Kibbles & Bytes Blog

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KB Dog

  • Dear Friends,

    I am on the road heading to Sturgis, SD and Emily is off camping with her family so Kibbles & Bytes is taking a bit of a summer vacation. This special short issue will feature our Dog Days of Summer specials. It is back-to-school time with some schools starting within a week or so and these bundles are ideal for those students’ return to books and school.

    Kibbles & Bytes will be back with a full issue next week with Emily as the lead since she gets back first. We will be somewhere on our way back to Vermont with a possible stop in Chicago to catch a Cubs game.

  • From the Archives

    **Tech Tails issue number 185, September 2003** featured an article on transferring data to your new mac, for the complete article visit our “archives link here,”:http://www.smalldog.com/techtails/177/ but for now take a moment to revisit memory lane, though admittedly some of these steps and information are still both useful and applicable today.

    Mac to Mac, or PC to Mac Transfer:

    Direct Ethernet Connection If you have both computers in the same location, you may be able to use an Ethernet cable to connect both computers together and copy files between them. You may need an Ethernet crossover cable depending on which model Macintosh you own. This method has the advantage of being fast and being able to transfer any amount of data. Once connected by Ethernet, turn File Sharing on (Control Panel in OS 9, System Preferences in OS X). Once file sharing is active, share the contents of one of the hard drives. You’ll then need to connect to the shared drive as you would connect to a server.

    Portable Hard Drive or Storage Device If your computer has either FireWire or USB, you can use a portable drive to transfer data. Portable FireWire drives provide the fastest transfer rate, and are widely available. However, unless the computer has a FireWire port, which is not as common on PC computers, you will not be able to use a portable FireWire hard drive. A portable USB hard drive can be used, but USB transfers can be slow.

    Note: While the faster USB 2.0 standard is available on some PC computers, some Macintosh computers only work with USB 1.1.

    CD Burner or Other Portable Media Creating a CD of the files on your computer is one of the easiest methods you can use to transfer any amount of data. This method provides the added benefit of creating a backup of your data.

    Using portable ZIP, Jaz, magnetic optical (MO), or other forms of portable media, is similar to burning a CD. Also, as long as the media device can be used on both computers, this method provides an excellent way to transfer any amount of data.

    Email For small amounts of data, such as word processing documents, pictures, or small application data files, using email to send data to yourself as an attachment is another option. However, if the data files are over 1 MB in size, or if you do not have a high-speed Internet connection, you should try other methods before using this one.

    Note: Some Internet service providers (ISPs) place restrictions on how large email attachments can be, so you may not be able to use this method with large data files, even if you have a fast Internet connection.

    iDisk If you have a .Mac account, you can use iDisk to transfer data. Since the iDisk is used through an Internet connection, using this method for large data files without a high-speed Internet connection takes a long time. You can also purchase various amounts of drive space on a yearly basis, which provides additional data storage flexibility.

    OSX to OSX

    Carbon Copy is a great utility to duplicate existing OS X volumes. Carbon Copy Cloner will retain file permissions and copy all of the hidden files.

    PC to Mac Transfer:

    Apple has made it really easy for PC users to switch to Macintosh. Move2Mac is a kit that includes software and a USB cable to connect from the PC’s USB port to the USB port on your new Mac. Detto technologies estimates that it will take approximately 15 Minutes to move 500 MB of data. The software allows you to select what folders and files to move. Move2Mac does not translate files or translate PC applications into Mac Applications. For instance, if you wanted to run Microsoft Office, you would need to get the Mac Compatible version. Most files will not require any conversion to operate in the Mac environment. The one major exception to this is Quicken. Quicken files need to be reformatted to be used on the Mac.

    When transferring data, most of the information that you have created is stored in your home directory. This is in the Users directory at the root level of your hard drive. There are some files in your Library that will not transfer by hand. The files that you will want to get for sure from your (the tilde ~ character is a UNIX symbol for the home directory) ~/Library are Addresses, Application Support, Favorites, Fonts, iTunes, Mail (if you are using OS X Mail), Preferences, and Safari. There are other files in the Library folder at the root of your hard drive that you may want to move depending on your configuration.

  • Securing WordPress Installations

    August 2015 is actually a pretty big month for me. It marks 10 whole years of blogging. Back in 2005, I was using blogger.com. Originally created by Pyra Labs 1999, Google bought them and their blog service in 2003. Blogger blogs were primarily hosted by Google via subdomains. This meant you could have your very own blog with your own partially customizable URL for free and without having much technical knowledge. In 2005, that’s what I did. I think I may have been technically capable of hosting my own blog, but in 2005, I was just entering my senior year of high school so money wasn’t that plentiful.

    I wrote for that blog continuously up until October of 2010, a few months after I graduated from college. By that time, my technical know-how had increased substantially. For two years, I created a handful of short-lived blogs before deciding that I wanted to restart a primary personal blog as I had done in 2005. This time though, I knew I could have my own domain and host the site myself.

    There may be some hardcore web developers out there who write their own blogs manually via HTML, but it’s really not the norm. Most blogs are run by software you install on your server. For our own “Small Dog blog”:http://blog.smalldog.com, we use software called “Textpattern”:http://textpattern.com/. Other well known blogging software includes “WordPress”:https://wordpress.org/, “Movable Type”:https://www.movabletype.org/, “Drupal”:https://www.drupal.org/, “Joomla”:http://www.joomla.org/ and “TypePad”:http://www.typepad.com/.

    For my purposes I installed WordPress. It’s free, widely used and has an extensive plugin library and community support. The wide use has a pretty substantial drawback though. WordPress is frequently the target of attacks and exploits. Every time I mention that I’m hosting WordPress on my server, Morgan, my fellow IT person here at Small Dog shakes his head and remarks about how many risks I’m taking.

    I really love the software though, so how do you help protect yourself, your server, and your installation of WordPress? I recommend the following “musts”:

    * *Updates* – WordPress updates are pretty frequent at a rate of one or two a month. Plugin and theme updates may be more frequent depending on the plugin or theme. There’s no excuse not to keep on top of this and install those updates! WordPress makes it easy to install them right from the browser and it notifies you which things need updating.

    * *Jetpack* – Jetpack is an advanced plugin that offers lots of enhancements to WordPress and I would certainly suggest it for all those reasons, but it also offers enhanced security. You can whitelist IP addresses for logins and it offers a captcha system for additional security. Each time I log in I see how many malicious login attempts have been blocked. Answer: a lot.

    * *Akismet* – Akismet is a comment spam filter that works exceptionally well. If you’re a non-commercial blog, you can use it for free. It’s easy to install and configure and I’ve gotten literally 0 spam messages since installing it over a year ago.

    * *Rublon two-factor authentication* – Two-factor authentication is such a powerful tool to secure any login system. You can now add that power to your WordPress installation with this easy to install and configure plugin. This particular system uses email-based authentication, so you don’t even need a token system. There are other token-based two-factor authentication systems available though.

    Overall, I’ve been very satisfied with WordPress and I like that it provides both ease of use but isn’t too hard to extend for a web developer like myself. If I wanted lots more customization, I might use something that leaned more towards a CMS (Content Management System) like Drupal or Joomla. For now though, WordPress suits me well and despite Morgan’s words of caution, I think I’ve secured my installation pretty well.

    Happy blogging!

  • It's Tuesday!

    It’s time for Tech Tail Tuesday! We have been cranking out this feature newsletter since the late 90’s. I spent some time this past week going over our “archives”:http://www.smalldog.com/newsletters/subscribe-to-our-fun-informative-newsletters and it’s hard to believe we have published almost one thousand issues of this publication. Looking back over the older issues it’s hard to believe we have only been publishing HTML versions since 2008–a time that feels like it was just days ago now that we are in 2015. Some of our early issues were fairly basic, but were still packed with valuable information…including the importance of backing up your data. Issue number twelve mentioned the importance of backing up your data and well over a decade later we are still stressing the importance of backups with all of our customers today! It’s also been fun to look back and see how excited we all were about what is now archaic in the technology world. The introduction of the G3 iBook, the G4 cube, the Titanium powerbook, the G5 tower and more! I remember when some of these early machines came into the Small Dog warehouse and it was like Christmas morning for us. We would all stand around the box and patiently (or not so patiently) wait for Don to open the box and reveal what was inside. Don would then parade around the building with the latest product and we would all be demanding and asking him for a chance to use it.

    Apple and all the accessories that go along with these products really have come a long way from their predecessors. I remember helping customers to pick out the right QuickerTek Antenna to increase wifi range on their iBooks or talking customers through data transfers over the phone. While I am still helping customers with these tasks the processes have become incredibly efficient and intuitive for even the basic of users. I will admit though, I do not miss the complication these processes once had especially data transfers!

    Thank you for reading!

    Emily Dolloff
    “emily@smalldog.com”:mailto:emily@smalldog.com

  • Tech Bits!

    Remember starting up your old mac and having every Mac user’s nightmare? That’s right, the sad mac!

    This symbol was used on older Macs and iPods and would show up upon start up when the device was experiencing a severe hardware issue.

    Have you ever wondered how this icon came about? This image was designed by “Susan Kare”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Kare, a graphic designer who was reportedly asked to create the image, but was told it would not actually be seen by the user. As many of us unfortunately know all too well, this was not the case. Susan created this and countless other icons we looked at in the early days of the mac as an original member of the Apple design team.

  • Dog Days of Summer!

    Now is the time to grab a great deal on computer or iPad bundles in our store! Visit any of our retail stores this month for great deal on a new or refurbished computer! **Buy any new computer with Applecare and get three years of accidental insurance through Safeware for free!**

    Want to make sure that the new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with Retina you just purchased stays like new? We have a great protection bundle to ensure that your new computer keeps that showroom shine! For **$124.99** you can get an external hard drive, a hardshell case from Speck, iKlear and a keyboard cover from KB cover!

  • Pages, Keynote and Numbers

    For the longest time the biggest gripe about Apple computers is that they were unable to easily interact with Windows users and those using Microsoft Office. This is no longer the case. In fact it’s been several years now since there have been significant compatibility issues. While some differences still exist, they are few and far between.

    Microsoft Office quickly became the standard for countless individuals and businesses, and for many users was the best option for word processing and other document creation needs. Other programs came and went as they tried to try mimic the functionality of Microsoft Office. Unfortunately very few came close to matching the power and functionality of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

    That all change in 2005 when Apple developed and released their very own office applications: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. In the decade since the first release of Apple’s productivity software it’s come a long way and has developed into a go-to piece of productivity software on the Mac.

    Pages is the Apple answer to the almighty Microsoft Word. It has the form and functionality of Word with a few nice features built right in. Pages comes pre-loaded on devices running Yosemite, and is available for the iPad and iPhone as well. It’s designed around sharing so a project can be started on your iPhone and edited with your iPad, Macbook or iMac. Pages is a fully functional word processing program. You can add charts, graphs or equations. You can add media files with just the click of a button. Drop in a photo and the text will automatically wrap. Your pages files can be shared in many, many ways. In addition to sharing among your own devices you can collaborate with anyone. You can share with Gmail or Dropbox. Pages is fully cross-compatible with Microsoft Word! You can begin a document in Pages and export it to a Word user and converting it to Word is incredibly simple:

    Open the Pages document, go to the **File** menu and select **export to** and select **word.** In the **export your document** screen click the triangle next to **advanced Options.** Select **docx**
    Give your document a name, select a destination then click **Export** and your done!

    Numbers, like Pages, is Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s Excel. More than a spreadsheet, Numbers is a stylistic way to present data like never before. Choose from many canvases and get away from the gridlock. Present your information like an artist. Take advantage of ready-made templates for common tasks. Utilize the beautiful charts and graphs to truly understand your data and get the big picture across to your clients, co-workers and professors. Numbers also comes pre-loaded on Macs running Yosemite and also available for iOS devices. Sharing to other Apple devices is a snap and also easy to share with Gmail or DropBox. Numbers supports over 200 functions and like Pages easily converts to Excel for easy sharing.

    Keynote is Apple’s version of Microsoft’s PowerPoint. Your presentations will dazzle and even make Van Gogh a tad jealous! Like Pages and Numbers it’s pre-loaded and easy to share and collaborate with others. Keynote features easy to use tools and an intuitive toolbar. Plug in photos or videos with ease. Add charts or graphs like a pro. If you get stuck, helpful pop ups are there for you when you need them. (Say goodbye to that obnoxious little paper clip!)

    Take a visit to the “**App store**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/App_Store to grab a copy of Pages, Numbers or Keynote if it’s not already loaded on your machine and for more detailed information on exporting your iWork files to a Microsoft Office application “**click here**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203997

  • Mobile Storage

    With the excitement of the Seagate Event in our South Burlington Store, all of the staff are buzzing about their new products. My personal favorite is the Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage device. I was convinced I did not need a lot of space on my iPhone – and went with an 8GB 4S and instantly regretted it – after a few good photography and video apps, a couple of playlists all of my storage space was used up pretty quickly! With the Seagate Wireless, I don’t have to fret because I have an untold amount of time left on my contract before I can upgrade my phone, I just simply use the Seagate Wireless to stream everything to my iPhone. I have our entire iTunes library on the Seagate Wireless. Another great feature of the device is that it does not need a WiFi network to stream to your phone, tablet or laptop, which makes it great for those long car trips with the kids. Build them a playlist and they can watch whatever they choose on their own schedule. The Seagate Wireless has a built in battery that lasts up to six hours and allows for three devices to to be streaming from it at one time, sharing any music, movies, videos and photographs that you choose. Who needs Pandora or Spotify when you can shuffle all of the songs in your iTunes library making your ultimate personal playlist using the Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage device! Oh and bonus, they come in really cool colors!

  • Outdoor Tech!

    We carry the Outdoor Tech line here at Small Dog Electronics and it’s quickly turning into one of our best selling portable speaker brands! They offer a great line up of headphones from wired to wireless and a full line of Bluetooth speakers. In addition to headphones and speakers they offer power banks for all weather and many products are water resistant. Our favorite product is the New Kodiak Mini power bank.
    If you don’t own a portable power bank, what exactly have you been waiting for? They’re an on-the-go energy outlet that allows you to keep moving when your phone is running low without having to stop and look for an outlet to plug it into. If that’s not enough, here are more ways they come in handy in a pinch. You can slip a Kodiak Mini into your back pocket and never notice it’s there. It’s great for those times you want to take a charge with you on your next cycling trip. If you find yourself at a lake and decide to dive in, don’t worry, these things are water-resistant too! The Kodiak series of power banks are small enough you can easily pack them for a weekend camping trip. You’re going to need some tunes while you’re lounging around the campfire. Power banks can recharge your iPod up to two or three separate times, so you can keep cranking up the volume.

  • Some of our favorite new features in iOS 9

    iOS 9 is Apple’s newest operating system for iOS devices. Introduced at WWDC in June and set to release this fall, iOS 9 builds on the content introduced with iOS 7 and iOS 8, bringing subtle design changes, refined features, improved functionality, and performance enhancements. iOS 9’s biggest focus is on intelligence and proactivity, allowing iOS devices to learn user habits and act on that information. Opening up apps before we need them, making recommendations on places we might like, and guiding us through our daily lives to make sure we’re where we need to be at the right time.

    Siri is at the heart of the changes, and the personal assistant is now able to create reminders and search through photos and videos in new ways. Swiping left from the home screen also brings up a new screen that houses Siri Suggestions putting favorite contacts and apps right at your fingertips, along with nearby restaurant and location information and important news. Deeper search capabilities can bring up results like sports scores, videos, and content from third-party apps. Notes now includes new checklists and sketching features. Maps now offers transit directions. Mail allows for file attachments. There’s even a new News App that learns your interests and delivers relevant content you might like to read. Apple Pay is being improved with the addition of store credit cards and loyalty cards, leading Passbook to be renamed to Wallet in iOS 9.

    Apple’s described iOS 9 as being more “**intelligent**”:https://www.apple.com/ios/ios9-preview/#siri thanks largely to Proactive Suggestions. Proactive Suggestions, the major feature addition in iOS 9, turn the iPhone into a lifestyle management tool and make Apple’s personal assistant Siri more responsive and able to complete more tasks than ever before. Proactive suggestions are system-wide and will work in a myriad of ways, offering up apps and recommendations at appropriate times. For example, if you often listen to music in the morning, iOS 9 will automatically open the Music app to a favorite playlist when you plug in your headphones. If you always open up the weather app to check what’s going on outside, it might open it automatically after your alarm goes off. “**Split-screen multitasking**”:https://www.apple.com/ios/ios9-preview/#ipad has been a much anticipated feature for the iPad that’s been rumored to be in the works for over a year. With Split-screen multitasking, it’s possible to use two different iOS apps on the same screen, so you can read a website while on a FaceTime call, or watch a video while composing a message in Mail. iOS 9 includes three different multitasking features: Slide Over, Split View, and Picture in Picture. Slide Over can be activated within any app by swiping left from the right side of the iPad. This gesture brings up a small side pane that displays a secondary app alongside the first app, in a 1/3 screen space arrangement. Choosing a new app for the side pane can be done by swiping downwards from the top of the screen within the pane.

    So, as you can see it’s going to be awesome! Can’t wait until the fall for the new OS? The “**public beta**”:https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/ is available now for those wanting to get their hands on it early!

  • August in store Events!

    We are pleased to announce special in-store events happening in our South Burlington location during the month of August. We have teamed together with some of our favorite products and manufacturers to have these events for our customers. Visit our South Burlington location on the Saturdays below and not only take advantage of special deals, but also take advantage of our product experts! Not able to join us in store that day? You might miss out on some special one day only opportunities, but you won’t be left out! We will be running special promotions on these brands throughout August no matter which retail location you visit!

    **Seagate special event Saturday Aug 15 10am to 2pm** at 100 Dorset St, South Burlington Vt

    **OutDoor Tech special event Saturday Aug 29th 10am to 2pm** at 100 Dorset St, South Burlington Vt

  • Greetings from the humid city of South Burlington! 

    Things are busy as always at the South Burlington store, but we’ve had a lot of fun this summer, especially with the new Apple products like the MacBook. Coming soon, arriving any day now is the new “**iPod touch**”:http://www.smalldog.com/iPods, which features an upgrade to the A8 processor chip, an 8 megapixel iSight camera, all new colors and more! To go with the new iPod we’ve seen an increase in portable bluetooth speaker sales, especially the Outdoor Tech lineup, some of which are completely waterproof! We’ve had a lot of luck with Outdoor Tech over the past year and we’re looking forward to in-store events with both Outdoor Tech and Seagate.

    As you may have read in last month’s Best in Show, we’ve now partnered with SafeWare to offer an accidental damage protection plan with your new Mac. For the “**Dog Days of Summer promotion**”:http://www.smalldog.com/dogdaysofsummer/summer-sales, we’re including **free SafeWare accidental damage coverage** with the purchase of a new Mac and AppleCare. With the summer festivities in full swing, it’s reassuring to have that kind of coverage! 

    Enjoy this edition of Best in Show, and make sure to say hi next time you’re in South Burlington!

    Patrick McCormick
    “patrickm@smalldog.com”:mailto:patrickm@smalldog.com