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iWeb update simplifies URLs
The iLife Updates Apple released yesterday fixed a gripe some users (including myself) had with the new URL scheme that iWeb employed. With its original release, an iWeb site's URL was http://web.mac.com/username/iWeb/. Leaving that last /iWeb/ off the URL would result in a 404 error. While this isn't a big deal to some, it's just one extra quirky name to add to a URL. To those unfamiliar with the internets however, .Mac and iWeb could mess up, resulting in that exponentially increasing frustration that usually leads to users simply giving up on the endeavor.After installing the 1.0.1 update last night and making changes to some of my iWeb pages, I was pleased to see the URL in the "announce your site" confirmation window chopped down to simply http://web.mac.com/username. This not only makes the URL a little easier to remember and pass around, it also adds a bit more credibility to the URL, especially over the previous http://homepage.mac.com/username scheme.
Two free book chapters for .Mac members
Check it out, .Mac subscribers: In the "Members Only" folder of your iDisk (that still makes me think of the jackets), you'll find two chapters of Joe Kissell's book, Take Control of .Mac.The first chapter focuses on using Mail, and is extremely thorough. Discussions include making use of aliases, .Mac webmail vs. an email client, working with attachments and configuring the online preferences. Chapter 2 looks at Groups, a relatively new .Mac feature. Topics include creating a group, managing your members, adding content to your homepage and working with the integrated calendar. Again, I found them very informative, and the best part is that you can use a hyperlink within the PDF itself to get the full book at a 30% discount. This one is recommended.
Backup 3.1 is available
.Mac users: Launch Software Update. Apple has released Backup 3.1, with several changes. According to Apple:"Backup 3.1 delivers added support for some backup destinations and addresses file restoration and other issues. Backup 3.1 is recommended for all users of Backup 3.0. Significant areas addressed are: improved support for iDisk, local hard drives, and some network destinations (Mac OS X Tiger only); new iWeb QuickPick and updated iLife plan; and addresses issues with restoring files."I'm looking forward to checking out the iWeb QuickPick. Grab your copy, and let us know if anything goes wonky.
Possible trick for syncing Firefox bookmarks via iDisk
In the grand quest for methods of syncing Firefox bookmarks between machines (a la .Mac syncing of Safari bookmarks), a friend of mine passed along a tip he found at a friend's blog. The tip involves creating a user.js file in your Firefox profile directory, then creating a Firefox folder in your iDisk/Documents directory. The tip is simple enough, but there's just one catch: I can't get it to work yet, so I thought I'd post it to see if any of you enterprising TUAW readers will have better luck.Playing with this tip inspired me to try a trick of my own which didn't seem to work either: placing Firefox's bookmarks.bak and bookmarks.html files in my iDisk, and then simply point at those files with aliases from within Firefox's profile directory. Again, no luck. While I don't necessarily mean to be posting tips that don't work, I thought these might be good ideas that could get us somewhere, without the need for installing extra software like Foxmarks. Although, to its credit, Foxmarks does get the job done fairly well; I'm just interested in the possibility of a .Mac Firefox bookmark syncing solution, devoid of extras or plugins.Anyone get something like this to work?
Dialog box delays with iDisk
I'm sure we've all experienced that annoying delay that sometimes occurs when we've got a CD or DVD sitting in our Mac's media drive. Call up an Open or Save dialog box and you have to wait while the disc spins up. Keith at MacIT.org noticed a similar delay that seems to have been caused by the local copy of his iDisk that he kept mounted on his desktop. He writes:"I turned iDisk Syncing Off in the .Mac System Preferences, which turns the local copy of your iDisk into a disk image file and un-mounts the volume, and the Open - Save dialog delays have disappeared."I've tried turning off my local iDisk as well, to see if I get similar results over the next week or so (as Keith notes, Transmit is much quicker with iDisk file management anyway). Has anyone else experienced this?
Open source .Mac alternative?
This is pretty cool. Ubuntu, in case you haven't heard of it, is a flavor of Linux whose tagline is: "Linux for Human Beings." In other words, it is meant to be easy to use by everybody. Some Ubuntu members are planning on building a .Mac-Like service for Ubuntu that would offer Webmail, Calendar, Address Book, News Reader, Public Homepage, and Blogging services along with a slew of other features for free. This project has hardly started, but if it succeeds nicely in Linux land, it probably wouldn't be that difficult to adapt to OS X, thanks to the open source underpinnings of both platforms. A free version of .Mac that is scalable and usable by all? Sounds like heaven. [via Digg]
Finally - iDisk web access enabled, .Mac site redesign
Yet another significant update that should be added to the list of major updates and changes that were cut from yesterday's keynote: web access to the .Mac iDisk. Apple was obviously touting all the new features of iLife and iWeb in a .Mac email newsletter I received today, but they also mentioned that, along with a slight .Mac member site redesign and a new blog, web access has been enabled for the iDisk. The only way I know of getting into from a browser is by logging into mac.com, scrolling down and clicking on the iDisk icon in the left column. A new browser window will appear which should request your .Mac member name and password. Once logged in, you should then have Finder-like access to all your files and folders in your iDisk. This should make the iDisk a lot more handy, as it should be accessible from nearly any OS and browser.I'm really glad Apple enabled this access, but this particular upgrade took way too long. I know there's this whole element of "paced evolution" to products and software like this, but give me a break. This should have been there since day 1.
Check out the official .Mac blog
What's this? An honest-to-goodness blog from within Apple? Are you serious?Well, sort of. The .Mac blog is really just a promotion for iLife '06 and all of the swell things you can do with it as a .Mac subscriber. Still, it's the first iWeb-generated site I've laid my eyes on, and it's not bad. It would be nice to add a photo gallery, just so we could check it out. While it may not be especially informative, it is a decent demonstration of the product. I'll keep it in mind for when people ask, "So, what exactly does iWeb do again?"
Survey: is .Mac worth it yet?
With last month's 1 TB bandwidth update to .Mac and all the powerful new one-click photocasting, podcasting and vidcasting features of iLife 06 with iWeb, I thought it would be a good time to check in with you TUAW readers again to find out if .Mac is looking any more appetizing in this post-Macworld 06-keynote world.Personally, I can't wait for my copy of iLife 06 to arrive, and I'm happier than ever to own a .Mac membership. But enough about me, what about you, TUAW readers: are you a .Mac member with a copy of iLife 06 already on the way? Do the new features tempt you all the more to sign up, or are you still not sold? Let's hear it!
.Mac services down during keynote
Finally, more interesting rumors related to Tuesday's keynote, and they actually have some incriminating evidence for proof. Sure, everyone's excited for Macintel machines, but we've known about (or have been suspecting) those for how many months now?This new rumor from hails from MacRumors, foretelling a big update to .Mac arriving on Tuesday. The evidence? It comes straight from the horse's mouth in the form of a service outage warning the morning of the keynote: ".Mac will be undergoing scheduled maintenance from 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM PST on 1/10/06. All .Mac services will be affected. We apologize for the inconvenience." Log in to view the actual warning.I hope all you .Mac'ers have at least a backup email address to use for five hours.
Fix for .Mac sync errors with Mail and random signatures
I recently set Mail on both of my Macs to chose a random signature. From time to time during a .Mac sync, I'll receive an obnoxious sync error claiming that a 'default' signature on one Mac is conflicting with the other. No matter which signature I choose to resolve the conflict, the sync process will lock into a loop, repeatedly offering me a sync error with new choices on either end for resolving the conflict. Obviously, this has lead to an increase of Advil in my regular diet.If you're nodding your head right now, you'll be happy to know we all can cut back on the pain killers. For the first time in a while, I actually received a helpful message from Apple's email support that said something more than "try rebooting." Turns out that, unfortunately, if you enable Mail's random signature feature on one Mac, Mail can't be running on other registered Macs for the first sync after this new feature. I replied to the support rep's email to find out what is up with such an odd quirk, but I didn't receive a very useful answer.Nevertheless, after getting back to square one by resetting my signature data on both Macs, I can verify that this fix works. Hopefully, this issue is on the list of updates coming in 10.4.4.
Give your .Mac aliases a name
I love my .Mac aliases, but Apple really dropped the ball on allowing users to add unique names to each alias in Mail.app. By default, a message from a .Mac alias doesn't have a sender name or anything - the sender is simply the alias itself; kinda ugly if you ask me.Fortunately, MacOSXHints has done it again and discovered that you can simply edit Mail's preference file to add a unique name for each alias. Their post recommends using Property List Editor, but on my PowerBook the file opened in OmniOutliner Pro, which made finding the right part of the file to edit a breeze.No matter how you do it, this simple trick makes those .Mac aliases a bit more valuable and aesthetically pleasing. However, Apple really should listen up here and create an easier way to do this for the typical .Mac customer.
Chronos releases StickyBrain 4
Take note, information junkies. Chronos has released StickyBrain 4, which features a laundry list of new features, including 300-1000% speed improvements (really?), spotlight integration, a more useful dock icon, seven new file note and more. Of course, StickyBrain still features .Mac integration so you can easily manage your data between several computers.I briefly used StickyBrain when it was first released as a discounted .Mac benefit, but once I learned how to edit text files with Quicksilver, StickyBrain was shelved (yes, I realize it does more than edit text files, but this was really all I used it for). StickyBrain 4 requires Mac OS 10.4.3 or later and costs $39.99US.
.Mac services down Monday evening
Looks like all .Mac services are going to be down for four hours this evening, from 7 pm till 11 pm PST. Does this get anyone else's gears turning? I'm not usually one to help churn up rumors, but with 10.4.3 being recently seeded to developers, as well as iChat and .Mac upgrade speculation flying around, I can't help but get at least a little fired up. I mean: how often is it that all services are taken down? Usually it's one or the other, and rarely (at least in my two years of experience) is email actually down, let alone for 4 hours.Hopefully, this is an answer to at least some of the complaints and feature requests from .Mac members everywhere. Just in case it isn't though: you don't get to yell at me, for I am just a fellow Mac geek, hoping for the best.
TUAW Podcast, The Sixth
As promised last week, here's our next installment of our podcast sans the month-long wait. This special .Mac podcast begins with a discussion between David Chartier*, Dave Caolo, and myself about .Mac and then Victor Agreda, Jr. and I discuss .Mac some more. We're working to get the feed problems with our podcast sorted out so that this will *hopefully* show up nicely in the iTMS or your podcasting program of choice. Just in case it doesn't, however, here's the direct link to the 8.6MB 23 minute long podcast.
