Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Tip of the Week: iPod Troubleshooting

    While many of us have switched from iPod to iPhone, or even given up either for iPad, it certainly seems that most of us still have working iPods. Every iPod’s day comes eventually, but in a wide variety of cases, it is possible to revive a seemingly dead iPod with one of five simple steps.

    Apple calls them the “*Five Rs*.”:http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

    Hard drive-based iPods like “*iPod Classic*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/iPod_classic/ have a telltale failure that’s easily diagnosed by simply pressing your ear to the back of the iPod. If you hear clicking or grinding that repeats at regular intervals, odds are the hard drive inside the iPod has failed.

    While only a tiny percentage of these devices actually fail in their first years of existence, some do. Because hard drives are like record players, it’s not surprising that shaking an iPod over the course of a year will cause hard drive failure.

    The Five Rs mentioned above will not fix a broken hard drive, nor a cracked screen, nor dents on the corner of your iPod. But you have nothing to lose by trying the troubleshooting steps when your iPod isn’t working properly.

  • Repair of the Week: First-Generation Mac Pro

    The Mac Pro has always been a beast of a computer, and even the first-generation examples remain so. Their reliability is second to none amongst the Apple product line, but with some approaching three years old, we are beginning to see more failures. This week’s repair is on an 8-core 3.0 GHz unit outfitted with a Fibre Channel card normally connected to an Xserve RAID, 16GB of RAM, a super high-end Kona video card and four 2TB hard drives set up in RAID 5.

    Needless to say, this is a computer our customer desperately needed back up and running as quickly as possible.

    Because he bought AppleCare and the computer from Small Dog, he enjoyed a free loaner computer during the repair. But because we need the entire machine–fibre channel card, RAM and all the hard drives–to properly diagnose, he had to make do with a more-or-less stock Mac Pro.

    The Mac Pro came in for random kernel panics during Time Machine backups of the startup partition to a FireWire 800 LaCie external drive. The first step was to swap the the RAM with known-good chips, and the kernel panics persisted. We then booted the computer from an external drive with a known-good operating system, and the kernel panics persisted. Then, we unplugged the internal drives and booted the machine again off the external drive. No luck.

    Component isolation is where you strip a computer down to its minimal configuration, unplug every nonessential component and then plug them back in one by one until the problem reappears. When it does, you can be fairly certain the component just reinstalled is the culprit. In its minimal state and not showing symptoms, we plugged the optical drives in one by one with no luck. It can only be called good luck that the second component swapped in, the Bluetooth card, brought the kernel panics back. Swapping in a good one fixed the problem.

    This was an easy one, but some of the harder Mac Pro diagnoses can take a very long time and are often a combination of software and hardware. More common failures are of hard drives, processors, logic boards, RAM and RAM riser cards. Logic boards and processors are very expensive, so this customer was very lucky!

  • From the Archives: Magnify on the Fly

    One of the things that makes the Mac OS intuitive is Apple’s use of universal symbols. Apple also extends these symbols to most of their software titles, creating a cohesive environment. The most common examples are Apple’s use of the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ symbols for adding and deleting, the magnifying glass icon for searching and the gear icon for changes or additional options.

    While the use of these universal symbols adds to the usability of the OS, they are sometimes overlooked. The symbol that I find is most commonly overlooked is the magnification slider found in Finder and iPhoto. Just yesterday a customer emailed support with a screenshot of iPhoto. It appeared that he was looking at single large image, and he was writing because he couldn’t get himself into “thumbnail view” despite having clicked on ‘Photos.’

    I immediately looked at the lower right of the screenshot and saw that his magnification slider was slid all the way to the right, which is the highest magnification. He __was__ in thumbnail view; his thumbnails had just been blown up to the full window size. By dragging the slider back towards the left, he was able to view the pictures in a more traditional thumbnail size.

    This slider can come in pretty handy, though! Not only is it nice to temporarily blow thumbnails up to a more viewable size, or scale them down to a mini-size if you have a ton of photos and want to scroll through them quickly, you can also easily use the magnification slider in Finder when viewing a Finder window in icon view.

    Try it out! Open a new Finder window by clicking on the smiling blue Mac face in your dock (or, if you love menus, you can go to the Finder and to *File > New Finder Window*). Now navigate to a folder with many documents or pictures in it; it’s much more fun with pictures! Get yourself into icon view by selecting the icon that looks like four squares on the top left of the Finder window. You should now see the slider on the bottom right; you can play around by dragging the slider to the left and right and watch your icons grow and shrink.

    Being able to resize photos and documents on the fly makes it even easier to find the item you want quickly. If you’re rocking Leopard or Snow Leopard, check out the Quick Look feature (select a document or picture in Finder and press the space bar), which helps fine-tune the process even further. Play around with it and have fun!

  • Happy Tuesday,

    We’re recovering from the epic rains and flooding from Irene. I spent yesterday shoveling muck from neighbors’ houses and generally cleaning up in Moretown Village, which was under as much as eight feet of water Sunday night. The entire state took a big hit, and just as expected, communities are coming together to clean and rebuild.

    The scene Sunday night was just incredible. Down by the Mad River, propane tanks hissed loudly as they barreled downstream and the smell of gas was overwhelming. One homeowner used his canoe to rescue a motorist who foolishly tried to drive through rushing water. Paddling back to shore, he watched his porch separate from his home and violently snap apart as it went with the current.

    The last flood of this magnitude was in 1927. Here’s hoping it’s at least another 84 years until the next one.

    As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    “matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com

  • HOW-TO: Type Accents on Your iDevice

    During my free time, I often use my iPhone to practice my foreign language skills. Well, not really, but a girl can dream….

  • Buy one Apple USB to Dock Sync Cable (no retail packaging), get one free! $9.99 with FREE shipping. Click above for details. Because…

  • Fun with Anagrams

    In addition to being a computer nerd, I am also a word nerd. Etymology was one of my favorite college classes, and on…

  • I leave early next week for my vacation. Grace and I are polishing up on our Italian and French. Well, actually I downloaded a couple of apps for my iPhone and iPad that might be of some help. Although I keep thinking of me saying “Er…wait just a minute,” holding up my hand and frantically finding the phrase I want to use. I guess we will just have to do our best and hope we don’t get lost too often. Kali, Stephanie and Jan will keep you informed in Kibbles & Bytes, and if I have access, perhaps I will send back a photo or two from the Alps and say hello from the road. As Grace says, though, “vacations are the meaning of life”… so I think we will mostly be enjoying the scenery and the culture and, of course, the motorcycle riding!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes team,

    _Don, Jan, Kali & Stephanie_

  • Special: Protect Your Magic Mouse

    Do you love your Magic Mouse and want to protect its Multi-touch surface from nicks and scratches? Do you sometimes notice friction when executing swiping or scrolling gestures on the Mouse? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then we recommend Moshi’s Magic Mouse MouseGuard as a complement to your Magic Mouse.

    Available in “*silver*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/78463/moshi-magic-mouse-mouseguard-silver/at_kb or “*white*,”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/78468/moshi-magic-mouse-mouseguard-white/at_kb the Moshi Magic Mouse MouseGuard is a thin, protective film that fits the contour of the top of the Magic Mouse and leaves no residue when removed. The MouseGuard’s ultra-smooth EZ-Glize surface allows for complete functionality.

    This week we’re offering free shipping shipping on the Moshi Magic Mouse MouseGuard to Kibbles & Bytes readers. Just use code *kbguard* in the cart.

    $14.99 with free shipping (with code *kbguard*). “*Click here to view details.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Keyboards_and_Mice/Mouse_Guards/

  • Fall eWaste Events Are Fast Approaching!

    What a beautiful sight—cars filled with old TVs, computers and electronic peripherals lined up waiting to be recycled. It’s a sight we look forward to several times a year, and our next “*Vermont*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewastevt and “*New Hampshire*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewastenh eWaste events are just weeks away.

    This fall, we have two eWaste collection events, so be sure to mark your calendars and start gathering all your unwanted electronics. On Saturday, September 24th Small Dog Electronics will be hosting a collection event at Ben & Jerry’s corporate office in South Burlington, Vermont. For our friends in New Hampshire, eWaste collection will take place on Saturday, October 8th at the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester. Both events will be from 9:00 AM until 2 PM, giving you plenty of time to stop by on your way to the grocery store or dropping the kids at soccer practice. As always, there is *no charge* to recycle your ewaste!

    All of the electronics collected will be processed in the United States by WeRecycle! in one of their two processing plants in Connecticut and New York. Although manufacturing processes are improving, computers, monitors and other equipment still contain some hazardous components like cadmium, mercury and chromium that can leach into the soil and contaminate groundwater. Over the past six years, Small Dog’s eWaste events have provided an environmentally responsible way to recycle and keep hazardous materials out of landfills, and are part of our company’s mission of social and environmental responsibility. Just this past spring, we collected over 146 tons of ewaste at our events in Montpelier and Manchester.

    We hope our fall events will be even more successful and look forward to seeing you there!

  • 5 Excellent iPad Apps for Business Professionals

    “*Notes Plus:*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fnotes-plus-handwriting-note%2Fid374211477%3Fmt%3D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 This powerful note-taking app supports handwriting, typing and audio recording and features PDF exporting, emailing and Google Docs uploading. *The perfect app for taking notes during meetings or presentations–when typing can seem rude–or jotting down ideas on the go, Notes Plus is available in the iTunes Store for $4.99.*

    “*WebEx:*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fwebex-for-ipad%2Fid364031971%3Fmt%3D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 This handy app allows iPad users to join or host meetings from anywhere! WebEx features high-quality video that shows multiple participants simultaneously, voice-activated video switching that spotlights whoever is talking and full-screen or floating video options. Users can also view documents, applications or screen sharing with live annotations using WebEx. *Ideal for the frequent business traveler, WebEx is available for free in the iTunes Store.*

    “*Numbers:*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fnumbers%2Fid361304891%3Fmt%3D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 Numbers lets users create spreadsheets–complete with photos, charts, tables and graphics–in just minutes. With more than 250 functions, Numbers allows users to quickly and easily organize data, calculate information and manage lists. In Numbers, users can open and edit Microsoft Excel files and save Numbers spreadsheets as Excel files. *An essential app for business people–available for $9.99 in the iTunes Store.*

    “*Omni Invoice:*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fomni-invoice%2Fid310187694%3Fmt%3D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 This app allows users to create professional quotes and invoices in just minutes and email them from their iPad. Quotes can be drawn up onsite or during meetings to help secure new business quickly and efficiently. *Ideal for the on-the go-professional, Omni Invoice is available in the iTunes Store for $4.99.*

    “*Expense Tablet for iPad:*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fexpense-tablet-for-ipad%2Fid364515469%3Fmt%3D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 This app is perfect for expense tracking and budget management. The easy-to-use interface lets users keep track of all expenses. Expense Tablet for iPad features category and account tracking, monthly budget reports, graphs representing recent expense reports and live search updates. *Keep track of spending with ease–available in the iTunes Store for only $0.99.*

  • HOW-TO: Type Accents on Your iDevice

    During my free time, I often use my iPhone to practice my foreign language skills. Well, not really, but a girl can dream.

    From time to time, though, I do find the need to type an accent on my phone, since, according to the rest of the word, one mark can change a word entirely. In addition, my husband’s middle name requires the lovely umlaut, and to type his name without it just seems wrong.

    *To produce an accent on your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad,* simply press and briefly hold the letter that needs the accent mark. You will soon see your choices from which to choose appear on the screen. Select your appropriate letter and you’re all set!

    “View a screenshot here.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/images/2530.png

    Très bien, no?