iCommune to released mid Feb

According to an article in wired.com, Speth, author of the original iCommune plug-in, hopes to release the new version around mid February.

For its defense, Speth describes the software "as the digital equivalent of letting friends or family borrow a CD [..] more like a small community of people who want to share things with each other. Making a copy of a CD that I own and giving it to you is not illegal. Sharing with friends is legal, as far as I know." A line of defense that hasn't been successful in court as yet.

Wired note also that "At Macworld in July 2002, Apple showed off something very similar to iCommune: a Rendezvous-enabled version of iTunes that shared play lists between computers connected wirelessly. However, the company has yet to release the software. Whether it was killed by Apple's legal counsel, or is still being developed, the company isn't saying. The company didn't respond to requests for comment."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's, senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann also notes that "iCommune may also have a strategic advantage. The way iCommune works resembles the file trading on instant messaging channels, which are the only file-sharing medium not to have been targeted by the entertainment industry. He added it's probably because IM doesn't have a global search utility, like Napster or Kazaa. The only way to download Eminem's latest single is by finding and setting up a connection with someone who has the file."

Let's wait and see ..

Previous Macinblog posts on iCommune.

Keep your "i" open

Hey, I just received an .Mac mailing announcing that iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 will be available for download no later than today:

[quote]
"On Jan. 31, iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 will join iTunes 3 as free downloads available at www.apple.com. iDVD 3 will also be released, and all four applications—bundled under the name iLife—can now be ordered on CD and DVD for $49.00. iLife is also included on new Mac computers."
[/quote]

Happy downloading

• iPhoto (32.1 Mb)
• iMovie (81.8 Mb)
• iTunes

The software is also available through the Software Update channel

(added direct download links and filesizes at 21:30 CET)

20" tentation

Ough. Talk of a tentation .. I'll give this 20" baby a home any time ..

[quote]
"The new 20-inch Cinema Display, with its 1680-by-1050 resolution, offers more pixels than our previous 22-inch product," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of Hardware Product Marketing. "We've priced it very aggressively at $1,299 (US) so that almost everyone can now afford a stunning, widescreen Cinema Display."
[/quote]

But beware, eventhough you might be running a Mac that can boot in Mac OS 9, this monitor can't: "The Apple Cinema Display requires Mac OS X v10.2 or later" (data sheet). Classic works though. (Read the thread on Macintouch).

YourSQL, a Mac OS X MySQL client

If you're looking for a simple client to manage your online MySQL database, give YourSQL a try.

Personally, I'm still a great fan of myPHPAdmin, but this MySQL client looks quite promising (and it's GPL).

(click to zoom)

It is certainly handy to create a database, edit a table's structure, etc. It's a little less practical when you wish to edit a table's data. It's done inline, a bit like a spreadsheet. I would have preferred a separate window, with one field per line e.g. But let's give it a try..

Need more info on how to install MySQL on your mac ? Go to Marc Liyanage's excellent www.entropy.ch MySQL section for tips, tricks, HOW-TOs and installable software. We've previously mentionned Marc's pages on Macinblog.

The end of Opera ?

According to an article in C|net, Opera Software may go silent on the Macintosh.

European based Opera (Oslo, NO) released Opera 7 for Windows on Tuesday, but didn't set a date for a Macintosh release. Apple's recently released Safari browser seems to be the reason.

"The mac plateform may not be viable for us any longer" says Jon von Tetzchner, chief exec at Opera Soft.

This looks like another company throwing in the towel on its mac product after Apple introduces its own free version. MusicMatch did the same after the release of iTunes, and Chimera seems doomed too..

Toggle HTML graphics on/off in Mail.app

HTML formatted e-mail may be pleasing to the eye, but they are one of the spammer's main tool to help them validate your e-mail address. Two recent Apple KnowledgeBase articles explain what the risks are and how to toggle the graphics on and off.

• Mac OS X Mail: How HTML Email Messages Relate to Unsolicited Commercial Email ("spam")
• Mac OS X Mail: How to Turn On or Off HTML Rendering

A previous Checkbox article (March 2000, in French) explains in detail how you can loose your anonymity simply by reading your e-mail.

A recent MacMegaSite tip provides you with an AppleScript to automate the operation:

tell application "Mail"

	set showgfx to not (download html attachments)

	set download html attachments to showgfx

	if showgfx is true then

		say "Graphics on"

	else

		say "Graphics off"

	end if

end tell

Happy Birthday Macintosh

Remember January 24th, 1984 ?

Hmm ? Well, Apple introduced the first Macintosh (watch the original ad).

"And you'll see why 1984, won't be like 1984" ..

;)

More info on that historical ad:

• Behind the scenes
• Apple Ads
• Great Apple Ads
• Apple's 1984: The Introduction of the Macintosh in the Cultural History of Personal Computers
• Search Google for "1984"

Subscribe to Apple Support Updates

This is one I stumbled on this morning: subscribe to Apple Support Updates, and receive daily or weekly newsletters on the latest information available in

• Knowledge Base: Recent Changes
• Recent Software Downloads
• Apple Manuals

Unsubscribe links are available on that same page too. Might come in handy to you Mac OS IT managers out there..

iCommune's new future

Hey, iCommune is back. Well,at least that's what its author states on http://icommune.net:

[quote]
I've decided to give iCommune a new future.

Here's what the next version will be:

• a stand-alone application that manages network accessible music libraries
• able to generate and manage playlists for your favorite mp3 player
• able to communicate with and control your mp3 player using AppleEvents
• Rendezvous-enabled
• built with a robust indexer and XML format that properly handles non-ASCII characters
• completely free of any Apple proprietary code or interface use
• completely open source under the GPL

[/quote]

Sounds good enough to me..
:)

Kung-Log metallified

Hey, look how cool Kung-Log looks metallified with Unsanity's Metallifizer,

(click to zoom)

No Airport Extreme for Switzerland (yet)

Apparently, AirPort Extreme (802.11g), the new technology Apple introduced during MWSF 03, will not be available in Switzerland due to certification problems by the Swiss certification authority Bakom, according to an InfoWeek report . It is not known when AirPort Extreme will be approved and sold by Apple Switzerland.
Picked this up in MacNN

Oops. and what happens to the new PBs Airport Extreme ready? I don't think they accept the former Airport cards (802.11b) .. With a bit of luck, it might just be the same kind of delay France suffered from when the initial Airport technology was introduced.

Welcome to Safari User

Visit Apple's website with Safari, and you'll be welcomed by ..

Add your vCard to your Mail.app sig

From MacOSXHints.com:

[quote] I don't know if this has been submitted before, but I just noticed that you can attach your vCard from Address Book to your signature in Mail.

Open Mail -> Preferences -> Signatures and select Add Signature, then open Address Book and drag your vCard to the open signature window. Add whatever other text you want and hit OK to save it. This is a great feature that I wish I'd noticed before.
[/quote]

The end of Chimera ?

Have you taken a look at the Chimera/Safari thread on apple.slashdot.org recently ? Whoosh .. it sure does drain comments.

The overwhelming reaction to Safari (1 million downloads today!) has made Chimera's developers throw the sponge in another slashdot article (original weblog entry).

[quote]
I'm torn about what to do with Chimera. It's obvious it will only ever be a marginal product on a even more marginal platform. AOL and Netscape have no interest in supporting it. Who aspires to be number two in an already over-commoditized space? Working my ass off for 3% just isn't any fun any more. Safari has already won, the rest is just to see by how much.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero.

Perhaps what is more disappointing is that my fifteen minutes of fame are just about up and I've really got nothing to show for it.
[/quote]

MacSlash has an thread on the demise of Chimera ("Is Chimera dead?"). I certainly hope that the Chimera team somehow withstand the shock, as they are Safari's best competitor. Chimera has become my main browser since version 0.6, and I've been using the nightly builds ever since. They have added stablilty and new features continuously to a great-to-be product.

Tab browsing is the main festure requested by the users - and the main thread of discussion in most forums and weblogs. My opinion is that I've grown into using tabs while coding and developing websites. They enable me as a developer to have at the tip of my mouse several versions of my product, access to online databases and other sources of references without cluttering my desktop with windows.

Talking about tabs in Safari, I fell on an original proposal while reading Mengjuei :: Blog : cocoa tabbed browsing as shown in JY's weblog (view an image).

Anyhow, I'm happy with Chimera for the time being.

Burn multi-session CDs from the Finder

This AppleCare Knowledge Base article might be useful for those of you that don't own Roxio Toast or a similar application that enables you to burn several sessions on the same CD.

Up until now, CDs burnt in the Finder were single session, meaning you could only burn a CD once.

From the original article:

The Disk Copy utility in Mac OS X 10.2 or later allows you to burn to the same disc two or more times until it is full. This is known as creating a multi-session CD.

To create a multi-session CD, use the Disk Copy utility to create a disk image file from which the CD is burned. Follow these steps:

1. Drag the item or items you wish to burn into a folder.
2. Open Disk Copy (/Applications/Utilities/).
3. Drag the folder onto the Disk Copy window. The Image Folder dialog appears.
4. Choose a location for the image file using the Where pop-up menu. For simplicity, you may choose Desktop.
5. Click Save. Wait for the image to be finished.
6. Choose Burn Disc from the File menu.
7. In the navigation dialog that appears, select the image you just created, then click Burn. If you have not already inserted a blank disc, you will be prompted to do so now.
8. In the Burn Disc window, click the disclosure triangle.
9. Select the checkbox for "Allow additional burns".

A disc burned with this setting will remain open to subsequent multi-session burns.

Additional burns on same disc
When performing additional burns on the multi-session disc, simply repeat Steps 1 to 7. The "Allow additional burns" setting selected in Steps 8 and 9 should automatically be retained for that disc on subsequent burns. Each new burn session on the disc will appear in the Finder as a separate disk, and it will have the name of the disk image file from which you burned it.

May sound a little complicated for some, but it works ..

Kung-Log : new cocoa version

Kung-Log is a weblog editor for Mac OS X written in pure Cocoa by Adriaan Tijsseling who runs kung-foo.tv. I discovered Kung-Log when I started to get serious about webloging, and converted several personal sites to weblog format. The first version was written in AppleScript, and caught my attention immediately, by its crystal clear user interface, simplicity and the features it offered over other weblog editors.

Kung-Log is designed to work with MovableType, a very popular weblog solution. It so happened that a friend of mine pointed it out to me a few weeks earlier, and that I had decided to give it a try. A real try. Kung-Log did the job right out of the box. What more to ask? [ read on ]

Well, the new cocoa version sports a similar interface, but adds numerous new and revised features such as,

• configure multiple weblogs (personalities) on different servers
• retrieve a list of recent posts in a side drawer (cool)
• edit or delete older posts
• save drafts to file
• editable menu for html tag templates, complete with shortcuts
• post with extended entry and excerpt (cool)
• preview current post
• set multiple categories for posts
• choose to publish post or keep it as draft
• syntax-coloring
• KeyChain support
• customizable toolbar
• spellcheck plus find/replace
• insert your current iTunes track, complete with name, artist, etc. and Google search url

Unfortunately, a bug in Apple's WebServices may prevent certain functions from working properly if you write you weblogs in a language that uses extended characters such as accents, etc. (French, German, etc.). The retrieve recent posts may generate an error (or may not). Apparently, a workaround is to code your blog in HTML entities (I still have to try that out).

But don't let that detail turn you off. Kung-Log is a wonderful application, that is a life saver if you blog to MovableType. Moreover, this is the first beta publicly released, and its author is very talented and motivated. The futur is bright.

[ If you're into Mac, coding, blogging or reading, don't forget to read kung-foo.tv ]

Apple kills iCommune

According to a article in MacMegasite and a thread on SlashDot, Apple lawyers are falling on the author of iCommune. The latter has received a notice of breach and termination of license.
:(

[ Drown In My Own Tears from the album "The Other Side" by Eva Cassidy & Chuck Brown ]

Subject: Notice of Breach and Termination of License Dear Mr. Speth,

It has come to our attention that you are distributing a software program called iCommune that violates the terms of the Apple Computer, Inc. iTunes Device Plug-In SDK Agreement you executed. The iTunes SDK materials are licensed only for the purpose of enabling the Licensee's hardware device identified in the agreement to interoperate with iTunes. The iTunes SDK is not licensed for use in a software program for sharing of music over a network. Your distribution of this program is a violation of the license agreement and of Apple's intellectual property rights.

Due to your breach of the agreement, Apple hereby gives notice of termination of your license agreement pursuant to Section 7.2 of the agreement and demands that you cease distribution of the iCommune program immediately and return the iTunes SDK materials to Apple.

Please contact me as soon as you receive this notice to confirm that you are taking immediate action to cease violating the agreement, and in particular, to cease distributing your iCommune software.

Sincerely,

[deleted]
Sr. Director, Products Law
Apple Computer, Inc.

Speth's answer (posted on Forwarding):

Speth's license allows him to develop a "component system mp3 player console" plug-in. He explains that he's honouring that agreement:
Now, my description of the device might be a little vague, but it does describe an application for which I use iCommune. I have a Mac G4 Cube set up as the media center of my living room. It's hooked into my stereo and television. I use iTunes and iCommune on the Cube to turn it into the mp3 player console I was envisioning when I started work on it. I use iCommune on my laptop to control that system. Unlike your typical device which is directly connected to the computer running iTunes, these systems talk over the network to each other.

I think I'm in compliance with the agreement, but they don't. Hopefully we'll be able to work something out. Otherwise, I'm thinking of ways to do this without the Device Plug-in API, so the project might survive.

iCommune: a followup

I told you I would give iCommune a try no later than today.

Well, the bottom line is quite impressive. Basically, it enables you to stream your iTunes library anywhere on the net, or browse (and copy) MP3 tracks from another iCommune-enabled user.

The setup is trait forward. Drop iCommune in iTunes plug-in folder, launch iTune and configure iCommune by clicking the new button on the bottom.
Sharing note: you must specify the real path of iTunes Library, it doesn't seem to work through symlinks, or aliases, and web sharing must be turned on.

I tested the streaming locally on a 100Mb network and through my home DSL connection. I noticed no slowdown or any sign of network activity on my local network. The DSL connection worked seemlessly too, except for a single rebuffering event. If you add several servers, they show up as separate 'Network' icons in the left pane, followed by the name you gave them : Network (lab) e.g.

For more info, check out QuickTopic's online discussions on iTunes playlist sharing.

I'm streaming while I write this blog .. real cool.

[ Stormy Monday from the album "Live at the Blues Alley" by Eva Cassidy ]

Google crashes latest Chimera build

The latest Chimera build (20030113) crashes when you launch a search through Google or AllTheWeb. Using ChimeraKnight to revert to the previous version corrects the problem.

New tools for your iMusic

Discoveries of the day: two new hot accessories for your iPod:

Hardware
iTrip, from Griffin Technology is a FM transmitter to listen to your MP3s on your FM receiver. Apparently, you can choose the wavelength among the entire FM spectrum (a plus on former products). Its look is too cool ..

Software
iCommune, an iTune plug in to stream your music to other iTune users on the net - and not only to your local network (goes further than RendezVous discovery). I'll try that one no later than tomorrow morning!

iCommune is a plug-in which extends Apple's iTunes software to share music over the network. Your friends' music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others.

How to get iSync to work (part 1)

Okay, I know .. I'm a real geek .. but I was itching to try this combination for a while now.. and as Apple isn't supporting other phones (yet) I switched to a T68i. (Why did Nokia give up local SyncML on their 6xxx serie anyway!?!)

Firstly, I worked on my Address Book. Made it into my primary contact source by importing all the records from Palm Desktop. Needless to say that it took a fair amount of time to clean the Address Book up, remove old entries, amend and complete current ones etc.

Note: that's where Chimera's tab browsing is a life saver: I had the Swiss white pages in one tab, the yellow ones in another, as well as the French and English Directories in their own. All of them in own single window! Come one Safari .. get your tabs ..

Secondly, I selected all the contacts I wanted to upload to the phone by adding them to a group called "Cell", and then loaded them all into the phone via iSync with success - first go. Okay, the Address Book got all messed up because I forgot to "Reset all Devices" before the sync, but I had a backup handy, and the previous state was easily restored.

I've got an operational phone now. Next I'll be attempting to sync the Palm, phone and Mac. I'll keep you posted.

Surfin' Safari

Dave Hyatt's weblog on Safari. Dave Hyatt is a member of the Safari team at Apple. He works primarily on the WebCore, the open source portion of Safari that contains KHTML (as well as the implementation of the Qt subset required to support KHTML).

Lots of very interesting info for anyone interested in Safari.

<http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/2003_01_05_mozillian_archive.html>

MWSF +2

Well, 2 days after Jobs' keynote, we got a chance to test the new software, and dwell on Apple's new directions.

The new hardware is good looking, especially the 12" PB. The 17" PB looks a little oversized at first - as on hormones - eventhough the screen looks terrific. Need to see the real thing. Did you notice that it is only 160 x 124 pixels short of Apple's 22" Display ?

The new software, well .. I just love the iLife integration - can't wait to integrate stills into my movies, and apply the "Ken Burns" effect. direct access to your iTunes and iPhoto library is a dream. Not to mention direct access iDVD to burn your slideshows or movies directly from iPhoto or iMovie ..

The app I downloaded immediately was Apple's new web browser: Safari. Apparently, Apple said that Safari downloads accounted for 20% of all apple.com downloads on Tuesday .. over 300'000 downloads. Whoosh.

Safari is based on Konqueror, and uses its rendering engine, namely KHTML (Ouch! Gecko was my favourite, and many pages are optimised for it..).

After two days of use, I must say that

• it is fast. I wouldn't say it is faster that Chimera (latest build), but it's a match.
• The UI is sleek, inspired from iTunes. No wasted space with useless button or function, or deco. A border free browser. Sleek is the word.
• Most of the sites I managed and visited showed up correctly. Even thoses using CSS2. This is not the case for everyone. Checkout Dive Into Mark's report
• SnapBack technology needs to get use to, but I think it can serve its purpose when navigating in directory sites or online shops. A nice feature (still missing from Chimera) is the back button drop down menu (à la IE).
• The bookmark management is out of this world. I've never seen anything like it. That feature alone is almost worth safari's adoption. You have a direct access to your Address Book websites, and to the RendezVous websites near you (the latest Chimera seems to sport that feature too) - but I didn't manage to make it work yet ..
• The history management works extremely well too - much better that Chimera for the time being (it's global here).
• It includes a keyboard shortcut for pop-up blocking - Chimera misses that .. I love it.
• Another great feature is the activity window that displays how much data was downloaded from where. Too cool.

On the downside,

• I'm missing tab browsing .. Gee, you get addicted to having mutiple sites in a single window.
• The view source is also still very basic. It appears that there is an issue with the screen resolution adopted by Safari, which defaults to 72dpi, instead of the 96dpi of all other modern browsers (that brings us back to Netscape 4). hence, all text seem smaller on a Mac viewed with Safari. According to Todd Fahrner, the problems in the fact that Apple considers that 1point = 1 pixel, and Safari bases its default screen res on the default user font size.
• Doesn't display the content of the TITLE parameter (anchor). I haven't found a way to know where a link will lead you since there's no status bar Use 'view status bar' under the view menu - you can actually turn on of off any button in the button bar like that .. Holding option down when the mouse is over a link downloads the link, and command opens the link in a new window.
• No keychain support ?

But overall, I'm quite impressed. I'm sure the next released will fill up the gaps, and address the bugs. Implement tab browsing, and it'll become my main browser ..

External resources:

Safari Review [ dive into mark ]

Safari: first look [ code poetry ]

Image preview

I stumbled on a nice little contextual menu application called PicturePop which enables you to quickly display any image, or group of images, that QuickTime supports through a ctrl-click.

Version 0.4 (2002-12-04). Freeware.

iApps updates will be charged (sic!)

An CNET article suggests that Apple's 6 "i" apps will be charged for as from next week, eventhough they will still be bundled with each new Mac..

After last July's .Mac's USD 100, here comes the iMovie, iTunes, etc. fees ..

What's in store for Q2 2003 ? Software updates fees ? Restriced to .Mac members ? Brrr ..

Address Book hole and iSync low

iSync figures on my Best of 02 list, in the "wishful thinking" category, hoping the the first release would be significantly more robust and adopt more phones, etc. Well, version 1.0 doesn't live up to my expectations. It installed correctly, but all my contacts were doubled on my Palm Tungsten, there's still no appropriate category management, and iMac is still required for synching between Macs. Low.

The other frustration comes from the Address Book API which can be used by any application to write, or read, or both .. oops.

Picked this up on MacInTouch (2003-01-02):

As of 10.2 there is an API that any program can use to read and write to the addressbook. This can be really great because it means that you don't need seperate addressbooks in your email client, your PIM, etc., etc. The API is in Addressbook.framework.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any protection with respect to which apps can access the addressbook. It would be easy to write a small C program to erase the entire contents of the addressbook! Looks like you've discovered one misuse of these new APIs already.

It would be nice if Apple applied a keychain kind of concept: "the application 'Norton Installer' wants to access your addressbook. [allow once] [disallow] [allow always]". This way we can choose which apps we trust to access our important (and private!) addressbook!

Hopefully Apple will do something before we see AppleScripts going around by email erasing the addressbook...

Applescript Trojan Horses ? Naaaaaah .. [ fingers crossed ]

And according to a MacNN reader, you'll soon be able to publish your Address Book on .Mac ..

Lets hope there's some security around all this ..

Happy New Year