eugene gordin

I would like to introduce Mike Mieler who has a new blog called Mike Went West devoted to all things music – concerts, artists, shows, reviews, etc as well as a promised regular podcast with new music recommendations as well as his favorites from back in the day.

I like to consider Mike the go-to guy as far as getting the newest and best music out there. He is the person behind my Music to My Speakers post, who introduced me to emusic.com, as well as countless artists that I am now obsessed with (despite shrugging them off when first hearing them as he will tell you ). So go visit Mike, and bask in the glory that is musical good taste.

Okay, so the title doesn’t make as much sense as it could, but basically I just wanted to rhyme. Today’s topic is all about instant messaging, and the better way to do it. There are two programs that I would like to talk about specifically – AdiumX (Mac OSX) and Trillian (Windows). In concept, both programs are very similar:

Both Allow:

• Chatting on multiple chat networks – AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc. without the individual programs
  
• Logging all conversations for later reference
• Customizing of the user interface
• Renaming of contacts
• File Transfers

Most people that I show these programs to are surprised that you can be on AIM without having to use crap from AOL, but I assure you that you can, and, in fact, should .

Here are some of the features that I love best about each program.

AdiumX:

• The buddy list syncs with your address book (Real names are listed instead of screen names)
• Extremely customizable look and feel
• Tons of plug-ins, skins, message windows, etc

Trillian:

• Audio/Video Chat
  
• Tons of skins and plug-ins
• Multiple identities for multiple users

If you use any instant messenger, I highly recommend AdiumX and Trillian over the original programs.

P.S. If you would like your AdiumX contact list to look like the screen shot above, download this, unzip it, and double click on each file to install.

Though the majority of my posts have to do with some type of software, technology, or, for lack of better words, interesting find, this post can probably be classified as a tech tip. Today I would like to heed a warning to all of those people that like to live on the bleeding edge of technology, or those that just like brand new shiny things.

New tech hardware that is released on a massive scale – whether it be computers, music players, entertainment systems, whatever – is bound to have problems, bugs, and glitches whose tried and tested counterpart just simply doesnt have. Let me offer a simple example.

I purchased my Macbook Pro 1.83Ghz on the day that they were released, and my Macbook arrived in America from China in the very first batch. As content as I am with my MacBook Pro – which is amazingly content – it has had 3 major problems, all of which have now been fixed (for monetarily free) in both mine, and all new MacBook Pros. I say monetarily because although all three repairs were completely free, two week were spent without my MacBook, which was quite a hassle (thank g-d for my mini). In fact, apparently, with my Macbook, I got relatively lucky.

My point is basically this: if you buy a new model, or pretty much any new technological innovation, you immediately assume not only the inherent risk that all technology brings with it, but also the fact that you probably will run into first revision problems that all can and will be smoothed out after some time.

For some people, this inherent risk is worth having the latest and greatest gadgets out there. However, for the majority of consumers, its exactly these bugs/problems/hassles that need to be avoided, and therefore, this information should be kept in mind.

As a side note, I was thinking of creating a website devoted to offering people advice as far as when a good time to buy a new computer (mostly Apple Macs) would be based on the large amounts of facts, information, and speculation in the computer (Mac) world. However, since I don’t foresee myself creating this type of site anytime soon, if any of you are considering purchasing a new Apple product, let me know because now might be a good time to wait just a bit for the newest version/model/revision which very well could be less problematic, buggy, and hassle-ful.

As most people know, both Windows and OSX have tons of keyboard shortcuts built into them, all for the sole purpose of speeding up remedial tasks. Instead of listing all of the keyboard shortcuts that are out there, which you can find here (Windows) and here (OSX), I thought I would list the ones that I use on a daily basis.Global Shortcuts (windows users should use ctrl key instead of apple)
apple+c – Copies highlighted item
apple+x – Cuts highlighted item
apple+v – Pastes copied/cut item

apple+a - Selects all items
apple+s – Saves document/webpage/etc
apple+p – print document/webpage/etc
apple+w – Close current page/document/etc
apple+n – Open new page/document/etc
apple+q – Quit current program

apple+b – Bold highlighted text
apple+i – Italicize highlighted text
apple+u – Underline highlighted text
apple (hold) +click multiple objects – highlights multiple objects (not necessarily in a row)
shift+click – Highlights multiple objects in a row

Personal Favorite:
apple+t – open new tab in Mozilla Firefox (I use this one hundreds of times per day)

Apple OSX Specific:
apple+shift+3 - Take screenshot of entire display
apple+shift+4 – Take screenshot of sizable window
apple+option+esc – Force Quit Unresponsive Application
apple+tab – Switch between open windows
apple+delete – Send item to trash
F12 – Bring up dashboard (10.4 Tiger & later)

Microsoft Windows Specific:
windows – Bring up start menu
windows+e – Open new explorer window
alt-tab – Switch between open windows.

Those are the keyboard shortcuts that I use regularly, and can reallys speed things up when you are working. I also use a program called SizzlingKeys for OSX, which allows me to program my own keyboard shortcuts for controlling iTunes. That way, no matter what program I am in, I can play/pause/move to next track in iTunes with simple key combinations. SizzlingKeys is free, but if you want to enable the Pro features such as searching your library and playlists with shortcut keys, it’ll cost you $4.95. On my Macbook Pro, I have sizzling keys programed for:

apple+F11 – Play/Pause
apple+F12 – Next Track

If you can remember any of these, it will really speed up some of the repetitive tasks we all often have to do. Hope that helps!

This guy. If that seems like a random thing to say, and doesnt sound familiar, I highly recommend you check out NBC’s The Office – its an amazing show, with great actors, and spectacular writing.

The reason I bring The Office up is because it, like many other shows, is one of my addictions and yet I have seen very little of it on TV. So how do I do it you ask? I download almost all of my shows, which works like Tivo for me, allowing me to watch whenever I have time.

I have wanted to write a post that explains where I download all of the things I download from for a while now, so here goes. I know that this post is long, but I believe that if you want to know the best places to download shows, movies, music, etc, it’ll be helpful. I download from mainly three sources: the newsgroups, bittorrent, and iTunes.

Though iTunes is the most user-friendly of the three, nothing really compares to the newsgroups. With the newsgroups, you can download pretty much any program, video, or music at consistant 100k+ speeds. If you want to know how the newsgroups work, you can visit this link, which does a good job in explaining it. However, if you just want to get to the downloading, you need to do the following things:

1. Go to www.easynews.com and sign up for an account (it’ll cost you $10 for 20GB or 30 days, whichever comes first). This account lets you access and browse the newsgroups.

2. The newsgroups are a big place, and your choices are either to browse them until you find whatever you want (which would be extremely arduous and timely), or you can setup an account at a site like NewzBin, which allows you to very simply search for what you want, and will let you download a nzb file which will point your newsreader to download all of the files you want. This costs something like $2 for 2 months.

3. You need to get yourself a newsreader. For Windows, a really good one is Newsleecher. For OSX, you should use Unison. Though both these programs are good, Unison, like all OSX programs, is much easier to use than newsleecher, but both will get the job done.

Once you have done these three things, you can go to newzbin, login to your account, and use the search box to find everything you would ever want, at amazing speeds. All you have to do is download the NZB file.

The second source of downloads for me is good ol’ bittorrent. Basically bittorrent is all about filesharing – instead of getting the files from some server like you do with newsgroups, you get files (actually parts of files) from other people who have already downloaded the file and are now sharing (or seeding) it. If you want to know more about how bittorrent works, click here for a great summary. If you want to just start downloading, you need to do the folllowing things:

1. Download a bittorrent program (or client). There are tons of choices out there, but for Windows I recommend Azureus, and for OSX there’s nothing better than Transmission.

2. Once you have those programs installed, all you need to do is find torrent files, which are just files that point to users who have the file. You can find these torrent files at lots of websites, but I highly recommend Torrentspy, Mininova, and The Pirate Bay. Just search for what you want on those sites, download the torrent file, and open it with your newfound torrent program.

The speeds will usually not be as good as those with newsgroups, but they will increase if you aren’t behind a router, or if you open your router ports (if you want to find out about how to do this, leave me a comment and i’ll gladly explain it).

The third and final source for downloads is iTunes. Basically, nothing beats the simplicity, and the prices aren’t too bad either. Though it only has TV shows, music, and music videos currently, by the end of this year it should have movies apparently.
Now at the end of this post, I should probably say something about the illegality of it all (except iTunes), and the moral implications and what not. But I won’t. Its only recently that I have begun purchasing more and more DVD’s of the music, videos, and movies I already have downloaded, and still download a whole lot more than I purchase. With iTunes getting more and more content, and all kinds of simple subscription models, I’m finding myself using it more and more to download. Hope this helped, and if you have questions, let me know in the comments section.

So today I had a good friend call me with what turned out to be quite a typical situation. She was working tirelessly on her computer (a brand new macbook, for the record), and for some reason did not click save inside Microsoft Word. Low and behold, when she came back to her computer, the file was no where to be seen and all of her work was gone.

We have all lost work like this, and, although at the time its terrible, its actually (for the most part) preventable. Microsoft Word, as well as all of the other Microsoft Office applications have built it security options for situations just like this. Basically, Word can save your documents for you automatically at any time interval. These settings can be found in Word (or Excel, or Powerpoint) preferences, under the save tab. Just make sure to change the AutoRecover time interval to one minute and to check the box that says Always Create Backup Copy. Below is the screenshot of the window on a mac, though it should look very similar in Windows.

Also, while youre at it, make sure under the File Locations tab you add a location for AutoRecover files. That way, if you do lose a document, you will know where Word automatically saved it. Hope this helps!

Today I took up the longstanding task of finding Windows compatible Backup Software similar to SuperDuper! for OSX.

For those of you who have never used SuperDuper!, let me take this chance to proclaim it the one piece of backup software you will ever need. As far as my needs, SuperDuper allows me to create a bootable copy of my MacBook Pro’s harddrive on my 320GB external harddrive Westie, named for its Western Digital creators. On top of this amazing feature, SuperDuper has the option of either each time doing a complete backup (erase external drive partition and copy the MacBook’s harddrive), or what T-Shirt Software calls a SmartBackup (using the existing backup to only modify and add the files that have changed since the last backup). With the SmartBackup feature, I can do backups in literally fractions (very small fractions, in fact) of the time. All of these features are compounded by an amazingly user-friendly interface, and a low price of $30. To put it simply, this software is a must have if you worry about data loss (which you should).

“If this piece of software is so great, why are you looking for a Windows version?” you might ask. I’m on this mission for my father, who needs a reliable, simple, and accurate backup solution for his Windows XP box. So in my search, I have run across two solutions and it is them that I present to you today:

The first solution was suggested to me by my Guru-of-all-things-tech Jon, and is called Cobian Backup 8. Cobian Backup 8 is still in beta, and does offer a bootable backup solution. According to the website, the program ” is a multi-threaded program that can be used to schedule and backup your files and directories from their original location to other directories/drives in the same computer or other computer in your network. FTP backup is also supported in both directions (download and upload).” Though it is free, the program unfortunately seems to still be in development, and offers a bit less intuitive and user-friendly approach than the next program, Casper XP.

Casper XP was the other backup software I discovered in my search, and it seems to most closely resemble what I need. The program seems like the Windows equivalent of SuperDuper!, and though the price is higher, it does offer its own version of SmartBackups, which they call SmartClone technology. Though I have yet to use the program, it does seem promising. The first sentence on the website ends this great search of mine: ” Casper XPâ„¢ makes it a snap to keep a bootable backup of your Windows XP system. Just use Casper XP to copy your system hard disk to another hard disk. When your system hard disk fails or becomes corrupted, simply boot your computer directly from your backup hard disk and you’re up and running again in just seconds! It really is that easy!”

I’ll post an updated review of the program once I purchase my new MyBook 500GB External Drive and give Westie to my dad.