The most awesome thing you can do with Dropbox
Note: Before you read this, you owe it to yourself to head over to Dropbox and sign up for a free account. It will be the best thing you’ve done on your computer all month. There is a video on the front page of Dropbox.com to explain why.
Besides straght use of its core feature—syncing your files and data between all your devices—my tip-top favoritest thing I can do with Dropbox is edit plain ol’ text files. Whether I start them on my iPad or Mac or iPhone, once they’re saved into Dropbox, they immediately show up everywhere else.
That may sound mundane, but trust me: this is cutting-edge stuff! Writers have always been chained to big clunky mechanisms. From ink-and-parchment to typewriters to the first massive “portable” computers (with their 5-inch screens) to modern laptops, we’ve never had true mobility, the liberty to change our writing environment at a whim. The archetype of the lonely author—in his favorite bathrobe, seated in his library pounding away at his keyboard—may go the way of the telegraph and the horse-drawn carriage.
My goal for my own writing life is to find my own perfect environment, not a physical one, but an undistracting digital space, where I can find all my drafts and finished pieces, no matter where I may find myself. Dropbox has become the key to that.
The right to write
Since finding this solution of plain text, synced with Dropbox, I’ve tried and recommended several different text-editor apps for the Mac and iPad. Elements, Nebulous Notes, OmmWriter, and Apple’s TextEdit have served me well (at least, when Elements wasn’t throwing frustrating error messages that forced me to quit and even reinstall the app). Meistergeek Brett Terpstra has supervised an insanely comprehensive matrix of all the text apps in iOS.
Just recently, however, my best writing app for the Mac has made it to iOS. Byword is just fantastic: clean, simple, and with just the right features to make me kick everything else to the curb, at least for the moment.
Byword’s default mode on the Mac is full-screen, hiding all other windows and toolbars behind a light-cream shade.
It behaves similarly on the iPad; the few buttons and controls are designed in faded grey, and the developer has included only the most important features and preferences, eliminating the urge to fiddle rather than write.
If I create a document on the Mac, which I can do in any text editor, I just save it in my Dropbox folder. I have linked my Dropbox account to Byword on iPhone and iPad, so it sees any text file in any folder there. Whatever edits I do get automatically synced. With Lion on the Mac, I don’t have to remember to hit Save.
This easy, no-save syncing is simply impossible with Microsoft Word. I haven’t used Word for writing in years.
When I’m ready to ship, I can just copy and paste, or email straight from the iOS app, or from the Mac file system, as an attachment, or as plain or formatted text.
The real magic
Wait, did I just say formatted? Indeed I did. For this is the big new tip for modern writer: you can format a plain-text file. Bold, italics, bullet lists, web links, even web images and footnotes…you can do it all.
The secret is Markdown. Markdown is a set of simple text codes you can use to indicate formatting. It takes just minutes to learn, and once you’ve got it, it’s yours forever.
One asterisk on either side of a *word*, for example, means italics. **Two asterisks** is bold.
Use asterisks or plus signs to make a bulleted list, so…
* my first item
* my next item
* my last item
…becomes…
- my first item
- my next item
- my last item.
You can read the full set of syntax on Daring Fireball, the excellent web site of Markdown creator John Gruber. I recommend that you start with the basics. Everything after that is pure gravy.
Once you’ve finished writing and editing your doc, all that’s left is to ship it. I mentioned that you can email text directly out of Byword. BUT…if you format with Markdown, you can send email that’s all kinds of pretty, in ways that Apple’s Mail app just won’t do.
For bloggers, Markdown changes everything about generating a post, because it will convert all your formatting into sweet, sweet HTML code to be pasted into WordPress or your choice of platforms. My favorite CMS, Squarespace, even lets you edit in Markdown directly on your site.
Power editing
Back to Byword: The biggest reason I landed on Byword as my go to composer is how super-smart it is about Markdown. There are quick shortcuts to the most common codes, and special behaviors to make the syntax even easier.
If, for example, I’m editing a numbered list with “1.,” “2.,” etc., I just hit return after each line and the next number is generated. Ditto for bulleted lists. Also, on the Mac, all the Markdown codes fade into the background, and keyboard shortcuts will insert codes for bold, italics, links, lists, and images.
Always-on preview: I have just one more Power Tip. Once you have started using Markdown, it is worth popping on over to the Mac App Store and picking up Marked for $3.99. Wen you open a Markdown file in Marked, you get a constantly updated preview of your formatted file. This is as opposed to hitting Preview in Byword every few minutes to see what your end result will look like. Marked also offers the best HTML and rich-text export for pasting into email or your blog.
The end result
I guarantee, if you follow these simple recommendations, the combo of Dropbox + Byword + Markdown will rock your writing world. I wish you a happy life of letters!
If you wondered whether to buy a new iPad…
Do it. Lovely piece of machinery. Fast, fluid, and so very pretty. I smile whenever I turn it on.
I like pretty pictures…
Yes, photos and videos are magnificent. I’ve got this one shot of mountain laurels that makes you wanna sniff the screen. Netflix looks fantastic, as do iTunes flicks and the high-def DVD rips that I stream from my Mac mini media server (Air Video rocks!).
The Retina display on the iPad makes any other computer screen look like Donkey Kong. But smarter folks have used smarter words to describe the experience, so I’ll leave it at: you just gotta see it.
The iPad announcement also included the release of iPhoto for iOS. I don’t know how much I’ll ever use the iPad cameras, but editing my images is a different story. This experienced Photoshopper has long dreamed of using more natural and intuitive strokes to make my photos sparkle. With iPhoto on the iPad, that dream is realized. Apple has brought professional-quality image processing to anyone with a finger. That’s big, big stuff.
…But the reading
Man, a 10-inch Retina display gives new meaning to the word “read.” Kindle books, Flipboard, Zite, and Instapaper are so very smooth. Or just go to a web article in Safari and hit the Reader button in the address bar…
I know some folks will get all steamed when I say that the iPad is better than a book, but there, I’ve said it. Thanks for everything, Gutenberg. iPad is the new book.
Do more, wait less
Apple didn’t put a much better processor in the 2012 iPad than the one in the iPad 2, but I traded up from a 1st-gen tablet, and the difference is dramatic.
The new device handles like a champ all the extra-big graphics that iPad app developers have pumped into their new versions. I have felt barriers to my productivity evaporate. And I start to understand how people like Harry McCracken have come to use the iPad as their main axe.
(Site note: Of the iPad owners I’ve talked to, there seems to be a unanimous, and annoyed, sensation that the first two iPads started to feel sluggish about two weeks before the new iPad was announced. I’d like to think that the benchmark nerds out there would have a good explanation for this, but I’ve seen nothing, and the complaints seem to have fallen off since iOS 5.1. Please contribute your own experiences to the comments.)
Dissipating the heat, with puns
Amazingly, Consumer Reports’ headline about the iPad hotting up managed to take some steam off the release. Apple took a lot of heat after that report, but reality quickly cooled the heels of the link-baiters, and the magazine seems to have warmed up to Apple’s new tablet.
The Marcus Report: After an Infinity Blade II marathon (which in no way delayed the writing of this review, the new iPad is noticeably warmer at one corner, where the processor is. The effect is slight, and doesn’t bother me in the least.
But do you really need it?
As I type this, my friend is sitting nearby, very happily surfing the net and watching videos on my original iPad. It did for a time feel a little mopey, but I don’t get that feeling any longer. Any iPad is an awesome iPad, and I think I’m gonna keep that one around for a while.
That said, if you enjoy your iPad 1, but don’t get a really fluid vibe from it, you’re gonna go ga-ga over an iPad (3 or whatever).
If you own an iPad 2, you’ll see all the difference in the new screen. And what a difference it is.
Current iPads go for $300 and up on Craigslist. Gazelle will give you an easy $320 for an iPad 2 32GB WiFi + 3G.
Steve Jobs said that conventional PCs will be trucks on the road, while tablets and app phones will be the passenger vehicles of the infobahn. The new iPad brings that clear-eyed vision into ever sharper focus.
The Malware Cometh
It’s official: Macs are finally vulnerable to nasty viruses. There are malicious programs that can infect a Mac without the user having to do anything accidental or unwise. It ain’t an apocalypse, but we should be increasingly careful.
Last week saw the emergence of a version of the Flashback trojan. This bad bug sneaks into your web browser when you visit an infected web site, and starts reporting things like your browsing history and logins.
There are really good writeups about Flashback, like these from TidBITS, MacWorld, All Things D, and this nerdy one from Basics4Mac, with plenty of technical details and descriptions of the . For the purpose of this article, I’ll simply say that Flashback uses the programming environments Flash and Java to run. (These names may sound familiar, from discussions about how the iPhone has neither of them.)
Apple has also now, for the first time, posted a response to an emergent Mac malware. It’s brief and worth a glance.
So now I am going to try to distill, in as few words as possible, what the average Mac user should do about the virus.
What Now?
1. Run Software Update from the Apple menu.
Apple has released a patch to Java that prevents Flashback from infecting your Mac.
2. Don’t click on unknown or untrusted links to web sites.
Even some legit web sites have been infected, but they will be cleaned up. When you see a link in an email, before you click, hover your cursor over the link and read the address that pops up. If it doesn’t look right, don’t click.
3. Don’t enter your password…
…unless you know why you’re being asked to do so.
4. Test your Mac for infection.
This takes just a bit of effort, but is not hard. You have three reasonable options:
- Download this small app by long-time Mac nerd Mark Zeedar. Once the file test4flashback.zip (lowercase) is in your downloads folder, double-click it to “unzip” it, and then double-click the resulting file called Test4Flashback (with capital letters).
- Go to this web page by security firm Kaspersky. It can supposedly compare your Mac’s unique ID against a database of known infected machines.
- Open the app called Terminal. You can find it using Spotlight or in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Copy and paste each of the following commands into the Terminal, hitting return after each.
defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
defaults read /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
defaults read /Applications/iCab\ 4/iCab.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES
The result should look like the screen shot below, with the words “does not exist” after each line.
5. Remove the infection.
If one of the above techniques revealed that your Mac is infected, you have three options:
- Call us and we’ll take care of it.
- Download this removal tool from Kaspersky.
- Or follow these brief-but-nerdy instructions posted by F-Secure.
What Next?
But what then? How should Mac-o-philes stay vigilant against these intruders?
Please understand that all of the following are just suggestions, not prescriptions. All of us want our Macs to just keep working, without the tinkering and worrying characteristic of Windows users. But to that end, I have myself adopted the following methods, and I believe they help protect my computers and my data from the bad guys.
1. Uninstall Adobe Flash from your Mac
Adobe has this page, from which you can download the Flash uninstaller for Mac.
I know, I know, you’re saying it’s going to break your internet. Read on, dear reader.
2. Use Google Chrome instead of Apple Safari for web browsing
Chrome is a fantastic, free web browser that Google created to make the web better and faster.
Google built their own version of Flash into Chrome, and Chrome updates itself on a regular basis behind the scenes. So you don’t have to keep up with Flash updates, and you’ll never be tricked into downloading a fake version of Flash.
Sometimes I browse in Safari, but mostly I use Chrome.
3. Should I disable Java?
You can read in the other articles how you can disable Java entirely, both for your browser and on your whole Mac. The problem is that, as of this moment, Java is even more important than Flash. Many of our clients are using CrashPlan for internet backups, or LogMeIn for remote access to their computers. Both services rely on Java.
As an experiment, I have disabled Java on Safari, in Safari menu > Preferences > Security. Ping me if you’re curious whether that has affected my experience on the web.
Back up, and be vigilant
If you follow the 3–2–1 rule of backups, then you can recover from anything that happens to your computer.
And from here on out, it behooves us to keep an eye on what goes on on our computers. The days of cavalier surfing are over for Mac users.
Ditch Quicken and QuickBooks, save time and aspirin
I thought y’all might be interested in a a couple of online services to help with bookkeeping and potentially replace Quicken.
1) The first is a free service called Mint.com.
It was purchased a while ago by Intuit, the makers of Quicken. It’s an online portfolio of all your financial accounts—banks, investments, credit cards, loans, everything. It shows it all to you all at once, and lets you configure alerts and reminders and budgets. I started using Mint a few years ago, and it’s really fantastic and easy.
And the iPad app is gorgeous.
2) The second is a more complete accounting package called Xero.com, which I’ve used to replace QuickBooks entirely. They have a personal plan for $35/year. It can pull transaction feeds from your banks automatically. It makes the whole process of bookkeeping so much quicker and simpler.
If you get squeamish about entering your banking user names and passwords into a 3rd-party service, it’s worth understanding that Mint draws its information from clearing houses to which banks already publish our data. As with any online service, it’s crucial that you choose a good, strong password for Mint, Xero, and your banking.
Should I backup my computer?
Every computer owner must keep active, daily backups of all of their data. We like to use the 3-2-1 Commandment of Backups:
Thou shalt keep:
3 copies of any data,
on 2 different media on-site,
and 1 copy offsite.
The 3-2-1 rule applies to any piece of digital data, however minor, small, or seemingly unimportant.
- Copy 1 is the drive inside your Mac,
- Copy 2 is an external hard drive in your home or office, which gets backups via the Time Machine software, connected either directly to your computer or over your internal network,
- And the 3rd copy happens across the internet, frequently to a service such as Carbonite or our current favorite, Crashplan.
We have established easy, elegant, and cost-effective methods to achieve 3-2-1, and we will work with you to find the solutions that best fit your business.
Here’s a scenario:
Let’s say you are maintaining good, solid, daily 3-2-1 backups. And then, in normal use, your Mac’s hard drive fills up, and you need to free up space. Before we do that, we just need to consider 3-2-1: if you delete something from your Mac, that means that you have to copy that stuff to a 3rd destination.
The easiest solution for that is simply another external drive. Think of it as an archive—you know you’ve got the data on Time Machine and Crashplan, so you can either do a manual, organized copy to the Archive Drive, or set some different software to automatically build the archive as you go, depending on your workflow.
It’s worth noting that Apple will release Mountain Lion this summer, which will let you set Time Machine copying to multiple drives. That’s going to ease a lot of our decisions in this arena.
Give us a call. We’ll help you choose the right devices, at the price that fits.
Was Jobs right about Dropbox?
On Feb 27, Colleen Pence wrote:
Thought you might find this article interesting:
Steve Jobs was right: Dropbox is a feature, not a product | PandoDaily
Man, that's spot-on in some ways. It's becoming a distinct possibility that Apple is going to make (or get closer to making) the "continuous client" idea happen with Mountain Lion. And I will be well glad for it.
But I don't see Dropbox failing anytime soon. The writer misses a crucial point, the difference between the Dropbox model and that of Apple and Microsoft. The major OS developers desire to keep you and your working environments within that company's ecosystem; Dropbox, on the other hand, wants to help you distribute your data across ecosystems.
This is Dropbox's killer feature: your stuff, everywhere.
Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog
Guessing at iPad 3 arrival + Re: Idea Sketch
Can I use Idea Sketch on my Mac or is it only a mobile app?
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idea-sketch/id367246522?mt=8
Mobile only, but with the paid upgrade to it, you can export the project files, which are openable in OmniOutliner, an amazing and long-standing app on the Mac.
Cool. Thanks. I think I’ll wait til I get an iPad. The 3 is coming out in like March, right?
New Google privacy policy won’t affect Apps for business, government
Twice I have had job interviews were I was presented with a document that states, “You will be fined and fired if we find out you are using Google for any services for data or email.” This is a very big deal for clients that do not not want their data mined and sold (investor-types and media folks, for example). http://arstechnica.com/#!/business/news/2012/01/new-google-privacy-policy-wont-affect-apps-for-business-government.ars
Web and email hosting
I would really like to switch from GoDaddy for our email and Web hosting services. I believe you told me that Google can also handle this. Is that correct, and if so, can you point me to the Web page that will explain it?
I definitely believe that Google Apps is the best choice for email hosting. It also includes Google Docs and Calendar hosting, as well as Google Sites, for building ad hoc web sites that can be shared strictly internally or to the world. These are good for things like individual projects, or quick reference documentation.
Google does not offer conventional web hosting, but there are lots of possibilities for that. If you are going to design a new site, the go-to platform for web sites is currently WordPress, but I am building my new site in Squarespace. It’s simply fantastic.
If you are keeping your current design, I could recommend staying with GoDaddy just for web hosting. Some folks take issues with GoDaddy, regarding everything from business practices to aesthetics to animal rights and gender roles. Because of their recent support of the impossibly stupid Stop Online Piracy Act, I will likely move my own domains to another registrar such as NameCheap or Hover.
There are lots of excellent alternatives. Lemme know more about your needs.
Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog
How to dispose of old technology
How do I properly dispose of an old CPU? It has no useful info on it. I just don’t want to throw it in the trash.
You can get rid of that machine a number of ways, including:
- Best Buy will take recyclable technology, requiring neither a fee nor an appointment.
- You can give stuff away at craigslist or Freecycle.
- You can take any non-trashable material or items — from batteries to paint to televisions — to the hazardous materials disposal depot over at Culebra and 410 (dial 311 in San Antonio for details).
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