Frozen iPhone / iPod / iPad? Try This!

If your iDevice has locked up... like an app won't quit, and it doesn't respond to just pushing the home button, try this:

Restart: Hold down the power button and the home button, and keep holding them. The device may say "slide to power off." If so, do that, wait until it is completely off, and then turn the device back on again.

If the "slide to power off" doesn't appear, or if you continue to have problems after a restart, try this:

Reset: Hold the power and the sleep buttons. Keep holding both buttons, even if the slide to power off option appears. The screen will go black and maybe a little streaky. Keep holding the buttons. Wait until the Apple logo comes up. Now let go of the buttons. Wait for your phone device to finish starting up. It's going to take longer than usual.

All Better? Good. You're welcome

No? Sorry. Call me. Maybe I can help.

PhotoSynth - I Love This App!

One of the shortfalls of the iPhone and iPad cameras is their fixed wide angle aspect. I've frequently been frustrated by the camera's inability to capture landscapes, or really anything much beyond casual snapshots. With all those megapixels in my pocket - more than three times as many as in my dedicated camera (and less than 1/8 the size and weight) - I've often wished I could take a picture 1/3 as good.

Photosynth changes the game. Even though it is made by Microsoft, it is one of my all time favorite photography apps. (That alone should tell you how good it must be.) I find myself going to it over and over again. Photosynth allows you to take wide angle and panoramic photos with your iDevice, just by slowly moving around as it automatically shoots overlapping images which it then weaves together into a (mostly) seamless picture. You can take a big wide shot and crop it and save it to your photo roll (click on the image to the left), or you can go the whole 360° route and then view your panorama in the App or on the associated web site, which can have some pretty dramatic results! Click on the box to the right and be sure to expand the resulting image to full screen to really take in just what this offers!

I've found the app to be pretty easy to use, consistently yielding pleasing results. My experience is that it works best when nothing in your shot is moving. Ask people to hold still as you pan near and over them or you will have ghosts and blurs, but sometimes that can be part of the fun. The app, and the non-required use of the web site are both free.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I don't know about you, but for me, Time Machine runs too often and takes up too much of my Mac's CPU (slows down my work), bandwidth (slows down my network connection) and too much disk space (too many backups too often). This is particularly annoying when I am working online, on photo or video editing, or sometimes just listening to music and surfing.

What is to be done?

Simple answer, download and install TimeMachineScheduler. It's a free Preference Pane that will allow you to set the interval between backups to

anywhere from 1 to 12 hours, and to not back up at all between certain hours. It runs on Intel Macs, OS 10

.5+. You could do this by messing with hidden Apple preference files and a text editor, which is how I used to do it, but why bother when something as simple and elegant as TimeMachineScheduler is available.

direct download

Want Your Internet to Keep Working After July 9th?

Then click here.*

*This is a site that will tell you whether or not your machine has been affected by the DNS Changer Malware. Here's the official FBI document.

If you have been affected by the Trojan, there's also plenty of info here as to how to get rid of it and set things straight. If that all seems overwhelming or you just don't want to... give me a call.

If you haven't been infected, Mazel Tov! Read on anyhow, because this is interesting stuff!

Here's the story: Believe it or not, a Trojan called DNS Changer started infecting PCs and Macs back in 2007.

A bunch of Estonian crooks started hijacking unsuspecting Internet users traffic and redirected them to hacker-created websites. Each time a user visited one of these sites, the mob made a penny or two on advertising they had set up there. A penny or two aded up to over $14,000,000.00 by the time they got busted by the FBI last November.

Think of it as a detour on the Information Highway, so that every time you tried to go anywhere on the net, first you went through Estonia! The crooks got paid just by having you go out of your way to look at their billboards and then go over their bridge on your merry way to Facebook, or whatever. You may have seen some ads you didn't want to see and your connection may have seemed slow, but otherwise, you wouldn't have noticed.

Because the scam was so widespread, the FBI simply took over the bad guys' servers and rerouted them to play nice again. In other words, you're still taking the detour, but the G-Men took down the billboards. But that didn't actually fix the problem. The problem is, your computer is still going to the wrong address first... and on July 9, the FBI is shutting down those servers for good. Back to the detour analogy, the bridge is going to be out and the detour signs are coming down. If you don't clean out the Trojan by July 9, when you try to surf the net, your going to end up in Nowheresville. (population: you).

So... now's the time to check and see whether you or I have a little work to do. Click my first link above, and here's to finding: DNS Resolution = GREEN

Fsck your Sparse Bundle!: A Quick P.S. on the Time Machine Verification Failure

I'm happy to report that I found a way to fix the Time Machine backup that I wrote about on Monday, and my Time Machine backups are fully restored.

If you find yourself with a Time Machine backup or Time Capsule that gives you the message...

Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you

...here are a couple of ideas on how to fix it:

1. Go fsck your sparse bundle! It's not a vulgarity, it's real Linux advice! Basically, it's Disk Utilities on steroids. Follow the instructions I found here. They look scary but they're really not that bad.

or

2. Give me a call.

Backup... And Backup the Backup

Today I got a message from my Mac Time Machine that it couldn't verify my backup, and wanted to start over. Since all is working fine on my computer right now, no big deal, right?

Well, no big deal, comparatively. I lose all the versions of all my documents and files, dating back many many months. Not a killer, I guess. But what if something goes wrong (or is wrong but I don't know it yet) while that new backup is being made? If my hard drive dies or my computer crashes before I have a new backup, that would be a problem.

Think of your backup as a safety net. Think of your data as you on a high wire. There you are, a few hundred feet up in the air, when your assistant hollers up, "Hey! The safety net just frickin' disappeared! I'm going to go get a new one. I'll be back in a few hours, maybe a day or so."

It would be nice to have a spare safety net, no? You didn't even know your thesis, dissertation, priceless photos and rare bootleg recordings were engaged in regular death defying feats!

Hard drives are big and cheap these days. That's good and bad. Good because they're affordable, bad because they aren't as dependable as they used to be and because you can store so much stuff on one of them that the loss of a drive is almost always catastrophic.

Develop a daily backup strategy. On a Mac, Time Machine is good. Then, backup the backup on a regular basis. Carbon Copy Cloner, Crash Plan, and Mozy are all excellent ideas. And don't forget Drive and Dropbox. They are both excellent places to stash your documents. Don't forget that photos and music can take a lot of space.

The best backup strategy is the one you use. Don't wait. If you don't have a backup plan, do it now. If you need help, I can set up one that you will use, in about an hour.

Keep Your Feet on the Ground and Your Stuff in the Clouds…

The cloud... the cloud... everybody's talking about the cloud. What's the deal?

The cloud is basically a short way to say, a big hard drive that somebody else takes care of, located somewhere I don't know, that I connect to through the Internet but it kind of feels like it's right on my computer or phone (and it kind of sort of might be).

Much easier to say the cloud. What's so good about the cloud?

• you can use it from anywhere there is Internet
• it doesn't take up space at your place
• it is always backed up so you won't accidentally lose your stuff
• it is never fills up (although you might have to pay for more space)
• a whole lot of it is free

Free, you say? Absolutely. Google Drive and Dropbox are two of the leading providers of cloud services whose basic package is free. Just click on the links above to start the sign up. Apple's iCloud is also a cloud service (duh) but works a little differently.

Both of Drive and Dropbox will install special folders on your computer. What's cool about the folder is that anything you put in it is automatically copied to the cloud. You can install this special folder on your home computer, your office computer, your phone... and automatically, you'll have access to everything that's in the folder. Change a file at the office. Open it up later on your home computer, make more changes, and find the changes waiting for you at the office the next day. You can also share whatever is in your folder with any one else! No more e-mailing giant picture or music files!

Apple's iCloud, although free, is only useful to people who use an iOS5 device, or an OS X 10.7 Computer. You can install iCloud on a Windows 7 or Vista computer as well, but if you don't have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, there's not much point. Not a storage option like Dropbox or Drive, iCloud is the little bit of Apple magic that keeps all your contacts, calendars, music, and photos synced between all of your computers and iDevices. iCloud replaces MobileMe, which will disappear for good on May 30. If you use MobileMe, now is the time to move to iCloud or consider some other alternative.

Setting up Dropbox and Drive are fairly straightforward. I encourage you to give it a try. If you need help transitioning from MobileMe to iCloud, the Apple tutorials and assistants will lead you through it step by step. It is almost always smooth as silk, but there have been some snafus. As always, if you would feel better having a professional take care of any of this, or your having a hard time deciding just what to do, I'm just a phone call or e-mail away.