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FEATURED SPECIAL | 07/17/09 – 07/24/09
This week we have great offer on a Small Dog Refurbished 4GB iPod nano 3G in silver. This is the square iPod nano that came out before the current rectangular version. The iPod nano 3G can play music, videos, podcasts, some games, and is compatible with the Nike+ Sport kit.
We’ve bundled it with an arm band and screen protecter so you can bring it out on runs or put it in your pocket without fear of scratching it up.
Small Dog’s Apple-certified technicians test and bring the product to current specifications. iPods carry a 90-day Small Dog Electronics limited warranty come complete with all accessories (unless otherwise noted).
What's There to Growl About?
Last week, I briefly mentioned “Growl, and how awesome I think it is.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/?c=kb628
Growl has been around for a while now, and if you haven’t heard of it, here it is in a nutshell: Growl is a notification system for OS X that lets supported apps give you pop up notifications. It can be very handy–the first time I ever heard about it was when I downloaded “Adium”:http://adium.im/ back in 2004.
I still use Adium today, and the notifications are more useful now than they ever have been because I use a 30″ display attached to my MacBook Pro in extended desktop mode (sigh… life is hard). Seriously though, it’s great to see a notification pop up on my main screen because I keep all my chat windows on the screen of the MacBook Pro.
Why use Growl? In their own words:
*Control*
Growl offers you complete control over which notifications are shown and how they are displayed. You will not receive any notifications that you do not want, because you can easily turn notifications (specific ones or all of them) off.*Consistency*
Growl centralizes all your notification preferences into its preference pane – you can control them all from one place, and you know exactly how they are going to behave.*Powerful*
Growl is very flexible. Notifications can be emailed to you or spoken instead of displayed on the screen.*Ease of use*
When you start up a Growl-enabled application, it will “just work.” Your apps can start displaying notifications right away.I can’t argue with any of those. Plus, Growl is pretty seamless. All you need to do is install it once, and it will show up in your System Preferences pane. From there on out, it will work with any other supported application you choose to install.
It is compatible with many popular apps, such as Adium, Skype, VLC, Transmit, NetNewsWire and more.
While it may seem like just one more thing you don’t need, I see it as a valuable plug-in for OS X that will just keep getting better. Plus, it has been rated 4 (and higher) out of 5 by Macworld, MacUpdate and VersionTracker. Try it!
“Download Growl.”:http://growl.info/index.php
“See the full list of supported applications.”:http://growl.info/applications.php
“View the notification styles archive.”:http://growl.info/styles.php*Next week: Prowl, a companion to Growl for your iPhone.*
I am heading out (probably in the rain) on my annual summer motorcycle trip. This year we decided to head south in search of sun and warmth. We will be heading for Philly where we will check in with our friends (and fellow Apple Specialist) Springboard Media, watch the Cubs beat the Phillies and then head south on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Once we get to the end of the parkway, we will have to visit one of the most famous motorcycle roads in the USA–Route 129, also known as Deal’s Gap or the Tail of the Dragon which has 318 curves in 11 miles. We will then head to Athens, GA to visit another Apple Specialist–PeachMac. Then it is diagonal meandering through Alabama and Mississippi to Natchez where we will head back north on the Nashville/Natchez trace.
In Nashville, we’ll check out Apple Specialist, MacAuthority, and then we’ll figure out how we want to ride back to Vermont–hopefully warmed up and well-vacationed. Ed and Kali will keep you informed here in Kibbles while I am gone.
Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes; we REALLY appreciate your business. We know that it is you, our loyal customers, that pay our wages!
Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali & Ed_LaCie 1TB Neil Poulton Hard Drive Review
Do you have a massive media collection clogging your Mac’s internal hard drive, and are looking to free up some space? The Neil Poulton designed Lacie 1TB Hard Drive may be your perfect solution. Featuring a high speed USB 2.0 connection and a tremendous amount of space, this external drive is a great value.
The drive includes everything you need to get started to either back up your data, or store your extra files. All cables are included, and all the drive needs to operate is a spare AC outlet and a free USB port on your Mac. Transfer speeds were surprisingly fast and consistent due to the 7200 RPM speed of the drive. The drive’s design is very simple, and it sits nicely on top of a desk or in a media cabinet.
I nicknamed mine “Monolith” after the similarly designed black rectangle in Kubrick’s 2001. I use this hard drive on a daily basis and have nothing but the best to say about it. My only complaint is that the blue access LED can get annoying when using the drive in a dark room for extended periods of time.
“Click here to see the LaCie 1TB Neil Poulton Hard Drive, on sale for only $109.99!”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/73623
_Dear Friends,_
The trees are turning color and we will soon see piles of leaves (Whoa, wait a minute–this is still July!). It sure seems like September here in the Green Mountains with cloudy days, lots of rain and very cool temperatures. My poor vegetable garden is so sun-starved that the plants think it is still June. I’m thinking of planting some more spinach because we just haven’t had more than a couple of days of summer this year.
Rebecca, Joyce and I went to the town development review board this week to present Rebecca’s plan for a dog paddock out in our field. We needed a permit to build this fenced in area for the dogs with an awning for shade. We have a lot of dogs here and when an employee is busy or has to go to a meeting, we felt it would be nice during the summer if there was a safe place where the dogs could hang out and play. We were warmly received at the meeting and it looks good for our permit.
Our team is putting together some amazing Mac-to-School bundles for the coming weeks, but we are featuring the ultimate upgrade bundle right now: the “Mac Box Set (iWork ’09, iLife ’09 and Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard) bundled with a 500GB Time Capsule.”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag19188/ This ultimate upgrade bundle is only $344.99 with free shipping, too!
If you have not upgraded to Leopard, this is truly the best value on moving up to the most powerful operating system available. You get the latest versions of iWork and iLife, the latest version of Mac OS X (Leopard) and a Time Capsule, which not only is a powerful wireless AirPort access point, but a 500GB wireless back-up device that works with Leopard’s Time Machine automatic back-up utility. You ARE backing up, aren’t you? You cannot fake back-ups and living without a safety net in this digital age is just asking for trouble.
The wildlife seems to be enjoying the cool rainy weather. My blueberries will be ready in a couple of weeks and with the black bears hanging out near my house, I am going to have to work to get to the berries before the birds and bears. My neighbor had a big black bear on her porch a couple days ago, she said it was over 6 feet tall. I saw her cub crossing the road by my house as I was riding my motorcycle down the hill, too.
Foxes are also hanging out near my place. We spotted a fox and some kits right between my house and my neighbor’s house. The other morning the dogs and I were awakened by what sounded a bit like barking in my yard. I never saw what it was but Kerry said it must have been the bear cubs. Sure enough, after she sent me some sound files I recognized the sound as a cub!
Congratulations to Lucie who became an official US citizen last week!
SOAPBOX: Not Another Health Care Soapbox!
*START SOAPBOX*
Yes, I can’t help it. I noticed that there are now TV commercials from special interest groups that are once again trying to scare people about health care reform. President Obama is correct in saying that without real health care reform there cannot be a true economic recovery. While the car companies may have failed because they were making the wrong cars, they also had the enormous burden of health care for their current and retired employees. So great was this burden that health care expense represented more in the price of a car than steel.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was passed unanimously by the UN stated that health care was a basic human right:
__Article 25.__
__(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.__
__(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.__I truly believe that health care is a basic human right. Of the 27 industrialized nations in the world, 26 provide universal health care for its citizens. The one that does not? Yes, that’s right, the USA. While we have the most expensive health care system in the world, we lag behind other countries in areas such as infant mortality, breast cancer screening, childhood leukemia and heart attack survival rates.
We pay over twice what other countries with universal health care pay and yet, we do not get our money’s worth. Worse yet, millions have no insurance or coverage in our country and many millions more are “under insured.” These under insured are often ignored in the system. The natural result of the rapidly escalating cost of health insurance is the flight to very high deductible plans or health care savings accounts, both of which provide a disincentive to seek preventative care and screenings.
We are setting ourselves up for a more costly health care time bomb when unscreened individuals discover the hard way that they have diabetes, high blood pressure or other chronic diseases.
The payer of last resort has always been employee-sponsored health insurance. Our surveys show that this fragile leg of the system we call health care in our country is crumbling as employers drop coverage, move more costs to their employees or go to very high deductibles and co-pays.
This has been a slow train coming for decades. The rate of increase of health insurance has made employer-sponsored health care unsustainable. When I first started in business, I could buy health insurance for a family for about $1500; now it costs $15,000. No longer are decisions about hiring new employees solely made by opportunity and business plans–if you are an employer that does the right thing by providing this benefit for your workers, you must also consider the astronomical cost of health insurance.
These employers are also put between a rock and a hard place as they have a competitive disadvantage in bidding for business when providing this benefit is voluntary and the competitor has a lower overhead structure by not providing health insurance to their employees in the race to the bottom.
This is why I am an advocate for a publicly-financed universal health care system. You may call that a “single-payer” system, but I really do not care if there is one payer or ten payers–I want the burden of health care lifted from employers and recognized as the “common good” that it truly is. I want us to put the sentiment that our country voted for in the UN into law–access to health care is a human right!
*END SOAPBOX*