LaCie SilverKeeper updated

LaCie wrote this free backup app called SilverKeeper a long time ago, and I quite liked it, but I had a hard time counting on it. It seemed like they weren’t serious about it. But they recently updated it to be a fully OS X Leopard-compatible, universal binary app. I’m testing it out now on a network volume, and will update this post with my findings.

Update: So far so good. I have SilverKeeper installed at a couple of environments, and it appears to be reliable and unobtrusive.

December 12, 2008 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

Amazon’s new mobile app

Download Amazon’s free app for the iPhone. Go to the “Remembers” section. Take a picture of any product. The picture will get uploaded to Amazon’s servers, which will try to match the image to a product in the catalog which you can then buy right then and there. I couldn’t believe it the first time I tried it. Nor the second time. It’s stellar! Doesn’t work every time, but the fact that it works at all blows me away.

I keep wondering: Why don’t they make these kinds of features more obviously available on our actual computers?

December 12, 2008 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

Will my Mac get a virus?

There was news earlier this week that Apple had released an article recommending that Mac users install anti-virus software. Many journalists made a big deal of this. Turns out the tech-support article in question was several years old, and had simply been updated, and looked recent. In response to the whole kerfuffle,  Apple has since yanked the article, because…

We have still never seen a Mac virus “in the wild.” 
Definition: virus = “a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.”
Viruses infect Windows computers, and they do so invisibly. But over the years, including just recently, a couple of anti-virus software companies recently reported a couple of  ”Trojan horses” exploits of the Mac.
Definition: Trojan horse = ”a program designed to breach the security of a computer system while ostensibly performing some innocuous function.”
Trojans are somewhat different than viruses. Trojan horses require that you, the user, do something to accept and install the malicious app on your system. In one example from earlier this year, the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan, a web site purportedly offering a movie — guess what kind of movie — says that the video cannot be displayed, and asks the user to download a “codec,” which is actually an app that changes your DNS servers to send you to phishing and spamming sites.
OSX.RSPlug.A may be a pest, but it ultimately does not really screw up your computer, and like other Trojan horses, it is removable. This one, for example, can be wiped through this admittedly annoying process or using a free tool now published by SecureMac.
But here’s the really important point: As with any system-level software on the Mac, one has to enter one’s administrative password to install this Trojan. Which is yet another reason Macs are more secure, and is also a lesson: If you don’t know where a piece of software comes from, don’t install it. Know your admin password, and know what you’re doing when you use it. Simple. 
A wag of the finger went to the people at Intego, who publish VirusBarrier for the Mac, and who blew the worry about this exploit way out of the water, which created a media scare and gave Mac haters a change to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Finally, if a virus scare ever becomes real, Mac users will be able to download and run the free ClamXAV. But doing is neither my recommendation nor, apparently, Apple’s.
December 6, 2008 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

What the heck does “default” mean?

I get this question a lot, so I decided to type “default” into Spotlight … Hey, that’s cool: Spotlight in Leopard is not only faster, it also finds definitions in the built-in Dictionary, which itself now has a Wikipedia search. Awesome!

default |diˈfôlt|noun. 
2. a preselected option adopted by a computer program or other mechanism when no alternative is specified by the user or programmer : 
e.g. “the default is fifty lines” | [as adj. ] default settings.

So, a program’s defaults are the way it will behave unless you choose otherwise.

December 6, 2008 | Filed Under Tech | 1 Comment