Exclusive Bracket Contest: Happening Now until 3/28

With the reintroduction of the iPad w/Retina display, we’re putting the Hammerhead Folio for iPad 4 on special!

When you purchase the Folio, we’ll throw in a *free Cleaning Cloth and Pen Stylus.* *Save $20!* for the next week!

_Dear Friends,_

The brackets are set and March Madness is underway. To the chagrin of all the Miami Heat fans down here, the Celtics beat the Heat for the 2nd time this year on Tuesday. I filled out my brackets and have my favorite underdog, Gonzaga, going all the way! Who knows, maybe I’ll win that billion bucks that Warren Buffet and Yahoo have put up for their bracket contest.

Of course, on the other end of the scale is our own sorta bracket contest. It is worth signing up online or in the stores because you might win something! (Well, at least the odds are a whole lot greater.) Fill out your final four teams and the subsequent winners of those games in any of our stores, and you could win a $400 Small Dog gift card! Get all of the details at “*Smalldog.com/marchmayhem.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/marchmayhem

We have brought the “*Sonos*”:http://www.sonos.com line of audio equipment to our stores and I will be setting up the house down here in Key West as a demo of the gear. This is a great complement to some of the other home automation products we are testing out. Sonos makes some fantastic speaker systems that integrate with your Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc. to give you great sound in any room.

One of the great features of Sonos is that it allows each speaker to play its own music from any of the Sonos music sources. For example, if you want Spotify on in the bedroom, but someone else wants to listen to a podcast in the office, it’s no problem. Or, create a house filled with sound by controlling them all at once with the same source. This is great for families and parties, and Sonos has a great setup for TVs and home theatre.

I have been trying to identify the trees, plants, and shrubs in my yard down here, but haven’t found a great app for that yet. We have a customer who runs a nursery here, so we are going to take clippings up to see if he can help. Has anyone seen a good app that identifies plants? Taylor suggested that I use Google and showed me how you can take a picture in Google search and it will try to identify objects. That is pretty cool, but it does not work well with plants, apparently. However, it’s a great idea for an app that could be used to identify plants, pests or other objects.

It is still cold in Vermont and I keep hearing of more ice and snow, so this week’s special is the Chill special! I am putting together two great portable music products by Chill Pill Audio. First up: Chill Pill mobile speakers in black for the ultimate in compact, big sound. We will also send you a Chill Box in your choice of color for Bluetooth wireless sound and conference call capability. To complete the deal, we will send you two Chill Pill 12-watt dual USB chargers so all your devices can be fully charged up for that next camping trip or journey to the beach.

This is a *$170 value* and for Kibbles & Bytes readers it is yours for *only $99!* “*Get the Chill deal here!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001323

I was at the saloon across the street from Small Dog here in Key West, coincidentally called Don’s Place, and it was funny to see a lot of dogs in the place. That included Roxie, a Whippet, who liked to get up on the bar and walk from customer to customer.

These guys keep an eye on our store when we are closed and send customers over all the time. (So much so that we are considering adding an entry for “Don’s Place” to our “Where did you hear about us” tool in our retail store!)

Get your brackets ready for March Madness and be sure to check out our March Mayhem specials, too!

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali & Stephanie_

Recently, after more than a year of research and tiny prototypes, I put together a “mini” 50-watt photovoltaic power system. My intent is to run my computer system off of it. At the heart of the system is a 34 amp-hour AGM lead acid battery. That’s a bit small to power a computer system, but with a slight reduction in use time, and some efficiency modifications, I think it can be done.

I’ve only just put the system together and have been running it for almost 2 full weeks. I haven’t powered my computer using it yet, but I have been running floor lamps and charging my cell phone using it (total overkill).

In researching how to build something like this, I found lots of people online who had built things in a similar size range, but none of their designs could answer one question I had: How do you monitor the battery accurately? Watching the voltage is ok, but it’s not very accurate if the battery is loaded or charging. Deep cycle batteries are tough, but you still need to treat them right. They aren’t cheap either, so protecting the investment is a good idea.

Originally I was going to use something like this “*Turnigy inline watt meter*”:http://www.powerwerx.com/digital-meters/dc-inline-watt-meter-power-analyzer-powerpoles.html, but I hesitated at the thought of running so many amps through a little plastic device. In the end, I took inspiration from how our server battery backup here at Small Dog is monitored.

*The best way to monitor a battery is by counting the amp hours in and out in addition to watching the voltage.* This is like the odometer on your car (if you could somehow put miles back into the engine). To do this without using an inline meter, you use a device called a “*shunt*”:http://ow.ly/uMTqb. A shunt is basically a very low-value resistor which causes a tiny voltage drop. This drop can be measured, and using “*Ohm’s Law*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s_law current can be calculated. With some digital logic, you can count how long the current has been flowing, and there you have your amp hours.

In my system I’m using the “*TriMetric 2025*”:http://bogartengineering.com/products/TriMetric. Yes this is a bit overboard for such a small system, but so far I’ve found it to be invaluable, especially since I’m doing a lot of testing. Installation is a bit complicated, but the instructions are very helpful in figuring out what goes where. You also need to program the device for your specific setup. I really found this handy, since I could set the battery charge voltages, charge efficiency, days to recharge reminders, and much more. The TriMetrics also have a J2 serial data out port, so I’m working on a way to pull data from there and upload it to the web in real time. Once online, I could check on the status of the charging from anywhere.

Interested in simpler, shorter term battery backups? Check out “*uninterruptible power supplies (UPS)*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Power_Supply/UPS_Backups. These are like surge protector strips except they have batteries in them that will continue to run your equipment if the power at the wall outlet fails. Most are only designed to run a short time (like an hour or less), but that should give you enough time to save and shut down your equipment properly without any data loss or damage.

Samsung’s 420 Series monitors are ideal for plugging into your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro to create a mobile desktop solution. Adjust your monitor to meet your preference and working style for less strain and a more pleasant experience.

*Enjoy free shipping for the next week!*

Customers ask us regularly to recommend anti-virus software for their Mac. Many of these are converts from the PC world and are accustomed to needing it. There are several reasons why it’s largely unnecessary.

Since OS X 10.6.8 Apple has included anti-malware that is built into the OS. There was a lighter version in 10.4 and 10.5 called File Quarantine that confirmed with the user that files and applications downloaded from the Internet were intentional and approved. In 10.6.8 File Quarantine was enhanced to include actually checking downloaded files against a list of known malware and malware types/signatures. Again, this is built in.

Apple has also established that many anti-virus programs interfere with Apple updates which is part of their argument for advising against them.

The last two large reasons are the main difference between PCs and Macs and are probably the most important. The Mac OS uses compartmentalization, or ‘sand-boxing.’ This means that applications are limited and isolated to the resources they need to access. This is very different from Windows operating systems where this isolation doesn’t exist and malware can attack system and other resources, although as of Windows 7 this is improving.

Lastly, the argument most commonly given is that Macs have a smaller footprint in the market and are less appealing to hackers who must invest great resources in the development robust malware and viruses. This is diminishing somewhat as Macs become more popular, but it’s still true.

Apple still tows the line that anti-virus software for modern Macs is unnecessary. I was a PC tech for fifteen years and dealt with at least one virus for a customer a week. In the year I’ve been working on Macs, I haven’t seen a single one.

So, rest assured that your Mac is safe and installing anti-virus software has the risk of doing more harm than good.