Kibbles & Bytes Blog

With all the news of our imploding economy and the presidential election, it’s easy to forget that the Gulf Coast states (particularly Texas) and several Caribbean islands have been hit hard and even locally devastated by hurricanes Hanna, Gustav, and especially Ike.

In Haiti, more than 1000 people have perished, and more than a million people are homeless. Haiti is in desperate need of food, drinking water, medical supplies and shelter.

In the US, gasoline, electricity, and water continue to be scarce for thousands, sewer systems are damaged and fears of a health crisis are spreading through affected regions. In coastal Texas, almost 30,000 people are still in emergency shelters. As of this writing, almost 2 million people are without power. Ike is likely to be the third costliest US hurricane of all time.

In this latest round of storms and suffering, I am particularly saddened to hear stories of people who have lost their homes (which in many cases were trailers). For many of these people, their homes were literally all they had. Now they will have to start over from scratch. I can only imagine how stressful and emotionally devastating such a prospect would be.

I want to encourage Kibbles readers to join Small Dog Electronics employees in donating money and even time to hurricane relief agencies.

Also, consider giving blood. The Red Cross says “with power outages widespread in the aftermath of Hurricanes Ike and Hanna, blood supplies, which were already low in many parts of the country, continue to drop. Dozens of blood drives across the country were cancelled thus far, causing a shortfall in planned blood collections.”

You can visit the Red Cross here:
“http://www.redcross.org”:http://www.redcross.org

For Haiti, consider donating to Doctors Without Borders directly at Smalldog.com; we will match your donation, up to $200.
“Click here to donate to Doctors Without Borders”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/42760 on “Smalldog.com.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/42760

Read about the Humane Societies’ efforts to rescue abandoned pets after the hurricanes:
“After the Waters Recede, Devastation and Hope”:http://www.hsus.org/hsus_field/hsus_disaster_center/disasters_press_room/fieldnotes.html

Many iPod accessories are not fully compatible with the newest iPods released September 9. On our website “Smalldog.com”:Smalldog.com, we refer to these iPod models as iPod nano 4G, iPod touch 2008, and the 120GB iPod classic. Some accessories, including most FM transmitters, are not at all compatible with the new iPods.

When plugged into a non-compatible device, a new iPod will most commonly return the message “Charging is not supported with this accessory.” So, for example, the iPod will still play through speakers with the built-in dock, but eventually the iPod will have to be plugged into a computer or compatible AC charger to recharge.

I’m going to brag a little here and note that Small Dog Electronics has already updated nearly ALL of our product descriptions for every iPod cable, charger, speaker system, and other iPod accessories to include compatibility with the new iPods. Since most manufacturers have not yet posted updated compatibility information, we’ve gone ahead and tested the accessories ourselves.

This compatibility issue is caused by the same change with the Apple Dock Connecter introduced with the iPhone 3G. Inside the iPod / iPhone Dock Connecter are 30 metal pins. Previous iPods and iPhones allowed for charging either over pins reserved for the USB connection or pins reserved for the obsolete Firewire connection.

While Apple apparently announced this upcoming change to manufactures of “Made for iPod” accessories back in 2005, Apple only formerly discontinued Firewire charging support with the most recent iPods. New iPods and iPhones can only charge via the USB pin.

As such, there is no way that a software update can fix this issue in the future; this is truly a modification in iPod hardware. Also, it’s important to note that while new iPods may have limited compatibility with older accessories, older iPods should have no issue with newer iPod accessories.

“View all iPod accessories by clicking here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/iPod_Accessories

By default, Mac OS X shows a generic, white icon when displaying a thumbnail of an image in a folder or on the Mac’s desktop. Many people find this frustrating, especially switchers who are used to the way Windows shows a little preview thumbnail of the actual image.

Fortunately it’s very easy to change this, so you will see a thumbnail preview of your images. Whenever I get a new Mac, this is one of the very first preferences I set.

From the Finder’s menu bar at the top of the screen, click on View > Show View Options (activate the Finder by clicking on its blue “Happy Mac” icon at the end of your dock, or by simply clicking on an empty space on your Mac’s desktop). In the Finder, you can also use the keyboard shortcut Command-J.

Once the View Options menu opens, check the box that says “Show icon preview.”
Note that you can also choose the size of the icons in the View Options menu. Close the menu, and now all of your generic thumbnails will show a preview of the actual image.

Also, it may take a second or two for OS X to create thumbnails in folders with hundreds of images.

_Dear Friends,_

We had the first hard frost last night but I was in Chicago at the time. Grace had the day off so she was able to harvest the rest of the garden. I was at the Shelburne Orchards earlier in the week to launch our annual Apples to iPods event in cooperation with the Vermont Department of Agriculture, Department of Tourism and the Apple Growers Association. This is a fun promotion where we put a wooden apple in each of the 24 Vermont Apple orchards and apple-pickers that find them win iPods. We had a press conference scheduled, though it also happened to be the same morning of the Lehman bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch sale, so we didn’t get the governor nor the press.

I am in Chicago for an Apple roundtable put on by peripheral manufacturer Targus. There’s some exciting stuff coming from Targus and it was good to meet their executives and marketing team. They also took us to a Cubs game–a losing effort from the Cubs, but an awesome Wrigley Field rooftop experience.

It’s pretty funny that Microsoft’s new Vista commercials are so bad. Bill Gates out-acted Jerry Seinfeld and Jerry got the boot this week. Just another example of how Microsoft doesn’t get it. It’s not only Microsoft that has attempted to replicate what Apple does so well; while other consumer electronics manufacturers are facing layoffs and declining sales, Apple is continuing to post record sales, market growth and innovative industry leading products.

I find it counterintuitive that Apple common stock has taken such a beating in this down market. They are chugging ahead on all cylinders, mitigating the impact of the credit crunch with a strong balance sheet and record sales. Strong balance sheets, cash in the bank and leading with design and function sure seem to be the right way to counter out-of-control financial groups.

We had some frost last night in the valley, so a lot of people are beginning to think of winter and making the annual preparations. Artie has been cutting wood on his property and I bought a few cords to supplement my heating system this year. I’ve got a wood/coal furnace as back-up to my oil furnace, but I need to clean it up and make sure it is ready for the winter by changing the filters, cleaning the chimney and making sure the controls work.

Maybe I’ll put that off another weekend, though, since there’s a Victory motorcycle gathering in the White Mountains and Saturday looks like a nice sunny day. I hope you have a great weekend and thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali and Ed_

By now you’ve probably heard about Spore, the much-hyped new game from the creator of Sim City and the Sims. In Spore you create and oversee a species from a single-cell organism to a complex animal, to an intelligent being that eventually leaves its home planet to interact with alien species across the galaxy. Throughout the game, the player’s perspective and species change dramatically. In the Spore TV ads, this is humorously referred to as “creationlutionism.” This is a blockbuster game – entertaining, engrossing, even somewhat educational.
For the next two weeks we have free shipping on Spore.

“Click here to order, $44.99 with FREE shipping!”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag18339/

Last week I reported that Spotlight in Tiger (OS 10.4) could perform simple calculations. Unfortunately, this is not correct; Spotlight will only do this in Leopard.

If you’re online, it’s possible to use Google for simple calculations just as you’d use Spotlight. To use Google’s built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you’d like done into the search box and hit return.

You can use Google to convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and mass among others. Just enter the desired conversion into the search box and Google will do the rest.

See more of Google’s handy little features here:

“http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html#calculator”:http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html#calculator

More about search terms/ criteria in Spotlight in Mac OS 10.4:

“http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/cdb_sptknd.html”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/cdb_sptknd.html

And more about search terms/ critereia in Spotlight in Mac OS 10.5:

“http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15155.html”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15155.html