The ApplePlumber’s Journal

If I'm burning a DVD, do I need to worry whether the blank is a DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW?

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:53:47 -0400

If you've ever burned a DVD, you're probably aware that there are four different recordable DVD formats: -R, +R, -RW, +RW. Back in the early days of DVD burning, it was crucial that you kept close track of what sort of DVD blanks you purchased, since most DVD burners didn't support all four formats. This has become a much less serious issue these days, since most modern DVD burners can now burn all four types of media - including SuperDrives that Apple ships with their current Macs.

Most folks understand the difference between the two R formats and the two RW formats: the R formats are "burn once" only, just like CD-R's whereas the RW formats are erasable and rewritable. The main thing that confuses most folks is the difference between the – ("dash") and + ("plus") formats.

DVD-R. The oldest recordable format, DVD-R is supported on almost all, but the very oldest DVD players out there. Quality of the burn is very dependent upon the quality of the media.
 DVD+R. Tracking and speed control during burning are less susceptible to interference than DVD-R, resulting in more accurate burning at higher speeds. Error management is also more robust than DVD-R, meaning that a successful burn is much less dependent on the quality of the media you've purchased. DVD+R was introduced more than 2 years after DVD-R and therefore may not be supported on older DVD players, however.

DVD-RW. Re-writable version of DVD-R, DVD-RW behaves a little different from conventional floppy or ZIP disks: if you want to add or remove data from an existing DVD-RW, you need to erase the whole disk first and then re-burn the whole shebang with the new changes. Supported on 75% of DVD players out there.

DVD+RW. Shares the same advantages of more accurate burning at higher speed and independence from media quality with DVD+R. DVD+RW also supports random write access, meaning that data can be added or removed from an existing DVD+RW without erasing the whole disk first, like DVD-RW.

If you're burning a movie onto a DVD and are planning to distribute copies to friends and family, I would strongly urge you to use DVD-R, since not all DVD players out there may support DVD+R, -RW, or +RW. However, make sure you use good media and not one of those generic spindles from some cheap brand. This comes from personal experience: a friend and I once burned about 10 copies of a movie project onto Apple DVD-R's and 50 copies onto Memorex DVD-R's. None of the people who got the Apple DVD-R's had any problems, while at least half of the people who watched the Memorex DVD-R's complained about skipping and hanging during our movie.

Why is the drive speed of my Superdrive much slower for DVD-R's than CD-R's?

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:46:56 -0400

Look at the specifications of any CD and DVD burner, such as your Superdrive, and you'll probably wonder why the drive speed during DVD burning seems to be much slower than the drive speed during CD burning. After all it's all there in writing, isn't it?

4x Slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Maximum Write: 4x DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW

At first glance, it seems pretty obvious: 4x for DVD-R and 24x for CD-R. However, DVD drive speeds and CD drive speeds are definitely not equivalent.

First off, the actual spin rate of a DVD at 1x is actually 3 times faster than the spin rate of a CD at 1x. Therefore, a DVD spinning at "1x" is actually spinning at the same speed as a CD spinning at "3x". So that DVD's not spinning that much slower than the CD in your Superdrive. On top of this, because the little spots you're burning on a DVD are much tinier and cramped more tightly than on a CD, you're packing considerably more data onto the disk on every single revolution of the DVD.

So how does all of this pan out in the real world? Let's look at some real numbers: it turns out that a Superdrive burning a DVD-R at 4x drive speed is writing data onto the disk at 5.3 MB/s. A 1x CD-R drive burns data at 150 KB/s, and at 24x we can estimate the data rate to be 24 x 150 KB/s = 3.5 MB/s. This means that the drive is burning data onto the DVD-R at an equivalent CD drive speed of 36x.

Not too shabby, huh?

JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP... what's the difference?

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:39:38 -0400

If you've ever created or edited an image file - especially for use on the web, you've probably had to choose a specific image format for your image. Given the proliferation of image formats on the web, it's important to understand their unique strengths and weaknesses so that you select the optimal format.

I'll also include examples starting with a 3024 x 1998 pixel RAW image I captured with my camera and a 2101 x 1576 pixel PICT clip art image.

RAW (5 MB) PICT (612 KB)

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
The predominant image format online and offline, most images on the web appear as JPEGs and most photographs captured by digital cameras are saved in this format.

Compression? Lossy (degree of compression is adjustable).
• Tiny file sizes for photos.
• Small file sizes for graphic art, text, and icons.
• Excellent results on photographs with smooth color variations.
• Fair results on images with sharp transitions, particularly line art, text, and icons.
• Each edit-and-resave cycle results in generational loss of quality.

Pros:
1. Excellent color range (up to 16.7 million simultaneous colors for any image).
2. Generally excellent "bang-for-the-buck" with regards to image quality and file sizes for photographs.

Cons:
1. Compression algorithm occasionally results in suboptimal visual results when used on graphics art and text.
2. No support for transparency.
3. No support for animation.

JPEG (1.1 MB) vs. RAW (5 MB) JPEG (440 KB) vs. PICT (612 KB)

GIF (Graphics Interchange File)
The most popular image format encountered on the web during the 1990's, GIF use has declined in recent years - although its online prevalence is still second only to JPEG. The decline in the use of GIF can be attributed to two factors: Netscape's introduction of in-line JPEG support in 1995 and Compuserve's decision to demand royalties from creators of any software application that displayed or generated GIF's in the late 1990's. Although Compuserve's action had no direct effect on web developers and web surfers, it did lead to creation of the royalty-free PNG format which has gradually supplanted GIF. (Incidentally, most of the GIF patents have since expired; the last will expire on August 11, 2006.)

Compression? Lossless.
• Tiny file sizes for graphic arts, text, and icons.
• Small file sizes for photos.
• Excellent results on images with sharp transitions, particularly line art, text, and icons.
• Excellent results on photographs with smooth color variations.
• No generational quality loss with each edit-and-resave cycle.

Pros:
1. Excellent "bang-for-the-buck" for icons and graphics.
2. Transparency support (by declaring single pixel value as transparent).
3. Animation support.

Cons:
1. Limit of only 256 simultaneous colors for any image (from a palette of 16.7 million).
2. Color limit often results in dithering when some colors need to be rendered.
3. Large file sizes when used on photographs. 4. Transparency support limited - no alpha channel.

GIF (2.7 MB) vs. RAW (5 MB) GIF (184 KB) vs. PICT (612 KB)

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
The PNG (pronounced "ping") format was developed in response to Compuserve's decision to demand royalties with the GIF format. PNG can be viewed as an "advanced GIF" format that is royalty-free.

Compression? Lossless.
• File sizes comparable to GIF, as long as 256 colors. If color depth is 16.7 million, the file sizes will be substantially larger.
• Excellent results on images with sharp transitions, particularly line art, text, and icons.
• Excellent results on photographs with smooth color variations.
• No generational quality loss with each edit-and-resave cycle.

Pros:
1. Excellent "bang-for-the-buck" for icons and graphics.
2. Transparency support (can declare single pixel value as transparent or add an alpha channel).
3. Excellent color range (greater than JPEG's 16.7 million simultaneous colors).

Cons:
1. No animation support.
2. Although supported by all new browsers, support by older browsers is a bit more spotty. For example, Internet Explorer 6 does not support alpha channel transparency in PNG by default. (Internet Explorer 7 does).

PNG 8-bit (3.2 MB) vs. RAW (5 MB) PNG (192 KB) vs. PICT (612 KB)

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
TIFF is a professional image format that has traditionally been used for image editing, scanning, and publication, though it is increasingly encountered online as a result of its offline prevalence.

Compression? None/Lossless (you can choose).
• File sizes are generally huge.
• Excellent results on images with sharp transitions, particularly line art, text, and icons.
• Excellent results on photographs with smooth color variations.
• Generally no quality loss with each edit-and-resave cycle.

Pros:
1. Excellent color range (equivalent to JPEG's 16.7 million simultaneous colors).
2. Choice of no compression or lossless compression available to user.
3. Many additionally features available for the professional users - generally for offline applications.

Cons:
1. Complicated format (for example, compression algorithms for Macs vs. PC's differ).
2. Huge file sizes.
3. Online support in web browsers still limited.

TIFF (17.4 MB) vs. RAW (5 MB) TIFF (12.7 MB) vs. PICT (612 KB)

BMP (Windows Bitmap)
Windows Bitmap is an image format created by Microsoft, free of patents, which was created for use in the Windows operating system. Due to ubiquity of Windows, BMP support has diffused into many web browsers.

Compression? None.
• File sizes are humungous, even larger than TIFF.
• Excellent results on images with sharp transitions, particularly line art, text, and icons.
• Excellent results on photographs with smooth color variations.
• No quality loss with each edit-and-resave cycle.

Pros:
1. No patent restrictions, despite association with Microsoft.
2. Excellent color range (16.7 million simultaneous colors for any image).

Cons:
1. Although format itself supports transparency, no web browser supports BMP transparency at present, including IE 7. Transparency is implemented via an alpha channel that is stored as a file separate from the image file. A recently introduced, new version of BMP finally integrates the alpha channel into the existing image file, however.
2. Absence of compression, results in large file sizes, limiting online use to small icons and graphics.

BMP (23.1 MB) vs. RAW (5 MB) BMP (12.7 MB) vs. PICT (612 KB)

XBM (X Windows Bitmap)
XBM is a 1-bit, black-and-white image format analogous to BMP, but created for use in the Unix X-Windows GUI for cursors and icons. During the creation of the web in the early 1990's, XBM and GIF were the only image formats supported by early browsers. XBM support continues to be offered by most browsers, probably primarily for historical interest and legacy support.

Compression? None.
• Great results on images black-and-white bit art only.
• No quality loss with each edit-and-resave cycle.

Pros:
1. Image data is not stored as binary information like every other image format in existence (GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF...) but rather in the form of C language source. As a result, the raw code for any image can be simply copied and pasted into the code for any application and compiled!

Cons:
1. Black and white only.
2. Support for XBM to be removed from Internet Explorer 7.

The MacPlumber's Bottom Line
Photographs: JPEG; experiment to see how much compression you can get away with on a case-by-case basis.

Icons, Graphics, Text: PNG if transparency not needed; GIF if transparency required.

What the difference between POP, IMAP, and SMTP when I'm setting my email preferences?

Tue, 4 Jul 2006 13:00:26 -0400

Whenever you send an email message to a friend, you compose your email message in either a web browser (e.g. Outlook Web Access, www.gmail.com) or an email client (e.g. Mac OS X Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird). After you click "Send," your message is transferred to your email server, which then sends your message to your friend's email server. Your email message is then stored on your friend's email server until they retrieve your message through either their web browser or email client.

POP, IMAP, and SMTP simply refer to different languages/conventions that are used whenever your email client communicates with your email server. POP and IMAP are languages/conventions that are used when you "pull" a message from an email server (i.e. retrieve email). SMTP is a language/convention that is used when you "push" a message to an email server (i.e. send email).

POP and IMAP: the Internet standard "pull" protocols
The two de-facto Internet standard protocols for pulling a message from an email server and into your web browser or email client are POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol). These protocols are also referred to as POP3 and IMAP4, alluding to the current version numbers of either protocol.

Most email clients and servers can be configured to use either POP or IMAP to retrieve email, leaving the choice up to you. It's important to understand the different advantages and disadvantages of each, so that you can choose the protocol that works best for you.

So how do they differ?

1. Location where your email is stored
POP: email messages are stored on your local computer.
IMAP: email messages are stored on your email server.

BOTTOM LINE: Since all emails are kept on the server when you use IMAP, your inbox appears the same regardless of what computer you're using to check your email. Therefore, any message in your inbox can be viewed, which is not always true for POP. However, the downside of IMAP is that the people who run your email server will usually impose a quota on how many messages you can keep in your inbox. The only thing that limits the size of your inbox when using POP is the size of your hard drive.

2. Connection to the email server
POP: your email client connects to your email server only for the duration of time it takes to retrieve any new messages.
IMAP: your email client connects to your email server to retrieve your entire inbox list of read and unread emails, and then remains connected for the entire time your using email.

BOTTOM LINE: opening your email client and checking for new email typically is much faster when using POP, since it requires less data transmission - extremely important if you're ISP is charging you by the amount of data you send/receive (like on some airplanes). If you're using your email for a long time, IMAP tends to be a little more responsive later on in your session - since it keeps your email client connected to the server for the entire time you're using email.

3. Security
POP: Simple protocol.
IMAP: Complicated protocol, implementations slightly more error-prone.

BOTTOM LINE: IMAP tends to be a more complicated protocol, offering hackers more opportunities to compromise your email. POP is generally believed to be slightly more secure than IMAP.

4. Access
POP: Since the email client connects to the server, retrieves a message, stores it on your computer and then deletes the message from the server, only one individual has access to a particular email message.
IMAP: Since any email message is kept on the server, multiple individual clients can log on and view a particular email simultaneously.

BOTTOM LINE: IMAP permits multiple users to access a particular email sent to an address, whereas POP limits access to one individual at a time.

SMTP: the Internet standard "push" protocol
At present, there is one de-facto Internet standard protocol for "pushing" email messages to your email server: SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Here's an example of how SMTP works. Let's say that I write the following email in Mac OS X Mail and click "Send."

I hear a "whoosh" from my Mac and the window disappears - indicating my message has been sent. A lot more has really happened behind the scenes in that split second:

The Mac OS X Mail application opened a connection with my email server and the following to-and-fro communication occurred between my email client and my email server. I've colored messages sent to my email server in black and responses by my email server in red.

HELO mac.com
250 Hello mac.com
MAIL FROM:<tigershark@mac.com>
250 OK
RCPT TO:<sjobs@apple.com>
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: your computers are HOT
From: tigershark@mac.com
To: sjobs@apple.com

steve,

i burned myself today with my macbook pro.

regards-
macplumber
.
250 Ok: queued as 10001
QUIT
221 Bye

As you can see, pushing an email message to a server using SMTP involves a strict protocol relying on English characters, numbers, and punctuation characters (i.e. ASCII).

It didn't take long to realize that SMTP didn't work very well when you wanted to send non-English characters or binary files (i.e. pictures, audio, video) in an email message. An extension to SMTP was subsequently created, named MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), that encoded non-English characters and binary files into ASCII.

If the subject line of my email had been written in Spanish:

Subject: ¡Hola, señor!

it would be sent to the email server using ASCII as:

Subject: =?utf-8?Q?=C2=A1Hola,=20se=C3=B1or!?=

In fact, SMTP and MIME have become so intertwined in these days of global email and multimedia that the Internet standard protocol for sending mail is increasingly referred to these days as "SMTP/MIME."

Is there any reason why I shouldn't delete the Font Book application? I never seem to use it.

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:41:45 -0400

The Font Book application that comes with Mac OS X sits quietly in the Applications directory of most Mac users, never to be launched more than once or twice during the entire lifetime of their Mac.

If you're one of the handful of people who've gotten around to launching Font Book once or twice, you'll notice that one of the primary functions of Font Book is to show you what each of the fonts installed on your Mac looks like... which would have been very valuable in the days of Mac OS 9. However, Mac OS X's universal font panel does an excellent job of this by itself, and is available from within almost every application, such as in TextEdit, for example:

So, is Font Book a waste of 2.2 MB on your hard drive? Surprising, no. Unlike Sherlock, there are actually a number of valuable things that Font Book does that can actually help improve your Mac's performance.

1. Identify duplicate installations of fonts
As the number of active fonts installed on your Mac increases, the launch times and responsiveness of font menus in many applications will take a hit. If you've owned your Mac for a while and have installed a few different software packages during that time, you may often have more than one copy of a particular font installed on your computer.

Font Book does an excellent job of tracking and disabling duplicate fonts for you. A dot will appear next to the name of any font that has a duplicate copy installed. In order to resolve a duplicate font (i.e. disable the duplicate), simply select a particular font family in the middle pane, and go to: Edit > Resolve Duplicates.

2. Create "playlists" of different fonts
If you use iTunes, you've probably created different playlists of songs. Font Book permits you to do exactly the same thing, but with fonts. Font "playlists" are called "Collections" and appear in the left column in the Font Book window. Apple creates a few default Collections such as "Fixed Width," "Fun," and "Modern." You can delete any of these or create your own, to make selection of your favorite fonts more efficient.

In order to create a collection, go to the menu bar and select: File > New Collection. Click back to "All Fonts" in the left column. Drag and drop any font into your collection, just like you would when adding songs into a playlist in iTunes.

3. Find corrupt fonts
If you've installed lots of different fonts on your Mac, and have kept them around for a while, there's always a possibility that a few font files may have been corrupted. Corrupted fonts occur infrequently, but when they do, they can substantially affect the performance of certain applications.

Font Book offers a "validation" feature that looks for any potential trouble-making fonts. Just select your fonts in the middle pane, go to the menu bar, and select: File > Validate Fonts.

What's the easiest way to find the nearest free WiFi network when I'm traveling?

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 16:46:09 -0400

Whenever you're traveling away from home with your PowerBook, iBook, or MacBook, there will inevitably be some point when you'll be searching for WiFi access, particularly the free kind. Here are a few helpful tips to remember when you're away or planning your next trip.

Choose a hotel or motel that offers free WiFi
A number of hotel chains will usually offer free internet access in their rooms and/or lobbies. Interestingly, these tend to be the more affordable chains and often not the nicer, 5-star hotels. Therefore, when you're booking hotel reservations, keep these chains in mind:

• Best Western
• Comfort Inn
• Four Points Sheraton
• Hampton Inn
• Holiday Inn
• Quality Inn
• Sleep Inn

Don't forget: it's always smart to double-check on your specific hotel when you're booking your reservation.

Apple Stores
Being an enthusiastic Mac user, you may find that your travels may include a visit to the local Apple store, particularly if there isn't one near where you live. All Apple stores offer free internet access on the Macs on display, and almost every store also offers free WiFi access if you happen to have your laptop with you.

WiFi FreeSpot Directory
The WiFi FreeSpot Directory is an incredible resource that lists many of the free WiFi networks near any place in the United States and Europe. Make sure that you remember the address or name of this site whenever you're travelling.

Do I have enough RAM installed on my Mac?

Wed, 7 Jun 2006 23:09:59 -0400

Although it's obvious that 256 MB of RAM won't cut it in a modern Mac, it's also true that installing the maximum amount of RAM your Mac can take might be overkill, too... particularly if you're on a limited budget. For example, a person who only uses their iMac to surf the Web and check email probably doesn't require 4 GB of RAM.

So here's an objective way to determine if you could benefit from installing more RAM into your Mac that takes in account your individual usage patterns:

1. Restart your Mac.

2. Spend about 30 minutes using your Mac as you normally would.

3. After the 30 minutes have passed, launch the Activity Monitor utility (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor). Go to the "Window" menu bar item and select "Activity Monitor." When the Activity Monitor window appears, click on the System Memory tab in the bottom half of the window.

4. Look at the number of page ins and page outs. (In this example, page ins = 26774 and page outs = 0). If the number of page outs is less than 10% of the number of page ins, you probably have sufficient physical RAM installed and are not experiencing much of a performance penalty. Obviously, having zero page outs is the most optimal situation.

Mac OS X memory management
Page ins occur when data is transferred from your hard drive to the physical RAM on your Mac's motherboard. Page outs occur when data is transferred from the physical RAM to your hard drive. A single "page" represents about 4 K of data.

Whenever you launch an application, the application's code is paged in (i.e. transferred from the hard drive and into RAM). When you quit the application, the code is cleared from the RAM for the next application that comes along.

Sometimes, however, you may be running several applications. If the combined amount of RAM all of the applications require exceeds the amount of physical RAM sitting on your motherboard, virtual memory (which is always on in Mac OS X) kicks in. Mac OS X's virtual memory manager guesses what contents in your physical RAM won't be used immediately and pages them out to the hard drive temporarily to free up space in physical RAM.

Since the retrieval time of data from the hard drive is much slower than from physical RAM chips on the motherboard, the more data you've paged out, the more your Mac's performance may suffer. Therefore, the best way to ensure optimum performance is to install enough RAM to prevent page outs from occurring excessively.

What do each of those background processes I see when I run Activity Monitor actually do?

Tue, 6 Jun 2006 22:37:53 -0400

As you all know, you can identify all of your currently running applications simply by glancing at the Dock. However, if you've ever run the Activity Monitor utility (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor), you'll notice there are a lot of other application/processes that are also running transparently in the background. The vast majority of these background applications/processes take care of behind the scenes tasks but have names that sound like something out of DOS. So what do all of these applications/processes do?

AppleFileServer
• Serves files on your Mac to other computers on our network
• Runs only if you have file sharing on

ATSServer (Apple Type Solution Server)
• Manages all fonts on your Mac and makes them available to applications

automount
• Mounts and unmounts network volumes

blued
• Handles Bluetooth on your Mac

configd
• Manages dynamic configuration information about your Mac and the network.

coreaudiod
• Handles CoreAudio, a low-level API for dealing with sound in Mac OS X

crashreporterd
• Logs information about all application crashes.

cupsd (Common UNIX Printing System)
• Handles print jobs you send from any application

DirectoryService
• Keeps track of permissions information for files and directories
• Keeps track of printer and server locations

diskarbitrationd
• Handles disk and server mounting
• Keeps track of disk or server availability

distnoted
• Provided distributed notification services

Dock
• Displays the Dock

dynamic_pager
• Helps manage swap files for virtual memory

ftpd
• Handles incoming FTP (file transfer protocol) connections
• Usually appears only when someone is connecting to your Mac via FTP

hdid
• Mounts disk image (.img and .dmg) files

httpd
• The Apache web server
• Runs only if web sharing is on
• Multiple processes may run simultaneously

iCalAlarmScheduler
• Handles alarms you've set in iCal

iTunes Helper
• Handles mounting and syncing from iTunes to iPod

KernelEventAgent
• Handles notifications about file system status

kextd
• Loads and unloads kernel extensions (i.e. drivers)

LaunchCFMApp
• Wrapper program for Classic Mac applications running in Mac OS X

launchd
• Runs scheduled applications and scripts
• Responsible for periodic system maintenance tasks
• Usually runs at night

loginwindow
• Displays login screen at startup
• Validating login attempts
• Restarts the Finder or Dock if either crashes
• Runs the Force Quit Applications window (command-option-escape)
• Handles logout, restart, and shutdown

lookupd
• Looks up information from network information services (NetInfo and DNS)

mDNSResponder
• Advertises network services provided by your Mac (e.g. FTP)

mount_webdav
• Mounts WebDAV-enable servers

netinfod
• Provides NetInfo data about your Mac to other computers on the network

nfsiod
• Handles asynchronous requests to NFS servers

notifyd
• Passes even notifications between processes

ntpd
• Synchronizes your Mac's clock to network time servers

pbs (pasteboard server)
• This is the Clipboard

pmTool
• Activity Monitor's process that collects info about all the other running processes

slpd (Service Location Procolol)
• Advertises network services (e.g. File Sharing) your Mac is providing on the network
• Does the same thing as Bonjour (Rendezvous)

syslogd
• Logs system status and error messages

SystemUIServer
• Handles the icon-based menus at the right side of the menu bar

update
• Keeps your hard drive synchronized to the file system cache
• Minimizes data loss if your Mac crashes

WindowServer
• Manages your Mac's screen and what appears on it
• Launches any application you double-click in the Finder

Special thanks to Gordon Davisson.

How do I undelete a file I accidentally erased when I emptied the trash can?

Mon, 5 Jun 2006 19:03:19 -0400

Back in the days of the classic Mac OS, utilities such as Norton Unerase worked relatively effectively if you tried to recover a file immediately after accidentally erasing it. These days your chances of un-deleting a file in Mac OS X are significantly poorer. So why is this and what can you do about it?

Creating, Deleting, and Undeleting Files
It's important to understand what happens when you copy a new file onto your hard drive: your Mac writes your file to a specific location onto your hard drive, and records the location of your new file in a hidden document called a file allocation table. When you trash the file, the record in the file allocation table is erased, which indicates to your Mac that the space where your file sat is now "free." The data will stay physically intact up until the moment a new file comes along and is written onto the free space.

Unlike older versions of the classic Mac OS, Mac OS X uses huge swaths of scratch disk space. Hundreds of megabytes are constantly being written, read, and re-written by the operating system in the background by the operating system as it goes about its normal (and usually invisible) tasks. Therefore, there's a considerably higher risk that the space where your file sat may have already been overwritten by something else by the time you launch your file undeleting utility.

As a result, people have generally experienced less success undeleting files in Mac OS 10.4 than they did in Mac OS 9. It's comes as no surprise that most folks have had less success with the Mac OS X versions of Norton Unerase than the classic Mac versions of Norton Unerase.

Anecdotally, people have had the most success undeleting files with ProSoft's Data Rescue II ($99.00, available on CD, Universal) and SubRosaSoft's FileSalvage ($89.95, available on CD or download) - though it's all relative.

If you're going to try to recover a file using any undelete utility, here are a few tips:

1. Install and run any undelete utility from another hard drive if at all possible. There's always a possibility that the undelete utility itself could overwrite the very file you're trying to retrieve if it's running off of the same hard drive.

2. Put your Mac to sleep as soon as your realize you've deleted something accidentally. The longer your Mac stays on, the more likely the operating system will overwrite the file even if it looks like your Mac's doing entirely nothing.

3. A more extreme (and possibly riskier) alternative is to power off your Mac immediately (i.e. pull the AC cord and yank out the battery) to specifically avoid the operating system's shut down process which involves a lot of disk activity. Hook your Mac to another Mac using a Firewire cable. When your ready to undelete, mount the hard drive of your Mac in target disk mode (hold down "T" at startup until the FireWire icon appears). Use this one at your own risk, though it theoretically should give you your best chance at recovery.

4. Hope you backed up.

What to Backup
Deep down, we all know that the only truly reliable way to ensure that you'll be able to retrieve a lost file is to have backed up first. In my opinion, the most important things to back up on your Mac are not your applications, but:

• Documents
• Desktop
• iTunes Library: be sure to select "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" in iTunes Preferences (iTunes > Preferences > Advanced) to make sure all of your music sits in the same place.
• iPhoto Library: be sure to select "Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library" in iPhoto Preferences (iPhoto > Preferences > Advanced) to make sure all of your photos sit in the same place.
• Mail and Address Book

There are plenty of backup utilities out there, some shareware and others payware. Since becoming a .Mac subscriber, I've found that the easiest way to backup is through version 3 of Apple's Backup utility. Backup is free for .Mac subscribers, has awesome default settings, is easy to figure out, requires little effort, and supports incremental backups. There really isn't anything easier for someone as lazy as me.

The MacPlumber Backup Method
If you're not a .Mac subscriber, I suggest the method that I used to use. After experimenting with different backup applications, I thought this was the simplest, quickest, and most versatile way to backup:

1. Find the largest external hard drive you can.

2. Make sure the following folders appear in the Sidebar in your Finder windows:
• User
• Music
• Pictures
• Library
• Application Support
Get rid of any of the other folders in the Sidebar if you're easily distracted.

3. Label the following folders red:
User > Documents
User > Desktop
User > Music > iTunes
User > Pictures > iPhoto Library
User > Library > Mail
User > Library > Mail Downloads
User > Library > Application Support > AddressBook

4. Go into iCal and set up a weekly alarm reminding you to backup.

5. When it's backup day, hook up your external hard drive. Drag-and-drop every red folder appearing in a Sidebar folder into your external hard drive before you go to bed.

Special thanks to Wysz.

What's the highest resolution QuickTime video that will sync and play on my iPod?

Sun, 4 Jun 2006 12:05:15 -0400

Current iPods support video playback and have a screen resolution of 320x240 pixels. Therefore, Apple sells videos at 320x240 pixel resolution on the iTunes Music Store. In addition, if you convert an existing QuickTime video to an iPod-friendly format using QuickTime Player, you'll quickly discover that the default "Movie to iPod" settings also produce video at 320x240 pixel resolution.

Sometimes you may want to watch a video you've imported into iTunes on your Mac, and not just your iPod. Obviously, it'd be nice if the resolution of the video could be higher than 320x240. Can you make a video file higher than 320x240 pixel resolution and still have it successfully sync and play on your iPod? Yes.

Video Codecs
The hardware and software supporting video playback on your Mac is obviously very versatile. Therefore, iTunes can support a wide variety of different codecs, including popular codecs like Sorenson Video 3 and MPEG-1. iTunes can also support very high resolutions for any given codec, too. However, the iPod's capabilities are a bit more limited. As a result, while iTunes will permit you to import and play a Sorenson Video 3 video at 640x480 resolution, it will refuse to sync this sort of video file to your iPod.

A close reading of the technical specifications for the current iPod reveals that the iPod supports two video codecs:

• H.264 (up to 768 Kbps, 320x240 pixel resolution, 30 fps)
• MPEG-4 (up to 2.5 Mbps, 480x480 pixel resolution, 30 fps)

H.264 is the more advanced codec and can compress video at any given resolution and frame rate into a much smaller space than MPEG-4. Apple prefers H.264, since it keeps video sizes on the iTunes Music Store smaller and downloads quicker. However, this more efficient compression comes at a price: it takes more processing power to decode and play an H.264 video than an MPEG-4 video. Therefore, while the limited video hardware in the iPod can handle decoding MPEG-4 video at 480x480 pixels, it can only deal with H.264 video at 320x240 pixels.

Your Videos
H.264 is Apple's "default" video format for the iPod in QuickTime Player. For example, If you convert an existing movie in using the "Movie to iPod" setting under File > Export, you'll produce an H.264 video at 320x240 pixels at 30 fps.

If you're not planning on transmitting your video over the Internet, the size of the file is probably less of an issue. As a result, you can use MPEG-4 instead of H.264. You will end up with a larger file - but you will also produce a higher resolution video that'll still play on your iPod.

If you're interested in real numbers, I experimented with Green Day's "American Idiot" video. While the H.264 version at 320x240 took up the 19.4 MB, the MPEG-4 version at 480x360 took up 56.8 MB.

Instructions for QuickTime Player (Pro)
1. Select: File > Export...

2. In the Export pull-down menu, select "Movie to MPEG-4" and click "Options..."

3. In the Options window, change the File Format from "MP4 (ISMA)" to "MP4." Use "MPEG-4 Improved" as your video format, "Custom" as your image size (480x360 pixels for a 4x3 aspect ratio video), and set your Data Rate at approximately 2500 kbits/sec.

How do I improve my website's page rank in Google?

Fri, 2 Jun 2006 22:17:08 -0400

An overwhelming majority of people on the internet use Google as their search engine. Your website's rank in Google will have a significant impact on the number of visitors who'll come to your site. That said, what are ways you can improve your site's ranking in Google?   I recently posed this question to a friend of mine who works for everybody's favorite search engine, and he told me that he could summarize his advice in one sentence: "Keep it genuinely useful, interesting, and fresh." At first glance, I thought he was just putting me off with a piece of advice my mom could've even told me... however, what he told me was actually very accurate. Google's great at ranking useful, interesting, and fresh sites - and those are the kind of sites most folks would like to visit. So what are the things Google looks for to determine that your site is useful, interesting, and fresh?

1. Back Links
The most important factor affecting how well your site ranks is the number of "back links" to your site. A back link is any link that points to your site. For example, the following link:

Visit Contested Terrain, a pop culture blog!

is a back link to "Contested Terrain." Google is intelligent enough to also take into account the page rank of the sites that are back linking to you. A link from a highly ranked website to your site will carry a lot more weight than a link from an obscure website. Bottom line: make your site useful and ask people to link to your site, particularly if their site is popular.

2. Practice Good HTML
This one's an important factor - easy to do if you still hand-code your HTML, but much tougher if you're using an HTML generator like the iWeb application.

Remember to always use <TITLE> tags and define <META> attributes. For example, if I were to follow my own advice, this is what the first few HTML lines of my web site should be:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>The MacPlumber's Journal: Assorted Tips for Mac Users</TITLE>
<META name="keywords" content="How, To, Tips, Tricks, Mac, iPod, Photoshop, iWeb, Apple">
<META name="description" content="This page provides a variety of useful, assorted, and random tips for any Mac user.">
</HEAD>

Always remember to include ALT attributes whenever you have an image:

<IMG SRC="MBPro.gif" ALT="Photo of my new MacBook Pro">

Avoid frames and pop-up windows. Never use Flash or Shockwave without an HTML option.

3. Make hyperlinks descriptive
Google analyzes the quality of your website by evaluating how informative your hyperlinks are. The most preferred type of hyperlink is a descriptive link like:

I use a web-based guitar chord finder when I practice.

Avoid generic, un-informative links like:

I use this web-based guitar chord finder: click here.

And whatever you do, don't use an image as a hot-link if you don't have to:

If, for the sake of aesthetics, you really need to use an image as a hot-link, by all means don't forget to specify the ALT attributes in the <IMG SRC> tag!

4. Frequent new content
Google prefers websites that are alive and constantly providing new and different content, since they tend to be more interesting, and likely to attract repeat traffic. Dead sites that haven't provided new content in ages tend to be less interesting, and corresponding attract less traffic.

A good piece of advice is to try to add some new content to your website on a daily basis.

Good luck!
If you do your best to keep these four basic rules in mind when creating your website, you can make a significant impact towards how well your site will rank in Google. More people will read what you have to say and maybe you'll be able to make a bigger dent in the world.

How do I get music off of my iPod and onto any Mac or PC?

Thu, 1 Jun 2006 22:36:48 -0400

If you're like me, you've probably realized that once you've put all of your music files on your iPod it's pretty much a one-way sync. Apple's spent a lot of time and effort trying to make it difficult for you to copy the entire library of music on your iPod to another computer. But what if your normal computer that syncs to your iPod is stolen or the hard drive dies? Why should all that music be locked away? Here are my suggestions for how to recover your MP3's using a Mac or a PC.

Copying music files from your iPod to Mac
There are several freeware and shareware applications that are available on the Mac. My preference is an application named iLinkPod. iLinkPod is probably the simplest and safest way to access all of the music files on your iPod which Apple has hidden from easy access.

iLinkPod creates a folder called "iLinkPodFolder" on both your Desktop and also in your iPod. Opening either one will give you instantaneous access to all the hidden subfolders (named F00, F01, F02, etc.) in which iTunes and iPod store your songs. The folders will remain on your Desktop regardless if iLinkPod is running.

This application eliminates Apple's "hidden files" protection scheme on the iPod without modifying any iPod or System files. Plus no application is ever needed again to access these files again, after the first (and only) time you launch it.

Copying music files from your iPod to PC
If you're a PC user, the most full featured and free application is named ephPod. In addition to letting you copy the music files off of your iPod, ephPod will also get your Outlook contacts, calendar, and several other tasks.

After downloading and installing ephPod, plug in your iPod and launch ephPod. Select the iPod's drive letter in the pull down list that appears.

A list appears. Double click "Songs" and a list of all the tunes on your iPod appears. Right click any song and select "Copy Songs to Directory." ephPod will ask you where to save the file and you're off to the races.