Kibbles & Bytes Blog

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  • Another Use for Time Machine

    We’re always talking about keeping good data backups here at Small Dog. You just never know what will happen to cause data loss or data corruption, and no matter how technical you may be it could still happen to you.

    Earlier this week I was logging into my WordPress blog and instead of being greeted with the administration index page which is normally just a login window, I was greeted with Russian writing and some music. Fortunately, I’m meticulous about keeping WordPress updated and following all possible security precautions, including two-factor login authentication. So it didn’t appear as though anyone had actually gotten into my blog or the database.

    Still though, I was stuck locked out of my blog. Time Machine to the rescue! I was able to get into my server and find recently modified files. There was only one: the index.php file for the WordPress administrator page. I fired up Time Machine went back a few days (those files shouldn’t ever change in normal use) and just replaced the whole directory with an earlier version. I was back into my blog within 10 minutes. Without a solid backup, it might’ve taken much longer. I might have needed to reinstall my entire blog suite and that would’ve taken the better part of a day.

    How do these kinds of hacks happen? Generally they’re performed by bots crawling the web with known exploits of popular and widely installed web software such as WordPress. I truly believe that two-factor authentication saved me from a much bigger disaster. After this incident though, I’ve taken the additional step of turning on HTTP Basic Authentication for the entire admin directory. This should help add yet another layer of protection.

    WordPress is a great blogging engine, but if you’re going to host it yourself, you really need to stay on top of updates and good security practices. Personally, I’d never run my own WordPress installation without two-factor authentication installed. It’s not a native feature of WordPress unfortunately, but it’s easy to install with a variety of plugins. Enabling HTTP Basic Auth requires some basic terminal skills and understanding of Apache (the web server software). All of the things I use helped make a potentially devastating hack a minor inconvenience. Happy blogging!

  • Review – Belkin Watch Valet

    Some of the Belkin items that were formerly exclusive for the Apple store are now available for everyone. One of the first that we tried is the Belkin Watch Valet. If you travel a lot, you know how inconvenient it is to disconnect your Apple Watch charging cable and take it with you. One of the big advantages of the Belkin Watch Valet is that it comes with its own charging cable. For the person that would like a stylish, well designed Apple watch dock, this is the item. It plugs into a USB charging port with a 4-foot cable. It has a watchband support, allowing the watchband to sit neatly out of the way while in use.

    Grace found it a little “persnickety” when attaching her watch for charging, so it is important to make sure the watch is in the charging mode before leaving it to charge.

    At $89 retail, it is a bit on the pricey side but it is stylish and you do get that charging cable which is $29 by itself.

  • Drop Pop

    I am always amazed at the number of customers that still have AOL email accounts. What is even worse is that they are usually POP accounts and these customers are managing their email on multiple devices. I don’t mean to trash AOL too much, but if you are still using an AOL email account you should change. AOL just doesn’t work the way the rest of the world does, especially when it comes to handling attachments in email.

    When you read an email message on your iPhone and delete it, do you have to trash it again when you check mail on your Mac or your iPad? Or is your email kept in sync so that if you delete a message on one system, it never even appears on the other?

    If you fall into the first camp, your internet service provider probably has you stuck using an email technology called POP. Conversely, if you’re in the second camp, you’re probably using a different email technology called IMAP. Don’t worry what POP and IMAP stand for—they could be called Spot and Jane for all that it matters. What does matter is that if you’re using POP to read email on more than one device, you’re wasting time and effort and using old technology.

    POP was designed in 1984 so that every email message would be downloaded from your mail server and immediately deleted from the server, so the only copy would exist on your Mac. But that made it impossible to check email from more than one computer, so POP’s designers made it possible for a message to be downloaded but not deleted, so it could be retrieved again by another computer. But the POP server has no way of knowing that the message was transferred multiple times, so each computer that gets it sees it as a fresh message, forcing you to delete or file it in each place.

    In contrast, IMAP, which came along just a couple of years later in 1986, was designed to keep all your email on the mail server itself so multiple computers could access the same set of messages. And, most important, anything you do to a message—delete, file, or reply—in your email app on one computer also happens on the IMAP server, so if you check email from another computer, your email collection reflects all those previous actions.

    Fast forward to today, where you might check email with your Mac at work, with your iPhone while at lunch, and on your iPad at home. If your internet service provider is using IMAP, anything you do on any of your devices is reflected on all the rest. As an extra bonus, you can search through all your email at any time, from any device, which is great when you realize you need the address for today’s meeting after you’re in the car.

    But some ISPs still rely on POP, and for those of you who have had the same email account for many years, even if your ISP supports IMAP, they may not have switched you over. If your email is stuck in the POP past, call your ISP and bring your email into the 21st century. If they aren’t willing to help, remember that you can always use your free iCloud email account instead or sign up for a free account with Gmail or Yahoo.

    For those who are shaking your heads because you don’t want some IMAP server in the cloud to hold the only copy of your precious email, rest assured that it doesn’t have to be that way. By default, Apple Mail downloads a copy of every message and keeps it locally on your Mac too, so even if something bad were to happen in the cloud, you’d still have your local copy and your backups of it.

    Life is too short to waste time dealing with the same email messages on multiple devices. Computers and smartphones are supposed to make things easier, not harder, so if you’re not already using IMAP for email, do yourself a favor and switch Now!

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I was only home here in the Green Mountains for a couple days before I hopped on a plane and went to Austin (not Houston, Emily 🙂 ) for the annual Apple Specialist Marketing Coop’s conference. The weather in Austin was nice the couple of times I was able to leave the hotel but with all the meetings and events I mostly saw the inside of the hotel and had bad hotel food.

    Nevertheless, it was great to re-connect with other Apple resellers, vendors and some Apple folks. I had good meetings and the trip was definitely worthwhile. I got home the next morning and as Grace got up to let Max out she says “don’t look out the window”. Of course, I immediately did and all I saw was white. I mentioned this to our store manager in Key West, Joe Lytton, and when I missed a call from him later he cracked “I thought you were outside making snowmen”.

    Notwithstanding the momentary snow, spring is truly here and the big apple tree outside my window here at the office is full of blossoms ready to burst open. I got the old rototiller started and the garden is ready. Of course, the black flies are now out in full force, too.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features a fully loaded MacBook Pro. This Apple factory reconditioned MacBook Pro has a 1-year Apple warranty just like new models. We are bundling it with AppleCare which extends that 1-year Apple warranty to 3-years but also extends the 90-days of free Apple technical support to a full 3 years as well. The “**MacBook Pro is a 15-inch model**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002218 that features the 2.8GHz i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD drive. I only have three of these left so it is first come, first served on this bundle. The special price for Kibbles & Bytes readers only is “**$2699.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002218 That’s a $325 savings for the first three to grab this deal!

  • It’s another busy weekend on the books for me. Saturday is Green Up Day here in Vermont, and we’ll be doing our part around our house this weekend to pick up litter and other debris that have shown up with the spring thaw. I’ll be spending a portion of my time as well helping a local non-profit along with other Small Dog staff members to put on a free technology seminar. Hopefully we’ll be able to get our camper moved this weekend as well and get camp ready for summer before it’s time to resume work on the new horse barn again.

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Amy & Hadley_

  • Emily Wins April

    A few weeks ago, “**I wrote an article about a fitness challenge I had started with Emily**”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb979/. Well, April 30th has come and gone. The month is over. How did our results turn out? Let’s just say I’m pretty much focused on May right now. I didn’t get the amount of biking in that I wanted. My monthly total was 135,000 steps. It was…insufficient to beat Emily’s 235,000 steps.

    So on to May. Actually, compared to last year’s longer winter, I’m already up 100 miles on my personal riding record. I know from experience that any time I can start riding in March, it’ll be a good season. Hopefully as we get some warmer mornings I’ll be able to start riding my bike into work. That’ll really help get my step count up! Watch out, Emily!

    I started riding seriously in 2008. My parents moved, so when I went home from college for the summer, I wasn’t with any old friends and I needed something to do. I had fixed up an old mid-80s Raleigh in high school, so I started riding that. At first, I didn’t do anything to track my rides. It was just fun. I’d ride a few miles every day after work. Eventually I found an old mechanical odometer that I mounted to the Raleigh. I have no idea if it was even accurate, but I really enjoyed tracking my distance, so I went out and got a well-reviewed Sigma bike computer. That **was** accurate.

    Once I graduated from college I decided to get a new, modern bike since I’d put so many miles on the heavy Raleigh. I ended up with a nice Cannondale aluminum-frame road bike. That’s still what I ride today, and I still use my Sigma bike computer. Sometimes people ask why I don’t just use my iPhone and GPS to track my rides. After all, there are cool social apps like Strava that let you compete with friends on challenges. I do track some rides, but I’ve found it’s a hassle to get my phone out, start the app, make sure it’s recording, then stuff it into my pocket and go. The bike computer just clips onto the handlebars and is done.

    These days I track my rides in Numbers. It has a great template for tracking running that I modified to use for riding. I track date, ride time, distance, pace, average speed, max speed, miles-to-date, and whether or not any of my ride offset a trip I normally would’ve driven. So if I ride to and from work, that tends to be a 21-mile offset for the round trip. It’s nice because I can save the file in iCloud and access it on any device no matter where I am.

    I like to take the winters off from riding and stay in shape with XC-skiing. I’ve found that when I start riding again, it takes about 100-150 miles before I feel confident to ride pretty much anywhere and any distance. I’ve pretty much already hit that distance earlier in April, so I’m optimistic that I’ll really be able to stack on some miles and maybe beat Emily in May!

  • Google Apps

    I’ll be honest, Google Apps, Gmail, Google Drive and anything associated with Google beyond a web search was very foreign to me. For over a decade my only resource for e-mail was Mac Mail, my preferred web browser was Safari and I only knew of Google as the place to go to search for whatever I wanted on the web. When Small Dog switched over to Google Apps for Business for many of our services, I was a hold out and avoided the change as long as I could.

    It’s been a long road (only due to my resistance) but I have learned to truly enjoy and utilize the benefits of Gmail, Google Apps and Google Drive. I still use Mac Mail as my primary mail program, and I keep all my contacts in my address book and iCloud, but I use other Google-based features on a daily basis. Prior to using Google, when I looked at e-mails on the road from my phone, I had to wait until I was back at my computer to file them away in their respective folders. Now I can quickly file away e-mails when I am done with them. I can do this from either the Mail app on my mobile devices, or via the Gmail app. I do admit I still prefer the Mail app, but the Gmail interface is growing on me.

    In the past year, if it wasn’t for “**Google Apps**,”:https://apps.google.com I would have found completing some tasks incredibly difficult and time consuming. No matter where I am, no matter what device I am using I can access my e-mail, my files, share files with others, my calendars and more! I’ve needed to work with outside consultants and designers for work and have been able to quickly and easily share files. I’ve had staff need me to share spreadsheets and documents. Thanks to Google Drive I can uploaded and download files much larger than those I might be able to share via e-mail.

    I think my two favorite features of “**Google Apps**”:https://apps.google.com are quickly filing e-mails and being able to have multiple users view and edit documents at the same time even while in different locations. The ability to view and share documents for multiple users to view, edit and share has honestly been invaluable. You can easily set up files as read-only or read and edit. One thing that I have discovered is that when you are using mobile devices such as iPhones or iPads, you do need to make sure you download the correct application and not just Google Drive in order for all users to not only view your documents, but edit them as well. Recently I was sharing a document with my husband. He had downloaded Google Drive and I shared my Google spreadsheet with him. He could see the document, but he was not able to see any changes that I was making without closing the file and re-opening it. He was not able to make edits either even though I gave him editing rights. It took a few minutes, but I discovered he needed to download Google Sheets in order to have full access to the file. This was one part of the Google interface that I did find to be not as intuitive as I would have liked. When you’re using your computer to create the files, you can access everything (for the most part) via Google Drive. On mobile devices you need to access some files via its specific app.

    It’s taken some time, but I’ve come to see the benefits and features of Google Apps. Many folks have been using these features for years and I know I am a little late to the game on this. Change isn’t always easy when it comes to computers, interfaces, operating systems and the like no matter your age and comfort level with computers! Are you interested in Google Apps for Business for your business? Small Dog Electronics has consulting services that have plenty of “**experience setting up Google Apps**”:http://www.smalldog.com/b2b-googleapps for businesses large and small.

  • _Dear Friends_,

    Don made it back to the Green Mountains over the weekend, but he wasn’t able to enjoy the cold weather for too long! Don’s in Houston this week at the ASMC conference, he’ll back back in charge of Kibbles next week. I think he was just looking for an excuse to get back to some warmer weather as fast as he could.

    As Apple specialists and as an Apple authorized reseller we are held to pretty high standards, not only by ourselves but by Apple as well. All of our retail staff upon hire and annually thereafter take a series of online training courses that provide in depth knowledge about Apple products and cloud services. Each year we also have the opportunity to send retail staff to Apple instructed training camps to help staff brush up on their Apple customer experience skills. These training sessions are not only designed for retail staff, but for our service staff as well. All of technicians, like our retail staff, take annual exams and participate in assorted training and exams sessions on a yearly basis to ensure that they are up to speed with current repairs processes and techniques.

    Over the past decade or so our sales have sifted more to our retail stores and less in the area of online sales, but for us the online competition still remains tough. Why? It’s simple, we live in a world where just about anything we want can be found with the tap of your finger or the tap of your mouse. What you can’t get with this instant gratification is the one-on-one interaction with a sales associate or service member who works daily with the products and that is why we spend so much time working with and training our staff.

    This week’s “**Kibbles & Bytes exclusive bundle**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002216 is the perfect gift for the grad on your list this year. Whether they are graduating from college or high school, this MacBook Pro 15in with Retina, 2.5Ghz i7, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB hard drive has all the power and storage they will need for their next adventures in life. I am bundling this with free shipping and AppleCare to ensure there is service and support for the next three years. Normally this bundle would cost $2430.97, but this week only you can get it for “**$2275.98**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002216

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