple, email, Google, Inc., IO, ISO, Leopard, ma, Mac, man, OSX, php, quick, Snow Leopard, wind

Found Footage: Expose-esque UI for iPhone app management

My Clippings October 17th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage

Oh, so tempting. Engadget and Slashgear link to this video from our friend Steven Troughton-Smith: Exposé-style app management running on a jailbroken iPhone. No, you can't download it anywhere yet; no, we don’t know when it will be ready for prime time and available on the Cydia repo; no, we don’t expect Apple to have anything similar in the pipeline for vanilla iPhone use.

But wouldn’t it be nice?

TUAW Found Footage: Expose-esque UI for iPhone app management originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tags: Apple, email, Google, Inc., ma, man, video, XP

Continue reading Yes, there’s a Chrome OS folder now, but don’t get your panties in a bunch yet

Yes, there’s a Chrome OS folder now, but don’t get your panties in a bunch yet

My Clippings October 13th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: OS Updates, Google

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler got all excited over the weekend about the appearance of a Chrome OS build folder on Google’s Chromium.org server. Yes, the snapshots are now being posted – actually, they have been since October 5th, by the look of things – but there’s nothing to get excited about just yet. Sorry, MG.

For starters, what’s in the folder is what’s in the other top level folders – a browser build for a specific OS. This isn’t Chrome OS per se, it’s the Google Chrome browser build for Google’s upcoming OS. You know, like the Mac, Windows, and Linux versions available for download from the very same server.

But let’s move on. Assuming you’re the easily excited type, the screen above shows what you get when building Chrome for Chrome OS versus Chrome on Linux. My thanks to Johnathan Frederickson, who commented on the TC post and actually played around with Google’s .deb packages.

As you can see, there’s really not much to look at apart from the clock and the little circle in the top left corner.
When clicked, the circle takes you to a sign-on page, currently only available internally to Google staffers in all probability. I’ll wager that has something to do with the single sign-on cookie we read about a while back.

Yes, there’s a Chrome OS folder now, but don’t get your panties in a bunch yet originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sponsored Topics:
Google Chrome – Operating system – Linux – Mac OS – Microsoft Windows

Tags: Build, Chromium, cli, email, Google, Inc., IO, Linux, ma, Mac, man, Microsoft, php, wind, XP

Sysinternals Disk2vhd helps migrate physical desktops to virtual machines

My Clippings October 8th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

One day, Sysinternals will probably run out of ideas and stop releasing incredibly useful free apps for Windows administrators and technicians. That day isn’t today, though.

Just released on TechNet is Disk2vhd, which is designed to create .vhd image files from physical hard drives. Like many other Sysinternals apps, Disk2vhd is tiny, free, and fully portable. It’s also available on live.sysinternals.com so you can run it right over the internet should you forget your trusty flash drive at an inopportune time.

The tool is dead simple to use: launch the executable, browse for a destination, choose which physical drive you want to image, and click create. Disk2vhd creates a snapshot that you can then mount in Virtual PC or HyperV, or as a virtual hard drive on a Windows 7 system.

Disk2vhd is compatible with Windows XP SP2 or newer. One word of warning: images over 127GB are not bootable in Virtual PC, so keep under the limit if that happens to be in your plans.

Sysinternals Disk2vhd helps migrate physical desktops to virtual machines originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sponsored Topics:
Windows 7 – Windows XP – Microsoft – Microsoft Windows – Virtual machine

Tags: cli, email, flash, Google, Inc., IO, ma, Mac, man, Microsoft, php, wind, XP

Make webpages more printable with The Printliminator

My Clippings October 8th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Design, Productivity, Web services

The Printliminator is a bookmarklet that gets any webpage ready to print. Once it’s activated, you can click on elements you don’t want to print to remove them from the page. If you don’t want to do it manually, you can remove all images on the page using one button. Another button applies a nice default print stylesheet.

Sometimes there’s only one element of a page that’s worth printing, and The Printliminator has you covered there, too. Instead of clicking to delete one thing at a time, you can option-click to delete everything but what you’re clicking on. If you make a mistake and delete something you wanted to print, there’s no undo. Just reload the page and start over.

Make webpages more printable with The Printliminator originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sponsored Topics:
Download Squad – Web page – Printing – Bookmarklet – Design

Tags: Bookmarklet, cli, css, email, Google, Inc., IO, ma, man, php, Printing, Remove

Multiget is a multi-threaded download manager for any OS

My Clippings October 8th, 2009 by System

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Linux, Open Source

If there’s one thing better than a handy, free application it’s a handy, free application that runs on everyone’s computer. Looking for a cross-platform download manager? Take a look at Multiget.

Once installed, Multiget monitors your clipboard for download links — or you can start putting the app to use via its floating drop box. Find something you want to download in your favorite browser, then click and drag a link onto the box to initiate the transfer. Downloads can also be started via Multiget’s task menu.

Multiget supports multiple simultaneous threads per download, FTP and HTTP resuming (as long as the server supports it), and it works through proxies.

The developer provides binaries for Linux and Windows – as well as the source code, of course. Those of you running a Linux distro with apt-get can likely do a simple sudo apt-get install multiget. Mac and BSD users have to jump through the additional hoop of compiling from source, but Multiget will work for you, too!

Multiget is a multi-threaded download manager for any OS originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.