Every month, the road outside our office fills with small groups of people looking like they are off to a wedding. All are dressed in their best clothes and walk up to the front doors in pairs or family groups. The callers are from the near-by Kingdom Hall and are basically trying to sell their latest newsletter but sometimes they don’t tell you that for a few minutes.

Being somewhat experienced at this monthly event we have a variety of ways to discourage the callers, ranging from outright lies: “We are Pagan Communists who worship Lucifer, how much for your little girl?”; through the placatory brush-off: “Sorry, can’t talk now I’m on the satellite phone to Kathmandu”; to the outright naff off: “I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy or Father Christmas and I don’t read books written centuries after the events depicted in them”. This usually does the trick.

In the same way, we’ve all grown good at dealing with cold-callers who telephone, with the possible exception of double-glazing salesmen who are quite at liberty to call and give us a quote to remove the brand new windows we installed in our newly modernised home and office.

Not all cold callers get the brush off
There are one group of cold callers I sometimes listen to. These are the ones who give free listings on their websites. We’ve never actually had any work from such a listing but there is always the chance. The one thing I’m never interested in is their extra-special listing which will “only” cost “this” much. One offer I did take up this month came from BT, giving me a free chunk of their cyber-shopping arcade, called Tradespace, here.

Tradespace is where photocopier salesmen mix with Jill’s Office Solutions and the Dorset Tourist Board. BT intend it to be an online community bringing small businesses and individual sellers together with potential customers to do business. It includes blogging, space to show off photographs and videos of your products and ways to plug special events or offers. All done via a web-based control panel. Then there are the RSS feeds, automatic mapping to show potential customers your location, comments and ratings sections and FREE phone calls.

BT giving away stuff for free
The best way to learn more is to take the tour offered in the URL above. BT say they are going to actively market the Tradespace and as their budgets are far larger than my own, this can’t be a bad thing. This is the second free-bee we’ve gratefully accepted from BT. The other is DigitalVault, here, 2GB of free on-line storage that we use extensively for the transfer of large files. They may upload at a paltry 86Kbps, meaning a gigabyte takes 3 hours to send but the system “just works”. There is also a free trial of 20GB on-line space, usual price £4.99 per month.

The one feature we always find with BT’s way of doing things is that it is unwieldy to use and completely unintuitive. This may be because, as Mac users, we have grown accustomed to an elegance and simplicity in software. But BT’s seems to go about things in a totally unnecessarily complicate way. Or maybe the systems are designed by Microsoft, in which case that explains why they won’t let you use FTP and other long-established protocols. Microsoft wants to create its own “standards”.

Back in the last century, when we got started as designers and our clients paid their bills (unlike today – You know who you are), we used to work with companies’ directorates.

Usually the personnel manager would call us in to discuss the new magazine/sales leaflets/whatever. They would pass us over to the senior manager or director it was destined for, most likely the head of sales. We worked directly with them. They took the decisions, accepted to proofs and things went wonderfully smoothly. If they also took the opportunity to get few more hairs added to their heads, maybe a tummy tuck and wrinkles removed, so what. We were pleased to oblige with early pre-Photoshop image editors.

The good old days

If only things were like that nowadays. It must be a feature of our education system, teaching children to work collaboratively. Will no-one will make a decision on their own nowadays? We start the job with who we assume is the ‘client’, they send us ‘final text’, accept the visuals and we produce the finished artwork. We are told they are “just going to show their colleagues”, before returning with a whole new ball game.

The final text apparently wasn’t and “can we just slip in these four extra pages of A4″ (into a DL leaflet usually). The images they sent aren’t correct and one of their friends doesn’t like the pink corporate colour we were told we had to use. Worst still, they send something they’ve knocked-up in Office which they want us to recreate; complete with centred Times bold titles, ‘friendly’ Comic Sans body text and clipart bullet points.

Creating everything digitally should have been a time-saver but because people use word processors, they assume that it is just as easy to make changes to a piece of design. No matter if you just spent 4 hours shoe-horning text into place to get all the baselines aligning across the spread. Or, the PDF you sent as a low resolution visual gets forwarded to the printer who happily runs out a million, full-colour copies with 72dpi images pixelated to destruction.

Apple to the rescue

Far be it for an Apple fanboy to blab on about the maker of his computers… but it looks like they may have a solution to proofing problems. The next version of iChat, Apple’s Instant Messaging client, will have iChat Theater here. With it we will be able to work collaboratively, holding a conversation with our client while editing their document. They will be able to watch us in realtime without leaving their desk.

To a certain extent this can be done by turning a free-standing web cam towards the computer screen but Apple’s move to build cameras into the monitor has taken this away. Plus, many of our clients go into a flappy-handed tizzy at the thought of setting-up something new. They want the IT department to do it for them. iChat is so simple that we can talk them through completing three one-line address boxes.

Once iChat Theater is incorporated into applications, audio and video can be presented during an iChat cenference. Editing changes will be easy-peasy, our client will see their addition of a ‘word or two’ (as if it were) throws the whole document out and they will have to cut the crud elsewhere. Their damage will be right in front of them, as will the solutions we try before finding a work-around.

The one problem is that iChat Theater will only work with Cocoa applications and QuarkXPress is not one of these. This could be the spur for Quark to rewrite XPress if Adobe makes further in-roads into Quark’s one-time near monopoly. But then again, Adobe’s CS3 applications are hugely expensive, here, even for upgrades…

ITPro and others have been crowing here about a supposed Mac vulnerability demonstrated at the CanSecWest conference. Get your facts right pur-lease.

There are a number of points the reporters missed out which rather change the whole scenario. Not the least that the cracking attempt was sponsored by Microsoft whose fanboys delighted in mis-reporting the supposed Mac hack.

So what exactly happened?
Much of the events have been kept secret but Engadget’s report here is more revealing than most, the comments following it tell the true story.

On the first day, a pair of MacBook Pros were set up with the competition being to access one remotely, get into the Users folder, open a file and act on its instructions. No-one managed to even crack into the Mac for the whole 24 hours. This was with just the simple on-board firewalls and security at factory defaults. Pretty much as most Mac users still use since they took delivery of their computers.

As the competition was to prove that Mac OS is as vulnerable as Windows, this rather defeated the aim, so the rules were changed. On the second day they made it easier. Hackers had to give a URL to the adjudicators who set the Mac to go automatically to the URL where the dirty deed was done.

Ah ha! So the Mac was vulnerable.
Well, actually no. What the URL used was an outdated Java routine that relied on an old browser plug-in. So the Mac itself wasn’t cracked. It withstood all attempts for 24 hours and even the “successful” hacker admitted it took them 9 hours on the second day. The item cracked was a third party plug-in, nothing to do with the Mac or its operating system which was never accessed. The winner only managed to access a user-level file once the door to the Mac had been left open.

Don’t forget there were two Macs in this competition.
The second Mac was set up the same as the first but with a slight change in the rules. To win, contestants needed to follow instructions in the file system root. To access this the hacker would have to gain administration and root-level privileges. Now that would have been something for Microsoft to crow about. Sadly for them, the bog standard Mac, running bog standard software at default settings repelled all attempts.

Macs by default, do not run at root level, it is actually quite a palaver to set up a root account. To install software or make changes to the operating system, Macs require an administrator password which gives temporary root access. Windows, on the other hand, does run at super user level by default (afaik) so once a hacker has opened it up, the whole computer is theirs. Vista has the “improvement” with its infamous warnings as depicted here.

Mac Users have got used to seeing strange downloads automatically appearing when they go to some websites. The resulting .exe files mean nothing to the Mac and are usually the result of going to sites where a message suddenly appears telling you your computer is vulnerable to spyware and would you like it to check things out for you. The download starts without permission but that’s all. On a PC it would probably join the growing malware, worms and viruses on unprotected computers.

But that’s old news.

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UPDATE
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Latest reports say it is a QuickTime vulnerability that allows a client-side Java error to execute arbitrary code when a Java-enabled browser visits a malicious website. Solution – turn off Java support (not Javascript) for peace of mind. And the vulnerability affects Vista too. More here.

Why does technology fail exactly when you need it most? Our laptop refused to wake from sleep. Loads of power in it, caps lock lights up, just no signs of life. We spent a week pressing it’s buttons every now and again in case some magic cured it, then reluctantly accepted that seven years is a good life span and it is time to move on.

Last Friday was spent playing with…err…researching new laptops. A MacBook came home and appears to be twice as powerful as our desktop computers, MP4 compression on the MacBook is twice as quick as on our G5’s and makes smaller files too. Now where does one obtain a copy of Windows to try the dual boot capacity?

Still no go - or comeback
Being UK born and bred over half a century ago, there must be a 50 years of our history stored in computer systems. All those bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, 20 years of education and professional qualifications, not to mention our regular appearances in the media. One would think it would be easy to get a passport to go on a day trip to France. This is, of course, not to get in or out of France but to return home to the UK. Last year I even passed in-depth Police checks and Special Branch cleared us when we supplied the computer networks for Labour’s Millennium conference. I’m the local Neighbourhood Watch man, dammit.

All this is useless according to the British Passport Office who rejected my application because my referee owns his company rather than simply manages it. The exact same referee who was perfectly acceptable for my partner’s application, dealt with by a different civil servant.

Get lost
This is where technology failed again. All that information tracks my life from birth to the present day. Carry a mobile phone and you can be positioned within a few metres but need a referee for a passport and be told to get lost. One has to know the right people for at least two years: a Merchant Navy officer, school teacher, publican, social worker or bank manager to name just a few. The sea may be at the end of the road but there’s no harbour, formal education ended decades ago, until smoking is banned we don’t frequent pubs and they don’t count the vineyard owners we know. I was a social worker but gave that up in the 1980’s and I’ve never met my bank manager. It looked as though my passport would be refused on the grounds I don’t mix in the right circles.

A new application form will be sent to the Passport Office today, a friend who is a GP’s Practice Manager counter-signed the form. He is the closest I can get to the GP the Passport form requests. In any case, a GP would probably charge £200 for their autograph. Nice work if you can get it on top of last year’s 25% pay rise of an already fat salary, plus no more evenings and weekends work.

Maybe I’d better stop sucking lemons or I’ll never get to Amalfi.

Silverlight was shown to the public for the first time at the recent Las Vegas National Association of Broadcasters show. Microsoft are aiming the new browser plug-in squarely at Adobe’s Flash and claim its interactive Web capabilities and streaming video will be superior even to QuickTime’s.

Instead of using special new magic to display vector-based graphics, text, animations and video, Silverlight will integrate with existing tools such as Apache, JavaScript and XHTML. A Windows-only creation application, Expression, will be released in June as an alternative to Adobe’s Creative Suite CS3. The preview release is available here.

Not to be left out…

Meanwhile, Adobe gave the National Association of Broadcasters a sneak peek at their plans for cross-platform authoring and streaming products. Including Adobe Media Player designed to show Flash movies in full-screen as high-quality, along with viewer ratings, on-demand streaming, progressive downloads and protected download and play - or DRM in other words. Adobe see the “download and carry” ability as important for advertisers and media companies because they will have a way to share media and make money at the same time. Adobe’s Media Player will be in direct competition with QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player

In the past I was never really a fan of Flash. Its plug-ins were often buggy and continually upgraded. The processing power needed was more than some of my elderly computers liked and Flashed websites can be awkward and difficult to use. Take Habitat’s web site here as a good example of bad Flash. But recently Flash has grown up and even sites such as YouTube deliver content by Flash.

Winner takes all or nothing

This isn’t a matter of who will win, Flash or Silverlight, the problem is that neither Microsoft or Adobe have shown commitment to maintaining cross-platform parity of features. Microsoft’s track record is littered with abandoned projects: Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and VisualBasic, for example. There is still no decent Mac Outlook Client and even Office, much touted as the best of breed, is a pile of half-baked tools that can absorb huge chunks of time fruitlessly trying to achieve simple tasks. And that’s on both platforms.

Adobe also have a certain history in this department, Acrobat for the Mac hasn’t been feature-matching the Windows version for some years.

On balance I’d take Adobe over the convicted monopolist, Microsoft, any day of the week. They at least don’t try to “borrow” others work like Microsoft did for their VC-1 codec only to be found out when they submitted it as a standard. Then it was discovered that 16 different companies all had a part in VC-1, with 125 separate patents and only two belonging to Microsoft.

I don’t think I’ll buy an Apple TV because they aren’t up to the job… yet.

Inside the Apple TV is a full blown Mac running a cut-down version of MacOSX 10.4.7. Its processor doesn’t have to do much work so is under-clocked to save power. Alongside is 256MB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 video card with 64MB of video RAM, plus a 40GB hard disk. Broadcom supply the 802.11n wireless card.

The GeForce card is actually better than ones found in Macbooks and Minis and does most of the Apple TV’s work, leaving the CPU to idle in power saving mode. It supports 1280×720 resolution which can be scaled up to 1920×1080 or down to 720×480.

Future upgrades
There has been much speculation about whether the Apple TV will be upgraded. The internals would appear to be far more capable than their current achievements. It may be that Apple intend to release more features via software upgrades. PowerMax, here are already offering Apple TV’s complete with upgraded 120GB hard drives for $449. The Apple TV’s USB port is interesting as well, currently having no apparent role for end-users.

However…
While I’m typing this I’ve got the Sci-Fi channel on. Not the one offered by Sky or cable TV suppliers but the full-blown US channel coming straight from a Slingbox in Chicago. I can control the Slingbox as if in the same room and the digital remote never runs out of batteries. Because of the time-zone differences my use doesn’t clash with my son’s - its owner - the only problem might come when his UK-based sister and I want to watch different channels. An interesting point arising from this is that if we never watch UK TV, do we need a UK TV licence?

We have had an EyeTV digital TV receiver/recorder for many years. To get a recording from EyeTV to play on the Apple TV they have to be converted. Even on fast Macs running as a mini cluster, see here, it can take longer to convert than to record them in the first place.

Also in our collection are movies in a variety of formats, many of which need specific codecs or software to play them. The Apple TV has only a limited range available and in any case, playing them via the iTunes interface is extremely limiting. The movies are currently stored on a separate hard disk or DVDs.

The solution
The Apple TV is probably the best value Unix computer on the market but for a little more I can buy a used Mac (or PC) laptop. Connect that to our existing TV and EyeTV box and we will have a far more capable and upgradable Apple TV alternative. It will access all our movies and iTunes library as well as Internet- based services such as accessing US TV via Slingbox. All existing and any future music or video formats will almost certainly play and the laptop will be infinitely upgradable.

The Mac/TV connection will take one lead, the same lead I’d have to supply for an Apple TV which doesn’t come with any. Mac OS X sorts out all the rest of the business, resolution and so on. Don’t ask me how, it just does, as if by magic, which I suspect it might actually be. A sort of tautological digital prestidigitation.

And so the Apple TV Extreme is born.

This looks like a job for The European Commission. They may be examining Apple’s pricing structure over the few pence difference between Euro and British iTunes stores but what about the massive con Adobe are working?
The prices charged for the Adobe CS3 Master Collection (ie. the full package), according to Amazon’s, US, British and German stores, varies by over a thousand dollars. The table below shows the prices at each store with their respective Dollar/Euro/Pound conversions. It is far cheaper to buy in America than Britain even though they are the same software. The German version presumably had extra work on the language but is still cheaper than buying a copy from Amazon UK.

The sting
Not only that, Adobe have ventured down the path often taken by Microsoft, by making a whole basket full of different versions. All at different prices and containing applications which may be largely unused. There is no ‘pick and mix’ allowing a buyer to choose which parts to upgrade. For example, I don’t need Photoshop CS3 but do want inDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat. I’d like to get Dreamweaver and Flash as well but maybe at a later stage. I have to decide between a bunch of pre-arranged bundles or buy separates at even higher prices.
The solution
Alternatively, I have an account with Amazon US store where they will accept my UK credit card but only ship to a US address. That’s okay because I just get it sent to a forwarding address and pay the small extra cost of delivery to the UK.
And to think I thought Quark were money grabbers… their latest upgrade even included some very nice new tools in the form of the ALAP XPert Tools, now owned by Quark. Shame they don’t rewrite XPress from the ground up, there must be code inside that dates from the 1980’s.

When Apple released the first G5 Macs in 2003, using the IBM Power 4 CPU’s, aka PPC G5, the first machines were bagged by Virginia Tech to build the world’s third fastest supercomputer running at 10.28 teraflops. We’ve got the same running here even as I type and it’s really easy to set up. Maybe not so fast because we are only using 2 Macs compared with their 1100.
How to make your cluster
Mac OS X Tiger has Xgrid built in already. Take a look in the Sharing Preference Pane and you’ll see it in the list. Unlike adding graphics to Blog columns in ITPro, it’s easy-peasy to set up: a tick box, a scrolling list and a text field. If you use the Mac’s firewall, a few ports will need opening as well, by typing in four numbers. And that’s it. Plus more than one Mac networked together and applications to make use of your new mini super computer.
For this, I’ve used Visualhub, an excellent little video converter that’s cheap and faster than Quicktime Pro as well as having more codecs built in. It is currently compressing a couple of movies I recorded with EyeTV, about 5GB, and converting them to MP4 with H.264 encoding at “Go Nuts” quality.


Using all our power
As the little CPU gauge on both machines show, Visualhub is utilising the entire processing power of our two main Macs, giving me an effective 4.3 GHz twin processor Mac. Very sweet it is too, especially as the Unix Nice facility – which allocates processor use – is throttled back so regular use of either Mac is virtually unaffected. Both machines are running at 70% CPU use for nice with 20% for the System and the remaining 10% for other tasks, unless they need more. Then Nice immediately releases more CPU time. Both Macs are also currently running QuarkXPress, Photoshop, Mail, Safari and various other applications, most of which are at idle.

Administering Xgrid
The final tool used, but not necessary, is the Xgrid Admin application available free from Apple. This shows all connected machines, jobs running and the overview, with a few more tools which have been unnecessary so far.

Never enough Macs when you need them
Next thing to add are more Macs and more applications written to take into account the speed offered by a mini cluster. I would love to play with, say, an office full of Macs, all running together.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I haven’t seen anything about building clusters with Vista.