tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12611611550028888812024-03-13T14:23:46.663-04:00David Alison's BlogI blog because everyone is entitled to my opinionDavid Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.comBlogger251125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-64350437501057205932023-12-12T07:17:00.001-05:002023-12-12T07:17:46.700-05:00How to Declare Email Bankruptcy<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ2_f5RBEeWbM0rIVV0aCZ33GhKTEEXnjA81jIJyvk2tGCGWkfN-c5NHp0VA8NMCE8X9UlN3Fyg3qzv7i7_vnmcBLGcaic_cpK9_N7Iwg7Lvwg4janlyZRDavN7_cOVmIkIlkpxo7fNqOImHOedSc2OlSwNxehdEwclCuaGZpZyZy_ZAAhtqbioi90gwE/s1792/PotensMentor-email-bankruptcy.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1792" height="367" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ2_f5RBEeWbM0rIVV0aCZ33GhKTEEXnjA81jIJyvk2tGCGWkfN-c5NHp0VA8NMCE8X9UlN3Fyg3qzv7i7_vnmcBLGcaic_cpK9_N7Iwg7Lvwg4janlyZRDavN7_cOVmIkIlkpxo7fNqOImHOedSc2OlSwNxehdEwclCuaGZpZyZy_ZAAhtqbioi90gwE/w642-h367/PotensMentor-email-bankruptcy.png" width="642" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Email overload - it may be time to declare bankruptcy. Source: DALL-E</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I've been adhering to a zero-inbox policy for years, a practice born out of necessity while working in a company with limited email space. This approach demanded ruthless efficiency in minimizing my storage footprint.</p><p>What this means is that my inbox contains only items needing my immediate attention. It's effectively a succinct to-do list. Anything lingering for more than a day gets shifted to my actual to-do list.</p><p>Beyond managing data overload, a zero-inbox also eased my cognitive load. There's something inherently overwhelming about an email icon flaunting a red badge with a number in the hundreds. Scanning through a massive list of emails meant making countless micro-decisions: Is the sender significant? Does the subject hint at something urgent? Is there a time-sensitive issue within?</p><p>So, how do you tackle this challenge? Declaring email bankruptcy often involves deleting everything in your inbox and informing everyone, "Sorry, I had to declare email bankruptcy. Please resend anything important."</p><p>If this approach seems pretentious to you, as it does to me, a more nuanced method is needed. Here's my solution, which requires a couple of hours of focused effort.</p><p>If your inbox is overflowing with hundreds, or worse, thousands of emails, create a new folder and transfer all the emails there. Name it "Emails up until [today's date]". For Gmail users, create a label with this name, apply it to everything in your inbox, then archive them.</p><p>Next, address this new folder (or label in Gmail). Start with unread emails. If they number in the hundreds or thousands, I suggest focusing on recent emails from the past few weeks. Use this pattern to triage:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Important, requiring immediate attention:</b> Move back to the inbox.</li><li><b>Useful for future reference:</b> Leave in the folder.</li><li><b>Unimportant:</b> Delete.</li></ol><p></p><p>Aim to spend no more than an hour on these unread messages. Afterward, mark everything else in that folder as read.</p><p>This process allows you to swiftly handle the most critical items, refocusing your attention on the inbox. You'll likely have new emails that demand your attention. Here are some strategies for managing ongoing inbox activity:</p><p><b>Unsubscribe:</b> From newsletters to marketing emails, if they contribute to inbox overload and you rarely read them, unsubscribe. The same applies to trivial automated updates in organizations.</p><p><b>Use Rules:</b> Both Outlook and Gmail offer robust rule settings to organize incoming messages. These rules can filter, move, or delete messages based on specific criteria.</p><p><b>Organize with Folders or Labels:</b> Creating folders or labels provides context and helps avoid missing important emails in broad searches. Some useful ones include nested folders for clients/customers, a receipts folder (especially valuable during tax season), and a travel folder for consolidating travel plans.</p><p>While setting up folders or labels may initially seem labor-intensive, they're invaluable for maintaining a clear inbox and efficient email management.</p><p>Email doesn't have to be a source of stress. The key is overcoming the initial hurdle of clearing out the inbox. Once that's accomplished, maintaining it becomes much more manageable.</p>David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-75667844283839051172023-12-06T08:15:00.004-05:002023-12-06T08:15:40.426-05:00Why I Keep Hand Written Notes in Meetings<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj48n8Tx-nLOC5b3o39NuzalCiKcltozuRxntKxogOJKiEwvixhDYyAE0tp8-Z0bFQMcecwUl4TQPrT9HHuPt3Gv0u6Z173cGeCTO7AbyViP5NeKFsUl4_Sl-vVofZUQP-AI8uLcrMMcXEPju2cwTsZtCmO3qoJrl0sUhDg3spduZKANl3-H4I9KlXI6r4/s1069/PotensMentor-longhand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="1069" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj48n8Tx-nLOC5b3o39NuzalCiKcltozuRxntKxogOJKiEwvixhDYyAE0tp8-Z0bFQMcecwUl4TQPrT9HHuPt3Gv0u6Z173cGeCTO7AbyViP5NeKFsUl4_Sl-vVofZUQP-AI8uLcrMMcXEPju2cwTsZtCmO3qoJrl0sUhDg3spduZKANl3-H4I9KlXI6r4/w651-h373/PotensMentor-longhand.jpg" width="651" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: DALL-E</td></tr></tbody></table><p>In a world dominated by technology, where digital tools are often the go-to for note-taking, I’ve found immense value in maintaining the practice of keeping handwritten notes during meetings. This technique is not just about documenting discussions; it’s an integral part of my active listening strategy — a critical skill for effective leadership and coaching.</p><p>Active listening involves more than just hearing words. It’s about fully engaging with the speaker, maintaining eye contact, processing their words, and often, reflecting their sentiments or phrases back to them. This ensures not only that you’ve understood their message, but also that they feel heard and valued. In my years of experience in leadership and executive coaching, active listening has proven to be a cornerstone of successful communication.</p><p>Interestingly, handwritten notes play a pivotal role in this process. Research has shown that the act of writing notes by hand can significantly improve focus and information retention. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxap0000375" target="_blank">taking and reviewing longhand notes can help mitigate mind-wandering</a>, a common obstacle in maintaining attentive listening.</p><p>For years, I carried bound notebooks, using them to jot down key points and thoughts during meetings. This method was effective in helping me remember and process information, but it wasn’t without its drawbacks. Physical notebooks, while handy, aren’t always within reach, especially during unexpected or impromptu meetings.</p><p>To overcome this limitation, I transitioned to taking notes on my iPad. Using a stylus and the Notes app, I can quickly create a new file for each meeting. This approach has several advantages. First, it allows me to keep my notes organized and easily accessible. The iPad’s Focus Mode also ensures that I stay free from distractions like text messages or notifications during meetings.</p><p>The digital format has another significant benefit: my notes are synchronized across my devices through iCloud. This connectivity means that my notes are available on my main computer and iPhone, offering me the flexibility to access them whenever needed. It’s a safeguard against the all-too-familiar problem of misplacing a notebook, something I’ve experienced firsthand.</p><p>But why stick with handwriting in an age where typing is faster and more convenient? The answer lies in the connection between hand movements and memory. Writing by hand involves more complex motor skills and sensory experiences than typing. This engagement of the brain’s motor pathways aids in better encoding and recalling of the information.</p><p>In my coaching practice at <a href="https://www.potensmentor.com/" target="_blank">PotensMentor</a>, I emphasize the importance of being fully present and engaged in interactions. Handwritten notes are a tangible manifestation of this principle. They represent a deliberate choice to immerse oneself in the conversation, to actively listen and participate, rather than passively record.</p><p>For anyone looking to improve their leadership and communication skills, I advocate giving handwritten notes a try. Whether you choose the traditional pen and paper or a digital stylus and tablet, the act of writing by hand can transform your approach to meetings. It’s a simple yet powerful tool that fosters deeper engagement, better memory retention, and, ultimately, more meaningful connections.</p><p>Handwritten notes are more than just a method of recording information; they are a conduit to deeper understanding and connection in our interactions. As we navigate our fast-paced, technology-driven world, sometimes, going back to the basics, like taking handwritten notes, can offer the most sophisticated solutions.</p>David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-71934514580491056912023-12-01T07:11:00.002-05:002023-12-01T07:11:54.073-05:00Why Failure is a Gift<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo98lFcpO4iZAdrEniO0SNWGDiwYOCMXGNl_QTlppacdibYYYX_eTZRoYx2FluUm0FruaOIXYn_CCrpwbyFAG0jRBBKbj8-9Ha2_UfcHbSa69e3PRN_G0jTbyonxb1SST1MXWWzwNnhfV6PEgJSW986Iwo2WZ0zjzEbQf3Gzr_oaEWIGd8gPVqxri-jLc/s1792/PotensMentor_Failure_Gift.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1792" height="389" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo98lFcpO4iZAdrEniO0SNWGDiwYOCMXGNl_QTlppacdibYYYX_eTZRoYx2FluUm0FruaOIXYn_CCrpwbyFAG0jRBBKbj8-9Ha2_UfcHbSa69e3PRN_G0jTbyonxb1SST1MXWWzwNnhfV6PEgJSW986Iwo2WZ0zjzEbQf3Gzr_oaEWIGd8gPVqxri-jLc/w682-h389/PotensMentor_Failure_Gift.png" width="682" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: DALL-E</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Embarking on each day, none of us plan to fail. Whether it’s our personal endeavors, professional projects, or simple daily tasks, the aim is always success. However, life is unpredictable, and at times, despite our best efforts and intentions, we encounter failure. My own journey, marked by both professional challenges in the tech industry and deeply personal experiences, has taught me to perceive failure not as a setback, but as a precious gift. This perspective has deeply influenced not just my approach to challenges but also my understanding of growth and resilience.</p><p>Failure, in its essence, tests our limitations. It nudges us out of our comfort zones, challenging us to confront and embrace our vulnerabilities. In the tech world, a project that doesn’t pan out as expected or a glitch that goes unnoticed isn’t merely a mishap; it’s a crucial learning moment. It highlights areas needing growth and skills demanding refinement. This principle extends beyond professional life; in our personal journeys, facing failure can profoundly teach us about resilience and perseverance.</p><p>The lessons failure imparts about ourselves are invaluable. When plans go awry, our reactions reveal the core of our character. Are we quick to surrender, or do we meet challenges head-on? These moments of truth unveil our real strengths and weaknesses. As an avid cyclist and woodworker, I’ve encountered numerous failed attempts and projects that didn’t turn out as planned. Each of these experiences has taught me more about my patience, creativity, and grit than any seamless success could.</p><p>In my past, I had the tendency to obsess over failures, replaying them in my mind and berating myself for each misstep. This relentless self-critique was harsher than any feedback I would ever consider giving to someone else. Stepping back and viewing these moments through a more compassionate lens, one that I would use for others, was a transformative experience. Learning to be kind to myself in the face of failure, and viewing it as a learning opportunity rather than an excuse for self-reproach, was a pivotal step in my personal growth.</p><p>Moreover, failure has a unique way of grounding us, especially amidst a series of successes. It’s easy to get carried away by consecutive triumphs, but failure serves as a reality check. It reminds us that success should not feed our ego but rather keep us anchored in humility and reality. In my career in technology and leadership, I’ve witnessed how success can cloud judgment. Failure, in these scenarios, acts as a necessary wake-up call, ensuring we stay true to our values and objectives.</p><p>The story of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Nyad" target="_blank">Diana Nyad</a> beautifully illustrates how failure can redirect us onto a better path or strengthen our resolve. Nyad, an American author and long-distance swimmer, made multiple attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida. Despite facing daunting challenges, she persisted. Her failures didn’t deter her; they fortified her determination. In 2013, at 64, she achieved her dream. Nyad’s journey is a powerful example of how failure can be a stepping stone to extraordinary achievements.</p><p>Failure also serves as a tremendous motivator. It fuels a desire to strive harder, push boundaries, and innovate. In the face of failure, analyzing what went wrong and strategizing for improvement can transform setbacks into stepping stones toward success. This approach is particularly pertinent in the ever-evolving tech industry, where adaptability is key.</p><p>It’s essential to view failure not as a personal defeat but as an opportunity for growth. This shift in mindset can be transformative, allowing us to embrace setbacks as part of our journey toward success. As we navigate through life, both professionally and personally, remembering that failure is not something to fear or be ashamed of is crucial. Instead, it’s a gift that offers invaluable lessons, motivates us to aim higher, and helps us become the best versions of ourselves.</p><p>The true measure of failure is not in the falling but in the refusal to rise again. Let’s value these moments of setback as they shape us into <a href="https://medium.com/@dralison/cultivating-resilience-34e993cf9e58" target="_blank">more robust and resilient individuals</a>, equipped to face future challenges with grace and determination. Failure, indeed, is a gift — a unique and profound one that has the potential to lead us to destinations beyond our wildest dreams.</p>David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-16029139953827173122023-07-10T16:24:00.000-04:002023-07-10T16:24:11.398-04:00PotensMentor: Unleashing Potential in Tech Leaders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUo4HrBikaaK0QOGH84Jg1-2psGSGGzHCp4Z3BMOO6Vr8O-iiK6b-HYQc03Lj9HyKCQhbZSaCpE1ibrsM-XskZrjqkzyiJe0We8TenRgKaFHxU2XAn5e48xSsDSUNiadj8u60CZp0_doF2GU-YsG1E5GbvGaXhQXlpskK9FMbJ8E35vspRE8x-FhIqW7E/s1456/PotensMentor_reach_potential_drawing.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="1456" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUo4HrBikaaK0QOGH84Jg1-2psGSGGzHCp4Z3BMOO6Vr8O-iiK6b-HYQc03Lj9HyKCQhbZSaCpE1ibrsM-XskZrjqkzyiJe0We8TenRgKaFHxU2XAn5e48xSsDSUNiadj8u60CZp0_doF2GU-YsG1E5GbvGaXhQXlpskK9FMbJ8E35vspRE8x-FhIqW7E/w640-h358/PotensMentor_reach_potential_drawing.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Dear Friends,</p><p>I am writing my first blog post in years to share some exciting news and a significant shift in my professional journey. I have decided to follow a longstanding passion of mine: executive coaching. A few years ago, I received my certification as an executive coach, and I believe now is the perfect time to put that to good use.</p><p>The name of my new venture is <a href="https://www.potensmentor.com" target="_blank">PotensMentor</a>. This executive coaching practice is designed specifically to nurture and empower leaders in the technology sector, a domain I have been intimately involved with throughout my four-decade-long career. PotensMentor is committed to unlocking the potential of tech leaders, fostering personal growth, and building resiliency in a rapidly evolving industry landscape.</p><p>Our mission at PotensMentor is simple, yet profound. We aim to ignite transformative growth in technology leaders, helping them evolve into the best versions of themselves. Through committed partnership and immersive coaching, we strive to empower these leaders to excel in their unique roles, inspire innovation, and catalyze unparalleled success within their organizations.</p><p>As I embark on this exciting journey, I plan to post new articles to <a href="https://medium.com/@dralison/about" target="_blank">my Medium account</a>. I invite you to subscribe to my feed if you're interested in learning about the techniques I've developed over the years to become a more effective leader and business partner.</p><p>Thank you once again for your continued support. Here's to new beginnings and the exciting road ahead!</p><p>Best Regards,</p><p>David</p><div><br /></div>David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-15816463192691332822018-09-12T11:10:00.001-04:002018-09-12T11:10:27.269-04:00Finding Davey: A Father's Search for His Son in the Afterlife<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZxJboJHdzCo/W5kTi0rEwUI/AAAAAAAAVHk/uauyu3Eg2PcRoTAYxCuVNcOvPtWm_HK8wCLcBGAs/s1600/Davey_and_David.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1425" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZxJboJHdzCo/W5kTi0rEwUI/AAAAAAAAVHk/uauyu3Eg2PcRoTAYxCuVNcOvPtWm_HK8wCLcBGAs/s320/Davey_and_David.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
<b>Note:</b> On August 17, 2018 I released my book: <a href="https://amzn.to/2oeBuxO" target="_blank">Finding Davey: A Father's Search for His Son in the Afterlife</a>. It is available on Amazon in both <a href="https://amzn.to/2oeBuxO" target="_blank">Paperback</a> and <a href="https://amzn.to/2x5TTBH" target="_blank">Kindle formats</a>.<br />
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When I started writing Finding Davey it wasn't because I wanted to write a book. It was because I wanted to keep a journal of what was happening to me as I navigated my way out of the profound grief I found myself in. Initially it was a struggle just to get through each day; so much of my life had been turned upside down by the <a href="https://www.davidalison.com/2018/07/a-course-change.html" target="_blank">death of my son</a> that I found myself in free-fall, grasping for anything stable.<br />
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Most days I would write down how I felt and record my thoughts. This was not intended to be a cathartic exercise; the writing was often very difficult and required that I re-experience the emotions as I wrote down how I had been feeling. Many tears were shed on my keyboard in the early stages. I did it because I wanted to see if I was in fact getting better. When you've fallen down a hole so deep you cannot see the light above you, getting any sense of progress while attempting to climb out is vitally important. When I wondered if I would ever feel happy again I would look back to the week before and see what I was experiencing.<br />
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Over time I saw a distinct change in my journal. The sadness was slowly replaced by growth; by exploring meditation, mindfulness, spirituality, life after death, etc., I was growing. I was getting closer to the rim of that deep hole, even when I still couldn't see any daylight.<br />
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As the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, I found myself looking back at the progress I had made and feeling better. I began to engage with other parents that had lost their children and found myself in the company of people at dramatically different levels of healing. Some had lost children years before we had lost Davey and they were still struggling just to get through each day.<br />
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Being a member of the club no parent ever wants to join means you have a special bond with fellow club members. As my wife Allison and I improved I found myself gently encouraging members of our club, cheering them on, trying to convey that life could become more beautiful than ever before. The book was born of the need to help other parents find happiness again.<br />
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Finding happiness doesn't mean you need to forget your child or pretend everything is "back to normal". Just as you cannot travel back in time and change the outcome of the event that triggered the grief, you cannot return to your old life exactly the way it was. There may be some elements that remain the same but most of it will need a new normal. It is my contention that the new normal can be a happy and joy filled life, but first it requires believing that it is possible.<br />
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It is my sincere hope that Finding Davey can become a helpful tool for bereaved parents that want to heal, especially for fathers that may struggle with skepticism and rigid thinking like I did.<br />
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Below is the foreword for my book, written by <a href="https://www.suzannegiesemann.com/" target="_blank">Suzanne Giesemann</a>. A fellow parent that has lost a child, Suzanne is a well known medium and spiritual teacher working tirelessly to demonstrate that life doesn't end at death.<br />
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I hope you will consider reading the book, especially if you have suffered the loss of someone close to you, or consider recommending it to someone that is struggling through grief.<br />
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<b>Foreword to Finding Davey</b><br />
If one were to stereotype an engineer, certain characteristics come to mind: analytical, logical, methodical, science-based, and no-nonsense. The author of this book, David Alison, typifies all of those terms. But David Alison is also a loving husband and father, and it is this identity that led him to write this moving book. As the result of the death of his son, Davey, David had the impetus and the courage to go where many men and most engineers dare not venture: into the world of the unseen and the unproven.<br />
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I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Davey before I met his father. I got to know Davey during a one-hour session conducted with David’s wife, Allison. I am an evidential medium, and Allison contacted me in hopes of connecting with Davey across the veil. As you will read later in this book, we did exactly that. Davey is an outstanding communicator with a vibrant spirit, who made the session with him easier than most.<br />
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With my background as a Navy commander and commanding officer, I can identify with David’s left-brain mentality. Having endured the sudden death of my stepdaughter Susan, I can also identify with what a family goes through when a child crosses the veil—Susan’s passing caused me to embark on a journey quite similar to David’s. I can promise you, David’s grief did not make him lose his grip on reality. Quite the opposite. Because of Davey’s passing, David has discovered a greater reality.<br />
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This book serves as a primer for parents with a child who has transitioned. It is especially important and valuable for men, particularly fathers, who are grieving. Parts of the Alison family’s story are difficult to read. Please do not put the book down or skip the painful parts that describe the events surrounding Davey’s passing. They are integral to David’s motivation in writing this book. At the risk of stereotyping again, I will say that for a man, David has done an excellent job of describing the emotional trauma he and his family suffered. Since he has shared his feelings and experiences so openly, readers in a similar situation will know that they are not the only ones going through such trauma. All will understand why David stretched himself beyond his comfort zone and traditional worldview to do as the title suggests and <i>find Davey</i>.<br />
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It has been proven that by reading stories of others’ experiences, we are more likely to have such experiences of our own. David Alison shares here a multitude of signs and encounters he has enjoyed with Davey since his son’s transition. In my classes and workshops, I teach methods to increase the likelihood of such experiences, and I can assure you that the events you will read about can be believed and trusted.<br />
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I have sat with thousands of people in grief. Most want desperately to have the kind of experiences David describes in this book, but few achieve this level and quantity of interaction. This is a testament to David’s discipline and dedication and to Davey’s powerful soul.<br />
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David and Allison are outstanding examples of <a href="https://www.helpingparentsheal.org/" target="_blank">Shining Light Parents</a>. This is a new term that we hope you will share with others after reading Finding Davey. A Shining Light Parent is one whose child has left the physical body, but whose light continues to shine as an ongoing presence in the family’s heart and home.<br />
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The term is a positive replacement for the term “bereaved parent,” reflecting an awareness that the light of the soul cannot be extinguished on either side of the veil. “Shining Light Parent” carries different meanings depending on where one is in the healing process:<br />
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<ul>
<li>As one begins the healing journey after a passing, it is the child in spirit—like Davey—who is the Shining Light. It is their light that keeps us going.</li>
<li>Moment by moment, thanks to unmistakable signs from those across the veil, undeniable synchronicities, and support from others, those still in physical form begin to feel the light within themselves once again.</li>
<li>With the help of the Shining Lights across the veil, those here who are doing the challenging work of healing after a passing begin to serve as shining examples for those new to the journey. The child who has passed rejoices in this healing. It no longer feels right to call such people “bereaved parents.” Like David and Allison, they have graduated to full status as “Shining Light Parents.”</li>
</ul>
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If you are a bereaved parent and look forward to being able to call yourself a Shining Light Parent, by all means follow David’s examples: <a href="https://www.helpingparentsheal.org/books/" target="_blank">Read books on the afterlife</a>. Go to conferences about the afterlife. Attend workshops or classes with those who legitimately and regularly connect across the veil. Meditate or practice presence regularly. Seek guidance from and ask questions of Higher Consciousness. Constantly check your belief system: is it helping or hindering you? Be open to the signs your loved ones are sending you. When you receive an undeniable sign or a visit from your loved one, honor that! Talk to your Shining Lights often and know that they hear you. Most of all, as David Alison so courageously demonstrates, don’t worry what others think or say. It’s not their journey. It’s yours.<br />
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Finding Davey shows that it is possible to heal from the death of a child. The light of the soul may grow dim temporarily as we face life’s inevitable challenges, but that spark never goes out. May we celebrate the eternal life of Davey and all of those who have passed by making every effort to turn up our lights in their honor.<br />
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<b>Suzanne Giesemann</b><br />
Author and Evidential Medium<br />
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The photo of Davey and me at the top of this post sits prominently on my desk, and adorns the back of Finding Davey. Our family was goofing around in the back yard, taking pictures on a warm summer afternoon. Davey and Julia were about to head off to their respective college campuses. We broke up into little groups, taking dozens of photos.<br />
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When it was time for Davey and me to take our picture together, Davey said "Hey dad, let me get on your back!" and before I knew it he had jumped up there, clinging to my neck.<br />
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I was in my bare feet and standing uncomfortably on the rocky path in our garden, my feet already in pain from the rough edges digging into my soles. The sudden addition of a 165lb squirming man on my back ramped the pain level up dramatically. While this was happening Allison was trying to take the picture and saying "David, smile! Come on, smile!" My son could not control his laughter, which happened a lot with Davey.<br />
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More than a few profanities escaped my clenched teeth, which I had forced into what I thought was a reasonable facsimile of a happy smile. Every curse word sounded like it came from a ventriloquist, which made Davey's laughter intensify. His shaking body amplifying the pain in my feet. When he finally jumped off my back it took him a long time to compose himself.<br />
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I didn't know it at the time but the pain I was enduring would give me my favorite photo of the two of us. Even painful experiences can create something beautiful if you give it time.</div>
David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-19200619054677902952018-08-21T09:37:00.000-04:002018-08-21T09:37:20.447-04:00Digital LandminesWhen you lose a child the number of challenges you face is profound. One of the reasons many grief stricken people disconnect from their prior lives is that the reminders of their loss are everywhere. I experienced this first hand after I lost my son in a car accident in July of 2016.<br />
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As a purveyor and advocate of technology for over 30 years, I had always been a fan of the sharing nature of the modern internet. Easy access to information opened completely new and innovative ways of solving problems for me, and I embraced it fully. Over the last few years social media has evolved, pushing more and more automated engagement on it's users.<br />
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Social media is both a blessing and a curse to the newly bereaved; it can be a primary conduit for connecting with friends and family. In our case it allowed us to see all the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/daveysgift" target="_blank">wonderful acts of kindness people were doing in our son’s name</a>, receive links for inspirational videos and articles, and do research on how consciousness could survive physical death.<br />
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There were several dark sides to this connectivity, however, among them local news sites and community forums. When the police put out the press release about my son’s accident they added at the end that “alcohol may have been a factor,” though I knew that Davey had not had anything to drink for at least two days before the accident and there was nothing found at the accident scene to imply that he had. Later the toxicology report would confirm that he had nothing in his system, but it wasn’t a news story by then.<br />
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Having been online since well before there was an actual Internet, I’m familiar with how brutal people posting anonymously can be. Friends told me that some people in community based message boards had speculated about my sons accident, judging him based on that erroneous police report. Personally, I avoided using Google to find out what news was out there on my son, and stuck to very limited social media channels. Unfortunately, though, that didn’t always help.<br />
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When a friend suggested I visit his Facebook page to view his artwork, a picture popped up of Davey and his friend Spencer, from eight years earlier. I had brought them to a Caps hockey game to celebrate Spencer’s seventeenth birthday. Facebook suggested posting this happy memory to my timeline.<br />
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It was seven months to the day after Davey had passed.<br />
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Seeing the smiling face of my son at sixteen was difficult at that point in my journey. I immediately made the calculation that I would, at that point, have eight years and five months left with him physically. If I knew that then, would I have done things differently? These were the thoughts that dominated my mind at that point.<br />
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LinkedIn recommended that I log in and congratulate Davey on his one-year work anniversary, a year after he started work with me on our start-up. The email included a picture of Davey in his suit, flashing that big smile of his. I had taken the photo of him a little over a year earlier and I knew that while he looked all dressed up he was actually wearing shorts, since it was just a headshot. While I loved that picture, having some system decide I needed to see it right now wasn’t helpful.<br />
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Even my iPhone got in on the act, at one point giving me a notification that it had created a new “memory” for me. I could see a little photo of Davey in the message and slid the notification to open it. Suddenly I was witness to a video montage of Davey pictures set to snappy music, wrapping up with the last short video I had made of him. That video was the one I had shown to the police officers to confirm his identity after the accident.<br />
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These digital landmines seemed to be everywhere, and I had to learn how to step on them without triggering an explosion of grief.<br />
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Figuring out all the various settings to make these notifications stop didn’t seem like a solution. There would always be reminders, and trying to make my happiness depend on never seeing them created too many conditions for that happiness.<br />
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Recovering from the emotionally difficult parts of grief required that I control what I placed my attention on. It wasn’t just some emails and pop-up notifications. I would never see Davey get married or become a father himself, would not get to see him develop his career, go on our backpacking trips or big family vacations. The list of things I was missing out on was huge and everything seemed to bring them up; the reminders were unavoidable.<br />
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Initially I tried to address this by focusing on what I did have—an amazing wife, two incredible daughters, a large, loving family, and friends that were always right there for me. While that helped, it didn’t last. It just felt like there was this large black hole in our family that I simply couldn’t avoid.<br />
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It didn’t matter how many times I bargained with God or played what-if scenarios, there was nothing in this world that would change the fact that Davey was gone physically. But he was still with me in a very real, spiritual way. I learned that I needed to not just accept that but embrace it.<br />
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A counselor from the group Compassionate Friends visited us a few days after the accident and told us that grief was like carrying around a brick in your pocket. It was heavy and painful but after a while you would pat the brick to reassure yourself that it was still there. Frankly, that felt like a sad way to continue through life.<br />
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What I needed to do was focus on Davey as he is now; his physical presence was gone but the energy that powered his body was still around. I had started a meditation practice and as a result learned to quiet my active mind and embrace the stillness between thoughts. As I did that I found that I could connect with Davey in ways that were even more powerful than the conversations about life we used to share.<br />
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I love my son unconditionally. It never mattered what he had said or done, I would still love him. That's loving without condition. Learning to be happy meant that I needed to remove the conditions I had placed on my own life in order to achieve happiness.<br />
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I began to accept that Davey’s physical life was perfect exactly as it was, from beginning to end. He really had accomplished everything he was meant to accomplish and he did in fact set my wife, our daughters, and me on very different paths than we would have been on without him. I also accepted that the version of Davey I now experience is perfect, exactly as he is.<br />
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Eliminating the conditions I had placed on how I viewed my son, accepting and embracing the version of him I have now, allowed me to move forward. I didn't "get over" my son, our relationship evolved.<br />
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As a result, those digital landmines had become inert, incapable of blowing up my emotions every time I encountered one.
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Note: This post is adapted from my book <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Finding-Davey-fathers-search-afterlife/dp/1732667004" target="_blank">Finding Davey: A Father's Search for His Son in the Afterlife</a>, available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-30465845974207399232018-08-14T08:59:00.000-04:002018-08-14T08:59:34.053-04:00What to say to a parent that lost a child<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Losing a child is arguably the most difficult challenge a person can face in life. When I lost my son Davey in July of 2016 I was plunged into the most profound grief and sadness I had ever experienced. In my 55 years on this planet I have been through a lot, however this made every other challenge I encountered seem trivial by comparison.<br />
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It wasn't just my son that died in a car accident on that hot muggy day in July. I died too. I instantly became a completely different person, changed to my core by an event that brought up all of those deep existential questions that I had previously just brushed aside. In the initial days I was in free-fall and found myself surrounded by hundreds of people that wanted to express their sympathies, doing everything they could to support me and my family.<br />
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The vast majority of my friends and family handled it with grace and compassion. A few were so overcome with emotion they blurted out things that only made my sadness more profound but as time passed my grief evolved and the types of discussion I had with people changed.<br />
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My goal with this post is to share the things people said to me that had an impact, both positive and negative. I provide this to serve as a resource, helping you understand how to speak to parents that have lost a child. If someone you know recently had a child die you are going to be challenged as a friend or family member to help them. If you suddenly find yourself confronted with a parent that discloses they have lost a child you may want to equip yourself with healing messages that can come out naturally.<br />
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The following are the things people close to me said in the initial days and then the months that followed. We had a celebration of Davey's life three days after his passing that effectively served as his funeral. Over six hundred people showed up on short notice from all over the country.<br />
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I fully recognize now that any time someone loses a child it is devastating news, not just to the parent but to everyone that is impacted. All of these people took time out of a hot, muggy Saturday late in the summer to put on their Sunday best and show their support for us as a family. Dozens jumped on airplanes to fly across the country for just a few days and many drove long multi-state car trips just to get to us.<br />
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To every single person that showed up, called, texted or sent a card or letter: thank you. Your support was deeply appreciated. You know who your friends are when you are faced with something so difficult and yet they show up to offer support, even if sometimes they don't really know what to say.<br />
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I provide the following feedback to help clarify how the words that were said impacted me when I was in my most broken and fragile state.<br />
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A few of the things I was told that only accelerated the sadness:<br />
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<i>"That's the most horrible thing that can happen to a person"</i><br />
<i>"That is awful! I don't know how I would handle this"</i><br />
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Yes, I am confident those statements were true, but when you are talking to someone that is already taking an emotional beating it's not helpful to point out the obvious. It's like yelling <i>"Your house is on fire!"</i> to a person that's desperately trying to climb out the window of a burning home.<br />
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<i>"I just feel horrible. This is the worst." </i><br />
<i>"I haven't slept since I heard the news. I'm a mess."</i><br />
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When people emphasized how awful they felt personally it didn't have the impact they probably hoped. Instead of coming across as commiserating with me, it felt like someone attempting to pull me down even lower. I realize now that was not the intent, but at that time I was not thinking rationally.<br />
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A few folks tried to fix me. One did this by telling me she knew exactly how I felt because she had a friend that nearly lost a child. This gave her the complete understanding of my situation and the confidence to tell me what I should do to feel better.<br />
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Unless you too have lost a child it's best not to say <i>"I know exactly how you feel"</i>. I've now met and talked to dozens of parents that have lost children and even now I will not say that. Each person's grief is different and it feels like someone is trivializing it by saying that.<br />
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I don't believe it's possible to "fix" a grieving parent with a few sage words, as wonderful as that thought is. The closest I've personally come to getting a quick morale boost has been when speaking to fellow parents that have experienced this type of loss and were able to share what helped them.<br />
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Several friends used this as an opportunity to proselytize their religious perspective. While most of my friends know I was brought up in a Catholic home, I was not a practicing Catholic and had drifted from the church. If you know the parent you are speaking with has strong religious beliefs, finding the correct quote or passage may help them. If you aren't sure - absolutely sure - about their religious perspective it's best to not push your beliefs on them unless they ask you for that kind of guidance.<br />
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Before I get into the things that you can say with confidence I'd like to share a couple key perspectives to consider before you begin talking to a grieving parent:<br />
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<b>1) Be Brave</b><br />
You are about to speak to a person that had their life turned upside down. They are looking to their friends and family for strength. If your emotions are getting the better of you that's okay, it just means you care about them. Try your best to look them in the eye, even if yours are also filled with tears. Do not be afraid to hug them.<br />
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<b>2) Listen</b><br />
Far more important than what you say is how well you listen. Give a grieving parent the opportunity to express themselves to you. Don't judge them, just listen. Silence is not awkward if you are supportive and paying attention to what they have to say.<br />
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<b>3) Love</b><br />
Feeling love in your heart for the parent you are about to speak to is the best way to approach them before saying anything. If you can feel love for anyone, even a casual friend, this is the time to generate that feeling inside yourself and direct it at the grieving parent. The person looking back at you doesn't need your pity, they need your love.<br />
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With these basics in place the best phrases said to me were variations on this:<br />
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<i>"I am here for you"</i><br />
<i>"If you need anything just ask"</i><br />
<i>"I am praying for you"</i><br />
<i>"You and your family are in my thoughts"</i><br />
<i>"I can't stop thinking about you and your family"</i><br />
<i>"I don't know what to say"</i> - yet there they were in front of me<br />
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And, the most powerful one coming from friends:<br />
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<i>"I love you"</i><br />
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Each of these messages came through clearly: I was supported and acknowledged. I may not have shown it at the time. Photos of my wife and me from those first few weeks after my son's passing are dim reflections of the light we used to carry in our eyes, and the light we have back now.<br />
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Another thing both my wife and I loved hearing were stories about our son. Davey was 24 and many of his friends had high school and college stories about our boy that we had never heard before. Sharing those stories - even the ones we HAD heard - were like a soothing balm.<br />
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How you handle the days, months and years after that is different. I've had some incredible friends that check in on me regularly. Even now two years later they call, shoot me a text or make a time to sit down and chat. I feel it's one of the many reasons I was able to heal the way I have.<br />
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It’s so easy to be a friend when everything is going well, but your true friends are the ones that are there for you when everything starts to spin. You reach out to stabilize yourself and they put out a hand to support you, even when you’re spinning so hard you can take them down too.<br />
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I still very much like to talk about Davey since he will always be my son. When friends bring up funny stories about him it's a little bittersweet but at least I get to talk about my boy. Even better is when people send me a picture of something they saw and say "Hey, I saw this and immediately thought of Davey!"<br />
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It may be one of his favorite candy bars, a business that includes his name in it or a butterfly that landed nearby. The idea that I'm not the only person that continues to think about my son is a tremendous gift to me. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to share those little memories or to create new ones by association.<br />
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Want to be a hero to a bereaved parent? When you see something that reminds you of the child they lost take a picture of it and send it to the parents. It's really important to continue doing that in the years that follow. There is something truly magical about receiving those messages.<br />
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As time continues to pass know that the parent you have a friendship with will indeed change. Trying to get them "back to where they were" or "normal" is literally impossible; the change they are experiencing is unavoidable. Just because they have become a different person doesn't mean you shouldn't invest time in the relationship however.<br />
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At this point in my journey I've met and had deep discussions with dozens of parents that have lost children. When you enter this club that nobody wants to join you do indeed meet some sad and broken people. I've also met some of the most amazing souls, people that have strength they never knew they had. They have a level of empathy that is striking and have a depth to their character that is incredibly beautiful.<br />
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I believe that every one of those sad and broken parents can join those of us that have learned how to rebuild our lives into one of joy and happiness. A key part of it is the love and support of their friends and family.<br />
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The challenge for you dear reader is to be that loving support system for your friends. It's worth the investment.<br />
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David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-22099899995016734442018-07-24T14:32:00.000-04:002018-07-24T22:21:07.366-04:00A Course Change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I started this blog just over 10 years ago it was to <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/02/hardcore-windows-guy-switches-to-mac.html" target="_blank">document what I was experiencing while adopting a Mac</a>. My primary computing platform at that time was Windows and I was both a long time user and developer. My goal with the blog was simple: I was learning a new platform and wanted to share with others what I had discovered. The internet has always been a tremendous resource for me and I felt that I should do my part and contribute to that knowledge base.<br />
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That simple goal ended up serving hundreds of thousands of readers over the years. Though I haven't made a single post to this blog in over 4 years, hundreds of people still visit this blog daily based on search results for things like <a href="https://www.davidalison.com/2008/05/fixing-simple-time-machine-error.html" target="_blank">Time Machine errors</a>, <a href="https://www.davidalison.com/2008/03/mac-where-did-my-backspace-key-go.html" target="_blank">keyboard shortcuts</a>, <a href="https://www.davidalison.com/2013/05/upgrading-mac-pro-to-ssd.html" target="_blank">upgrading an old Mac hard drive to an SSD</a> and <a href="https://www.davidalison.com/2010/09/setting-up-new-mac-for-college-student.html" target="_blank">setting up a MacBook for a college student</a>.<br />
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I received messages from readers of this blog fairly regularly asking when I would return to blogging, but I always replied with "soon... I hope". My life had become busy and making the time to write about Macs and technology was not a priority while I was busy ushering my children out of college and into adulthood and regularly jumping into a new startup or consulting venture.<br />
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<b>I Can't Imagine</b><br />
All of that changed 2 years ago. On July 20, 2016 two police cars pulled up to my house. The officers asked if I owned a Volvo sedan. Though I did own the car, my 24 year old son Davey was the primary driver of it. He had been out of reach for the previous 6 hours and calls and texts to his phone had gone unanswered. He had left to go to a local park for a trail run but had not returned.<br />
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The officers told me the car had been in a solo accident, hit a tree on a winding road and that the driver did not survive. Everything went into slow motion as the officers asked if I had a photo to confirm his identity. I pulled out my iPhone and showed them a still frame from a video I had taken just a couple days before of Davey sitting at his desk in our home office working away.<br />
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The officer looked at the photo of my son and acknowledged it was him.<br />
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Just like that, my entire world collapsed. The young man that had been a major part of my life was suddenly gone. My son had given me a chance to be a kid again, playing with him as a little boy let me relive my own childhood. I watched him grow up into a stellar athlete, playing sports up through high school. Davey was also a fantastic brother to both of his sisters, constantly amusing them with his goofy sense of humor and never fearing to demonstrate how much he loved them.<br />
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He took up surfing very young and most summer mornings would find him at dawn on the beach, searching for that perfect wave before going off to his summer job.<br />
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When Davey went off to college I was incredibly proud of him. Though his full name was David Reese Alison IV, he was the first David Reese Alison to receive an undergraduate degree, earning a Bachelor of Science in Economics from James Madison University. After graduation he asked if he could join the startup my oldest daughter Jocelyn and I had been working on, a security awareness training tool that was in the planning stages.<br />
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We added him to the team in February of 2016. I could not have been happier, working every day with my oldest daughter and son on a new venture and showing them what startup life was like. We were getting very close to launching an early release version of the product in July when his accident happened. His loss was profound and not only impacted my family but the business we were hoping to build.<br />
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Jocelyn and I would try to keep the new product moving, pushing it out just a few months later but the effort was lacking. Both of us found it impossible to focus on the new company while bearing the grief of his loss. We made the joint decision to put our business on the shelf for the foreseeable future.<br />
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It was at that point I focused all of my efforts on restructuring my life, learning how to live with the loss of my child and the profound changes that had impacted literally every thought, action and relationship I experienced. Fortunately I had my amazing wife and two loving daughters sharing this journey with me. I was also surrounded by a huge group of loving friends and family that provided incredible support.<br />
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As I sit here two years later I am amazed at the changes that have happened in my life, all of them positive and beautiful. My consulting practice flourished and over the last year and a half I have been working on a book that I am about to publish. The goal for the book is simple: to help parents that have suffered the loss of a child see how I have managed to navigate my way past the grief that overwhelmed me and lead a happy and joy filled life. My hope is that it can serve as an example of how to make it through what is arguably the most challenging event a person will face.<br />
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This blog was started with the intention of being a resource for people that were looking for answers to questions and that fundamental goal remains. The focus is now shifting, from technology issues to personal transformation. I hope you will join me on this journey, even if it's just to share the information I provide with someone you feel needs it.<br />
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If you arrived here searching for answers to technical questions about your Mac those posts will remain as long as I can keep this blog running. My hope is that you will find value in the personal stories I will be sharing, as well as the observations and resources I have found that have helped me so much.<br />
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All my best,<br />
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David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-50432542210692936462014-04-26T16:44:00.000-04:002014-04-26T16:44:10.042-04:00The death of the internet as we know it is about to beginWhen I talk to people in person about Net Neutrality I generally get blank stares from all but the highly technology oriented people. Most folks don't know or care how the internet works. Ask the average person if they understand the internet and most associate it with a web site or email. They still say things like "The internet is down!" when their local connection is having issues.<br />
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There is nothing wrong with this blissful ignorance. Technology <b>should</b> fall into the background for most people. There are lots of things that work this way. Most people don't understand how water or electricity is produced and delivered to their homes. They turn on a switch and a light comes on. They turn a handle and water pours out of a faucet. The stuff just works (most of the time).<br />
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If you fall into this category you need to learn more about the Net Neutrality issue and how the internet we use every single day is about to be hijacked by the cable and wireless industry. It <b>will</b> impact you and unless you are an executive at a cable or wireless provider it's not going to be good.<br />
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<b>Why Net Neutrality Is Important</b><br />
Most people in the US get their broadband internet access from their cable provider. Cable providers in the US are usually in a monopoly position. A small minority of people get two service providers to choose from for true broadband access and some may have three or more.<br />
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In my case I have one service provider for broadband: my local cable company. Verizon FIOS isn't an option for me (Verizon FIOS only services 12% of the US today), DSL over copper is capped at 1.5MB/s for me and Google Fiber is still decades away from becoming an option. Sure satellite is possible but bandwidth is limited and the latency is extremely high, eliminating the ability to play interactive games and introducing unusable lag to video calls. Using a satellite connection to upload anything (like photos or videos) is also untenable.<br />
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I could set up a hotspot via AT&T or Verizon but we get almost no reception where I live. It's so bad I actually have to attach an AT&T cell phone repeater to my broadband to be able to use my mobile phones in my house. My broadband access is very much a common carrier for me.<br />
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I don't live in some remote rural area - I live in a suburb not far from Washington, DC.<br />
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Competition simply does not exist. That's one of the reasons US citizens pay significantly more than the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24528383" target="_blank">rest of the world for internet access</a>. Traditional capitalism fails quickly when companies do not have to compete for your business and in the case of broadband access to the internet this has already happened. Just <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/02/12/comcast-and-time-warner-cable-forget-tv-it-is-all-about-broadband/" target="_blank">take a look at the acquisitions taking place in the cable industry</a> and it's becoming increasingly clear that a small handful of companies that have been granted an exclusive franchise to provide your broadband access can set the price point for usable broadband service to whatever they want.<br />
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<b>But That's Not Enough</b><br />
Simply providing access to broadband, where the amount of data you consume is either capped or metered is not enough for cable providers. Now they want to monetize <b>what</b> is delivered to you. With streaming video services like Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc. becoming popular the need for higher bandwidth is starting to hit these cable providers. Because a lot of that content is in direct competition with the cable TV content they provide this does not make them happy.<br />
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This is the heart of the Net Neutrality issue: when a broadband service provider passes packets of data to you they should not be able to discriminate against that data. Doing so means that the broadband provider suddenly gets to choose which packets get to you quickly and which ones take the scenic route.<br />
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This runs counter to the way the internet has been built and adopted in the US and most of the free world.<br />
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Regardless of <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/blog/setting-record-straight-fcc-s-open-internet-rules" target="_blank">the claims by FCC Commissioner Wheeler</a> that anti-competitive price increases will not lead to the kind of discrimination that proponents of Net Neutrality have always feared will happen, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/24/fcc_s_new_net_neutrality_proposal_is_even_worse_than_you_think.html" target="_blank">the ability for small players in the market to fight discrimination</a> will require expensive legal proceedings.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The bottom line is this: lobbyists for the cable and wireless companies have successfully influenced the FCC Commissioner (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler_(FCC)" target="_blank">himself a former lobbyist and venture capitalist in the cable and wireless industry</a>) to set up the rules for internet traffic to benefit... the cable and wireless industry.</i></blockquote>
The first losers in this are the content providers; Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc. Fortunately for them, they have money. Of course they will pass the costs down to you so ultimately the consumers pay a higher fee.<br />
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The second losers are the smaller content providers. If your content (whether it's a web site, a data sharing service or music service) will be operating in the slow lane. If you feel the cable providers are discriminating against your traffic you can go before the FCC. Lawyer up! The barrier to entry for new startups in the internet space just got higher.<br />
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The final loser in all of this is the internet consumer. You'll pay more for things like Netflix and iTunes. In addition the pace of innovation will be reduced rather dramatically as startups simply can't raise the funds to get on the internet fast lane that is required to get decent service.<br />
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<b>Why Isn't President Obama Doing Something About This?</b><br />
President Obama campaigned in both of his elections in <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-pledges-net-neutrality-laws-if-elected-president/" target="_blank">support of Net Neutrality</a>. Earlier this year a <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutrality-directing-fcc-classify-internet-providers-common-carriers/5CWS1M4P" target="_blank">petition was circulated that asked the White House to restore Net Neutrality</a>. It was signed by over 105K people. The following is part of the official White House response to this position:<br />
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<i>It was also encouraging to see Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, whom the President appointed to that post last year, reaffirm his commitment to a free and open Internet and pledge to use the authority granted by Congress to maintain a free and open Internet. The White House strongly supports the FCC and Chairman Wheeler in this effort.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>The petition asked that the President direct the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as "common carriers" which, if upheld, would give the FCC a distinct set of regulatory tools to promote net neutrality. The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet -- a principle that this White House vigorously supports.</i></blockquote>
If there was ever a time for the President of the United States to back up a campaign promise, this is it. If there was ever a time for the President of the United States to back up the statement of the White House just a few months ago, this is that time. Mr. President, it's time for you to provide some leadership and resolve this issue. Mr. Wheeler is <b>your</b> appointee.<br />
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<b>So What Can You Do?</b><br />
First off, take 2 minutes out of your day and email your congressman and both of your senators. Tell them that the FCC needs to reclassify broadband carriers as common carriers. Need help with that? <a href="http://www.house.gov/" target="_blank">Here's a link to the House site</a> - simply enter your zip code and it will tell you who your congressman is and provide a link to contact them. As for your Senators, <a href="https://www.senate.gov/" target="_blank">here's a link for them</a>.<br />
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Next, <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-true-net-neutrality-protect-freedom-information-united-states/9sxxdBgy" target="_blank">sign the current petition demanding that Net Neutrality be reestablished</a>. Your voice needs to be heard.<br />
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Finally, talk to people about it. Point them to this blog entry. Encourage them to review the facts. The lobbyists in Washington DC are counting on you being apathetic about issues like this.<br />
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It's time you did something about it.<br />
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<br />David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-64738991813383499432013-05-23T11:28:00.000-04:002013-05-23T11:28:07.559-04:00Arq and Glacier - Affordable Mac Cloud Storage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2013/05/hard-disk-clicking-and-time-machine.html" target="_blank">After the near miss I had in losing a considerable portion of my personal digital library</a> I decided to do something about it and look into a cloud based solution for keeping my files safe. I’m still using Time Machine locally to back up nearly everything, I just wanted a final line of storage just in case.<br />
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I’ve been <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2009/02/my-new-favorite-free-utility-dropbox.html" target="_blank">using DropBox for years</a> for my documents and miscellaneous files. I have several Google Apps for Business accounts that store my emails and shared docs and spreadsheets. The code I write is versioned and stored in <a href="http://www.github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>. For the most part I live off the cloud already, the only thing missing was my large collection of family photos and videos, which totaled nearly 140GB.<br />
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<a href="https://www.icloud.com/" target="_blank">iCloud</a> is cool and all, and I love the way it keeps my little iPhone photos synced, but at $100 / year for only 55GB, this is a pretty expensive solution. I looked at a variety of different cloud backup solutions and found them to be ill-fitted to my needs. While many of them have plenty of capacity and are pretty affordable, they usually require a rather heavy backup application to be running in the background monitoring changes.<br />
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<h4>
Amazon to the Rescue
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I’ve always been a huge fan of <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services</a> and specifically <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/" target="_blank">Amazon S3</a> (Simple Storage Service), a cloud based storage model. Amazon makes S3 incredibly resilient, providing a 99.999999999% durability rate. Though I’ve used Amazon S3 extensively myself as a software developer for my online services, I had never used it for storing personal data. Since up to 1TB of storage costs $0.095 / GB / month to store, my 140GB collection would cost me just a little over $13 / month to keep safe. That was a little steeper than I wanted.<br />
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Fortunately Amazon introduced another variation of S3 storage called <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/" target="_blank">Amazon Glacier</a>. Designed to be just as durable as S3, with Glacier you cannot pull the data out very quickly without incurring some additional costs. This wasn’t an issue for me since this collection was really just a deep archive and backup to my backup. The advantage is Glacier is very affordable at $0.01 / GB / month. This meant my 140GB collection would cost me $1.40 / month on Glacier. Perfect!<br />
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<h4>
Transporting the Files with Arq
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The next challenge was getting the files up to Glacier from my Mac Pro. Amazon designs their services as something a programmer or systems administrator would access, not the average end user. I considered writing some scripts that would push my files up to Glacier but that seemed like too much work. Besides, it turns out somebody has already done that: <a href="http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/index.php" target="_blank">Haystack Software’s Arq</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LIPCywdCWfI/UZ1gsyR9ZJI/AAAAAAAADL4/tg11zRJU2OQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-22+at+7.34.13+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="161" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LIPCywdCWfI/UZ1gsyR9ZJI/AAAAAAAADL4/tg11zRJU2OQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-05-22+at+7.34.13+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arq's Main Window</td></tr>
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This $29 download (30 day free trial) makes it really easy to just select what you want pushed up to your Glacier account and let it manage moving it up to the cloud. The interface is very spartan, which is actually great. You just need to have established an Amazon AWS account and signed up for S3, and Arq will take care of the rest.<br />
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One of the more reassuring features of Arq is that they have released the <a href="https://github.com/sreitshamer/arq_restore" target="_blank">restore tool as an open source project on GitHub</a>, providing some peace of mind.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Restore Tool is available as open source</td></tr>
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I set up Arq to run at 3AM, dropped the key photo and video folders on to it and let it run. It took a few days through my Cox Cable connection to get everything up to Glacier. If I add any new photos Arq picks them up on the next sweep and pushes them to Glacier.<br />
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<h4>
Restoring from Glacier Takes Time</h4>
If you want the files to be readily accessible, then Glacier probably isn’t your best bet; you should use S3. Restoring even a single file from Glacier can take up to 4 hours before it even starts. This is one of the side effects of Glacier and why it’s best suited for deep, long term archiving, whereas S3 is better for files you need rapid access to.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5QotqdDjw8Q/UZ1gsyfzcvI/AAAAAAAADLw/EgwSIQEjhTU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-22+at+8.00.38+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="129" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5QotqdDjw8Q/UZ1gsyfzcvI/AAAAAAAADLw/EgwSIQEjhTU/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-05-22+at+8.00.38+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Glacier Restores require great patience</td></tr>
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For $29 up front and $1.40 / month, I’ve now got highly durable cloud copies of all my photos and home videos. Sure beats the panic I went through a few weeks ago.<br />
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Got a great cloud based backup / archiving solution people should know about? Drop a line in the comments. I’d love to know how others are handling this.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-54696016650363285922013-05-20T10:32:00.000-04:002013-05-21T08:43:27.512-04:00Upgraded your Mac to an SSD? Enable TRIMAs I wrote last week, the <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2013/05/upgrading-mac-pro-to-ssd.html" target="_blank">SSD upgrade for my Mac Pro</a> went very smoothly. There were two important things I found out after I started reading the comments from that entry:<br />
<ol>
<li>An SSD is a good performance upgrade but the <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID" target="_blank">OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2</a> provides incredible performance. Though quite a bit more expensive than a standard SSD, if you want the absolute best performance for a Mac Pro you may want to consider it. At 820MB/s it is over 5 times faster than the SSD I just installed. Hat tip to <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/03117320393243020160" target="_blank">Eytan</a> for pointing this out to me.</li>
<li>After adding a 3rd party SSD to your Mac, you need to investigate TRIM support. Derek brought up the issue in the comments and I spent some time investigating it.</li>
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<h4>
What is TRIM?</h4>
TRIM is effectively a garbage collection model for SSDs. There is some great information on it on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM" target="_blank">Wikipedia’s TRIM entry</a>. The bottom line is that without TRIM enabled the performance of an SSD will suffer over time. This is something you’ll want to address.<br />
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I contacted Crucial technical support to ask if the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004W2JL3Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004W2JL3Y&linkCode=as2&tag=davalisblo-20" target="_blank">Crucial 512GB M4 SSD</a> I purchased supported TRIM. Crucial told me I had two options: occasionally "clean" the SSD or enable the operating system to send TRIM commands to the drive. The cleaning process sounds... tiresome. You restart your Mac every couple of weeks, holding down the Option key during the reboot, then let it sit at the boot menu for 24 hours as the firmware cleans the SSD.<br />
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You can however turn on TRIM support through a <a href="https://gist.github.com/bzerangue/2986122" target="_blank">series of Terminal commands and script execution</a> or by using a free utility called <a href="http://www.groths.org/trim-enabler/" target="_blank">Trim Enabler</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-igVP0tFNGNA/UZlFbSwUTMI/AAAAAAAADLc/8fTCixqAigY/s1600/trim-enabler.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-igVP0tFNGNA/UZlFbSwUTMI/AAAAAAAADLc/8fTCixqAigY/s320/trim-enabler.png" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trim Enabler - just turn it on</td></tr>
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Running Trim Enabler is pretty simple. Download and install it from the provided DMG and then flip the main toggle button to On. Once this is done you will need to reboot your Mac and TRIM will be enabled. You can confirm this by checking your System Information application and looking at the Serial-ATA entry for your SSD:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_1m03aY1sI/UZlFbSwV1zI/AAAAAAAADLY/5ykTpnpyZI4/s1600/system-information.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_1m03aY1sI/UZlFbSwV1zI/AAAAAAAADLY/5ykTpnpyZI4/s320/system-information.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">TRIM Support is enabled</td></tr>
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Based on this information available you will need to restart and run Trim Enabler again if you upgrade OS X to the next point release. If you’re not sure, after an upgrade simply check System Information to ensure TRIM is enabled.<br />
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Got a tip for maximizing SSD performance? Drop a note in the comments!<br />
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<b>Update:</b> I always get the best comments. In case you don't read them, Hendrik pointed out that not all SSDs are created equal and that Sandforce based SSDs have built in garbage collection baked in. OWC <a href="http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-trim-or-not-to-trim-owc-has-the-answer" target="_blank">SSDs in particular should not run Trim Enabler</a>. Your mileage may vary. Clearly for the Crucial SSD I installed it's needed but if you install an SSD check with your manufacturer to see if it needs TRIM enabled in the OS.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-21961896682321732102013-05-17T10:22:00.002-04:002013-05-17T10:22:45.253-04:00Upgrading a Mac Pro to SSD<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpbo07kEVAY/UZYxensEZtI/AAAAAAAADKI/d_Np7YKSgL8/s1600/IMG_5649.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpbo07kEVAY/UZYxensEZtI/AAAAAAAADKI/d_Np7YKSgL8/s200/IMG_5649.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mac Pro circa 2008</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I bought <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/04/mac-pro-is-force-to-be-reckoned-with.html" target="_blank">my Mac Pro 5 years ago</a> and other than the <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2013/05/hard-disk-clicking-and-time-machine.html" target="_blank">hard disk failures I just had</a> with my add-on drives, the machine has been rock solid. I’ve kept it up on every version of OS X that’s been available and it runs Mountain Lion like a champ.<br />
<br />
Even though my Mac hasn’t slowed down with age, it feels relatively slow ever since I added my new 15” MacBook Pro with Retina display to the mix. Between the 16GB of RAM, stunning display and ridiculously fast SSD, the new MacBook Pro seemed to run circles around the larger Mac tower.<br />
<br />
Upgrading the processors didn’t seem reasonable. It already has 12GB of RAM and for the way I use the machine that provides plenty of headroom. The one area I figured could see dramatic improvement was by swapping out the 320GB boot disk with an SSD drive. This was the route I took.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Finding the Right SSD</h4>
I did a lot of reading on SSDs, looking at Amazon reviews and finding guidance from a variety of different sources where I primarily focused on SSD reliability. Since my Mac Pro only has a 3GB/s SATA interface—not the 6GB/s that most of the SSDs support and what comes on a new MacBook Pro—I wasn’t too worried about performance. I knew it would be dramatically faster than the conventional magnetic drive I had humming away in the drive bay.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dFywGYTCFL4/UZYx7WgXdjI/AAAAAAAADKQ/AHXS7b838VU/s1600/IMG_5645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dFywGYTCFL4/UZYx7WgXdjI/AAAAAAAADKQ/AHXS7b838VU/s200/IMG_5645.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Icy Dock adaptor and Crucial SSD</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I ended up settling on the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004W2JL3Y/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=davalisblo-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B004W2JL3Y&adid=03M4XDDPJVHCKJMREGX6&" target="_blank">Crucial M4 512GB drive</a>. One of the fundamental changes I wanted to make was to move my iPhoto Library to the SSD. That meant making room for an 80+ GB file bundle, which is why I went with the bump in capacity.<br />
<br />
The first step in upgrading to the new drive was to ensure it would even mount in the drive rails of the Mac Pro. The SSDs are generally delivered as 2.5” laptop drives. Turns out what you need is a 2.5” to 3.5” SATA drive converter. For that I went with the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002Z2QDNE/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=davalisblo-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B002Z2QDNE&adid=1WSQ5V3QKZNR4YEBCNC5&" target="_blank">Icy Dock enclosure</a>. It’s a plastic box that is in roughly the same shape as a 3.5” internal drive and fits perfectly with the rails on a Mac Pro. <b><i>If you do this upgrade be careful</i></b> - there are lots of 2.5” to 3.5” converters out there but not all of them will line up the SATA interface with the Mac Pro’s drive system.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G4CgJUcHAU0/UZY3ymlBROI/AAAAAAAADKg/eVJv96AhaH0/s1600/installation-of-ssd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G4CgJUcHAU0/UZY3ymlBROI/AAAAAAAADKg/eVJv96AhaH0/s320/installation-of-ssd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Installation with the Icy Dock takes just a few minutes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Installing the drive into the Icy Dock takes all of a couple of minutes. Simply open the box, line up the SATA connectors with the SSD and plug it in. Snap the lid on and it’s ready to be mounted to the Mac Pro drive rails. Once mounted—there are 4 #1 phillips screws—the drive slides right in.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Prepping the Drive</h4>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A8n4a6lBnDU/UZY4gOGsd5I/AAAAAAAADKo/vNSYAQr03x8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-09+at+9.25.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A8n4a6lBnDU/UZY4gOGsd5I/AAAAAAAADKo/vNSYAQr03x8/s200/Screen+Shot+2013-05-09+at+9.25.28+PM.png" width="200" /></a>With the drive installed I fired up my Mac Pro. The drive is not pre-formatted so I needed to get to work on that. Since this was going to be a direct replacement of an older drive, I decided to try cloning the original to this new SSD. For that I chose <a href="http://www.bombich.com/" target="_blank">Carbon Copy Cloner</a>. CCC is a nice tool for not only creating a complete duplicate of a drive, but also providing incremental updates to keep a cloned drive current. This is critical if you want to be able to recover from a drive failure in minutes, not hours. For now, all I needed to do was clone the drive.<br />
<br />
CCC saw the new drive and recommended that I use the Desk Center to create a Recovery Partition on the new SSD, which I did. Once that’s created the cloning process can kick off. For me CCC ended up pushing nearly 205GB of data onto the new drive. That process took 2 hours and 50 minutes to complete.<br />
<br />
From there I went into the System Preferences and clicked on Startup Disk. After I changed it to the new SSD drive I clicked Restart and I was now running off the SSD.<br />
<br />
Though everything appeared exactly the same on the new SSD, for some reason it didn’t carry over my Dropbox credentials. I had to log back into that tool manually.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Faster? Oh yeah. Faster.</h4>
Before doing the install I recorded the time it took to perform certain tasks and load some applications. I also ran the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/novabench/id411466132?mt=12" target="_blank">Nova Bench application</a> and let it calculate a score before and after the conversion. Nova Bench upgraded my score from 1042 to 1094 after the SSD was in and reported that my disk throughput went from 52MB/s to 166MB/s. For perspective my MacBook Pro tests out at 323MB/s, roughly double the performance. Given the MacBook Pro is running a 6GB/s SATA interface, that makes sense.<br />
<br />
I also tested some normal tasks:<br />
<br />
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr><th>Task</th><th>Hard Drive</th><th>SSD</th><th>Improvement</th></tr>
<tr><td>Power on to Login Page</td><td>1m 11.3s</td><td>24.6s</td><td>65%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Login to Desktop Ready</td><td>13.3s</td><td>3.8s</td><td>69%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Shut Down (no apps running)</td><td>1m 9.7s</td><td>27.0s</td><td>61%</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Some decent performance improvement was achieved. Starting up felt much snappier than before. But how about regular use applications? Here’s what I found:<br />
<br />
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr><th>Application</th><th>Hard Drive</th><th>SSD</th><th>Improvement</th></tr>
<tr><td>Mail.app</td><td>5.2s</td><td>2.4s</td><td>54%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Safari.app</td><td>6.8s</td><td>1.6s</td><td>76%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Contact.app</td><td>2.1s</td><td>1.1s</td><td>48%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Pages.app</td><td>8.3s</td><td>2.7s</td><td>67%</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I measured the improvement based on that first pass opening the apps. In every day usage this performance was pretty stunning. It felt as though I had upgraded to a brand new Mac. Every aspect of the Mac just seemed snappier.<br />
<br />
Back when I was heavily into Windows I found myself upgrading machines every couple of years. It wasn’t really a hardware issue as much as the degradation of a Windows machine after extended use. You pretty much <b>HAD</b> to format the drive, reinstall Windows and start over again. Once you get to that point it was worthwhile just upgrading the hardware at the same time.<br />
<br />
My Mac Pro has been different. It’s now 5 years old and has been through Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and now Mountain Lion. These were not full reinstalls but upgrades to the existing OS. It really is amazing to me that with this SSD upgrade I’ll likely get at least another 2-3 years out of the machine, if not more. Sure, Macs may cost a little more up front, but the ROI is easily justified if you'll be keeping it long term.<br />
<br />
Got some advice for SSD upgrades? Please drop a note in the comments.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-67914453882336960432013-05-14T10:40:00.000-04:002013-05-14T10:40:20.272-04:00Hard Disk Clicking and a Time Machine FailureIt had been a long couple of months. We’d been working furiously on the <a href="http://www.easygrouper.com/" target="_blank">launch of EasyGrouper</a> and were just a few days away from having it go live. As I sat in my home office working on my new MacBook Pro I heard a deeply disturbing sound coming from my older Mac Pro tower a few feet away:<br />
<br />
<i> ZZZZ-click </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i> ZZZZ-click</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i> ZZZZ-click</i><br />
<br />
That’s never a good sign. My Mac Pro is my main home machine and runs a lot of stuff for me. It’s got a 320GB main drive (“BootDisk”) running my apps and working documents, a 1TB drive called “BigDisk” that contains my family photos, videos, music, etc. and another 1TB drive called “Backup” for... you guessed it... backups.<br />
<br />
I tapped the keyboard to wake up the screens and could see that the icons for my drives were all on my desktop when suddenly the BigDisk icon vanished and OS X gave me an error message that said I had not ejected the drive properly.<br />
<br />
Not good.<br />
<br />
My Mac could no longer see my BigDisk internal drive—the drive that contained over 380GB of rather important information. Virtually every digital picture I’ve taken since 1999. I didn’t panic though. I’m a big Time Machine advocate and it’s saved me before. I tried restarting the machine but the ZZZZ-click sound returned and it wasn’t even able to see my drive. I got back to work on EasyGrouper, determined to get this resolved the following Monday when I came up for air after the launch.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Fast Forward to Monday Night(mare)</h4>
I sat down Monday night to work on restoring my files. I clicked on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, selected Enter Time Machine and the space traveling interface popped up with a Finder window.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w1Gh6M7KXhs/UZJJg56iD_I/AAAAAAAADJ4/Gu4BV0eVbZc/s1600/time-machine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w1Gh6M7KXhs/UZJJg56iD_I/AAAAAAAADJ4/Gu4BV0eVbZc/s320/time-machine.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Time Machine Display</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
But there was a problem. A big problem.<br />
<br />
I clicked on my machine in the list of items on the left pane and it only showed one drive: BootDisk. Oh yeah, Time Machine had been running for the last few days so it had been backing up my machine without BigDisk in there. I started to use the Time Machine interface to go back in time.<br />
<br />
I backed up to the day I heard the clicking sound. No BigDisk. I backed up further. Nothing. The only drive that was being backed up was my BootDisk drive. It’s as though Time Machine didn’t even see the drive.<br />
<br />
Now I started to panic. I counted on Time Machine to back this up for me and I never saw an error message or any indication in the menu bar that Time Machine was having a problem. I knew that at some point Time Machine had been backing up that drive because I had previously used it to recover a file I inadvertently modified and saved.<br />
<br />
I looked into Console and searched for “<b>backupd</b>”; there were plenty of entries for it backing up my BootDisk, but that was it. No <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/05/fixing-simple-time-machine-error.html" target="_blank">Time Machine error messages</a> like I’d seen in the past. I had an external drive in my fireproof safe that contained a backup of my pictures and home movies, but I hadn’t updated it since the end of 2010. I had become lazy and complacent and it was about to bite me. The last three and a half years of my digital life had just vanished.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Recovery Time</h4>
I asked around the office and many people recommended I see if a hard drive salvage specialist could restore the data for me. I found <a href="http://www.salvagedata.com/" target="_blank">Salvage Data in nearby Herndon, VA</a>—they were super nice and would perform a free diagnostic to see if the drive could actually be recovered. I dropped it off and waited to see if they could help.<br />
<br />
The next day I got a call. The drive’s primary head cluster had failed and the drive had logical errors that would need to be corrected. It would take 10-15 days if I didn’t need rush service. The price: $1,740. The price seemed high but Salvage Data had an excellent reputation and the people were extremely attentive and understanding. They described the work that would need to be done in a clean room environment and the parts they would need to acquire and it seemed reasonable given the amount of time it would take. Finally, they assured me that if I did proceed with the recovery I wouldn’t have to pay anything if it turns out they couldn’t get the actual data off.<br />
<br />
I talked it over with my wife and we decided that the information we were missing was just too important. I went back to my Mac Pro, dejected that Time Machine had failed me and that I didn't have a more robust backup system in place. I decided on a whim to check it one last time.<br />
<br />
I used the right-hand time-line and clicked on the oldest date I could see. Time Machine animated the Finder windows and scrolled rapidly through the days and I noticed something odd. One of the days had an extra drive in it. Through patient scrolling I found something that I had missed earlier: on April 3, a little over a month before my drive had failed, there was a backup of BigDisk. There was no entry for it before or after that day.<br />
<br />
I opened the drive entry in Time Machine and lo and behold my photos, movies and music were all there! All of the pictures I took after April 3 were missing but otherwise I had virtually all of my data! I immediately started the process of restoring the data to my external drive.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Time Machine - Not Confidence Inspiring</h4>
I’ve always been a big fan of Time Machine. I love that Apple has made backing up as simple as they have. This little experience has given me pause though. Time Machine had failed and I never received an error message. No notice, no warning. Just a lot of missing files.<br />
<br />
While I am a huge fan of simple and powerful, I really need to stay informed. If I have a Mac with multiple drives does Time Machine back them up? The only option I have in Time Machine is to tell it what I want to exclude, which implies that everything else is going to be backed up.<br />
<br />
In the mean time, I’ve decided that this little experience requires a complete change in the way I store and ultimately back up my digital life. Over my next few posts I’ll be covering how I have added new and more robust storage to my Macs, how I’m handling offsite storage and some of the tools I’ve found to make my information far more secure.<br />
<br />
If you’ve got some background on how Time Machine works in a multiple drive system, please share it in the comments below.<br />
<br />
Trust me when I tell you this: within the next 24 hours you should verify that you are properly backing up your important files. Pick any hard drive (or SSD for that matter) that you have. If it died now, how would you recover? The cost of prevention is a tiny fraction of the time, money and frustration you'll experience if you don't.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-24750865556277741852013-05-10T11:41:00.000-04:002013-05-10T11:41:45.174-04:00Employee Lists on your iPhone or Android with EasyGrouperIt’s been a long time since I blogged, mainly because I’ve been so busy building up another product for public release. Now that the product is launched I’m hoping to spend a little more time covering technology topics. I figured what better way to restart the blogging than by writing about our new product.<br />
<br />
<h4>
The Problem with Contact Lists</h4>
Today nearly everyone carries a smart phone. Whether it’s a company issued phone or (more likely) a personal device, it’s hard to go anywhere and not find them. When you need to get in touch with someone you work with, the best way is usually to call or text their mobile phone if they aren't nearby. Sometimes it's a quick email from your smartphone if the message isn't urgent.<br />
<br />
This is where the problems begin. Getting the people you work with onto your phone is largely up to each individual. Unless the company they work for has an Active Directory or LDAP server humming away—and it's been updated with everyones person mobile device—each person has to maintain their own contact list. Most small non-technology businesses don't have the resources to run a server like that.<br />
<br />
For companies that only have a handful of employees, this isn’t really an issue. However once you hit the 15-20 people mark it becomes very difficult to balance. The most common way of dealing with this is by putting together a spreadsheet and either emailing it around or putting it on a shared drive (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) that people can access. Pulling up this information is not generally very easy when you are sitting on a mobile device with a poor internet connection.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Enter EasyGrouper</h4>
Seeing this as an opportunity we developed <a href="http://www.easygrouper.com/">EasyGrouper</a>. What we wanted to build was a really simple way to put a list of just the people you work with—and their primary work contact information—on the web and on everyone's phones. It needed to be spreadsheet simple because that’s generally what we were replacing.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wVCHMpSzBVg/UYwEhdrFzuI/AAAAAAAADH0/YGY2AKmzzPc/s1600/everyone-list.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wVCHMpSzBVg/UYwEhdrFzuI/AAAAAAAADH0/YGY2AKmzzPc/s320/everyone-list.png" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Main List</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The idea was to make it completely separate from your regular contact list. The contact list model in most phones feels completely broken; every app wants to access my contact list; online apps like Facebook and Twitter want to mine my contacts to see who I communicate with; some desktop apps and online services want to synchronize my contact list and I get multiple copies of the same contact in my address book. For a common user—especially of the non-technical type—it’s a giant mess that people have just accepted as ugly.<br />
<br />
Rather than exacerbate the problem, we decided to take a really simple approach. Put the list of people on our secure web site. Focus on the most basic contact information that people really need: name, title, email, phone numbers. Provide a web page that is responsive and looks good on mobile devices as well as custom apps that provide beautiful and responsive user experiences for the end user. Keep the data cached on people’s phones so the response time is extremely fast, and only perform updates to the data in the background.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Locations and Groups</h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6kaVo_eJqrQ/UYwFEO6d5aI/AAAAAAAADH8/VEymw9bO3So/s1600/info.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6kaVo_eJqrQ/UYwFEO6d5aI/AAAAAAAADH8/VEymw9bO3So/s320/info.png" width="156" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Information Page</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We went a little further than just putting together an employee list that would allow simple calling, texting and emailing. When people are out in the field or away and traveling they often find themselves needing to look up important information that is specific to the company or a project some people may be working on. Our Information pages are basically a complete web page that gets pushed down to each person’s phone automatically. Links in those pages are automatically linked into the features of your mobile device. Tapping a phone number will dial it, a link to a web site will load your web browser, an email address will load your mail client, etc.<br />
<br />
This means that if a company wants to put up an information page for their office they can list out who the emergency contacts are, who to call for catering, directions to a client location, health insurance information, etc. Pretty much any information a person may need when they are out of the office.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Statuses</h4>
The one last feature we added was the ability to set a status. Very often when you are trying to find someone you work with and they aren’t where you expect them, you ask around: "<b>Have you seen…?"</b>. The status feature lets you put a quick line next to your name in the list for a set time frame. It’s a great way to let people you work with know that you’re <b>on vacation</b>, <b>at the dentist</b> or <b>traveling</b>.<br />
<br />
As we built and prototyped EasyGrouper <a href="http://www.easygrouper.com/proof">we talked to a lot of small businesses about it</a>. The reception we received was overwhelmingly positive and after having used it for a few months several of our early adopters have found EasyGrouper to be an indispensable tool.<br />
<br />
We <a href="http://www.easygrouper.com/pricing">priced EasyGrouper to be very affordable</a>. The client apps that we built for iPhone and Android are free and anyone can set up a 45 day trial account for up to 200 people. For US $25 per month a company with up to 50 employees can roll this out to everyone.<br />
<br />
You can check out the video for EasyGrouper below or get more information by visiting our web site at<a href="http://www.easygrouper.com/"> www.easygrouper.com</a>.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/65253903" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe>
David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-12780559507641953712011-10-12T18:16:00.002-04:002011-10-13T00:31:07.441-04:00Warning - iOS5 Update Restore Error - Wait to upgradeI patiently waited for the actual release of iOS5 - since I can't get myself an iPhone 4S for a little while without paying a premium. When I saw that iOS5 was available, I decided to update my 32GB iPhone 4 to the latest and greatest.<br />
<br />
First off, Apple wanted me to upgrade OS X to 10.7.2 and iTunes to 10.5. That took the better part of an hour in itself, between downloading a pretty hefty collection of bits, installing them and then running a subsequent back up, I was a full hour in before I could even begin to upgrade my iPhone.<br />
<br />
Once that was out of the way I tried updating the iPhone 4. Here's where the fun began.<br />
<br />
First, an error<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ITpiXChDWaA/TpYMcBHe0tI/AAAAAAAACSc/xqVpubePyuk/s1600/ss1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ITpiXChDWaA/TpYMcBHe0tI/AAAAAAAACSc/xqVpubePyuk/s320/ss1.png" width="320" /></a></div>After sitting there for a very long time—I didn't pay close attention—iTunes reported this little error. Not good. When I clicked OK (it's not really OK but that's the one to push), I pulled my iPhone off the USB connector and the phone itself seemed fine. Still running iOS 4.3, and all of my content was sitting there fine.<br />
<br />
I Googled up the issue and there was a <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3374000?start=0&tstart=0">huge thread on the Apple discussion forums</a> on this. Since several people reported that they were able to upgrade by just continuing to try, I decided to give that a go. Three attempts in, I got something different. It looked like my iPhone was being updated!<br />
<br />
Then suddenly I got the error again. Oh well. The problem was my iPhone was now in a restore state and not being recognized by iTunes - it had the little "plug me in to iTunes" graphic on the screen of the iPhone.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mEeTZmiiZUs/TpYMdBOkS5I/AAAAAAAACS8/ppjVGH1uluM/s1600/ss5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mEeTZmiiZUs/TpYMdBOkS5I/AAAAAAAACS8/ppjVGH1uluM/s320/ss5.png" width="320" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lc1MmIHTflI/TpYMcUjdHpI/AAAAAAAACSk/OBSfa3OdCIc/s1600/ss2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lc1MmIHTflI/TpYMcUjdHpI/AAAAAAAACSk/OBSfa3OdCIc/s320/ss2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
This was not good. I tried to do a restore and it would spin and spin, however I now got a different error message:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1fNLHVD-FWk/TpYMcpQ37zI/AAAAAAAACSs/wDN4q73TE0U/s1600/ss3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1fNLHVD-FWk/TpYMcpQ37zI/AAAAAAAACSs/wDN4q73TE0U/s320/ss3.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Looks like the Apple servers were completely overwhelmed. This was not good. Especially now that my iPhone was essentially in brick mode. I kept retrying and the restore would get to varying degrees of success, then eventually fail out. Sometimes with the above error, other times with one of these:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_MYcK-sAsI/TpYMc2XB9eI/AAAAAAAACS0/24DvR2FtqWo/s1600/ss4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_MYcK-sAsI/TpYMc2XB9eI/AAAAAAAACS0/24DvR2FtqWo/s320/ss4.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OgOEyMBpItM/TpYMdQ8UPWI/AAAAAAAACTE/MlwGzMzjJqo/s1600/ss6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OgOEyMBpItM/TpYMdQ8UPWI/AAAAAAAACTE/MlwGzMzjJqo/s320/ss6.png" width="320" /></a></div>After this error, I would then get the old "Hey, this iPhone is in recovery mode..." error:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mEeTZmiiZUs/TpYMdBOkS5I/AAAAAAAACS8/ppjVGH1uluM/s1600/ss5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mEeTZmiiZUs/TpYMdBOkS5I/AAAAAAAACS8/ppjVGH1uluM/s320/ss5.png" width="320" /></a></div>I tried everything. Rebooted my Mac several times, tried unplugging all the USB devices, etc. and still no luck. I was panicking - while I was sure I could get my apps back somehow, I had a lot of video and photos on my iPhone that hadn't been pulled off. I thought about the videos I had taken of my mom over the last year, right before she passed away. If those were gone, I was not going to be happy. I knew iTunes was making backups for me, and that my Mac was in turn backed up, but the way this was going, my confidence was not very high.<br />
<br />
Eventually the iPhone appeared to restore and started up again. Then it flipped into "restoring" mode for my apps and then music and videos:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qVGJkyRileA/TpYMdt-3nmI/AAAAAAAACTM/zR37N_c6glE/s1600/ss7.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qVGJkyRileA/TpYMdt-3nmI/AAAAAAAACTM/zR37N_c6glE/s320/ss7.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
This process took the better part of an hour. All in, the upgrade took me about 3 hours from start to finish, and I still have an iPad 1 to update.<br />
<br />
I think I'm going to wait a week or so to upgrade the iPad. If you are considering upgrading your iPhone now to iOS5, be <b>very</b> patient; you may be without your phone for a number of hours and the way the Apple servers are performing right now under load, perhaps a very long time.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE:</b> My iPhone was successfully updated to iOS5 - total upgrade time was a little over 3 hours and took about a dozen retries at various stages. All of my information (contacts, calendar, photos, etc.) were intact.<br />
<br />
I decided late this evening (Oct 12, 2011) to try updating my iPad, just to see if it would actually go through. This time the upgrade went much more smoothly - not a single error. It did require about 1.5 hours to complete however.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-35356467598666855032011-10-06T07:09:00.000-04:002011-10-06T07:09:59.949-04:00Remembering Steve Jobs<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_woRdJ_CAWs/To0xnVypddI/AAAAAAAACSU/I31ByYYlScc/s1600/stevejobs.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_woRdJ_CAWs/To0xnVypddI/AAAAAAAACSU/I31ByYYlScc/s200/stevejobs.png" width="200" /></a></div>We mourn the loss of famous people—our entertainers, our leaders, our athletes—even though we never got a chance to meet them in person. They entered our lives through popular media and became part of it. We would watch them act or sing and it would engage us. They would speak about the important challenges we face and we would be inspired to address them. We would watch in awe as they performed incredible feats of skill, wondering how anyone could pull that off.<br />
<br />
When one of those famous people die young, it's notable. That small window in our lives that they occupied goes dark and we miss them for a time.<br />
<br />
Steve Jobs was different.<br />
<br />
He wasn't an entertainer, yet he could capture the attention of the public and engage us. He didn't give many speeches, but the few he did <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc">were inspirational</a>. Though he was not the classic business CEO he created multiple businesses that enjoyed extraordinary financial success. While these are all great accomplishments, it's not the main reason many people will remember Steve Jobs.<br />
<br />
Steve had an uncanny ability to create things that became part of our lives. He didn't just build tools that made it easier to do something, he built tools that added joy to the task. He and his team put such a high value on the quality of a product that simply holding it in your hands left you with an appreciation for the attention to detail poured into it. There was a depth to the products Steve created; while something could be very simple on the surface, a little digging would lead to some cool discovery of a feature or capability that would make you smile. Like many of his product presentations, there always seemed to be "one more thing" subtly hidden on the device, waiting for you to discover it.<br />
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Personally I'm going to miss Steve's influence on the future of technology.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iSOqMvF2XT0/To05Qxfl2XI/AAAAAAAACSY/1ALxgjftQaY/s1600/stevesseat.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iSOqMvF2XT0/To05Qxfl2XI/AAAAAAAACSY/1ALxgjftQaY/s400/stevesseat.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
My thoughts are with Laurene, Steve's children and family, and the folks he worked with every day to make magic happen.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-89431466245019947662011-08-12T13:34:00.003-04:002011-08-13T08:38:29.062-04:00Things I learned from my mom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oBV3fHDxJPo/TkVgjhTCsnI/AAAAAAAACSM/qrQp1klRVFI/s1600/mom2011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oBV3fHDxJPo/TkVgjhTCsnI/AAAAAAAACSM/qrQp1klRVFI/s200/mom2011.JPG" width="149" /></a></div><b>Hug Frequently</b><br />
A hug costs nothing yet gives a huge return. Spend them on family and friends as though you have an unlimited supply, because you do.<br />
<br />
<b>Enjoy Family Time</b><br />
My mom was happiest when we were all sitting at the dinner table, swapping stories and making one another laugh. I am happiest when I am sitting at the dinner table with my own kids, making each other laugh.<br />
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<b>Laugh Easily</b><br />
Open yourself to laughter. Try to find the humor in things, even if it sometimes comes at your own expense. When frustration is about to lead to anger, try laughing about it instead.<br />
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<b>Protect Ferociously</b><br />
If you attempt to harm my child I will personally introduce you to the afterlife. No, I am completely serious.<br />
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<b>Marry My Child, Become My Child</b><br />
When I married my wife, my mom didn't treat it as though she lost a son but that she finally gained a daughter. She gave her love unconditionally and always treated my wife as her own child.<br />
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<b>Say “I love you”</b><br />
Don't assume your family and close friends know that you love them. This isn't some awkward teenage crush, these are the people that are most important to you. Tell them. I never had a conversation with my mom that didn't end with her telling me that she loved me, unless I managed to get it in first.<br />
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<b>Share Your Pride</b><br />
My mom frequently shared how proud she was of me. She always focused on my accomplishments, and merely noted my failures to me privately. She instilled in me a drive to succeed, not a fear of failure. Find the positive things your children do and build on them.<br />
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<b>Don't Give Up</b><br />
Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. It may be a spouse going through a tough time, a personal financial crisis or even cancer. Fight it because your family needs you.<br />
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<b>Teach By Example</b><br />
You can't expect your children to behave any differently than you do. If you want your children to pay attention to you, pay attention to them. Be as kind to them as you want them to be to others.<br />
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<b>Keep Chocolate Handy</b><br />
Every problem looks easier to solve with the application of a little chocolate.<br />
<br />
<hr />Adalene was born on February 14, 1930, the fourth child of Salvatore and Rosaria. My grandparents immigrated from Sicily just a few years earlier and settled in a little burg in Western Pennsylvania. My grandfather hand built the house that my mother was born in and remains in the family to this day.<br />
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My mom was a child of the Great Depression and quit school after the 8th grade to take a factory job and help provide for her family. She spent the first 30 years of her life devoted to her parents while staying in Pennsylvania. When Salvatore died, my mom, her sister Angelina and her mother moved to California to start a new life. It was there that she met my father Dave Alison.<br />
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On her first date with my dad they were involved in a horrific car accident when a drunk driver ran a red light. My mom's foot was nearly severed but they were able to reattach it, though the injury would plague my mom for the rest of her life. At this point it became pretty clear that my mom was a survivor.<br />
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In 1962 she married Dave and became Adalene Alison. A year later she had me, followed by my brother a year and a half later. With a young family under her wings, she and my dad set about building a life for themselves. My dad had a couple of business ventures that failed, putting some pretty heavy stress on the family. To complicate matters, my dad was an alcoholic, alternating through beer, whiskey and vodka over the years.<br />
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Through all of these challenges Adalene remained committed to Dave. My grandmother Rosaria lived with us and watched my brother and I while my mom and dad worked during the day. It was only when I was an adult that my mom and dad revealed how hard times were when I was a child. I never knew this; I always had clothes, there was always food on the table and my parents would somehow find a way to give us huge quantities of toys for our birthdays and Christmas. My brother and I wanted for nothing.<br />
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In the late 1970s my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She insulated my brother and me from it, always assuring us that she would be fine. She always seemed more concerned with us than herself. She had surgery several times to remove the cancer before it would come back. She kept fighting and eventually had a mastectomy. Though scarred from the surgery, she was cancer free and would remain so for the rest of her life.<br />
<br />
Over the years my mom encountered other health problems that led to her quality of life declining. Fortunately my dad quit drinking and became the devoted spouse my mom had always been to him. As dementia started to affect my mom, my dad was there to help her get by. The year 2011 was a series of declines for my mom and it was pretty clear that her time on this earth was coming to a close.<br />
<br />
Though my mom fought many battles and overcame adversity every time it knocked at her door, she never lost her ability to laugh and smile. Even while in hospice care and bound to a wheelchair, she would reach out and hold the hands of others around her, trying to comfort them.<br />
<br />
On August 11, 2011, while my mom quietly breathed her last breath, my dad held her hand and whispered into her ear "I love you".David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-14103818411053961502011-07-25T12:38:00.000-04:002011-07-25T12:38:37.428-04:00First Impressions of Lion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WjZsxnDWCCk/Ti2VWWGo3MI/AAAAAAAACSA/UN_uLC9wrQw/s1600/lion.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WjZsxnDWCCk/Ti2VWWGo3MI/AAAAAAAACSA/UN_uLC9wrQw/s1600/lion.png" /></a></div>I've been playing with Lion fairly steadily now since its release and have some initial impressions I'd like to share.<br />
<br />
<b>Gestures</b><br />
The changes to the gestures in OS X are dramatically different. I can deal with the change to scrolling direction on a page (up is down, down is up) - that's really not that big of a deal. After less than a week I've completely adjusted to it. You can switch it in settings if you like, however you are better off just adjusting to it if you are exclusively a Mac user since it matches up with how actual touch screens like the iPad work. Apple wouldn't be making a change like this just for consistency, I believe it's to prepare Mac users for the future when a hybrid device that is a merger of iPad and Mac is released.<br />
<br />
What is a big deal is that the default behavior for going back in a browser (three-finger swipe left) is changed, now it's two fingers and only works on Safari (not Chrome). I'm hoping I can get this to work in Chrome because for now I'm back to using Safari. I understand why Apple did it but it's made using my Mac feel very awkward for now.<br />
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<b>Full Screen Mode</b><br />
I like it - though having another button for doing this seems excessive. I don't know of anyone that uses the Zoom button (green + in the caption area). We've seen by the gestures that Apple is willing to completely change behaviors, why not this one? I do like that it also hides the menu bar at the top, which is great for letting you focus on content. Move the cursor to the top of the screen and the menu bar "un-hides".<br />
<br />
What is a little odd is that moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen while in Full Screen Mode does not bring up the Dock Bar, so you can't easily launch another application while in that mode. This makes sense though since the application you are currently running is taking over the entire screen. Instead you can hit the old Exposé key (or the Mission Control gesture) and launch another application from there.<br />
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I haven't upgraded my dual-display Mac Pro to Lion yet (it's actually still on Leopard), but I'm interested to see how Full Screen Mode works in that environment.<br />
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<b>Scroll Bars</b><br />
Like many of the user interface elements in Lion, the scroll bars are now very muted in appearance. The big change is that by default they are set to auto-hide when not actually scrolling. While that behavior is brilliant on an iPhone because of the severely limited screen real-estate, that's not really the case on a full size display on a Mac. Why not? The scroll bar not only provides you with a general scrolling mechanism but it also gives you immediate feedback on how long your document is. Without it there you need to touch the scroll gesture just to see it. Fortunately you can change that in System Preferences to always show them, which is what I have done.<br />
<br />
<b>Mission Control</b><br />
Love it and hate it at the same time. I use Spaces heavily and I don't like that I've lost my nice little grid and that it's now a single line across the top portion of the screen. It's lost keyboard navigation (arrows) between the "desktops" while in zoomed out mode, though I can assign Control-# keys for each of the Desktops. I like that the gestures for Mission Control allow me to simply swipe side to side (3 fingers) to move between them. This should expose it to more people that Spaces, which was really more for the techies out there.<br />
<br />
The changes are not too bad on a modern Track Pad equipped MacBook Pro where the Track Pad is very close to the typing position. If you are an external mouse user then it's a much more difficult proposition.<br />
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<b>Launchpad</b><br />
This is just useless to me as a power user. I assume it's there to help new switchers that are coming because they love their iPad or iPhone so much. I can see that it would be much easier to guide a new user through finding and launching an application rather than having them scroll through the Finder's Application folder, however I'll just stick to launching my applications from LaunchBar.<br />
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<b>Mail</b><br />
Really like the new Mail overhaul. I use Mail extensively and this is just great. I like the appearance, the way threads of messages are kept together (ala Gmail), the drag metaphor (click and hold a second, then a message is draggable). Looks fantastic in full screen mode.<br />
<br />
<b>Calendar and Address Book</b><br />
This is a rather large mistake by Apple. They are going for a "real world" object look and compromising functionality by doing so. The Address Book in particular is far less usable. Hoping they don't try this little "making it look like it's a real world object" with Mail (look like a piece of paper pulled out of an envelope), iTunes (look like an old record store with a demo turntable), iMovie (an old film splicing machine), etc. This is not enhancing usability at all.<br />
<br />
<b>General Stability</b><br />
I've been getting exceptions thrown in Safari pretty regularly. Since I upgraded from Snow Leopard I had quite a few utilities installed and I think one or more of them could be causing issues. Make sure you check the applications you normally run all the time to see if there are Lion specific updates available.<br />
<br />
<b>Other Little Things</b><br />
If my MacBook Pro drops into sleep mode the trackpad no longer wakes it up; I have to hit a key on the keyboard. One of the utilities I've come to depend on—Growl—is not currently supported and I find myself lost without it. Performance is very good overall, and Snow Leopard was no slouch. Safari is considerably faster and the new Back / Forward animations look very slick.<br />
<br />
<b>Summary</b><br />
With Snow Leopard Apple brought OS X fully into the 64 bit world, preparing the operating system for the next generation of software to come. With Lion Apple is now doing the same thing with users, preparing us all slowly for a world that is driven by portable devices, not personal computers.<br />
<br />
It's a lot easier for Apple to get the average person to buy an iPad and use that for Email, web browsing and some basic applications. People don't consider that "switching" - it's an entirely new paradigm to them. Given that, I think we will continue to see the innovation at the user level happen on the iOS front and that will drive direction for the foreseeable future.<br />
<br />
You may read what I have written and think I'm not happy with Lion. That would be incorrect. I really like Lion and the problems I'm pointing out are because of frustrations I have with something I spend so much of my day using.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-23236596149952003902011-07-20T12:33:00.001-04:002011-07-20T12:36:38.513-04:00Upgrading Multiple Macs to LionLike many Mac users I am in the process of upgrading my Macs to Lion today. With 8 Macs in our house downloading 3.7GBs of installer seems like a huge waste of bandwidth. You only need to purchase the upgrade once for all of the machines you own or control so here's a technique that may help you only download Lion just once:<br />
<br />
<b>1) Purchase Lion on one of your Snow Leopard Macs</b><br />
The download is about 3.76GB so depending on your connection speed it may take a while. You'll need to be current with Software Update if you aren't already.<br />
<br />
<b>2) Once the download is complete you will be presented with this screen:</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZhFu2pKk5cg/TibpP5B_VeI/AAAAAAAACR8/iOp9TFcraDw/s1600/InstallScreen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZhFu2pKk5cg/TibpP5B_VeI/AAAAAAAACR8/iOp9TFcraDw/s320/InstallScreen.png" width="320" /></a></div><b>3) Do not click Continue! Press Command-Q (or quit from the menu) instead</b><br />
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<b>4) Open Finder and navigate to your Applications folder</b><br />
You should see the installer with the Lion icon titled "Install Mac OS X Lion". Copy that 3.76GB file to portable media device (like a Flash drive or external hard drive).<br />
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<b>5) Copy the Installer application to the Applications folder of the Macs you want to upgrade</b><br />
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<b>6) Ensure each of your Macs is running Snow Leopard and current with Software Update</b><br />
I'm not sure this is completely necessary but better safe than sorry. There have been recent updates to the App Store that enabled people to purchase Lion upgrades; if you don't have those updates I'm not sure if the upgrade will work. If you are still running Leopard on a Mac it will first need to be upgraded to Snow Leopard and updates applied.<br />
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<b>7) Backup your Mac before your upgrade</b><br />
Though the Snow Leopard to Lion upgrade is pretty smooth and few people appear to be reporting problems, having a decent backup (even if it's just Time Machine being completely current) is always prudent.<br />
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<b>8) Run the Installer on each of your Macs</b><br />
The upgrade took about 35 minutes to run on <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2011/04/upgrading-to-new-macbook-pro.html">my new MacBook Pro</a>, though your mileage may vary.<br />
<br />
I'm putting this out before I've completed the upgrade process on all of my Macs because as soon as you execute the Upgrade the installer is removed from your Mac and will need to be re-downloaded (or copied as I mention above).<br />
<br />
If you have any other experience with upgrading multiple Macs to Lion please leave a note in the comments!David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-89648693517617782162011-06-29T09:41:00.000-04:002011-06-29T09:41:10.000-04:00Vibram FiveFingers - Getting started running barefoot style<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1LjEL9705pY/TgsksKJmXeI/AAAAAAAACQc/0qKHrB2Z0fU/s1600/Bikila+Sole.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1LjEL9705pY/TgsksKJmXeI/AAAAAAAACQc/0qKHrB2Z0fU/s1600/Bikila+Sole.jpeg" /></a></div>After reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307279189/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=davalisblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0307279189">Born to Run</a>, Christopher McDougall's best seller on long distance athletes, I became convinced that I needed to make the switch to a barefoot style of running. Based on everything I've read the human body has evolved over millions of years to be optimized for running, yet it's only in the last 40 or so years that we've had heavily padded running shoes and the number of injuries caused by using them has skyrocketed. I won't delve into the details here, encouraging you to either <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307279189/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=davalisblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0307279189">pick up McDougall's book</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=barefoot+running">Google yourself up some background</a> on it.<br />
<br />
The bottom line is that if you want to go with a more natural barefoot running style you have a few choices. Since the bottom of my feet are about as tough as the South bound end of a North bound baby, actually running in bare feet didn't seem reasonable. I've done it on the beach in soft sand but that's pretty much where I draw the line. The first thing I did was lace up my heavily padded Nike running shoes and try running on the balls of my feet.<br />
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It turns out running "on your toes" is actually pretty tough to do in standard issue running shoes. The padding insulates you so much that your foot doesn't naturally want to land on the ball of your foot and I found myself really having to focus, lest I revert back to running on my heels and rolling forward. Turns out that undoing 30+ years of heel-strike running wouldn't just happen automatically. I ran a very flat 3.1 miles that way at an 8:37 pace (normally I run at about an 8:10 pace while exercising). <br />
<br />
My calf muscles were quite tight afterwards, something I never experienced after running. Usually it was my knees that were a bit sore and they were fine. As a hardcore cyclist—last year was 4,500+ miles at an 18.5mph average—my calf muscles are well conditioned. Or so I thought. The barefoot style was pulling on them in a different way and I found that after my first run they were quite sore in that over-stressed muscle kind of way. I probably should have stretched them more after my run but since I didn't the next couple days involved me walking a bit gingerly. Fortunately it had no impact on my cycling.<br />
<br />
<b>Enter the Vibram FiveFingers</b><br />
I decided that if I was going to switch to the barefoot style I may as well use a "shoe" optimized for that and went with the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HEI17E/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=davalisblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=B004HEI17E">Vibram FiveFingers Bikila</a>. I use shoe in quotes because the Vibrams hardly look like a shoe, especially when mounted on your feet. Because they are form fitting the appearance at first glance is that your feet are painted the color of the shoe. They provide a nominal level of impact insulation, more to protect your skin from small sharp objects (glass) and provide excellent gripping on smooth surfaces.<br />
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I wear a size 10 1/2 US shoe and though the size charts I've seen would recommend anywhere from a 45 to a 46 (EU style sizing) I chose a 44 because that's the size cycling shoe I use. Putting on a Vibram takes a little getting used to - you can't just jam your foot in. Instead you need to inch your toes into their respective sockets.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rPaKW55Po9E/TgsmJUSEdiI/AAAAAAAACQg/L4XvYfmgioI/s1600/shoeside.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rPaKW55Po9E/TgsmJUSEdiI/AAAAAAAACQg/L4XvYfmgioI/s320/shoeside.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Initially wearing the Vibrams was an odd feeling. I wasn't used to having material between each of my toes. It's not an unpleasant experience, just a bit odd initially. The material for the shoes are highly breathable so it doesn't feel like you're really wearing anything. Walking around in them is also interesting because it's just a tiny step above being in bare feet; you "feel" the undulations in the ground you are walking on and your foot conforms to different terrain. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzuvXL6okHE/Tgsmatr-NLI/AAAAAAAACQk/7vSMdsgCrAw/s1600/vibram.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzuvXL6okHE/Tgsmatr-NLI/AAAAAAAACQk/7vSMdsgCrAw/s320/vibram.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<b>Appearance</b><br />
The reaction you get while wearing Vibrams will vary. People you don't know will ask you about them: "What ARE those?", "How do they feel?" and "Does it hurt to run"? If you have children like I do in their late teens and early twenties, they will be completely horrified. "Dad, PLEASE don't go out in public with those on your feet"! Ah kids. I remember the battles over appropriate clothing with my daughters when they were young teenagers and this is my mid-life revenge.<br />
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<b>That First Run</b><br />
As I set out on my first run in the Vibrams I noticed something immediately: my foot automatically adjusted to running in the barefoot style. I didn't have to focus on my running like I did when I was wearing my Nikes. As I extended my leg forward my foot just dipped down to land gently on the pads of my foot, my foot spread out as my heel came down a microsecond later. It was a solid but gentle impact. If you are used to running in padded running shoes with your heel striking first and rolling forward, try running barefoot on a hard surface; your feet automatically adjust to the terrain and the ball of your foot will absorb the impact. This is exactly what happened when I ran in the Vibrams.<br />
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Another thing I noticed immediately was that my feet felt very light. It's hard to appreciate how much running shoes add to your in-motion weight until you discard them and run with something like the Vibrams. I immediately felt much faster and had to back off on my pace because I didn't want to become gassed a mile into what was supposed to be a 3 mile break-in run.<br />
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I ran almost exclusively on asphalt in a very flat area and everything was going great. At one point I had to jump over to a grassy shoulder to let traffic by and the transition was very easy; even though there was an angle to the surface I had no problem with keeping stable. The wide bottom of my running shoes normally had a difficult time on those types of surfaces and sometimes my foot would roll awkwardly if it caught an edge. With the Vibrams my foot just conformed to the surface area, wrapping around whatever I stepped on.<br />
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At one point I tried running on a gravel pathway next to the road to see how it felt. The marble sized rocks felt a little odd under my Vibrams—and large rocks were uncomfortable for my sensitive feet—but overall it was actually quite easy. I didn't feel any discomfort until the last 1/4 mile of my run.<br />
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<b>Let the Pain Begin</b><br />
With just a couple blocks left in my run I started to feel some discomfort on the inside edges of my feet just forward of my arch. It started out as a mild pinching sensation and rapidly started to hurt more and more, especially in my right foot. My wife will tell you that I'm one of the more stubborn people on the planet so rather than just stop and walk the last 1/4 mile I kept running as planned. As I rounded the last corner and began to taper off, I was favoring my right foot pretty heavily and limping slightly. I sat down on my deck and extracted my feet from the Vibrams, which is nearly as challenging as putting them on. You don't slip your foot out as much as you peel them off.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U20nXdO40Kk/TgsonyfZYaI/AAAAAAAACQo/tOV9AhR8dG8/s1600/footdamage.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U20nXdO40Kk/TgsonyfZYaI/AAAAAAAACQo/tOV9AhR8dG8/s320/footdamage.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I had developed two small and painful blisters on each of my feet in nearly identical locations, though they had broken open on my right foot. The problem was where the base of the strap was mounted to the outside of the Vibram. When I put on the Vibrams I synched down that strap very tightly, much like I do to my cycling shoes. I believe that I had it so tight that it was pulling the strap base into my baby-like skin and that's what caused the abrasion.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Am-2-Bm793E/Tgso7XMex8I/AAAAAAAACQs/m4FEckNED8Q/s1600/shoepink.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Am-2-Bm793E/Tgso7XMex8I/AAAAAAAACQs/m4FEckNED8Q/s320/shoepink.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The second thing I noticed was that my calf muscles were again on fire. I hadn't fully recovered from my earlier attempt at the barefoot style and was now paying the price. I sat down and massaged my calf muscles heavily and that helped but it turned out that pain would be with me for a couple of days.<br />
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I managed to complete the 2.9 miles in 24:48 with an 8:32 / mile average. This was still down from my normal speed but the last painful 1/4 mile was run at a pretty slow pace.<br />
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<b>Three Days Later - Another Run</b><br />
After three days and several bike rides to help my legs recover I felt I was ready to give the Vibrams a try again on that same 2.9 mile course. This time I had two pretty heavy blister bandages sealing up my foot in the injured area, the strap was pulled on pretty lightly and I set off at what I felt was a pretty easy pace. The bandages helped my feet tremendously and I felt no discomfort from them. My legs also felt very strong and I tried to maintain a pace that could have gone for 10 miles pretty easily.<br />
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I kept waiting for the pain to come to my feet but it never did - the blister bandages were working. I returned home within 23:55 for an 8:14 pace, which is very close to my normal time, yet I was not pushing all that hard. My calf muscles were again sore but this time I spent 10 minutes stretching them out after the run. A few hours later they felt fine.<br />
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<b>Summary</b><br />
Running in Vibrams is a very interesting experience. If I look beyond the blistering my feet experienced (something that should go away over time) and the muscle adjustment (already made to a degree), I feel like my running experience has been completely revitalized. My knees are not sore at all and my heels feel great. Instead of feeling like I'm jamming my legs into the pavement I feel like I'm working my muscles as they were designed to operate. Frankly I can't wait to get out on the road in them tomorrow; the 5K and 10K races I run during the summer start soon and I'm interested to see if this will help me improve on the personal records I set last year.<br />
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Special thanks to <a href="http://twitter.com/BarbaricPenguin">Greg</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/reidmain">Reid</a>—Twitter friends and fellow runners—for giving me feedback on the Vibrams. Also, please note that I'm including links to Born to Run and the Bikila's through my Amazon referral account - if you pick them up from there I get referral credit.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-78502383089565701532011-05-18T10:48:00.001-04:002011-05-18T10:49:20.443-04:00Three iChat Features You Should Know AboutAs I wrote up my last blog post on <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2011/05/skype-alternatives-for-mac-users.html">Skype alternatives</a> I started seriously looking at iChat again. Since I had been using Skype for my video chats and Adium for my IM communications, iChat never seemed to have that little blue orb beneath it in the dock bar to indicate it was running.<br />
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When I <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/02/hardcore-windows-guy-switches-to-mac.html">first switched to Mac over three years ago</a> I played with iChat and relatively quickly dismissed it as a cute toy. The cartoon bubble discussion was cute but not compact enough for my relatively heavy IM usage. The video chatting was cool but after playing with the effects button and carrying on a video chat while riding a moving roller coaster I quickly concluded that this was a fluffy consumer novelty and moved on to other applications for my business needs.<br />
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Researching alternatives to Skype changed all that.<br />
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The more I played around with iChat, the more I learned about some interesting features, especially if the people I was communicating with also had iChat available to them. More and more of my friends and business associates now have Macs than ever before and iChat is already installed so it's really not that hard to leverage. For the most part if you see the Video Conference image:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6zlgVxE5oVA/TdPZBXZYDwI/AAAAAAAACPU/bp-uyVNHbmQ/s1600/functionality.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6zlgVxE5oVA/TdPZBXZYDwI/AAAAAAAACPU/bp-uyVNHbmQ/s1600/functionality.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div>to the right of their name in your buddy list, you can leverage all of the features below:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cif8DNeuvNs/TdPZVuhU2rI/AAAAAAAACPY/YVk5lWRDyCg/s1600/screenshare.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cif8DNeuvNs/TdPZVuhU2rI/AAAAAAAACPY/YVk5lWRDyCg/s400/screenshare.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<b>Screen Sharing</b><br />
As a person that provides technical assistance to my family and friends, being able to trouble shoot a problem without having to go to their computer is a huge help, especially when they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Having the ability to share a screen and actually manipulate it as though it's local is also great for demonstrating something I've built locally to one of my colleagues.<br />
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With iChat you can initiate either a "Share my screen" or a "Ask to share their screen" connection. While connected a voice chat channel is opened and you can speak over it while you work. To start up a screen sharing session, Control-click (or Right-click) a buddy name in your iChat list and select the sharing direction you want.<br />
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While the screen is active you can jump between the two by clicking on the screen in the lower-right corner.<br />
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<i>A couple of notes:</i> You can end the session by closing the small box in the lower right. This will also terminate the voice session. Pressing Command-Q or Command-W will not end the session—those commands will be sent to the remote screen and likely close the current application or window that's open.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UxGR-bF88yc/TdPZ4iAmFmI/AAAAAAAACPc/nuMlDU_oa4w/s1600/chat4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UxGR-bF88yc/TdPZ4iAmFmI/AAAAAAAACPc/nuMlDU_oa4w/s400/chat4.png" width="400" /></a></div><b>Multi-Person Video Chat</b><br />
With iChat you can link up to four people together in a video conference. Though obviously limited to a very small group, having four people able to easily see one another and carry on a discussion is amazing for an application that's simply included with OS X. Though <a href="http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/features/allfeatures/group-video-calls/">Skype now offers video conferencing</a> with up to eight people, it requires a paid subscription in order to use it.<br />
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Once you establish a video connection with a person you can add others to your chat by clicking the Plus symbol at the bottom of the video chat window and adding another buddy. If you are communicating with people using AIM accounts you can even join a chat room and keep a running text log as your meeting progresses.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0apl6SgUSWc/TdPauo_SB2I/AAAAAAAACPg/D7VvbMtLKHc/s1600/jeffchat.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0apl6SgUSWc/TdPauo_SB2I/AAAAAAAACPg/D7VvbMtLKHc/s400/jeffchat.png" width="400" /></a></div><b>iChat Theater</b><br />
Another great little feature of iChat is the iChat Theater. Once you have a video chat running with someone, click the Plus symbol at the bottom of the window and select the option to share a file through iChat Theater (or simply drag the file to the video chat window). The image of the person you are video chatting with drops down into the corner and the image or file you are presenting takes over the main part of the screen. This is great for reviewing images or paging through a Keynote presentation. There are reports that the next version of OS X (Lion) <a href="http://www.totalapps.net/mac/os-x-lion-ichat6-gets-webpage-sharing-account-integration-yahoo-im/">will support sharing web pages</a>.<br />
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iChat Theater also works when doing multi-person chat; as a presenter your multi-chat window is taken over by whatever it is you are sharing, as you can see below:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aPdR6TNtugo/TdPbPD49tLI/AAAAAAAACPk/zZoCUcUJnrM/s1600/conf-theater.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aPdR6TNtugo/TdPbPD49tLI/AAAAAAAACPk/zZoCUcUJnrM/s320/conf-theater.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Important Tips</b><br />
When you have a single or multi-user video chat running you will see a Mute button in the lower portion of the screen. Clicking that will mute your audio, but not the audio on the other end. As a result, if you click Mute your chat partner will continue to be both seen and heard and your video will continue without sound. If the other person mutes the sound, don't say anything stupid like "wow, when is this going to be over?". <br />
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Holding down the Option key transforms the Mute button into a Pause button. This both mutes the audio from your end as well as freezes the video from your end. Like Mute only, this only applies to your feed; the other end is still visible and audible.<br />
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For years now my friend an Mac super-user <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/astamoore">Ast Moore</a> has been telling me I should be using iChat instead of Adium. Now I'm starting to see why.<br />
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Got a video / screen / file sharing tip with iChat? Please drop a note in the comments!David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-25106299365092468732011-05-12T11:56:00.000-04:002011-05-13T16:28:15.801-04:00Skype Alternatives for Mac UsersMicrosoft has <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/may11/05-10CorpNewsPR.mspx">agreed to acquire Skype</a> for $8.5 billion in cash. As a long term <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype</a> user I've had Skype loaded on my Macs for years now. It serves for video chats with my family and business associates and also as my desk-bound IP telephony device. This model has worked well for me. By combing a couple of <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/09/skype-launchbar-ultimate-landline-style.html">cool AppleScripts with Launchbar</a> I can call people without my fingers leaving the keyboard. So if everything works so well, why would I need an alternative?<br />
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<b>Skype's Mac Client</b><br />
I was more than a little concerned when Skype released their last Mac client and it was, well, not very good. Skype's never really been a company that embraces the Mac user interface well, though version 2.8 is serviceable from a user experience standpoint. With the announced acquisition my confidence in Skype putting any money into "embracing and extending" the Mac client in a way that makes dedicated Mac users happy is... well... compromised.<br />
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<b>Microsoft</b><br />
My confidence in Microsoft's ability to service the needs of Mac users is not very high. Though Steve Balmer has stated that Microsoft will continue to "<a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/159807/2011/05/ballmer_skype.html">invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms</a>", that could simply mean they will patch bugs and maybe ensure that some new features added to Skype will also be slapped into the Mac user interface. This hardly makes me confident that they will do anything innovative on Mac. It's far more likely they will simply leave the Skype for Mac client wallowing in freakish misery forever.<br />
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Given these and <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/10/what-does-the-skype-sale-mean-for-apple-customers/">other issues</a>, what are the options for people that want to move away from Skype on Mac? I'll take a look at some of the more popular alternatives here.<br />
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As a comprehensive communications solution Skype is pretty robust and not easy to replace with a single solution. It supports both Mac and Windows (there is even an <a href="http://blogs.skype.com/linux/">open source Linux client</a>), and offers mobile video support as well. You can use Skype to make free calls to other Skype users for video and/or voice as well as fire chat messages back and forth. Skype on the iPhone also supports video calls over 3G. Video chats are very reliable and other than some basic configuration settings (like which mic to use), they generally work very well.<br />
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For purposes of this blog post, I'm going to focus on the Video Chat portion of Skype. I will compare the three main options for Mac users: FaceTime, Google GTalk and iChat.<br />
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<b>FaceTime</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QhKPrgOMWDw/TcwGW_DL4sI/AAAAAAAACPI/vqyY2Ahw9Wc/s1600/facetime.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QhKPrgOMWDw/TcwGW_DL4sI/AAAAAAAACPI/vqyY2Ahw9Wc/s1600/facetime.png" /></a></div>Though <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/">FaceTime</a> is the new kid on the block, it's become very popular among Apple aficionados because it's integrated into iPhone 4s, iPod Touches and iPad 2s, as well as any Snow Leopard based Mac. Apple has also released the specification for FaceTime as an open standard, encouraging other platforms to use this. Apple made FaceTime a significant part of their marketing strategy, devoting full national commercials to it.<br />
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<b>Advantages:</b> Very high video quality, even over connections that would cause other video chats (including Skype) to degrade and produce artifacts. Integrated directly with the calling feature on iPhones so you can switch to a video chat on demand. No large client loaded on Mac while waiting for calls - incoming calls are handled directly by OS X.<br />
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<b>Disadvantages:</b> Requires the latest and greatest Mac OS (currently Snow Leopard). Older Macs not upgraded to Snow Leopard are out of luck. An iPhone 4, 4th generation iPod Touch or iPad 2 is required on the iOS side, though that's mainly because they are the first devices to have a front and rear facing camera. As of today, you cannot run a FaceTime call over 3G; it requires WiFi unless you <a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/20617/FaceTime-over-3G-Video/">jailbreak your iPhone</a> or <a href="http://www.mactrast.com/2011/03/04/use-facetime-over-3g-without-jailbreaking/">trick it into thinking it’s connected to WiFi</a>. There are no clients currently available for Windows or Linux. No screen sharing.<br />
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<b>Summary:</b> While I love using FaceTime, today it's far too limited. 3G support will help tremendously. Apple should invest the time in building a Windows FaceTime client because it's highly unlikely anyone else will. Those two factors are critical to widespread adoption of FaceTime. This is a great consumer point to point solution for personal use assuming the people you want to chat with are sporting the latest and greatest Apple equipment.<br />
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<b>Google GTalk</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rsza7p-QFb4/TcwIbkDZ0OI/AAAAAAAACPM/KxYIHOQV4JI/s1600/gchat.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rsza7p-QFb4/TcwIbkDZ0OI/AAAAAAAACPM/KxYIHOQV4JI/s1600/gchat.png" /></a></div>If you have a <a href="http://www.gmail.com/">Gmail</a> or iGoogle account you also have a Google Chat account. Add in the <a href="http://www.google.com/talk/">GTalk plug-in</a> and you can have a video chat with another Gmail account user directly from your browser. The video quality is great and connecting up is very simple. The price can't be beat because this is another one of Google's many free offerings.<br />
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Though Google doesn't directly support video chats on iOS there is a free application called <a href="http://vtokapp.com/">Vtok that does support video chats</a> from an iPhone/iPod/iPad.<br />
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<b>Advantages:</b> Excellent video quality on the desktop. Works on Mac OS X (10.4 +), Windows (XP +) and Linux. Client plugin is very lightweight. Can run Vtok over 3G on the iPhone.<br />
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<b>Disadvantages:</b> Video quality when running on iPhone (using Vtok) is poor, even over WiFi. Cannot perform screen sharing.<br />
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<b>Summary:</b> If you want ubiquitous access much like Skype, Google Gtalk is probably your closest bet, though it's really not for mobile devices right now. Sure, Vtok works but the quality is very poor on iOS devices, at least when compared to the Skype or FaceTime options. Google needs to develop a super high-quality iOS client for iPhone equipped users to feel like this is a viable option.<br />
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<b>iChat</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtEmfvkWpj8/TcwI1QDbBjI/AAAAAAAACPQ/0iVsT0Op6n0/s1600/ichat.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtEmfvkWpj8/TcwI1QDbBjI/AAAAAAAACPQ/0iVsT0Op6n0/s1600/ichat.png" /></a></div>Macs have had video chat capabilities for years through <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/ichat.html">iChat</a>. With iChat and an AIM, Google Talk or MobileMe account (or connected to a Jabber server) you can video chat with another Mac user. iChat is a base part of OS X. Not only does it do basic video chats, it includes some other great features. iChat really is a central hub for a wide range of communications capabilities, mostly technical in nature. Transferring files, remote screen sharing (the full interactive kind), walking through presentations and video conferences with up to 4 people are all possible.<br />
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<b>Advantages:</b> Very good video quality over a decent connection. Supports up to 4 simultaneous video chats at once - great for a small conference. Has many of the filters and capabilities of Photo Booth, so you can make your video chat occur on a moving roller coaster if you want. The iChat Theater is great for walking a couple of people through a document or presentation. The screen sharing feature allows you to do complete technical support for another Mac user.<br />
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<b>Disadvantages:</b> No mobile support. If you are connecting with someone else and they don't have iChat, it's hit or miss as to what functionality you will have. Video conference with more than two people appears to require everyone on the same service (not some on AIM, some on Google Talk). File transfers rarely seem to work correctly.<br />
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<b>Summary:</b> iChat isn’t going anywhere because it is the base method from Apple for IM chats on OS X. Apple now has two different and incompatible video sharing technologies (FaceTime and iChat), so it will be interesting to see where this goes. My take is that while FaceTime is a really easy to use consumer oriented product, iChat is more oriented towards work and collaboration tasks. As I researched this topic I discovered a huge number of great features in iChat that I didn't know about and will be writing up shortly.<br />
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<b>Bottom Line:</b><br />
If you feel compelled to move away from Skype and need to do video calls, any one of these three tools are a decent replacement. If your video calls tend to be business related, iChat provides all of the sharing technologies you could need for Mac to Mac communications. If you deal with a heavily mixed platform environment, Google's GTalk and video plugin will give you the best cross platform support.<br />
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FaceTime is the most promising of these technologies because it seamlessly integrates voice calling and video, allowing you to transition on demand (assuming both sides have the same capabilities).<br />
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Personally I wish video calling was as standardized as voice calling; when I call a person I don't think about which handset or carrier they use, I just dial the number. Over the next few years virtually every mobile phone sold will have video calling capabilities, yet if I can't perform a video call from my iPhone on AT&T's 3G service to a friend running an Android based phone on Verizon, where's the value? Virtually every laptop and netbook sold in the last 2-3 years has a video camera set up for video chat, yet they are not compatible with one another.<br />
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As a consumer, I just want it all to work together. If Skype, iChat, FaceTime and GTalk could all video chat with one another the world would be a better place.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-29915698351573336872011-05-05T09:24:00.000-04:002011-05-05T09:24:17.738-04:00The Mac applications I run all day, every dayWhen I <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2011/04/upgrading-to-new-macbook-pro.html">bought my new MacBook Pro</a> I used the applications I had running on my previous MacBook Pro to help me determine what I would need in terms of horsepower. It was an interesting exercise, mainly because it gave me a good sense for all of the things I need my Mac to handle throughout the day.<br />
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I'm a software developer and do some of the development for <a href="http://sharedstatus.com/">SharedStatus</a>, so my needs are a little biased towards that. I've broken down what's running on my Mac into two sections, Basics and Development. To give some perspective on how many apps I have loaded up as I write this, here's a snapshot of my current Spaces window zoomed out:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ToaOgQZk_Oo/TcHCvxHV1tI/AAAAAAAACME/8YIXugxXXJM/s1600/Fullscreen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ToaOgQZk_Oo/TcHCvxHV1tI/AAAAAAAACME/8YIXugxXXJM/s320/Fullscreen.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I've always been fascinated by these types of lists because it helps give people exposure to some apps they may not know about. Here are the ones I nearly always have running:<br />
<br />
<h2>Basics</h2><table><tbody>
<tr><td><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a></b></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-awsR8FRI9Gc/TcHDzOKLg-I/AAAAAAAACMI/XB3U64PapAk/s1600/safari.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I love the speed of Safari and this remains my default browser. Nice and fast, Safari does have a tendency to crash on me if it's been running for a long time and I have a huge number of tabs open, though it always seems to happen when Flash based web sites are loaded up. Fortunately more and more sites are switching to HTML5 solutions instead of Flash. My iPhone and iPad are happy about that too.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/">Google Chrome</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y8gGqXy9uu0/TcHH0gxgk2I/AAAAAAAACMM/IDcALqtE7I0/s1600/chrome.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I really enjoying using Chrome. Why do I have two (well, three—see below) active browsers? Because I'm often logging in to different profiles (personal / business entity) on different online services. The fact that the URL bar and the search area are one and the same is also a cool feature. Chrome is—like Safari—very fast in rendering web pages.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://adium.im/">Adium</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--ccNUfWi970/TcHIsqsOctI/AAAAAAAACMU/xUzTC8fBPaE/s1600/adium.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td>Though I have some die hard Apple fans that tell me I should use iChat, I'm hopelessly addicted to Adium. The customizability of the interface is outstanding and the integrated support of multiple IM accounts means keeping everything consolidated in one place is easy. Having a friend that has <a href="http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=7764">Trollicons loaded up</a> makes for some hilarious chats too.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype (version 2.8)</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OKsP6wCMQZY/TcHJom47MpI/AAAAAAAACMY/57Is6xuUXWk/s400/skype.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I continue to use Skype for my virtual phone and also for video conferencing, though Facetime may soon replace that function. I haven't upgraded beyond version 2.8 due to the <a href="http://voiceontheweb.biz/2011/04/skype-for-mac-5-from-ecstasy-to-agony/">horror stories</a> associated with the most recent release. <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/09/skype-launchbar-ultimate-landline-style.html">Combine Skype with some Applescripts and Launchbar goodness</a> and it's a great replacement for a land line.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.echofon.com/twitter/mac/">Echofon</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f3uj-wHbNq0/TcHQ5zaVRPI/AAAAAAAACMg/MUsqeCnijPc/s400/echofon.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I'm very heavy into <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/dalison">Twitter</a>; it has effectively become my primary news channel, replacing my RSS feeds for the most part. Echofon is great because it syncs up from Desktop to iPad to iPhone, so as I switch between machines I don't have to scan through tweets I've already read on another device. Note: you can follow me on twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/dalison">@dalison</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/mail-ical-address-book.html">iCal</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WWlVxbL2OKo/TcHRrwfTiDI/AAAAAAAACMo/3pYFwhzdRzU/s400/ical.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I always have iCal loaded up; quickly seeing what's on deck, accepting e-mailed appointment invites, etc. all work nicely, and it syncs up well with my iPhone and iPad. I also have it mated up with my <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar">Google Calendar</a> account.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/mail-ical-address-book.html">Mail</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-guOTX1_wBIc/TcHSkN96cwI/AAAAAAAACMw/3lbhN7MIrCg/s400/mail.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I occasionally access e-mail through a web interface (especially for Gmail based accounts) but my default e-mail access point is Mail.app. I use IMAP to keep my folders synced up and the integration with the rest of the OS is good. With the Growl add-on installed (see below) I get a nice notification of new e-mail as well.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/">Pages</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HkRppEJM5iA/TcHpzw3Na_I/AAAAAAAACM4/2iXAfZxIB6Q/s400/pages.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I'm doing more and more writing and blogging these days and my preferred tool for capturing initial drafts is Pages. I love the user interface, the application performance and in the unlikely event I need a document that is print (or more likely PDF) ready, Pages can create a really beautiful document quickly. I always seem to have it open.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://growl.info/">Growl</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rvC7N0RPdSA/TcHqtxtx4YI/AAAAAAAACNA/T-nXMWhs660/s400/growl.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">Most of the notification oriented apps I run have Growl support. Rather than each app coming up with their own notification model, Growl provides a clean and highly customizable model that any OSX application can leverage. I love seeing a Growl notification that a file in my shared Dropbox account has been updated.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html">Launchbar</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MIxxc82zt1w/TcHuZGJlGyI/AAAAAAAACNI/-srLErIOS2w/s400/launchbar.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I've become a hard core keyboard user on my Macs as a direct result of LaunchBar. Not only can I quickly launch or open my existing applications from the keyboard (much like Spaces) but I can connect applications and documents together. I've written rather extensively <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/07/launchbar-as-quicksilver-replacement.html">about Launchbar</a> in the past.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/">iStat Menu</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yFjVhZkKsqs/TcHvFFhThwI/AAAAAAAACNQ/hAM0-Q8xFkU/s400/istatmenu.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I like to know what's going on with my Mac, whether it's the temperature inside the machine, the actual health of my batteries or to see if there is any odd network traffic flying across the pipes at the moment. iStat Menu is a staple on my Mac's menu bar.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YLh8nFA3DMQ/TcHvWyDLNPI/AAAAAAAACNY/T-jypVz1hNU/s400/dropbox.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I'm not sure how I got by without Dropbox before. It’s not that I couldn't quickly transfer files between my various machines, it's just that it required me intervening to do it. Dropbox makes it seamless. Just getting my 1Password files to synchronize automatically makes Dropbox invaluable to me.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://agilewebsolutions.com/onepassword">1Password</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MuBZfdtPKoE/TcHvvpQXnJI/AAAAAAAACNg/A5oAs484VeE/s400/1password.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">The older I get, the less grey matter I seem to have to dedicate to remembering passwords, login names and some of the incantations sites require me to perform to obtain access. 1Password handles all that and fills out credit card and mailing address forms for me. The fact that it's synchronized between my various machines (and my iPhone and iPad) make it a necessity for me.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://skitch.com/">Skitch</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bsXI3_7RSng/TcHwOdUEBsI/AAAAAAAACNo/ETM5_Dj4gvs/s400/skitch.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I often find myself passing screen shots of new features for <a href="http://sharedstatus.com/">SharedStatus</a> back and forth with my partner <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/josiahivey">Josiah</a>. Skitch makes that easy, not just because it can take a screen shot so easily (OSX does that natively) but because it includes basic drawing tools to quickly call out parts of images captured. I can resize, crop, drop in arrows and call-out text in seconds.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/">Caffeine</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OcMYVBA8PIU/TcHwlaSH7iI/AAAAAAAACNw/iWhqk-gr7Bg/s400/caffeine.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">You know when you fire up a long <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> video or Skype video chat and your energy saver preferences kick in because you haven’t been touching the keyboard or mouse? Clicking the Caffeine coffee cup in the menu bar tells your Mac not to fire up the screen saver or drop into sleep mode for a pre-defined number of minutes. You can come close to this behavior with Exposé hotspot preferences (System Preferences / Exposé & Spaces), but Caffeine makes it much easier. And it's free.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/">SMARTReporter</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--53l1pxzDwo/TcHxD1DjEJI/AAAAAAAACN4/MEBMNKxy-cw/s400/SMARTReporter.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I keep SMARTReporter running all the time because I like to keep an eye on the health of my hard drives. I don’t actively use it but I like that it passively sits in my menu bar and will notify me if one of my hard drives starts to act up. Also a great free utility.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.xmarks.com/">Xmarks</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-efPKZYvspVo/TcHxWsgiA3I/AAAAAAAACOA/IkPKyu9y898/s400/xmarks.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">As you can see on this list, I keep three different browsers running all the time. I also have two primary Macs that I use; Xmarks keeps my bookmarks and browser tool bars synchronized between each of my browsers and on each machine. Combine that with 1Password and I can get to anything from pretty much anywhere.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html">Time Machine</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WeT9EulHOGc/TcHx0pqh5qI/AAAAAAAACOI/vFHl10OvFGs/s400/timemachine.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I've always been a big fan of Time Machine because it makes backups something that I do every single hour and I don't have to worry about it. Unless there's <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/05/fixing-simple-time-machine-error.html">a Time Machine error</a> of course. Time Machine has saved me hassles on more than one occasion; <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2010/04/restore-from-backup-bringing-mac-back.html">mate it up with a Time Capsule</a> and you have roaming around the house backups.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<h2>Development</h2><table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/apps-and-utilities.html#terminal">2-3 Terminal windows</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mtV6KSB3zkk/TcHydx8UEVI/AAAAAAAACOQ/WAfgKNrx1qI/s400/terminal.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">At any given time I have 2-3 Bash shell windows open. One is usually for local commands related to my Rails development, another is for a running instance of my development version of SharedStatus (or other project) and a third is usually open with an SSH session to a remote server.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/">Firefox</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oezOt6gDUTA/TcHy_d6609I/AAAAAAAACOY/73j14P2ZN-A/s400/firefox.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I put Firefox into the development category because that's primarily how I use it. I've generally found that page rendering is a bit faster with Safari and Chrome than in Firefox, but neither of those browsers has the depth of extensions for playing with web pages.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://macromates.com/">TextMate</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SAlb_3iDuHQ/TcHzY9_pTAI/AAAAAAAACOg/xDUgPzgGnv0/s400/textmate.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">As a <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a> developer you learn that a healthy combination of terminal windows and a programmers editor are your friend and TextMate is a fantastic editor for Ruby development. Lots of extensions for languages and version control systems too. It's also great for hacking on plain old text files, CSS pages, etc.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/">MySQL Server</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BgFcZt4jvP0/TcHz5uxcgiI/AAAAAAAACOo/Op-SDmfuDbk/s400/MySQL.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I keep a MySQL Server instance running on my machine at all times (automatically started at login). A couple of the Rails projects I do use MySQL server so I like to have it available immediately in case I need a local development build of a web application.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://www.sequelpro.com/">Sequel Pro</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zMP8JMRmEEU/TcH0MEZSXtI/AAAAAAAACOw/IyQW891cO2o/s400/sqlpro.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">When I need to browse through data sets or build up experimental queries, Sequel Pro is my go-to tool and I often just have it loaded and running in one of my Spaces windows. It’s perfect for jumping in and examining (and modifying) data. Another great free utility.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://fivedetails.com/flow/">Flow</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sIIuFWSC32M/TcH0hnzQadI/AAAAAAAACO4/SB7NIYP56rs/s400/flow.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">When I purchased one of the <a href="http://www.macheist.com/">MacHeist bundles</a> a while back I got Flow, an FTP client. Flow has a very OS X like user interface and feels natural running on Snow Leopard. I'm always pushing files up to web servers and having this open makes it simple. About the only thing I wish it did was integrate with 1Password.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><b><a href="http://developer.apple.com/xcode/">Xcode</a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--EEyp_Ar4Zg/TcH1BqAL0qI/AAAAAAAACPA/bEBXc5t1MXQ/s400/xcode.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></td><td valign="top">I've been doing more and more iOS development lately (more learning than anything else) and as a result I nearly always have Xcode Version 4.0 loaded up with a project. Xcode can create some fairly heavy demand on a Mac, sometimes at really odd times. Why my CPU utilization pops up so high when parked on the New File dialog is but one example.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Most days these apps are all running at the same time, as you can see from the Spaces screen shot at the top of this post. I have lots of other applications that I use on an infrequent basis but they aren't always running, like the rest of the <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/">iWork suite</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/">iPhoto</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/apps-and-utilities.html#preview">Preview</a>, <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/">OmniGraffle</a>, etc.<br />
<br />
What's running on your Mac right now? Any cool applications that I should be using that I haven't already mentioned? Please drop a note in the comments and let me (and the other readers) know.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-12723502091312235382011-05-02T11:38:00.000-04:002011-05-02T11:38:17.522-04:00Finding a protective shell for a MacBook ProWhen I <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2011/04/upgrading-to-new-macbook-pro.html">packaged up my old MacBook Pro for my daughter</a> I did a quick wipe down of the machine and found that though it was three years old it had very little visible wear and tear. The keyboard and palm rest areas were in perfect shape and there were no dents in the aluminum case. Though the white power supply and cords were a bit dirty a quick wipe down with a damp cloth had them looking like new.<br />
<br />
About the only thing that made the machine look used was the outside of the case. As I had slipped it into my bag or carried it in my hand, objects like my watch band had rubbed against it and put a series of small scratches all over the outer shell. They were purely cosmetic but annoying nonetheless.<br />
<br />
I’m determined to treat this new MacBook Pro with a little more care and as a result started searching around for a protective shell case for it. I rationalized that this would help maintain the resale value of my Mac in the unlikely event I decided to sell it or—more likely—it would look like new when I passed it down to one of my kids in the future.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="229" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--MFDfKIJL2E/Tb7KgbnUDBI/AAAAAAAACLg/52vbauSR9zk/s320/plasticsofa.png" width="320" /></div><b>Plastic Covered Couches</b><br />
My grandmother was a fan of plastic covered furniture back in the 60s and 70s. As a young lady going through the Great Depression she developed a deep appreciation of the cost of things and wanted them to last as long as possible. As a result, her couches and chairs were hermetically sealed in plastic-wrap. You would sit on them in shorts and immediately begin to sweat and after just a few minutes you felt you were physically attached to the piece of furniture.<br />
<br />
Sure, her couches looked like new and were preserved for future generations but I couldn’t help but think that the enjoyment of that particular piece of furniture was completely compromised. While I want to protect my new MacBook Pro, I don’t want it to suffer the same fate.<br />
<br />
<b>First Try - iPearl mCover Hard Shell Case</b><br />
As I tend to do, I jumped on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon</a> and found a number of cases available. I looked through the reviews and found a very affordable hard plastic shell that got pretty solid reviews: a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001Y01UCW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=davalisblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B001Y01UCW">Blue iPearl mCover Hard Shell Case</a>. At $19.99 it was less than half the price of other cases so I figured I’d give it a try. I’m a member of Amazon Prime so 2-day shipping was free and as I’ve been finding lately, sometimes it arrives next day.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHGyj4S2_Qg/Tb7LdKmyBxI/AAAAAAAACLk/OQ8mUrdz9SM/s1600/IMG_1116.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHGyj4S2_Qg/Tb7LdKmyBxI/AAAAAAAACLk/OQ8mUrdz9SM/s320/IMG_1116.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro open (mCover installed))</small><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NVbVIHo0zg/Tb7LeA-nj4I/AAAAAAAACLo/gimBMxpmzqc/s1600/IMG_1117.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NVbVIHo0zg/Tb7LeA-nj4I/AAAAAAAACLo/gimBMxpmzqc/s320/IMG_1117.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro - top view</small><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9e3OWMcXWQw/Tb7LfQGqtrI/AAAAAAAACLs/PEmFd8_H0Ns/s1600/IMG_1118.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9e3OWMcXWQw/Tb7LfQGqtrI/AAAAAAAACLs/PEmFd8_H0Ns/s320/IMG_1118.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro - left side view of ports</small><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D81dLviTWNc/Tb7LgQyyzMI/AAAAAAAACLw/Zumvxea4Jyg/s1600/IMG_1119.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D81dLviTWNc/Tb7LgQyyzMI/AAAAAAAACLw/Zumvxea4Jyg/s320/IMG_1119.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro - right side view of Super Drive</small><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sbse2XNzuRk/Tb7LhUZahsI/AAAAAAAACL0/uFTqyxgPczk/s1600/IMG_1120.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="126" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sbse2XNzuRk/Tb7LhUZahsI/AAAAAAAACL0/uFTqyxgPczk/s320/IMG_1120.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro - Back / hinge side view</small><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YXy86E24xDk/Tb7Li2Og3AI/AAAAAAAACL4/Vmwqi_fPcog/s1600/IMG_1121.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YXy86E24xDk/Tb7Li2Og3AI/AAAAAAAACL4/Vmwqi_fPcog/s320/IMG_1121.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <small>MacBook Pro - bottom of case</small><br />
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This case is a hard plastic shell that clips to the MacBook Pro and provides protection for both the top and bottom halves of the machine. It doesn’t impact the closing of the MacBook, nor does it seem to prohibit pushing the display back to a pretty aggressive level.<br />
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<b>Pros:</b> This case feels tough and pretty durable. When attached you can still see the Apple logo and the bottom half contains some small folding feet that can prop your MacBook Pro up a bit. It fits the outside of the MacBook case very well and snaps on in seconds. There is plenty of venting on it, especially on the bottom, so I didn’t notice any heat build up with it attached. All of the ports on the MacBook are readily accessible—the case doesn’t prevent any of the connectors from being used. The front edge of the case is flush enough that it doesn’t rub against your wrists as you type. There are two rubber feet on the front edge of the case that keep your MacBook from sliding around.<br />
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<b>Cons:</b> Since this a shiny hard plastic shell (it provides no shock absorption), your MacBook Pro now feels very plastic. The shell collects finger prints and smudges pretty easily and seems to attract dust statically. The shell doesn’t really touch the MacBook Pro surface other than at the clip points so the shell makes the MacBook feel significantly thicker. The folding feet on the bottom don’t feel very sturdy and are not useful when propping the device up on your legs because they have a small footprint and dig into your legs a bit, at least while wearing shorts. The cutout on the bottom (which I assume is for heat dissipation and/or cut down weight) makes the bottom of the MacBook look very odd and exposed.<br />
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I tried using this case for a couple of days and didn’t care for it. My MacBook felt very cheap with it on and carrying it under my arm felt odd because of the air gap between the MacBook and the shell; it just felt bulky.<br />
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Using this particular case just made me feel like I was doing to my MacBook Pro what my grandmother did to her furniture. If you are looking for very cost effective protection for your MacBook Pro, this may be a good choice for you. Reading through the reviews on Amazon it’s clear that quite a few people like this case and that it may be a good fit for some. I guess I’m just not one of them.<br />
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My search for the perfect MacBook Pro shell continues. If you have a recommendation for a good protective (and high quality) shell, please drop a note in the comments.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1261161155002888881.post-12285091628441659142011-04-28T10:13:00.003-04:002011-04-28T10:42:21.286-04:00Upgrading to a new MacBook Pro<img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--HVImOKby8M/TblyHzV7qdI/AAAAAAAACLc/yoTydPbUGI0/s1600/MacPro2.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /><br />
We were sitting around the dinner table when my daughter called to tell us that her MacBook—which had loyally served her through he entire college career—<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/jocelynalison/status/62548329581645825">had died</a>. The hard drive was failing, she was three weeks from graduating and needed a solution quickly. My wife and I discussed options for how to deal with it and then she said something incredible:<br />
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<b>Wife:</b> ″David, you’ve been talking about getting a new MacBook Pro. Why don’t you get it now and ship your older MacBook Pro down to her? She could have it tomorrow if you do this now.″<br />
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<b>Wife:</b> ″David? Where are you?!?″<br />
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Too late, I was already driving to the Apple store.<br />
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<b>The ″Problem″ With Macs</b><br />
When <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/02/hardcore-windows-guy-switches-to-mac.html">I was a Windows developer</a> (1990 to 2008) I found myself upgrading my machine with pretty regular frequency. It wasn’t that the hardware was that far off the state of the art, it’s just that Windows had a tendency to degrade over time, to the point that within a year and a half the machine felt very sluggish. The normal solution was to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows and all of my apps. When faced with this option I often just decided to upgrade the entire machine.<br />
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My Macs however have been a different story. Both of my primary machines, obtained in the Spring of 2008, still performed as fast as ever. It’s become more and more difficult to justify an upgrade to a machine that just worked fine and performed well. When my wife dropped the green flag I didn’t hesitate to jump in.<br />
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<b>Choosing the Right MacBook Pro</b><br />
Figuring out <a href="http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/">which MacBook Pro</a> worked best for me was relatively easy. My MacBook is used as a development machine; some <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a> work and basic web development and lately more and more <a href="http://developer.apple.com/">Xcode work on iOS apps</a>. I am a <a href="http://www.davidalison.com/2008/11/getting-most-out-of-spaces-on-dual.html">heavy Spaces user</a> and at any given time have a considerable number of apps running. All this pointed towards a slightly more powerful processor.<br />
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From a portability standpoint this is my travel machine. When I’m on the road (or just want to head outside and work), I need something that’s portable enough I can grab and take with me. While I think a 13” would be ideal purely for travel size (or a <a href="http://www.apple.com/macbookair/">MacBook Air</a> for that matter), as long as I can open it on an airline folding table I’m good and I have been able to do that on most airlines with my older 15” MacBook Pro. This is one of the things that eliminated the 17” from contention.<br />
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From a screen real-estate standpoint my needs are high. When doing application development you want as much screen as possible. Having an application window open while you are debugging code in another window is a regular occurrence. Fortunately Apple recently released a much higher resolution screen with the 15” MacBook Pros - it’s 1680 × 1050, a 36% increase over the standard 1440 × 900 display I used to have. Though I would love the 1920 × 1200 display on the 17” MacBook Pro, the portability factor trumped that. If this was my only Mac (I still have a desktop bound Mac Pro with dual displays) I likely would have gone with the 17”.<br />
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The displays are also offered in a Glossy or Antiglare options. Though technically the Glossy display is supposed to make colors pop better I didn’t see that when comparing them side by side. The Antiglare screen is significantly more visible in brightly lit environments. Sunlight, fluorescent lights, background lights, etc. can wreak havoc on the glossy display and limit your ability to see the screen.<br />
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While I could have custom ordered my machine from Apple I needed to get it that night so I had to make some compromises. The Apple store I visited didn’t stock exactly what I wanted so I paid a little more than I intended and got the highest processor so that I could get a machine with the higher resolution screen and Antiglare.<br />
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I really want 8GB of memory for this machine but Apple’s cost to upgrade that is a completely unrealistic $200 premium. I’ll go to the aftermarket for that.<br />
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The specifications for my new MacBook Pro are:<br />
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15” High Resolution Antiglare Screen<br />
2.3GHz Intel Quad Core i7 Processor<br />
4GB RAM<br />
750GB 5400RPM Hard Disk<br />
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I plunked down the credit card and walked out the door with my shiny new MacBook Pro.<br />
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<b>Migrating Macs</b><br />
Before I shipped off my old MacBook Pro to my daughter I needed to migrate everything over. When you first start up a new Mac you are presented with a series of options, one of them being to migrate your data and applications from your old Mac to your new Mac.<br />
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Since both of my MacBook Pros (old and new) had FireWire 800 ports, I purchased a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ACXGDK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=davalisblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B001ACXGDK">Belkin FireWire 9-Pin</a> cable to hook them together and perform the transfer. When you choose that option on a MacBook Pro you are presented with a series of steps, the first of which start off with starting up your previous Mac in <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661">Target Disk Mode</a>. You restart the machine and immediately hold down the "T" key. This effectively turns your Mac into a FireWire hard disk enclosure for your drive.<br />
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I walked through the steps to start the migration and let it perform its magic. With 165GB of data and an extraordinary number of small files (versioned development with Git will do that), it took about 2.5 hours to perform the migration. I’ve done these migrations before using Ethernet (also an option) cabled up to a 1 Gigabit Ethernet Switch and it takes about 20% longer. I’ve also had some problems with the Ethernet migration because it sometimes has trouble with very large files.<br />
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This is where a Mac really shines—once you’ve completed a migration (assuming it works like mine has anyway) your new Mac has everything ready to go just like your previous Mac. There were only a couple of minor things that I had to tweak and that’s because I’m a developer: I manually modify my /etc/hosts file to remap domain names and that file did not get migrated over. I also had to manually start (and set to auto-start) my MySQL server instance. Once that was done my new Mac was performing just like my previous Mac, except that it was considerably faster and had a much higher resolution.<br />
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<b>Saying Goodbye - to an old friend</b><br />
With my new Mac up and running properly all that was left was doing some final touches on the older MacBook Pro, packing it up and overnighting it down to my daughter. This Mac is named Yoda (in keeping with the Star Wars theme I have for all my computer names). <br />
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As I write this Jocelyn called to tell me Yoda had arrived and that she couldn’t believe how cool her “new” MacBook Pro was. She never got around to upgrading her older MacBook and it was still running Tiger, so Snow Leopard on a bigger screen with a faster processor was a huge step up.<br />
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Hearing the joy in her voice about her new Mac made me pretty happy too.David Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14134311846576585532noreply@blogger.com16