Well the Eye-Fi cards promise to have a better solution for copying photos: these cards can transfer your digital snaps wirelessly. Yep – despite being the same size as a normal SD card, an Eye-Fi card can connect to your computer over a wifi network. Let’s take a closer look at the Eye-Fi Pro | X2 – their latest and greatest.

Getting started

You need to download special Eye-Fi software for the initial setup. You connect your Eye-Fi card to the supplied USB adapter and configure it to connect to your existing wireless network, or you can either have it create its own ad-hoc network for when you’re on the move.

Then, just pop the card into your camera and away you go.

How to use the Eye-Fi card

The Eye-Fi card works just like any other fast SD card. Pop it in your camera, take pictures (RAW or JPEG or both) and movies – that’s it.

Once your camera has been on a few seconds, the Eye-Fi card will power up its wireless feature and look for your existing network. Once connected, the special Eye-Fi software on your computer will copy the photos over the air onto your PC or Mac.

If you haven’t got a wireless network nearby, the card can alternatively create its own wireless network. You connect to this network (named something like “Eye-Fi 132456″) and then the copying magic starts.

Performance

Despite having pretty impressive wireless performance, it will take a bit longer to copy the huge files produced by today’s modern cameras over wifi than it would over a USB card reader. However, you can optionally choose to only copy your JPEG images, leaving your RAW copies on the card ready to by copied over USB later.

The software is an Adobe Air app, so it isn’t the best Mac app I’ve ever seen, but overall it isn’t too bad. Once you have your card configured, you won’t need to use it too much anyway. Kudos to Eye-Fi for having a cross-platform solution for us Mac users that works.

Other handy tricks

Geotagging

Certain Eye-Fi cards can also make use of the wireless chip inside to geo-tag your photos. They do this by looking at nearby wifi networks. These are later matched by the Eye-Fi software to a database that knows the geographical location of tonnes of wifi networks around the world and uses that to give your photos a rough geographical location.
It’s not perfect, but it’s usually good enough to help you figure out which side of town you took a particular photo.

Endless Memory

Need to take a ton of pictures? No problem! If you’re on a wifi network, your Eye-Fi card will shove pics over to your computer and free up storage for new pictures, which means you’ll never run out of storage. This is only useful for certain scenarios, but if you need to take a lot of pictures and don’t want to have to switch cards it might come in useful.

Picture uploads

I didn’t test this feature, but Eye-Fi also offers an online storage and sync option, that allows you to share pictures with friends or between devices.

iPad app

One other great feature is the fact that you can use the Eye-Fi card with the free companion iPad app, allowing you to use your iPad as a giant photo preview screen: snap a shot, wait 2 seconds and it shows up on the iPad. I used this feature to turn my iPad and a camera with an Eye-Fi card into a rudimentary homemade wedding photo booth.

Conclusion

If you just need to grab a few photos quickly, the Eye-Fi a great solution. I could see it being particularly useful in scenarios where you’re frequently taking a small number of shots and need to quickly preview them on a larger screen.

The geo-tagging feature is also quite nice and a good alternative to using geo-tagged iPhone pictures as a reference.

The Eye-Fi Pro | X2 does exactly what it claims. The wireless performance is pretty good and it can be a huge timesaver if you often need to preview your pictures in between shots.

Recommended

Waterfield bags are designed to be very tough (not surprising as the company was founded by a former bicycle messenger), so I was keen to take a closer look at the Waterfield Cargo bag.

Features

The Waterfield Cargo looks like fairly typical messenger-style bag at first. It has a shoulder strap, front flap and a buckle. But there are ton of nifty design touches that make the bag very practical in everyday use:

• The top zip makes it easy to get stuff from the main compartment without lifting up the main flap
• The interior fabric is a bright colour, that makes it easy to find things inside
• The back pocket is great for your iPad or a folder with papers

Design

This bag looks pretty good, but the design isn’t the main reason you’d buy this bag. It’s a very functional design and it’s“tidy” enough to take into any office, without looking too corporate.

You can also customise the look quite a bit by choosing various trim and colour options.

Quality and Durability

Waterfield state that the bag was inspired by ruggedized bike messenger accessories and it certainly feels every bit as durable as its heritage. The nylon fabric is extremely tough and feels much more durable than the fabrics used on similar products from other well-known manufacturer’s bags I’ve owned.

This is how much I can easily fit in the Waterfield Cargo:

Contents of my bag

As I mentioned at the outset, I plan on commuting by bike quite a bit with this bag, so I want something that can be strapped to the back of a bike rack and withstand a bit of wear and tear. So far, the Waterfield Cargo has been more than up to the challenge: Despite being bumped around on the back of a bike for several weeks, kicked around on the floor of the subway and dragged halfway across Malaysia on my honeymoon, it still looks like new. Any dirt or muck you get on the bag easily brushes off, and all the seams and zips are rock solid.

Bonus Round

There’s a lot to like about this bag, but here are a few extra tidbits I particularly like:

• The strap can easily being adjusted just by lifting an adjustment flap at the side, but it doesn’t accidently lift or slip
• Underneath the front flap are two slim pockets that are almost hidden – perfect for storing your passport or other valuables somewhere hard to access while travelling.
• The interior pockets don’t get in your way, so you can use the space inside the bag to the fullest.
• If you do need extra compartments, the Sleevecase accessory is perfect for documents and laptops (it has two compartments, perfect for a MacBook and iPad), while the Cablepouch is great for all your accessories and cables:

Conclusion

At $189, the Waterfield Cargo is certainly one of the more expensive laptop bags out there. But this Waterfield bag, which was handmade in San Francisco, is extremely well made with high-quality materials used throughout, so I’d argue that the price is more than justified. If you’ve got a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air you’re carrying around, it’s worth investing in a good bag to protect it.

Unlike other messenger bags that I’ve owned, that have all started to fall apart at the seams after a few months of owning them, this bag feels as though it will give me a good few years of use.

The attention to detail and everyday practicality is very obvious — someone really thought about every aspect of this bag while designing it – and it is very versatile, equally useful as a travel bag for longer journeys or as a daily bag for the office.

Overall, highly recommended.

There are a number of utilities available that make it easier to launch apps in a specific language, however they all usually require a number of extra clicks and typically only work with apps in your Applications folder — making it cumbersome to open development builds that aren’t installed there.

I’m a big fan of the keyboard launcher tool Alfred and was thrilled to see that the developer recently added extension support for Alfred Powerpack users (at just £12 / $19 the Powerpack is a steal – highly recommended).

I’ve written a collection of Alfred extensions (basically shell scripts) that will allow you to quickly open an app in the language of your choice:

Simply type the application name, choose the build of version you want to launch, hit the action key and then type the language. Although this may sound like a lot of steps, in practise it’s very easy and fast:

You can download the extensions here, I hope someone else might find them useful as well. Note that you’ll need the Alfred Powerpack to use extensions (but if you use Alfred on a regular basis, I think it’s worth buying just to support continued development).

Download “Open in Language…”

If you have any comments or suggestions or just want to let me know how you’re using this, please feel free to get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!

So ignore the workaround below, update GarageBand and you’ll be all set.

At the time of writing (March 2011), the Mac version of GarageBand can’t open files created with the iPad version. Instead, you’ll get an error message and the file won’t open. This is presumably because the iPad version has some features, instruments and loops not yet available in the Mac version.

Apple has promised an update, but for the time being, I’ve found this workaround.

Before you  try this, let me stress that it’s a workaround with issues: your files won’t open perfectly, but at least you’ll be able to get some of your project onto your Mac. However, please do make sure you make a copy of your project file first.

The project on my iPad

Can't be opened on a Mac

First, copy the project file onto your Mac with iTunes. Then, right-click the project file and choose “show Package contents”. Find the “projectdata” file and open it, preferably with the Plist Editor, but a plain-text editor should work as well in a pinch.

Look a the “version” key with the value “45000” under “$top“.  Change that value to “40000” and save the file.

Now, when you open it with GarageBand, you’ll receive a warning (as opposed to the earlier ‘error’ message), but you should be able to open the file, albeit with some errors and warnings.

Just ignore the warnings

Success

Note: There’s a reason Apple changed the version number and you’ll find a lot of things won’t work (e.g. certain Apple Loops and instruments will be missing – note the empty drum track in my screenshot). But if you just want to get the basic project information and the bits you played off your iPad onto your Mac, it’s worth a shot.

Presumably Apple will soon be releasing an update for GarageBand on the Mac, so hopefully this hacky workaround won’t be necessary much longer. If you’re reading this long after March 2011, make sure you have all GarageBand updates first.

Sparrow first caught a lot of attention last year when the initial public beta was released. I have to admit, I was quite skeptical after a first look: it seemed like a weird rip-off of Tweetie for Mac combined with everything I disliked about the Gmail web interface.

But the final 1.0 release has really won me over. Sparrow gets rid of the visual clutter caused by lists of folders, unread count badges etc. and puts your email front and center.

Thanks to its robust support for Gmail’s ‘labels that kind of work like folders’ system, label-fans as well as users that prefer a more traditional organization with folders will feel right at home.

The quick reply feature shows a small reply box just above a message, instead of opening a new window. By encouraging users to bang out quick one and two line replies, I found myself clearing emails from my inbox faster and getting distractions out of the way.
   

I currently use Sparrow for all of my private and blog emails, however for work emails I currently still rely on Mail.app. Part of the reason that Sparrow works so well is probably because so much of the heavy lifting is taken care of by Gmail: It has all my filters, labels, aliases all set up. It’ll be interesting to see how well Sparrow fares with regular IMAP accounts that require the email client app to offer more in terms of email management.

##Likes
- Clean, no-fuss interface
- Encourages quick, immediate replies
- Growl integration
- Support for multiple Gmail aliases

##Caveats
- Only supports Gmail accounts at the moment (although full IMAP support is promised for March)
- “Missing” features such as automatic image resizing, client-side filtering, multiple signatures, etc. (could also be seen as a feature)

##Conclusion
If you’re looking for a full-featured, kitchen-sink type email client, Sparrow probably isn’t for you. But if you want something to use with Gmail, that gets out of the way and lets you get your inbox cleaned up, Sparrow is definitely worth checking out!

The long-rumoured Mac App Store has finally been announced and developers have started to post their reactions and opinions. So far, everyone seems cautiously optimistic and despite some concerns and understandable misgivings about handing over 30% of application revenue to Apple, there have only been a few developers who have categorically rejected the Mac App Store.

So how will the Mac App Store really impact developers? The answer depends on what type of developer you’re talking to and what kind of products they sell. These three groups come to mind:

The lone Mac Developer

These guys are going to love the App Store. Until now, they’ve had to take care of their own marketing, sales, licensing, online store, support, etc, all in addition to writing their apps. Being on the App Store won’t magically make these additional jobs go away, but it remove some of pressure to do all of these simultaneously.

Write an app, upload it to the App Store and you’ll be able to start selling it immediately – no credit card handling, license processing, marketing effort required.

Verdict: The App Store is a good thing for independent Mac developers and will allow them to focus on their core development activities.

Mid-sized Software Companies

There aren’t many mid-sized companies out there that focus exclusively on making Macintosh software, but there are more than you might think. OmniGroup, RealMacSoftware, Rogue Amoeba, equinux, Panic… the list is fairly long and has bee steadily growing these last few years. These companies typically make 5-10 software titles and have dedicated staff for design, marketing, sales, support and other activities.

Having dedicated staff to take care of all that stuff allows these companies to push out more products than a lone Mac developer could.

These companies may have previously relied on the traditional base of Mac users, but may have found it difficult to reach the growing number of switchers. These new Mac users don’t read Macworld, have never heard of TUAW and don’t normally buy software for their computer. But these new users have gotten into the habit of purchasing iOS apps from the App Store and are likely to continue that habit in the Mac App Store. So overall, the Mac App Store should allow all developers to reach a far larger potential audience.

The challenge for the mid-sized Mac software makers will be competing for attention alongside hundreds of smaller Mac developers. Brand recognition or positive reviews don’t matter as much in the App Store, where the all-important Top 25 lists dictate discoverability.

Verdict: The App Store will require many mid-sized developers to adjust their marketing and sales strategies. While they have typically mainly marketed their products to traditional Mac users, the App Store has a far greater variety of users that can’t be reached through traditional Macintosh marketing channels.

Software Giants

Only a few of these really spring to mind: Microsoft, Adobe and Filemaker and perhaps one or two other companies with more than 250 people working predominantly on Macintosh software.

These companies are large enough to get by without addressing the Mac App Store juggernaut and quite a few pundits have suggested they will ignore it entirely, as Apple’s policies are too restrictive.

However, I do have to question the reasoning to a certain degree: even if you have the distribution channel, brand recognition and products that your customers need, it still seems to make sense to make it as easy for customers to get your products as possible.

Apple clearly intends to sell iWork through the Mac App Store, so I don’t think Microsoft can afford to risk users ditching Office in favour of Apple’s alternative. I expect to see Microsoft selling standalone versions of all the Office apps on the App Store by next year.

Adobe will most likely not be able to sell their CS Suite of products without giving up their licensing and copy protection schemes. But it’s very likely we’ll see their consumer-orientated apps such as Photoshop Express and Lightroom on the App Store in the near future.

Verdict: Like the mid-sized Mac developers, large developers will have to adapt their sales and marketing strategies to the realities of the App Store. They may choose to ignore it, but given the reach the App Store will presumably have, they may not be able to ignore it for long.

A good thing?

The Mac App Store will finally allow Mac developers to sell their applications to the millions of new Mac switchers that they haven’t been able to reach via the traditional Mac software sales channels. But access to all of those new users will come at a price: The Mac App Store will attract thousands of iOS developers looking to make a quick buck and the App Store makes it fairly difficult for quality apps to get noticed. Any apps that fall outside of Apple’s rules will find it difficult to attract users used to the convenience of 1-click shopping and developers will also need to deal with Apple’s 30% cut and the price pressures that are common in the aggressive App Store market.

But the Mac App Store will get more users buying software, increasing the pie for everyone, which can ultimately only be a good thing.

I often find myself sharing screenshots with colleagues and friends. There are a ton of applications out there that will help you do this, but most of them rely on you taking a screenshot and dragging it to another application.

GrabBox is a free app that lets you share a screenshot whilst skipping that second step: just take a screenshot and it will automatically add it to your public Dropbox folder and creates a short url for you to share with friends. It puts that url on your clipboard so you can paste it right away.

Here’s a clip of GrabBox in action:

[video src="movies/GrabBox.mov" width="640" height="400" options="controls autobuffer" id="vid-1"]

What I love most is that I don’t need to change my workflow: I just hit the regular OS X keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot and GrabBox does the rest: snap, paste, done.

The ugly icon, and the fact that it runs in your Dock instead of your menubar are two minor gripes, but overall it’s highly recommended!

1. Go to http://me.com/activate
2. Choose “Apply to an existing account” and enter your code
   
   
3. Sign in with your Mobileme account name and password when prompted
   

And that’s it!

If you now go to your account page, you should see the new expiration date a year from now.

Q: I’ve got two weeks left on my account – should I renew now anyway?

A: Your new subscription’s year starts immediately and doesn’t count towards any time left on your last subscription. So if you have a while left before your subscription ends, wait until it’s almost expired.

Support the site and save a few bucks:

Purchase MobileMe (Individual) on Amazon.com

Purchase MobileMe (Family) on Amazon.com

Unfortunately, the password protection can cause other issues:

• Preview’s full-screen “Slideshow” view will display a blank screen (rdar: 7757682)
• Not all iOS apps can open encrypted PDFs (although iBooks and GoodReader have both recently been updated to support this feature)
• PDF Passwords aren’t saved – so you’ll need to look it up and enter it each time

But if you have the correct password and can open the PDF file, there’s a (slightly tricky) way to store a non-password protected copy for personal use. There are a few different ways you can do this, but after trying out several methods, I believe this is the easiest.User CarlRJ over at MacOSXHints.com came up with this great, single-line command that does the job nicely (it’s further down on OSXhints in a comment below the original hint).

Make sure you have a postscript-capable printer installed and configured. Then:

1. Open your PDF document using the required password
2. Go to System Preferences > Print & Fax, select “Open Print Queue” and pause your printer
3. Now go back to your PDF and print the document. Select “Add to Queue” when asked.
4. Next, open the Terminal and paste this command and enter your OS X account password when asked:

sudo -s "cd /var/spool/cups; /usr/sbin/chown -v `id -u`:`id -g` d* | xargs -I@ mv -iv @ ~/Desktop/nopassword_@.pdf"

All done! You should now see a copy of your document on your desktop that can be opened without requiring a password.

Please note: This hint is provided for educational purposes only.

I use the equinux TubeStick to watch TV (full disclosure: I work for equinux) so this tutorial was written for The Tube, but it’ll work with other software or online streaming sites as well.

Update:

My colleague has put together a small application that eliminates the need to use Garageband. Check it out for even easier Vuvuzela filtering.

Step 1: Install & Configure Soundflower

Download the free Soundflower utility from Google Code. This utility allows you to pass audio from all applications back into your system, allowing us to filter it using Garageband.

Once installed:

• Open System Preferences > Sound
• Select Output: Soundflower (2ch)
• Select Input: Soundflower (2ch)

Your audio will now be muted – don’t worry, this is normal.

Step 2: Install VuvuX

There are other ways to filter out the buzz of the Vuvuzela’s manually, but Prosoniq offer a free AU plugin that takes care of it for you. Download it, then drag it onto the ‘Components’ alias:

Step 3: Start filter with Garageband

Prosoniq suggest using their filter with Audio Hijack Pro, but if you’d like to save yourself $32, you can use Garageband which probably came free with your Mac.

Simply launch Garageband, create a new real instrument project and adjust these settings:

• Go to Garageband > Preferences > Audio/Midi and select Audio Input: Soundflower (2ch)
• Go to your real instrument track, select the Edit tab and click a blank slot to add a new effect
• Choose VuvuX from the drop down list and make sure it is turned on
• Switch back to the Browse tab, select Input Source: Soundflower (2ch) and turn on the Monitor

You should now hear audio again. Now fire up The Tube and you will notice that Vuvuzela’s are a fair bit quieter. Turn the filter on or off to really hear the difference. You can also click the filter in Garageband to manually adjust the level of noise reduction – be careful though, too much reduction will cause the commentary and other game sounds to sound distorted.

Any there you have it! Enjoy a vuvuzela-free World Cup!

Follow me on Twitter for further updates and tips!