Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • APP REVIEW: Packing Pro

    Last week I wrote about iTravel and Passbook, services soon to be available on your iOS devices that will make travel more convenient. This week, I have been away from Small Dog HQ on vacation on the North Carolina shore.

    One of the great things about working for Small Dog is that we encouraged to take vacations as a way to take a break, recharge the batteries, and come back to work refreshed. I am happy to report that swimming in the ocean, sipping frozen margaritas, and stargazing on the beach have me in a state of deep relaxation and I am ready to get back to Vermont and hit the ground running at work.

    To help all of you enjoy your (hopefully) upcoming vacations, I have an app to recommend to make sure you get started on the right foot. Check out “*Packing Pro.*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/packing-pro/id312266675?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30 It is $2.99 and has some great features to make sure that you get out of the house with everything that you need for your trip. I am always scrambling out the door at the last minute when I go on vacation, and this app has made that mad dash a little less stressful.

    The included sample lists contain the items one would need for a variety of trips and can be used as the basis for customized lists. You can also create lists from scratch. The expert list assistant automatically creates lists based on the number of adults, children and days, as well as temperature, destination, food preparation and clothes washing preferences. You can even input the weights of the items that you pack to make sure that you never have to pay for overweight bags. Collapsible categories and check boxes by each item makes the packing process as painless as can be.

    If someone figures out a way to link this app with 3D modeling software so that it can tell me exactly how to pack my suitcase without breaking a zipper, I might even get out of the house on time before my next trip.

    Happy travels everybody!

  • Get Ready for Mountain Lion

    The release of OS 10.8, Mountain Lion, is tentatively set for July 25 (next Wednesday). If you’re “*champing at the bit*”:http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/champ+at+the+bit to upgrade as many of us are, the good news is that we don’t have long to wait. If you’re still unsure about whether to make the move to Mountain Lion or not, check out some of the most exciting features and requirements here.

    *Reminders*
    The lightweight list-based app in iOS is coming to your desktop. Though it’s not as all-inclusive or sophisticated as say, “*Things*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-for-ipad/id364365411?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30 or “*OmniFocus,*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-for-ipad/id383804552?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30 it can be a great basic app for your lists and to-dos.

    bq. “__Make as many lists as you need and easily add to them. Set due dates and you’ll get alerts as deadlines approach. Set a location from your Mac, and your iPhone or iPad will remind you when you get there. Check items off your lists as you go and keep track of what you’ve completed. iCloud keeps your reminders up to date on your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, so you don’t forget anything.__”

    *Notes*
    Another included iOS app, Notes is designed to work with Mail and Messages (below) seamlessly.

    bq. “__Add, delete, and flip through your notes or do a quick search. Use the Share button to send your notes with Mail or Messages. Pin important notes to your desktop so they’re easy to get to. And take them with you everywhere. Notes works with iCloud, so when you create or edit a note on your Mac, it automatically updates on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. And vice versa.__”

    *Messages*
    iMessaging is coming to the Mac, basically combining texting and iChat in one easy-to-use application.

    bq. “__Send messages to anyone on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5, too. Messages appear on your Mac and any device you use, which means you can say hi from your Mac and keep chatting on your iPhone or iPad, no matter where you are. Send photos, videos, documents, and contacts–even send messages to a group. You’ll see when your message has been delivered and when someone’s typing a reply. Turn on read receipts, and they’ll see when you’ve read a message. With end-to-end encryption, your messages stay safe and private.__”

    *Notification Center*
    Perhaps the most highly anticipated new feature being ported over from iOS, Notification Center clearly lays out what’s happening on your Mac–whether it’s an email, a message, a software update, a calendar alert or something else.

    bq. “__Notifications always appear in the same spot on your desktop and disappear quickly so they don’t clutter up your screen. Whenever you want to see all your notifications in one place, just swipe to the left from the right edge of the trackpad. And there they are, in a simple, ordered list. So you’ll always know what’s up as soon as it comes up.__”

    *Safari*
    Apple’s web browser is getting a boost, and it will be a welcome one, especially in the wake of Google’s super fast Chrome update.

    bq. “__New features in Safari make browsing the web smarter and faster. Now there’s one simple search field for both search terms and web addresses. Tab View shows your open tabs. Just pinch to see them all and swipe to switch between them. When you open web pages on your iPhone or iPad, iCloud Tabs makes them available on your Mac, too, so you can pick up browsing wherever you left off. And now that Safari saves entire web pages in your Reading List–not just the links–you can catch up on your reading even without an Internet connection.__”

    In addition, there are seven new features related to *Auto-Save,* five new features for *Built-In Sharing,* eight *Dictation*-based features, five new *Finder* features, seven new *iCloud* features, and over 150 more. “*See all of them here.*”:http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html

  • Back By Popular Demand: The 'Apple' Symbol

    We recently discovered that a post back in the day (in 2007, to be exact) was highly popular among our blog readers. Turns out, many of you wanted to know how to type the Apple logo!

    To do this, hold down Option-Shift-K at the same time. Note that this only works on Macs, and it doesn’t look exactly right in plain text. Try it in a rich text document, such as a Pages or Word doc or email in Apple Mail.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    It’s definitely the dog days of summer as most of the country is gripped by a heat wave and some serious drought conditions are harming crops in many areas of the country. Here in the north, we have had some hot and humid days but nothing like most of the country. Our nights are cool, and today it is quite pleasant with low humidity, a lot of sun and perfect motorcycling or beach weather. My blueberries are coming in and we are trying to beat the birds to the fruit. Grace made the first blueberry pie of the season last night–food you grow yourself always seems to taste better!

    I am very pleased to announce that Jason Wu has joined the Small Dog Electronics team. Jason has a lifetime of experience in the Apple market and has been my friend for a couple of decades. Jason will be responsible for our wholesale division and will be working to expand our Hammerhead and Chill Pill Audio brands. I have traveled to China a number of times with Jason and his vision and financial expertise will help to make that division a success. In addition, Jason serves on our board and will be advising Hapy and me on leading Small Dog Electronics.

    Did you know that Small Dog Electronics publishes three other email newsletters? In addition to Kibbles & Bytes, we send Tech Tails and Deal Retriever out each week and Best in Showroom each month. You can subscribe to any of our newsletters “*here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/newsletters If you haven’t checked out our blog that might be interesting to you as well. Our website was basically a blog way back before there were blogs. I used to get up very early each morning and write something for “Barkings!” that would be the feature on the website. It’s still called Barkings! and can be “*found here.*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/ or accessed from our “*homepage.*”:http://www.smalldog.com Be sure to check us out on “*Facebook*”:http://www.facebook.com/smalldogelectronics and “*Twitter,*”:http://twitter.com/hellosmalldog too!

    Dawn and I used to write two other newsletters each week. One was called “Do your Business” and was aimed at our business customers. Who knows–we may have to resurrect that one someday. The other was published during the heyday of the Mac clones when we could sell to educational institutions and it was called “Ed’s Up!”. If any of you remember those, feel free to share your memories of them with me at “*don@smalldog.com!*”:mailto:don@smalldog.com

  • Improve Gmail in Apple Mail

    Are you one of the 425 million people in the world who have a Gmail account? If so, you’ve likely become accustomed to…

  • Reboot a Frozen iPhone

    This past weekend a friend of mine posted a frantic status on Facebook that his phone would not power on no matter what…

  • Breakdown of RAM Allocation

    One frequent question we encounter with regard to performance and speed is “how much RAM do I need?” While increased RAM will help significantly in some cases, RAM is not always the bottleneck contributing to the performance deficit you are working through. How do you then determine if more RAM will help you and your computer? The Activity Monitor application has several wonderful tabs built in. These tabs include *Mass Storage Usage, Network Throughput and Memory Allocation.*

    In Activity Monitor, select the Memory tab toward the bottom of the application window. Listed in a few columns with a corresponding pie chart will be the RAM usage of your Mac, broken into several different categories. To begin with, in the lefthand column, there are five main listings: *Free, Wired Active, Inactive and Used.* “Free” is the amount of addressable RAM in your computer not currently allocated to any process. The second item, “Wired,” is the amount of RAM that cannot be moved to mass storage because it’s being used by the system.

    Next in the list is *Active RAM;* Active is the data in the RAM recently used. *Inactive RAM* is RAM that contains information from applications or processes that have been ended. This RAM is available to the System, but if the application which parented this wired RAM should be reopened, it would become Active again and its information would not need to be reloaded from mass storage. *Used* is the sum of the four previous categories of RAM in the machine; Used plus Free should equal the total RAM installed in the computer.

    The second column contains how much data from RAM has been written elsewhere–or *Virtual Memory.* In this column, the one statistic that will alert you to the need for more RAM is *Page outs.* Page outs are the total number of times the System has written contents of RAM to mass storage because there was inadequate RAM in the system.

  • Improve Gmail in Apple Mail

    Are you one of the 425 million people in the world who have a Gmail account? If so, you’ve likely become accustomed to one of the best email experiences today that you can get for free. However, there may be some tips I can impart to improve your Gmail experience on your Mac.

    We all know how great Gmail’s web interface is, but there are some great benefits to accessing your Gmail account via Apple’s Mail app. For example, have you ever wanted to reference an old message but not had access to the internet? Apple’s Mail application can store a local copy of all your messages, providing access to email without an internet connection. Google has a great knowledge base article on how to set up your Gmail account with Apple’s Mail app “*here.*”:http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=180188

    Once your Gmail account is configured, you’ll be presented with an inbox identical to the inbox you have at “*Gmail.com.*”:http://www.gmail.com However, there are some key changes I’d recommend in order to keep everything about your Gmail email (it rhymes!) in sync.

    After adding your Gmail account to Mail, you will note that a *Gmail* category has been added to Mail’s left-hand sidebar. Underneath that, you’ll probably have a couple mailboxes/mail folders with the first one labeled *[Gmail].* Click on the disclosure triangle to the left in order to disclose the contents. What you’re seeing under the Gmail category is every folder that’s synced to Gmail’s servers. Under the [Gmail] mailbox, you’ll see *Sent, Trash, and Drafts.* It’s important to click on each of these, one at a time, and click *Mailbox* in the menu bar and click *Use this mailbox for…* Then, choose the appropriate type (Sent, Trash, etc.). This will keep everything you do in sync with Gmail’s servers, as well as other devices you check your email on.

    Next, you’ll want to go to Gmail.com, log in, and get to Gmail’s settings. Here, you can click on *Labels.* You’ll see *System labels* and *Labels,* all of which will have a *Show in IMAP* checkbox option. If you want to tidy up Mail’s left-hand sidebar or if you simply don’t care to utilize some of Gmail’s built in label/mailbox/mail folders, then you can simply uncheck a label such as *Important* or *All Mail.*

    Google services are great, but I hope I’ve relayed some info that might make your Gmail experience on your Mac a bit better. Stay tuned for more Google-Mac-integration themed tips in the future!

  • Reboot a Frozen iPhone

    This past weekend a friend of mine posted a frantic status on Facebook that his phone would not power on no matter what he did. We typically have a few people come to the service desk here in South Burlington every week with a similar problem. Nearly all of these phones are brought back to life by a very simple two button reboot process.

    Hold the power button (the one at the top) and the home button (the one on the face of the phone) both down until you see the Apple logo on the screen. Depending on the status of your battery, you may need to plug the phone in for this to work. In cases where the phone either has a fully drained battery or has crashed this should get it rebooted.

  • Hello all,

    It’s another week of dangerously hot weather in the central part of the country and it’s unseasonably stupidly hot here as well, with no end in sight (at least until later this week)! If you live in the middle part of the country please take care.

    I received a bunch of good-natured emails after last week’s column, the general thrust of which was “Ha. You aren’t old enough to talk about the good old days.” There were some great insights into the nature of the good old days as well, which maybe I will revisit here at a later date. I may not be the oldest person in the world, but my next big birthday is going to put a 5 in my tens column and mark a point where I might (just might) start to consider myself to be middle-aged. I remember moon landings and the oil embargo of 1973. I remember the floods of 1972 here, and Richard Nixon resigning.

    I also remember when there were no personal computers, no internet, and no awareness in the mass consciousness that we were on the edge of a radical and widespread change in the way humans perceive and interact with the world. No idea that in the next twenty years everything would change for hundreds of millions of people. It’s often said the advent of this new era of wonder has made the world smaller, much like the telegraph and telephone did earlier. I suppose I understand that, but from my perspective–that of a kid growing up in a small town in an era when that meant your world was small already–it has gotten a lot bigger and has shown itself to be more wondrous and richer than I could possibly have imagined back there in the “good old days.”

    Thanks for reading.

    Liam
    “*liam@smalldog.com*”:mailto:liam@smalldog.com