I have to say that since the iTunes Music Store happened, I’ve gotten more up to speed with music. With the advent of the Radio Shark, I can listen to the radio, jump back to see who sung a song, or what the title was and get into the loop quicker.

With that, I’ve gotten into a couple of groups lately.

Jem’s 24 is really haunting and I love the big voice from such a small package.

I saw The Redwalls on Conan and I’m not sure if it is the Bob Dylan sound, or the 60s beat, but I really dig these guys. “You’ll Never Know” is one of my favs.

Ok that album was released in 2003, but that is recent for me They do have a new album just out, De Nova.

I took the time to learn how to make enhanced podcasts. Check out what you can do by listening in iTunes!

Listen

If you’re getting the “We’re having technical difficulties” error while submitting your podcast rss feed to the iTunes music store, don’t you believe it! It is your XML.

I use Movable Type to generate my page and it had a bunch of extra namespaces, improper dates, etc that iTunes did not like.

I stripped my feed down to a very small feed, then added in the itms tags needed to make the store happy. I am now submitted

He says he could not stop a sync to his iPod after 30 mins, needed a reboot of the machine, etc.

I’ve seen issues like this before podcasting. The Mac gets blown away by the iPod being attached, usually when my iPod is plugged into a hub, or there is a second firewire device also attached (iSight or DV cam) and the Finder and/or iTunes totally borks up, is slow, or just completely locks the machine.

If you have similar experiences, be sure to post them on the Apple Discussions Boards.

On the Wizards of Technology, the iPodderX guys said of iTunes,

• “spent the morning figuring out how it worked and what it did and didn’t do”
• “figuring out how they got things working and not working, all at the same time”
• “this isn’t just a competitor picking apart another competitor, I think Apple really rushed this to get it out there, to take advantage of the trend”
• “I’ve seen a lot of comments on the internet and that it’s pretty horrible and they are going to stick with whatever client they are using”

Wow. Are they talking about iTunes, or iPodderX 3?

This coming from the guys whose client, iPodderX 3, is being banned from some sites because it is still downloading podcasts after they have been marked read, etc.

iPodderX 3 was so buggy when I tried it that I could not use it for more than 15 mins before it had downloaded all of my podcasts 3 times and the button to pause stopped responding.

iTunes rushed out? It works. I have more podcasts in iTunes than I was downloading in NNW (which is awesome for my rss feeds) and it’s just been working very well. Heck I listened to WoT in iTunes, which I got right off iTMS.

I understand the sour grapes, but come on guys, stop spending time on podcasts dissing iTunes and fix your software. iPodderX 3.0.1 still re-downloaded podcasts after I marked them as read. Not even iTunes does that.

I’d post this to their forums, but their forums are down also.

iPodderX is a advertiser on WoT.

I want the iPodderX guys to succeed - I believe in the small developer. But they have to deliver, not ship buggy software and complain about the competition.

Coverage of podcasting support in iTunes 4.9!

Listen

If you’re interested in listening to my podcasts on your iPod, open iTunes 4.9 and from the Advanced menu, choose “Subscribe to podcast” and then paste in:

http://www.geeksrus.com/podcast.xml

This will update automatically with just the podcast entries from my blog.

And yes, it’s time to start doing these more often

Gone are the black and white ipods, all iPods (except the shuffle and minis) are color now.

Even bigger news, Apple has shipped iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support. The UI is a little goofy. You go to the iTunes Music Store and subscribe to a podcast there and it is added as a new class of audio at the top of the list, like Library, Music Store, etc. Not just a playlist.

The first two podcasts I subscribed to were bookmarkable AAC files. You can add your own via the Advanced menu, Subscribe to podcast.

The iTunes Music Store had the open source sex show, and gay escapades, but not The MUG (Mac Users Group) Center podcast.

Several podcasts were listed 2-4 times on a search.

iTunes does not appear to convert podcasts to bookmarkable AAC files automatically. BOO! Oh but wait! All podcasts are bookmarkable now! The new ipod software and iTunes know how to work with mp3s, etc, to keep your files in sync.

For those confused, this means that if I start listening to an hour long podcast at home and get 25% of the way through when I need to leave, I simply pause the podcast, update my ipod, go to the car, plop the iPod into the cradle and press play. The podcast will pick up where I left off. When I get home, I update the ipod again, and iTunes will pick up where the iPod left off. Sweet.

Looks great!

Why do I always get the chills when Microsoft proposes an extension to something? This time it is RSS.

They want to extend it to handle lists, or e-commerce sites, etc.

I wonder which servers will push this new info first? Hmm, let me tap my forehead and think…

Now they are working with Winer, so that is good, but it better not break anything that already works. Something about embrace, extend…

Thanks to Bisho for this funny song

Ok this was too beautiful to not post. I use Macs as people know by now and I’ve been a Mac bigot for a long time. I’m much less of one now, but when something egregious happens, I love to post about it.

So I also use the wonderful Harmony remote. The Harmony was bought my Logitech, whom I despise for many reasons I won’t go into.

I had bought a Harmony for my folks and something changed in their setup and now my brother needed to change the remote. He calls me asking for the login info which I didn’t have for some damn reason so I told him to check the site and see if they can email the info.

Well they can’t But you can plug in the remote and it’ll find it for you! Sweet. Oh, but I had set it up from my laptop and Mom didn’t have the software on her iMac. Ok so Matt goes to the site to get the software. Well you have to log in to get the software.

Ugh!

Alright, well while he hunted for the CD in Los Angeles, I filed a bug on Logitech’s website stating this catch 22. Here are the basics from the report as sent to me from their system. I emphasized the important bits.

Customer (Steven Riggins) 06/19/2005 03:29 PM My mom didn’t have her account info, so it said plug in the remote, but she doesn’t have the software, and you need to log in to get the software LOL. Why can’t people just download the software without the antics? Auto-Response 06/19/2005 03:29 PM This is an autoresponse message. We have received your support request and will be responding soon. Question Reference #050619-000328 Product Level 1: Harmony Remote Product Level 2: H659 Model Number: 659 Operating System: MacOS 10.3x Computer Brand: Apple

Alright, I get a nice prompt reply this morning.

We are sorry to hear of this issue. We have provided a link to the software below. We have also forwarded this incident to our supervisors so they can review this and ensure the software is accessible in the future without an account. To get the latest Harmony software: 1. Install the latest version of Java from http://www.java.com/en/download/download_the_latest.jsp (Editoral: This is Windows Java link!) 2. Once this has finished reboot your computer 3. Go to http://images.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/Downloads/LogitechHarmonyInstaller4.4.exe 4. Save this file to your desktop 5. Run the file once it is finished downloading. This will install the software

Hello! So not only should I download a Java Runtime and run this exe to extract a Java app, they linked me all Windows stuff, after it was clear, twice, I used a Mac.

Alright, my response:

Dear Kyle, Thank you for typical Logitech support. Now if you would not mind reading the bug report and seeing that we are on Mac OS X 10.3 and not Windows, you can try again. Sincerely, Steve

LOL I know, I know, but I can’t stand it when people do this. Anyway, here was their response, also timely:

We would like to apologize about the confusion on our part in our answer. We have attached the link to the Mac version of our software. Before you install the software, please ensure there are no updates for your Mac system. The software is located at: http://images.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/Downloads/LogitechHarmonyInstaller4.4.dmg

LOL. Just a simple disk image which auto expanded itself. Ahhhhhh, no java runtime, just an installer. I love my Mac!

Kudos to Logitech for timeliness and simplicity of the installer and for keeping the Mac client up to date. They just need to read their reports more clearly next time.

Now I wonder if this new software works. Well the software went from version 0.1 to 4.4.0. Safari downloaded the update file and the harmony app saw it immediately. Now it is uploading new info to the remote. Update went fine and the remote works great!

What great advertising: this gal won a contest where the prize was a $20,000 shopping spree at Bridgeport Village shopping mall. What was the first place she went? The Apple Store. Dropped $3500 on a 15″ PowerBook and related accessories.

Of course this was run and aired by one of the most popular pop music radio stations here in Portland.

Listen thanks to the awesome Radio Shark

I finally broke down and picked up a Cinema display (Thanks Simeon!) and it rocks!

I posted some pics on my LIving in Oregon album, and here they are as well

CatCow showed up at PMUG! It was great to see him. Oh, you too, Barry.

Barry cleaned up the picture.

for us Americans… (You had to be there )

Update:

I turned on “interference robustness” which seemed to make things much better (one short dropout during a 3 min cooking cycle)

Update:

Well it worked for 2 things cooked, but not the third. The search continues.

Update:

It seems that changing both the linksys and airport to channel 1 with an increased power signal out of the linksys was enough to fix it!

Original Post:

So now I have my fancy dancy Airport Express but when I use my fancy dancy Panasonic 1300w inverter microwave, it kills the wifi (as it always has) Of course, now my stereo barfs heh.

I tried a simplistic covering of the walls around the microwave with aluminum to some, but not good enough, results. I have not tried tripling everything.

Does anyone have a good solution?

When I buy a place, will try and get one with a lead box in the kitchen for the microwave

So this week was full of stuff. Apple switching to Intel Pentiums, I’ve kept up my hiking (don’t expect to see any results for several months) and in general, all things still moving forward in a positive karmatic direction.

So what do I think about this Macintel thing? This has to be good for Apple. Apple will either benefit greatly, stay where they are, or die. Is the world going to end if any of these happens? No. So let’s embrace it, make the best of it, drop the pitbull anger and just make it better.

Some analysts have asked why Apple announced a year early. I think that aside from the obvious reason, to let Adobe have a ton of time to port Photoshop, Apple also benefits from listening to all of us state what we want. Do we want to be able to dual boot into Windows? Do we want dual core? All that can help them make decisions.

I’ve stated I’d like to see Apple use Intel’s EFI BIOS, just so we’re not dogged by the old crap that PCs have had for 20 years. However, Windows XP will not boot on EFI, only BIOS. Longhorn will support EFI. So who knows how, if at all, this will affect Apple’s hardware decision. Publicly, Apple has to state they don’t plan to support windows. But realistically, the reason so many PC pundits like Dvorak are salivating over this is to be able to buy dual boot machines.

Dual boot is attractive to me as I can finally have one laptop that will play PC games at full speed and let me use my Mac for everything else. Some things need to be done first before even I would use this though.

For example, booting into Windows on a separate partition protects my Mac data, or does it? If somehow a hacker gets a rootkit on my Macintel Windows partition, can’t they install software that will erase my Mac partition? Or even mount it and hack it too? The worry is the point of entry to my hardware running windows natively might introduce.

Running Windows under WINE or Virtual PC under OS X would not be an issue. The virtual machine could sandbox windows into a sparse disk image, just like Virtual PC does now. This would rock for running most Windows applications, with the exception of games.

So there is a lot of hard decisions to be made and discussed. Let Apple know what you want, what your concerns are and let’s see what the future holds.

Update:

I found a solution over at vafer.org My LinkSys WRT54GS just happens to run Sveasoft’s Talisman firmware (1.0.5) and it worked! Sveasoft has come under fire for their GPL practices which I don’t like either, but their firmware is good.

For the record, the steps this fellow suggests work fine. I had to ditch WPA security unfortunately for WEP 128bit. To do this properly, set WEP on the Aiport Express first, then click the Password icon at the top of the Administration window to get the hex key. Copy this hex key into the Linksys’s key field for it’s WEP settings.

This also works with SSIDs hidden.

There is a 8 second delay for itunes to connect to AirTunes for some reason, which sucks when pause/resuming Any input on this would be helpful.

Original Post:

As my friends know, I am a bit of a geek and love da cool features.

Currently I use my uber cool Linksys WRT54GS router, which is also my wireless connection to my laptop.

For playing tunes, I normally use my iPod connected via a dock to the stereo. This works well.

I also have a Phone Valet Messaging Center which does things like record calls, shows caller ID on my screen and can run AppleScripts when my phone goes off or on hook. Two of the scripts they provide interact with iTunes and iChat.

The iTunes script pauses and resumes iTunes as I use the phone. This rocks! The iChat script changes the status and status message of iTunes. I just fixed this script to save the available status, so now it does not mess up custom settings, like playing the current track in iTunes.

What the iPod/Stereo solution does not afford is pausing and muting when I use the phone. So I’d like to use an Express to play the music. However, there is a hitch, of course. The Express cannot bridge with my Linksys.

Now I have two solutions I can think of. Spend even more money and buy two express, or run a long ethernet cord into the living room. Both suck.

Are there any other solutions? Does someone sell a AirTunes compatible WAP (Wireless Access Point) that might work with my Linksys?

Folks,

I keep getting emails/IMs stating “Macintels run Windows! Apple is supporting…”

The speed reports from WWDC and the hardware pictures are useful and cool, but please remember this:

The current dev kit hardware has no bearing on what Apple will ship to customers The real machines will have different motherboards, different processors and maybe (if we are lucky) be some of the first Intel machines to use Intels EFI BIOS (a more modern bios as opposed to what every PC uses, which is far inferior to the current Mac’s Open Firmware)

I doubt things will get slower in release machines, but one can never tell if a PowerBookIntel will be faster than a current G5 with native apps or what.

Just keep that in mind - Put no weight in the current hardware.

In a hilarious example of “We don’t understand what we’re talking about” Paypal has sent out an email which explains how to avoid spoofing and phishing. Of course how do they tell you to learn about these scams?

Click the link they say! Doh! Tiger Mail allowed me to easily pass the cursor over the link and see that it is a Paypal address, but still, you are teaching your customers to click links in email! Shame on you, Paypal.

This will be the next email copied and scammed by the phishers, just you watch.

Stupid.

For the record: Do not click links in emails! If a company asks you to go to a site, type in their domain name and find the page directly. Unless you can show the “raw source” and copy the URL by hand, so you know exactly where you are linking to, it is best to just not click links.