Problem:

After months of blissful Bluetooth connectivity, I’ve awoken to discover that neither my Magic Mouse nor my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard are properly pairing. First my Magic Mouse failed to scroll, which led me to remove the Magic Mouse and attempt to pair it to my computer again. This attempt failed. I then rebooted my computer, and was still unable to pair my computer and Magic Mouse. After another restart, my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard was also unable to be be used as an input device with my computer. It is important to note that, while the Bluetooth Device Manager reported this failure to pair, both devices are reported as ‘connected’ under the Bluetooth icon in the OX X menu bar. Neither device, at this point, is responding to any input.

Solution:

1. Delete com.apple.Bluetooth.plist. This file is found at HD/Library/Preferences.
2. Turn off Bluetooth on your Mac. This is done by clicking the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar and selecting ‘Turn Bluetooth Off’.
3. Unplug input-based USB devices (e.g. any USB mice, keyboards, Wacom tablets, etc).
4. Shut down computer. Do *not* restart, but do a full shut down.
5. Turn off your Bluetooth devices.
6. Boot computer.
7. Turn Bluetooth on.
8. Begin pairing devices. This involves clicking: Bluetooth icon in menu bar >> Set up Bluetooth Device >>  Select Bluetooth device >> Follow on-screen instructions. In the case of your keyboard, I would suggest pressing the ‘Enter/Return’ button several times after entering the passphrase shown on your screen.

This should result in your devices being reconnected.

What May Have Provoked/Complicated My Problem:

Shortly before I had this issue with my Bluetooth devices, I updated my MagicPrefs app. This application is meant to give more complete functionality to your Magic Mouse, and to Apple’s new Magic Trackpad as well. Suspecting this might be driving my problem, I removed both applications by:

1. Quitting MagicPrefs by clicking on its icon in the menu bar and selecting ‘Quit’.
2. Drag MagicPrefs.app (found in your Applications folder) to the trash.
3. Open the Preference pane, right-click on Magic Prefs and select ‘Remove MagicPrefs Preference Pane.’ Do the same for the Magic Menu item in the Preferences pane.

I removed these applications prior to the above written solution. This may, or may not, be required to resolve the Bluetooth pairing problem; I haven’t investigated any correlation between the MagicPrefs application and my problem, but felt it valuable to note this element of my troubleshooting process.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Technology Fix: Pocket Mac and Blackberry Devices
2. Solved: Apple SATA II 1.7 Firmware Problems
3. Solved: Apple Time Capsule Not Found in Airport Utility

The screen, ergonomics, and weight are all fine. It’s using an IPS-LCD, which means that viewing angles are good and colour reproduction is pretty faithful. While some have criticized the back for being slightly rounded, it hasn’t bothered me in any way, nor has the weight of 1.5lbs struck me as ‘heavy’ though the device is heavier than appearances might lead one to believe. There is a bezel surrounding the screen itself and it makes sense: I can rest my hands on the non-interactive bezel without affecting whatever I’m displaying on the screen. This is a good thing. the iPad has the same touch interface as the iPhone and iPod Touch. This makes the iPad simple to use, if lacking any deviant features from those earlier devices (and, with the release of iOS 4, the iPad actually has slightly fewer features than the iPhone or Touch). In light of its use of the older 3.2 release of the OS, the iPad is horrible if you rely on multiple windows being open to get work done and is a poor choice for any content producer looking to do a lot of work on it that will see you flipping between a document/content production editor and the web. In effect, anyone who’s tried doing intensive content production on the iPhone or Touch will largely encounter the same old problems here. I’m not saying that you can’t do such production, but it’s far less convenient than on a full desktop/notebook or even netbook. On the upside: the device is light and battery life is good (I tend to go for 36-72 hours without needing to plug in, with moderate to heavy use each day).

Now that the hardware and OS is out of the way, let’s turn to where the iPad truly shines: content consumption.

I do a lot of reading and, having exhausted a significant number of the actual books that immediately pertain to my research, I need to meaningfully dig through .PDFs of reports from various think tanks, DPI vendors, and electronic academic articles. While in the first year of my PhD I printed in excess of 5000 sheets of paper, largely articles. I’m both unable (for storage reasons), and unwilling (for storage and environmental reasons), to continue printing vast quantities of paper when I’ll likely read any printed document once or twice, and similarly dislike reading off the various screens adorning my home. I *can* read off the screens, but that’s not to say that I enjoy sitting at a computer desk and scrolling through documents for 6-10 hours a day. This said, it’s critical that I’m able to easily annotate any .PDF documents that I read. Further, having documents and their annotations in a searchable format can and will make my life much easier. The iPad fits this reading niche for me.

I’ve been taking the device out and about after loading up the days electronic documents to read (I’ll get into the ‘loading’ element of that is a second…) and use iAnnotate to make comments, highlights, underlines, and bookmarks in my electronic documents. The program itself is simple to use and, critically, when you export the document all the annotations are kept with the file and can be read by any .PDF viewer supporting annotation display. I’ve read documents ranging from 5-500 pages and in my experience to date the ‘comfort zone’ of iPad reading ends at around 100 pages. After this point it’s more convenient to have a hard copy of a document when you want to quickly flip through and find your notes. That said, I did successfully read a book that was slightly over 500 pages on the iPad: I would have never done that if I was tied to a computer monitor and unable to lounge with the text, walk around my office with it, and generally enjoy the rhythm of reading that I get into when reading a longer bit of text.

With its IPS screen type, the iPad is also great for viewing photos. While few consumers (a) know about; (b) care about screen type, trust me that the IPS is far better than the TN screen panels that likely adorn your home. The difference between the iPad showing a photo and my BenQ V2400W or Macbook Pro screen is literally like the difference between night and day. I have a handy program, PhotoGene, for basic photo editing. While it’s no GIMP it is more than enough for basic colour adjustments, rotations, cropping, minor effects, framing, and so forth. The problem with the program is that is can’t delete old photos or create photos in already existing albums. These problems follow from Apple not permitting developers to access this functionality. I’ll get back to this restriction in a second or two.

The other major reason that I wanted this device was for conferences.The iPad has come with me to this year’s Canadian Telecom Summit and Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP) Conference, and has been a great experience in both situations. I take a lot of notes (using Evernote) at most of these events, but I find it annoying to have to type things out on a full laptop because it feels like I’m cutting myself off from the other people at the table(s) with me. The very act of having a screen between you and others creates a situation that I, personally, don’t like. Having the iPad flat on the table, like a notebook, removes this barrier for me. I also tend to fall victim to honest-to-God multifunction capability and thus will open up applications that don’t pertain purely to note taking. While it’s normal, I know myself well enough that I fall victim to this and the iPad, with its monofunctional ‘capabilities’, means I stay on task. That the battery lasts an entire day without needing to plug in is a huge benefit, and the on screen keyboard is good enough for note taking purposes that I don’t regret bringing the iPad over a full laptop.

So far, the content production I’ve referred to is what I identify as ‘short form’, or content that is generally less than 2,000 words in length, can range over various topics, and generally doesn’t have to remain too focused for too long. Key is that short form content is minimally reliant on external links and references, meaning that you can work in a single window and only have to pop out of it once or twice to produce the content. For this content, the on-screen keyboard is generally good enough, though if you want to do something a bit longer you can easily link a bluetooth keyboard with the device. I did so at CFP for writing longer emails (in excess of 1000 words) and for some side projects I was working on at the time. The bluetooth keyboard meant that text entry was a quick on a laptop, though rapid entry doesn’t alleviate the pain-in-the-ass of having to switch between multiple windows when you want links, photos, and so forth to be embedded in a document.

Truly the key problem with the iPad is that Apple has an absolutely piss-poor system for transferring content to and from the device and its installed applications. My first experience with the iPad was having it in my hands, out of its box, and immediately needing to connect it to my Macbook to initialize the device and do initial content transfers over to the iPad. The ‘tethering’ problem continues, though it’s somewhat mitigated by my premium subscription to Evernote (which lets me store documents in the cloud as well as at rest on all of my devices, ensuring I have access to documents even when without a wifi connection), Dropbox membership (which supports easy transferring of content in the Dropbox service to other applications on my iPad), and Goodreader (which integrates with damn near everything cloud-based and sucks it into the application). In effect, what I’m saying is that there are many good kludges around to resolve some of the deficiency in file transfers that are imposed by Apple, but that’s what they are: kludges. Apple’s control over the file system means that you can’t delete photos or make and save modifications to photos themselves: editing on photo in a non-Apple application leaves you with another copy of the photo in a post-edited form. This is highly annoying. Hopefully Apple releases their grip on the file system, or at least does something interesting to make the saving and transferring of files more pleasant in a future OS update.

On the whole, I really do think that the iPad is ideally suited to any niche of consumers that want to do content consumption of text and who need to be able to do small modifications/additions to the text. It’s good for anyone wanting a highly portable computer-lite experience, and stellar for going through airport security with (no need to open your bag!). For anyone looking to do substantial amounts of long-form content production that will require them to have multiple windows/applications running simultaneously, it’s a horrible, horrible device, but for small amounts of content generation and note taking its a good substitute for paper. I’d recommend the device as is – I don’t think that needing small adaptors to extend functionality is the end of days – but only if what you want to do with the device fits its particular consumer profile. Don’t get the iPad as a notebook replacements, don’t get it for long-form creation, and don’t do it if you are unwilling to play with Apple’s often aggravating rules for playing in their sandbox.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Solved: Apple SATA II 1.7 Firmware Problems
2. Apple and Locational Data Sharing
3. Solved: Apple Time Capsule Not Found in Airport Utility

The new MacBook Pros were shipped with their SATA II data speeds crippled; they were limited to 1.5Gps rather than the SATA II 3.0Gbps standardized speed. While this had no real effect for HDD users, it did affect SSD users – SSD is capable of taking advantage of the SATA II spec, and so SSD users rightly complained.

Apple heard these complaints, and released a firmware update for the MacBook Pro line; they warned that the update might not work with non-stock drives (!) but that it would restore SATA II speeds. I decided to update the firmware, just because having an up-to-date system is a good idea. This is right-minded thinking, right?

Wrong.

Shortly after installing the firmware update I began experiencing regular slowdowns; every few minutes I’d get a spinning beach ball for 3-40 seconds, during which the computer was effectively frozen. I discovered that there isn’t a way of rolling back to earlier version of firmware on a mac (!), and that there was a good chance I’d just need to wait for Apple to issue a new firmware update.

After reading through a variety of forums, it appeared that resetting the PRAM should resolve the spinning beach balls on stock HDDs. To reset the PRAM, reboot the computer and hold command+option+P+R. You should hear two chimes, and then the computer will boot into OS X. Since resetting the PRAM on my stock 13″ MacBook Pro the slowdowns have vanished!

Hopefully this will be the end of my Apple-related IT woes for a while!

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Solved: Apple Time Capsule Not Found in Airport Utility
2. Solved: Bluetooth Devices Not Connecting to OSX
3. Review: Apple iPad

At first I assumed that the problem was a Windows Vista-related issue. I’d had other issues getting everything set up, and third-parties had mucked around with the media center while I was gallivanting around Ontario a few weeks ago. The only time that the router (and AirPort Disk) become unresponsive was when I used Vista to connect to the AirPort Disk. No issues arose when just browsing the AirPort Disk using a Mac (note: all Macs in the house are running 10.5.7).

I installed Windows 7 (RC), in the hopes that this would get around whatever problems ‘Vista’ was causing. Installing Windows 7 was a breeze, and it was a snap to both find and connect to the Time Capsule and associated Airport Disk. Things were great!

Except that I kept experiencing network drops after rebooting the media center for the first time …

Taking a step back, I decided that it was either Vista/Windows 7 that was at the heart of my issues (and I was still entertaining that possibility), or some other element of my home network was driving me insane. I recalled that I recently updated the firmware on the Time Capsule; I had been using version 7.3.2, but just before I left for Ontario I updated the firmware to version 7.4.1, and then 7.4.2. I hadn’t been experiencing these problems when running 7.3.2.

I returned the Time Capsule to version 7.3.2, and lo and behold, it seems to have resolved the network drops. I mapped the AirPort Disks in Windows 7 by entering the IP of the router, followed by the name of the AirPort disk. The drives are set to automatically reconnect with the supplied credentials whenever the computer is turned on. I’m now able to watch TV shows using my tuner and accessing the AirPort Disk, as well as enjoy my movies, music, and listen to the radio without headaches!

Edit: the other change I did in Windows 7 was much about with the Local Security Policy a bit, following instructions over at DotBlag.com.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Applecare and the Time Capsule
2. Solved: Apple SATA II 1.7 Firmware Problems
3. Fixing Apple Mail

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Cisco Brings Targeted Ads Home
2. Integrating Posterous

Acer Aspireone (AOA110-1531 (Refubrished))

• Sapphire Blue
• Intel Atom Processor N270 (512KB L2 cache, 1.60GHz, 533MHz FSB)
• 512BM DDR2 533 SDRAM
• 8GB SSD
• Card Reader
• 802.11b/g WLAN
• 10/100 LAN
• Webcam
• 8.9″ WSVGA (1024X600)
• 3 cell battery
• Preload with Linux

The Good

I’ll start with the good points: it’s very light, was very affordable (~$290 Cnd after taxes), and the Linpus OS boots very quickly. The screen is gorgeous, and with decent battery management you can squeeze about 2.5 hours out of it. While I’m not the biggest fan of the keyboard (I’m now very used to the ‘chicklet’ style Apple keyboards) it’s not terrible – I can probably hit about 80% of my average wpm out of it.

The Not-So-Good

Now, let’s talk about what I dislike:

1. It’s a locked box. Seriously – I’ve broken down my share of notebooks, and while I’ll likely have another go in a week or two, actually accessing the SODIMM slots is hard. Really hard. Hard enough that I’d say either wait until they make getting into the AAO more reasonable, or just buy one with more memory. These little guys are not meant to be opened and modified (you can, but it’s not easy).
2. Linpus is terrible. There, I said it. It boots quickly, but they’re working off a modified version of Fedora, and when I try to use the add/remove programs I consistently get dependency errors. Is this fixable? Sure. Should I have to fight with the damn OS at the command line so that I can upgrade to Open Office 3.0? No.
3. Support from other OSes is still in the infancy stages. I’ve worked with Linux before, and I get the ‘Linux is a learning experience, and you can’t expect things to just work.’ That said: I don’t want to be fiddling around with the command line for a few days to get my install working properly. At the moment, I’m just waiting for some bugs with Ubuntu to get ironed out and then Linpus is being replaced.
4. Linpus doesn’t connect to wireless networks. Well, let me rephrase: it will connect to non-enterprise networks. Anything WPA2-Enterprise or newer, and you’re out of luck until you replace the network manager. When you *do* replace the manager, you run into problems with it not remembering wireless access passwords when you come out of hibernation.
5. Card reader memory allocation is hit and miss. Apparently, when you don’t tinker with anything, you can insert an SD card and that SD card is dynamically added to the available flash memory available to the OS. This is cool – I got an 8GB SD card to slide into the AAO, which would give it a cool 16GB of total internal storage – more than enough for casual browsing and word processing. The catch: as soon as you make the needed modifications to access the OS proper, you have to manually mount the SD card each time you turn on the computer, or bring it out of hibernation. While this wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t want to unlock the OS, I don’t think that using the computer as a computer should mean that this breaks.
6. Ships with Firefox 2.0. I mean, really – FF3.0 has been out for a long time. Why the hell is it shipping with FF2.0?
7. Terrible SSD HDD. I get a 7.x MB write to the disk. Enough said.

If you’re looking to buy one of these, get a version with a spinning disk drive. That said, if you want a netbook that is just going to rock out of the box, I’d suggesting getting the HP 2140 – it’ll be a bit more expensive, but I think you’ll be a lot happier. Maybe I’ll change my tune once Ubuntu is loaded on the netbook. In fairness, I should note that I’m being picky (because it’s what I do with these kinds of things), and the person actually using the computer doesn’t have these complaints – it does what it needs to (though not being able to access WPA2-Enterprise has caused them problems). This said, I think that items (1), (2), (4), (5), (6) and (7) really are showstoppers, though (2) and (4) will both be alleviated by changing OSes, (5) is resolvable by shifting where documents and such are saved to, and (6) is solved by hitting up the command line a bit.

My rating: 3/5

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Techno-Trinkets: Firefox Bookmarks, Flash Books, and Redundent Data Storage
2. Review: Apple iPad

I love my Blackberry. It goes where I go – it’s rarely more than a few meters away from me. It has truly reacquainted me with email, and that’s great. I also love my MacBook. I’m rarely away from it for more than 12 hours at a time, and it’s a delight to use. I like the OS, the craftsmanship, and so forth.

I really hate how poorly RIM has decided to treat Blackberry owners who use Macs. RIM’s syncing ‘solution’ is Pocket Mac, which is a load of junk. In Windows, I could upgrade my OS, could configure my BB, could install applications, and so forth using the BB sync client. I can’t do that on a Mac – it’s been almost 2 years since they released Pocket Mac, and I still can’t do these basic operations, which means that I need to have a Windows virtual machine. On top of that, Pocket Mac will, fairly regularly, just stop syncing my contacts and calendar (it can’t actually sync anything else with any reliability). For a few months I’ve been trying to get this resolved, and progressively getting more and more annoyed. Annoyed to the point that I’m tempted to just move to an iPhone (I won’t because of security issues, and I can’t just get an email plan without a data plan, but it’s tempting).

Today I figured out how to resolve my issues with Pocket Mac not syncing properly anymore.

1. Open HD/Users/*/Library/Preferences
2. Delete the “PocketMac” .plist files.
3. Attach your BB via USB, and click ‘no’ on the BB when asked if you want to use the device as a mass storage device.
4. Open Pocket Mac, reset your settings, and click ‘Sync’.
5. Enjoy a synced Blackberry. Rinse and repeat steps 1-4 whenever Pocket Mac stops syncing for you.

Either that, or just get an iPhone. At least it will work with OS X, despite its associated security issues.

UPDATE February 15, 2009:

The method listed above did not work, reliably, for long periods of time. What does seem to work is this:

1. Backup the Blackberry, in Windows, using the Window’s based desktop client.
   
2. Perform a hard reset on the device (Options >> Security Options >> General Settings >> Menu Key >> Wipe Handheld).
3. After device is wiped, go through setup. Do not set up email accounts. Allow SIM contacts to be copied to the Blackberry device’s memory.
4. Re-send service books
5. Power off the Blackberry.
6. Open PacketMac SyncManager.
7. Connect your Blackberry through USB.
8. Power on Blackberry.
9. Click ‘Sync’ and overwrite contacts/etc as you see fit
10. Disconnect Blackberry; you’re done!

This seems to be working reliably for me. My Pearl is running OS version 4.5.0.102 (Platform 2.7.0.85)

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Solved: Bluetooth Devices Not Connecting to OSX
2. Decrypting Blackberry Security, Decentralizing the Future
3. Mac Preview: Towards Breaching Bill C-61 (Copyright in Canada)

The Problem

In the process of trying to redirect my home theatre PC to the new networked drives in my drive enclosure, I ran into a problem: there is no way to delete all of the file location information in Windows Vista Home Premium’s Media Center (WVHPMC; isn’t that an ugly acronym!). This meant that, when I pointed the Media Center to the new location of all of my files, I was left with duplicate entries of my files, only half of which actually led anywhere (once the server was turned off).

The Solution

There are two main steps that are involved in resetting the library data for WVHPMC. First, we need to temporarily stop a Windows service, and second we need to actually delete the library files.
Disabling the Service

1. Open the Start menu and type ‘services.msc’
2. Accept the UAC warning
3. Find the service called Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service, right-click on it, and select Stop from the drop-down menu
4. Close the Services window.

Deleting the Library Files

1. Open the Start menu and select Control Panel
2. Click Folder Options and then the View tab
3. Click Show hidden files and folders
4. Unclick Hide protected operating system files
5. Click OK
6. Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\**username**\Local Settings\Microsoft\Media Player and delete all of the files in the directory. DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDERS IN THIS DIRECTORY – ONLY THE FILES THAT ARE LOOSELY CONTAINED IN THE FOLDER

Congratulations – you can now reindex your media library by pointing WVHPMC to the appropriate directory/network share that you’re now storing your media on.

Technorati Tags: Media Center, Troubleshooting, Vista

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. The Making of a Media Center
2. Solved: Bluetooth Devices Not Connecting to OSX
3. Technology Fix: Pocket Mac and Blackberry Devices

Problem:

I had used iWeb to toss together a quick placeholder site for my girlfriend’s new domain without any incident a week or two ago. A few days later I went back into iWeb and was unable to add new pages, or create a new site. While the options to do both actions were available, clicking on them neither added a new page, nor created a site.

(Unsuccessful) Troubleshooting:

1. The first thing that I did was to shut down iWeb, drag com.apple.iWeb.plist in /Users/Library/Preferences to the desktop and reboot the computer. Once it started up again, I launched iWeb. Upon launching I was presented with the .Mac splash screen and, when entering the program proper, ran into the same issues that were listed in the Problem section.
2. Next, I again quit iWeb, and moves all of the files located in /Users/Library/Application Support/iWeb/ to the desktop. I rebooted the computer and once I was logged into OS X again, launched iWeb. I was presented with the .Mac splash screen and, once I got past it and into the program, I was unable to create a new page or site. This difficulty differed from that listed in the Problem section, however, because the options to create a new page or site were greyed out – I wasn’t even given the option to try creating them.
3. Next, I quit the program and reinstalled iWeb. I experienced the same problems as in (2).

The Solution:

Ultimately, I ended up just dragging iWeb to the trash can, and then reinstalling the bundled software that came with my Macbook. I can now open iWeb, and use it with full functionality again. All of my other iLife applications also work, and I haven’t had to register my iWork suite again.

Note:
The solution that I outlined results in you losing all of the sites/pages that you had previously created in iWeb. This isn’t an issue for me, as I only lost a placeholder, but it may be an issue for you. This said, since you still have the old domain.site file on your desktop (assuming that you performed step (2) in the Troubleshooting section), you might be able to use the iWebSites program to resurrect your prior sites. I haven’t tried this, however, so try this at your own risk.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iWeb, puppy

No related posts.

1. Be reliable! No weird and unexpected crashes. Moreover, I don’t want to be servicing the damn thing on a semi-regular basis.
2. Be fairly easy to manage. I’m not going to have a lot of time to futz around with this thing come September.
3. Be simple! If it take a lot of work to maintain, my hopes of spreading that work around are doomed to failure!
4. Be as good as Vista Home Premium! While I really do want a dominantly Mac environment, I’m not willing to do so at the loss of overall functionality.
5. Access media from my Fileserver (this, really, is what makes this whole thing a pain in the ass).

Now that we’ve identified the conditions for victory, let’s go and investigate how to do this!

Hardware/Software Requirements
Listed are the items that this has been tested on. Hopefully I’ll be able to add to this when I actually own some of the hardware myself *grin*

• Macbook: 2.2 Ghz processor, 2GB of RAM, Intel x3100
• Leopard 10.5.2
• Frontrow
• Apple Remote
• Perian 1.1
• Flip4Mac WMV
• Script: Move2iTunes 1.2
• Script: Doug’s Find Album Artwork With Google
• Script: Doug’s Enter Long Description Text for Selected
• (Optional): Fileserver/NAS/Networked Storage Drives

The Setup
First, head to the above linked software/scripts and download them. Make sure that you’ve updated your iTunes to at least version 7.6. Once you’ve done that, we’ll proceed through them (as a note: this whole process can potentially take a lot of time. Give yourself an afternoon or more if you are going to be adding a substantial library).

• Install Perian, let it update itself automatically. This give you the ability to play most video formats in Quicktime.
• Install flip4Mac WMV; this will let you want WMV files in Quicktime.
• Drag the Moveie2Tunes script to the Applications folder. Then drag a copy of it to the Dock – this will save you a lot of time later on. Trust me on this.
• Drag the ‘Find Album Artwork With Google’ script to [username]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/. If there isn’t a ‘Scripts’ folder there already, just create a New Folder, name it ‘Scripts’, and place the script in the newly created folder.
• Follow the onscreen instructions for ‘Doug’s Enter Long Description Text for Selected’ script.

Now that we’ve done the easy parts, let’s get a bit closer to actually getting ready to play your precious, previous media *grin*.

Mount Yer Volumes!
As it stands, I’m currently running a (crappy) Windows XP fileserver. I should be honest – all I’ve done is load up an old PC with a buttload of HDDs, assigned them unique names, and share out the volumes across my network. I know – it’s not the best or nicest method of doing things, but it’s what I had at the time. Consequently, I’ll be laying out how to easily automount Windows NTFS-formatted drivers. Once I move away from the present system to external drives made available through the Time Capsule that’s in my future I’ll update how to access that. Until then, however….

Share out your Windows XP HDDs. Find the folders/drivers and set up sharing. Check out either Microsoft or the Computer Digest to figure out how. There are other places on the ‘net to do it as well.

The grunt way of setting this up (i.e. the ‘I don’t want to use Applescript, and you can’t make me!’) is a bit of a pain, but not all that painful. First, ensure that you assign static IP address(es) to the computers that are sharing files across the network. While I haven’t run into problems with DHCP, it’s probably better to be safe. After you do that open Finder and press Command + K. This will let you connect to your server(s) – just enter the names of your server(s) here and access the shares that are presented to you. Once you’ve mounted that share open Accounts and click on ‘Login Items’. Drag your shares into the list of items that will open automatically when you log in.

Log out, and log back in. Make sure that your volumes have mounted as they were supposed to.

Adding the Media!
Great – now our gigs and gigs of video, music and TV are available through Frontrow! Because we’re on a Mac we can just drag and drop all of our media into iTunes and we’re done, right? Oh, young padawan, you have so much to learn about the ways of the Apple…

Because we really belong in the Apple digital environment, our benevolent pomum-dominus has tried to ‘assist’ our choices by limiting us to items purchased from His iTunes music store. While that’s . . . great . . . sometimes a bit of choice is actually a good thing. While I don’t mean to upset the Godhead (i.e. Steve Jobs), I think that this is a case where more choice is good. That said, because iTunes is designed to be a neatly locked pen, it requires a bit of work to escape it. Fortunate the scripts that we’ve downloaded are going to help with that.

Brain Rot – Movies and TV
If you tried to ‘drag and drop’ the TV shows and movies that are on your mounted volumes and were disappointed that it didn’t let you automatically add them to iTunes, you’re not alone. Fortunately we can create .mov reference files using the Move2iTunes script. All you have to do is drag your .avi, .wmv, etc files onto the script that you’ve conveniently placed in the Dock and give yourself some time. Depending on the amount of media you have, this could take a while. Once you’re given a notification that everything has been referenced open up iTunes and click on the TV and Movies links in your Library. You should see that your video content has been moved – yay! Unfortunately, you’ve probably noticed that there is a file extension after the name of each item (i.e. Capote.avi shows ‘Capote.avi’ instead of just ‘Capote’ as its name).

Here’s your first afternoon task: going through all of your library items and removing the extension-part of the name – just Get Info for the file, and remove the offending extension from the ‘Name’ and input the genre and date produced. This sucks, but if you’re as anal retentive as I am about these things will make you smile once its over. Finally, hit up the Internet Movie Database and search for the movie in question. Once you find the movie, copy the summary and, in iTunes, click on the newly imported movie, click the Apple Script menu item, and ‘Enter Long Description Text for Selected’. Paste in the summary. This last part is important if you want to have summaries of each movie in Frontrow.

Follow the same process for filling out your TV collection. You’re now seeing why this could take you a while – if you have anything larger than a 1TB collection all I can say is ‘sorry’, but I’m sure that the Godhead has a good reason for forcing us to go through this process. Perhaps it prepares us for the joy we’ll experience when actually seeing a film?

The Siren’s Call – Music
Now that our brains are as mushy as porridge, let’s shift gears a bit and import our music, eh? Before just dragging and dropping all your music into iTunes, and assuming that you are already storing your media elsewhere (a Volume, external drive, etc), open ‘Preferences’ in iTunes, select the ‘Advanced’ tab, and make sure that ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding the library’ is not checked. Now that we’ve done that, you can select your (presently blank) Music library, open the File menu, select ‘Add to Library’ and select the folder/volume/directory where your music lives in.

Now that we’ve waited for God-knows-how-long while your library was imported we can try to automatically download your missing album art by selecting ‘Get Album Artwork’ from the Advanced menu item. Open up your drink and enjoy . . . look, it’s just going to take time if you have a large stash of music. Get a case of beer and enjoy the next few hours in drunken bliss. That state of mind is going to help soon.

Now that we’ve taken some of the Godhead’s knowledge and added it to the iTunes installation in front of us (read: now that the most obvious album covers have been added to their corresponding albums) we’re ready to make some more brain-porridge. The first thing: consolidating compilation albums.

Consolidating Albums

If you’re like me (or other people too, I suppose), you probably listen to a fair number of albums that are compilations of various artists. Unfortunately, this often means that the Dance Mix 2008 album you’ve been enjoying is currently split into a dozen or so different ‘albums’. This sucks, especially if you want to use the Cover Flow view. Here’s how we fix this:

1. Select all of the items in your library that belong to the same library.
2. Right click on the items and select ‘Get Info’.
3. Type ‘Various’ or ‘Various Artists’, or something like that for the Album Artist and under ‘Compilation’ choose ‘Yes’. Click OK. Note: If the divided album isn’t a compilation album, but rather is an album by a single artist, insert their name in the Album Artist field. While you’re there, you can also fix up the Genre and other information as you see fit.

Now that we’ve consolidated the albums, we can move on to adding album art that is missing.

Adding Album Art

Remember the Doug’s Find Album Artwork With Google script that we installed? It’s going to get a workout now! Select a song from an album that lacks cover art, open the Applescript menu item, and click on ‘Find Album Artwork With Google’. Find the appropriate image in the browser window that opened. Right-click on the selected on in iTune, choose ‘Get Info’, select the ‘Artwork’ tab, and drag-and-drop the album artwork that is in your browser window. Click OK. You’ve now added the artwork for your album!

Now go do it for the other items in your library. If you’re into dance/techno/anything that isn’t iTunes-popular, I’m sorry for the time that this will take. At least you’ve still got beer, right? Right?

The Hybrid Threat – Music Videos
Adding in music videos is only a little bit lengthier/annoying than adding movies (that gets you excited to add them, eh?). We’ll begin by assuming the following:

• You have your music videos on an external drive/volume/etc.
• The Move2iTunes script is working for you.
• You still have time to keep doing this.

First, drag your Music Videos on the Move2iTunes item in your Dock. This will place your videos in the Movies or TV Shows sections of your iTunes Library. Find them, right click on them, click ‘Get Info’ and select ‘Music Video’ as their Video Kind. Now click on the Info tab, and fill out the correct name for the video and the artist’s name. You could probably fill out the Year if you wanted to, though I don’t think that it makes any real difference. Now click on the Sorting tab and make sure that the Name and Artist fields both have the information from the Info tab. Click Ok.

Your music videos should now be available in Front Row; access them through Front Row by clicking ‘Music’ and then selecting ‘Music Videos’. Everything should be sorted by artist.

Enjoy Frontrow
Now you can finally enjoy using Front Row with the media that you already own. While I don’t think that it’s a direct competitor to the Windows Media Theater experience (yet), if our Great Godhead decides to let us add our media in a more open fashion I can certainly see it taking at least a little marketshare.

The Wrap-Up
Remember the five criteria at the beginning of this article? Let’s briefly revisit/respond to them.

1. Be reliable! No weird and unexpected crashes! Moreover, I don’t want to be servicing the damn thing on a regular basis!

Though there is an ugly initial time investment, after that’s been ‘paid’ the system is technically stable. Of course, if the Great Godhead and his minions of joy (i.e. Apple Coders) make substantial changes to iTunes and/or Frontrow I’m totally not going to be responsible for your hours of dedication being ‘improved upon’ by our Apple overlords.

2. Be fairly easy to manage.

It’s easy to get going, once it’s going.

3. Be simple!

Well…it’s reasonably simple to get working, and has a relatively short process loop once things are running. That said, adding hundreds or thousands of, well, anything all at once is going to be ugly.

4. Be as good as Vista Home Premium’s media center.

This is a real hit and miss for me. I’m in Canada, so I get bupkis as far as extra go. The nice thing about WHP’s media center: it dynamically adds content when add it to a volume. That said . . . I’m on Vista if I’m using MS’s media center, and that’s not a lot of fun. Ultimately, however, I really think that the Mac media center is only almost as good as the Vista one. A big plus: You can easily buy media, can easily look at movie trailers, and the remote comes with older macs. That almost counts for something, right? right?

5. Access media from my Fileserver

Done and done.

The Conclusion
So, would I recommend this to others? Probably, actually. I like the Mac OS (and have for some time). I’d just love to actually have the hardware (a mac mini would be perfect!) to set one of these up for myself *grin*.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Media Center, Frontrow

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1. Resetting Windows Vista Media Center
2. Review: Remix – Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
3. Review of “Making Technology Democratic” by Richard E. Scolve