Recently in TechNotes Category

Not to be confused with bandspotting, the new band spotlight at the upcoming Festival of Faith & Music at Calvin College, bandwagon is a web-based iTunes backup system (for Macs) that might be really helpful. Having had a hard drive with all of my music on it fail in the past (wiping out a good deal of music in the process), this might be just the ticket:

Well, it appears as though this "column" will appear less often than I thought it might. Perhaps when I get into a writing routine, write more often. Even semi-regular readers can recognize that a "writing routine" might not ever happen ... but it's a goal to work towards, right?

Anyway, a lot can happen in the world of technology in two months and, indeed, a lot has happened since my last TechNotes--much of which will be reflected below.

iPod, iPod, iPod

I'll get the bad news out of the way first. Last Saturday, while in a hurry to close the store so we could drive to Indiana for a family function, I dropped our iPod. And, as one might expect, it broke. It looks fine (it was in a case when I dropped it), but I'm pretty sure I trashed the hard drive. Every time I try to start it, I get the iPod screen of death (a file folder with an exclamation point on top of it) while the hard drive makes an ill-sounding clicking noise. Ugh.

We're still trying to figure out what to do about it; we've gotten very used to having it around. Indeed, it is an incredibly useful device for people who listen to a lot of music and travel a lot. But it's also expensive--expensive to purchase and expensive to fix. A new hard drive would run at least $150 and a new iPod is $300. I imagine we'll adopt a holding pattern on this one and do nothing until a solution presents itself. Grr.

On to better news: Apple has recently introduced the iPod Nano and the new line of iPods, which can now play video. Both feature color screens, the patented Apple Click Wheel and, of course, iTunes.

The Nano is impossibly small and sports flash memory, meaning it no longer relies on a mechanically based hard drive to store information. This is significant, of course, because, as I illustrated with my own iPod last weekend, hard drives are susceptible to impact-induced damage. Flash memory is far more durable in that regard and, because there aren't any moving parts, much faster. The primary downside to flash memory is that it doesn't have the capacity of hard drives--yet. So, for example, the Nano can hold up to 4GB while the iPod can hold up to 60GB. Even so, they're pretty amazing devices.

The new iPods improve on the previous model slightly, featuring a slimmer casing and larger screen. The big news here, though, is that the new iPod now incorporates video into the iPod experience. Users can download music videos or television shows from the iTunes Music Store (looks like they will have to change the name) to play on their iPod. The video resolution is 320x240--so it will only look good on an iPod or other portable device--and the current selection of television shows available is sparse. While certainly not a robust solution at the moment, it seems as though this could be a promising development for delivering video content digitally.

Software

I have made significant changes to my workflow in the last two months. I recognize that I don't communicate as well as I need to do be an effective project manager. And, considering most of my work--World Fare, *cino, independent contracting--requires good project management, I am trying to rectify my communication deficiencies. Toward that end, I've started utilizing the following software solutions:

• After using Apple's Mail application for well over a year, I have switched back to Microsoft Entourage as my default e-mail program (Entourage is the Mac Outlook). The primary motivation for the switch was the new, fully integrated Project Center in Entourage 2004.
  

  Project Center allows me to identify contacts, notes, tasks and calendar items by project, meaning that all of these assets can be accessed in a single location. For example, e-mail--both to and from project contacts--is automatically added to a project in Project Center, making communication tracking easier. I can also choose a file folder to associate with the project, which is another helpful way to access all project-related material in one convenient location.



• Unfortunately, I lost the use of Mail.appetizer when I switched to Entourage. I immediately found that I missed this handy e-mail notification feature, so I went on the search for something that worked with Entourage. And I was pleasantly surprised ...
  

  Growl is a global notification system, so it works with several programs at once and provides unified notification delivery. Growl notifies me of new e-mails, the status of instant messenger buddies, the current iTunes song when it begins playing, the number of unread headlines in my RSS reader and a number of other things I forget about until I see a notification. The notification window is unobtrusive and appears just below the icons in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The only drawback to Growl is that it doesn't share the functionality features of Mail.appetizer--being able to delete e-mails directly in the notification window, etc. So far, though, the trade-in for global notification has trumped the loss of these features.



• Most recently, I've started using several online applications built by 37signals, a group of developers in Chicago whose tagline--"Simple software to help you get organized"--pretty much says it all. They build beautiful applications that do one thing really well. I've found two of their applications, Writeboard and Basecamp, particularly useful.
  

  Writeboard is a collaborative document writing tool that allows several people to work on a single document at the same time, complete with version tracking so you can see what has changed over the course of the writing process.

  
  

  Basecamp is a complete project management site. It includes Writeboard and features to-do lists, messaging, milestone due dates and file uploading. The project administrator adds people for specific projects and sets permissions for each person. For example, Bob can edit/write Writeboards, Joe can edit/add to-do lists, etc. Each person can then use the tools together with everyone else in the project. Several people can contribute to an ongoing revision to-do list, which tracks when tasks are completed. Someone can post a question message and others can respond to it, in much the same way blog commenting works. Basecamp is an extremely useful tool because it allows project communication to happen in one place. It even features an RSS feed, so that users can be updated when anything is added or edited on the project site.

  
  

  While Writeboards are free to use, Basecamp is fee-based and the fee is determined by the number of projects managed at one time. Currently, I'm using the $12/mo. plan, which allows up to three simultaneous projects, but I'm quickly moving towards an upgrade.

Here ends the second installment of TechNotes. Once again, I hope, if you've read this far, you found my observations marginally useful. Until next time ...

I've decided to start a semi-regular "column" on the blog called TechNotes. Very clever, eh? Essentially, I'm going to use the column to point to interesting technological developments as they apply me individually, the organizations we serve and the general technological milieu. All of which gives me a significant amount of leeway to discuss just about anything as long as it relates to technology.

And away I go ...

The new server

The biggest current development to speak of is our move to a new server. In fact, this is the first blog entry to be posted on our new space! The new server is far more affordable and offers more than 40 times more space. More, more, more for less. Makes you wonder why we didn't move earlier, doesn't it?

Well, to make the move all of our sites coded in ColdFusion needed to be re-written in PHP. I simply haven't had time or energy in the last two years to learn an entirely new language. And I still don't ...

Thankfully, my new friend James Stewart has graciously given many, many hours of his time to develop the new code for catapult, by far the most complicated site in the *cino family. He's also helped considerably on the server administration side of things, walking me through the process of database migration (among other things). James: thank you, thank you, thank you (again).

For the next several weeks, I suspect, we'll be working through the inevitable glitches. Thank you for your patience.

Mighty Mouse and Intel

My beloved Apple has made many strides in the past several weeks that may contribute to significant climate change in Hell.

First, they announced that they will be moving all of their computers to Intel processors over the next couple years. After years of trying to convince consumers that faster processor speed didn't necessarily mean a faster computer--which is generally true, to a point--Apple finally gave up on IBM and Motorola PowerPC chips. Every Mac will be shipping with "Intel inside" by the end of 2007.

I think this will be a great move for Apple in the long run. While I was initially skeptical (along with every other Mac user), I've been convinced that this will lead to some winsome developments. IBM and Motorola haven't been investing the kinds of resources in computer chips necessary for innovation; Intel only makes processors, making innovation essential for growth. It should be interesting to see what two highly innovative companies can come up with. And because I don't plan on upgrading my machine for the next several years, my next Mac will be an Intel machine.

Second, Apple introduced the Mighty Mouse last week, its first multi-button mouse. From the pictures and descriptions available online, it appears to be a wonderfully conceived piece of hardware. Simple, elegant and intuitively functional. While I wouldn't mind owning one, I think I'll probably wait until my current mouse gives up the ghost--which will, of course, likely be never.

Software

Several little software packages have helped me organize my workflow as of late and I'd like to briefly mention them in case they might be of use to you:

• Audioscrobbler is a plugin for software music players--iTunes, in my case--that sends song information to the Audioscrobbler web site, which compiles information based on what you're listening to and compares it to others. Don't worry, it isn't sending anything other than song titles, album titles and artist names. For example, here is my user page. You can see what I've been listening to recently and who some of my favorite artists are based on music I play through iTunes or my iPod.
  

  Why would you want to do this? Well, things get interesting when you start visiting your musical neighbors (people who listen to similar music) or checking out your recommendations (based on people who play similar music and have listened to things you haven't). Essentially, this system is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to new music, completely sidestepping the music industry marketing machine.



• Mail.appetizer is a handy plugin for Mail that pops up a translucent window with message information every time you get new mail. You can quickly look at the message and decide to view it in Mail, delete it, mark it as read or simply close the window to deal with the message later.


• Delicious Library is a fairly inexpensive library system to keep track of books, CDs, movies and video games. If you have a barcode scanner and you're connected to the internet, you can scan the barcode on a CD and Delicious Library will import all of the information from Amazon.com. You can also search manually. Then, you can use it to track who you are lending things to. You can even set return dates if you'd like. The only problem is getting massive libraries into the system to get started ...


• NetNewsWire is a clean and effective RSS newsreader. I can subscribe to all of my news sources and blogs I read regularly through RSS, allowing me to open one program to see if anything new has been posted on 25 different sites. Utilizing RSS has significantly cut down my aimless browsing time.


• Quicksilver behaves much like the new Spotlight feature in OS X Tiger, but I continue to use it because it seems to work a lot quicker. It's basically an application that points to programs, documents, e-mail addresses, songs--any kind of information, really--and gives you immediate access to all of them in one keystroke. For example, to open any program on my computer, I press the Apple key and the spacebar at the same time, type in the first few letters of the program and press enter. Or, if I wanted to visit a bookmarked website, I could simply type in the first few letter of the address to immediately access the site. If my browser isn't open, it is launched and the site is opened. Slick.


• M-Beat is a little application for iTunes that places playback controls in the menubar, among several other handy features.

Well, I hope you found that slightly useful. If nothing else, you were introduced to several nifty applications/plugins. I have no idea how often I'll end up posting these TechNotes, so stay tuned (if you're interested in this sort of thing).