RSS readers: What I like.

After a long break I am back on the blog. This time I will speak about my favorite RSS readers. To start off I will just explain what is RSS. RSS stands for real Simple Syndicate. And it is what the name suggests. A simple way to get all the news. It is a small link that you add to your news aggregator (more on that shortly) and whenever there is a new story or update on the site you visited it will notify you. What is the advantage? Well no more manual reloading and updating of the websites to see if the

re is something new. Safari since the introduction of Leopard has this feature build in. It is not as convenient though. That 's why there are other programs that compete and win Safari. What I usually look for in these programs are simple:

• Ability to group the RSS feeds in categories
• Ability to do smart folders
• Simplicity
• A nice notification system for new available news.

I used to use the News Fire. It is a neat, small app with very little processor and memo

ry usage. It does what it is supposed to do and nothing extra. It supports folders to group your RSS feeds (eg fun, computers, news, etc) and smart searches that can find and group based on keywords. It utilizes great the Growl and makes it super easy to see the news at glance. It used to be shareware and the demo version allowed only 20 RSS feeds. Recently in a surprising move (well it is about a year ago) the developer decided to give it for free. Since then only a few tweaks have been done to the newer versions usually bug fixes. There is not really much to improve. Small powerful, effect. Al you need. The only issue I had was the inability to sync my two computers. I had the iMac that I use at home and I ready the news late at night and the weekends and the MacBook Pro that I use at work.

Recently (a few days ago) a new kid showed up. Well not really new kid. Just an old friend repackaged. The NetNewsWire. It was a much more powerful RSS program that NewsFire, but as expected it was also much more complicated to use. The biggest difference was the ability to sync through a server newsgator to sync across multiple macs, and even only reading. Although it was a pretty awesome concept the overall need for yet one more separate account made the whole thing less attractive. But now it is syncing through Google Reader. That is awesome too...

See Google could not stay back in the game of readers and aggregators, so they came up with the on-line version of a reader. You add your links and you read them. With NetNewsWire this becomes even easier now, and the best part is that it syncs back and forth, so if you read something on NetNewsWire it is marked as read in google too.

For now I keep both programs. NewsFire I am using it for ages. I cannot leave it. NetNewsWire is the new kid on the block and sure looks pretty. We shall see!

A new hard drive... and now what?

Recently I followed some instructions on line and I upgraded my MacBook Pro hard drive. I had an old 120 GB that can fill up only by the Apps. So in order to upgrade I needed to open the MacBook Pro, replace the hard drive close it up (without any screws left behind), format and install. I run however in so many problems which most of them were unique. Before we continue, please read the section I had in the previous on Disk Formatting.

Attempt 1: Open the hard drive, rebooting and installing the MacOS 10.5.6. Well there we go to the first problem. The DVD that I had was not working. And now what? Open again put back the old hard drive until we have a working DVD drive.

Attempt 2: My next door neighbor had a spare DVD drive from a MacBook that he spilled coke on. The DVD (hopefully works). So second attempt opening the Macbook and the MacBook Pro and this time transplanting the DVD from one computer to the other. Plus installing the Hard Drive. This time the drive was working and the operation was success. Now I just needed to install the OS. The first thing that I was asked was to format the Hard Drive to host the MacOSX. I selected the MacOS Journaled (case sensitive).

And that brings us to the next and final attempt... Yes I needed one more attempt. Why? Well first of all I just needed to install the the OS. The reason? Apple is fully supporting the case sensitive format, but not all other companies. So after the time that it took to install the OS and recover the data from the old hard drive, I had to do that all over again.

So the moral of the day. Do not use the case sensitive. Even time machine drive is not working with that format. You will need a new time machine, that is also case sensitive format.

iPhoto 09 reputation reinstalled

Okay so before I speak again about anything I will do a depth analysis or investigation. I stated in the first review of the iPhoto that it does not convert the places to the GPS EXIF data. Well it doesn't or at least it doesn 't directly. Meaning that it will keep the location in the database but will not imprinted it in the picture. So in case that you want to export the pictures and sent them to a friend the location is not there. So if you select the images and drag them to the Desktop and open the image, then the exif info do not include location.

Well... Think again! There is this option and almost in every export option. So for example let 's take the case where you export the pictures. So select File>Export and select the first option.

You will see this screen. Select the JPEG option and there is there the option of saving the "location inormation". A nice feature is the image renaiming. You can either save them with the title or even better with a prefix and an increasing number.

In this option we have the sequential image with the name "IMAGE_". And the fun does not stop there either. In the preferences at the Web publishing tab there is an option there to include the location information for published photos.
So after all the iPhoto 09 has a great incorporation of the Places. It still an issue that after the first instalation the Photos are not imported with their location.

iPhoto setting the record straight

In the previous post, I stated that the new iPhoto is amazing with the facebook, but there is no point in doing so since the names are not clickable on facebook. Well, it turns out that, this was not true. The names are clickable and behave as normal facebook links. The key there is to add the email that corresponds to the name and have the name (full name) just as it appears on facebook (not super sure about this last one).

So at the info tab for all the faces, just click the "i" button and just add the name there. And guess what the name can be anything that you want. Most of my life in Greece my friends were calling me Webby, so I pick this as a nickname, I add my full name as is on facebook, and I add the email I use for facebook. That 's it, now! The picture will be uploaded to the facebook and the name is clickable. See the example below with the very fashionable hair and helmet.

The nickname appears, the name is correct and the facebook is clickable.

iPhoto 09

I got a copy of iLife and although I used the iWeb and iMovie, I am amazed by the iPhoto, the flagship application. There are three main features, that can amaze you as they did me.

• Faces
• Places
• Facebook

Faces: This was one of the wow things on the past (and last, unfortunately) Macworld Keynote presentation. It utilizes the best face recognition software to locate the features of the face, and immediately puts a square around it. Once done it will ask you to name the face and thereafter it will do it itself. Although a first attempt this works pretty well, it is still not perfect. It will pick many random people among your pictures as suggestions. However, I see certain pattern repeated. I see for instance that suggests as my my mother and my father, that I look like anyway. It can be an alternative for a DNA test... I have to say, however, that Although over the years I lost 20 lbs it could still recognize me.

Places: This is the very long awaiting feature. Many sites like flickr already implemented it in their features. I was using a combination of programs to do it in my library for a bout a year now. I was doing with Geottager a Applescript software and Google earth. You center the location on Google Eaths and then you drag and drop the image on the geotagger app and includes in the exif data the latitude and longitude. Exif data is an small text file that is saved along side the image file and stores information as, the camera model, the lens, the aperture size and speed, etc. Now it can store GPS information. However, when I started the new iPhoto it did not import this information. I looked around and I did find many users reporting this as major issue. A work around is to re-import the pictures, which will force iPhoto to read this information. It is not practical though. So I just used the build in geotagging tool that is ok. Not the greatest, but pretty good. And then one more bummer... The iPhoto does not save the location as exif data but only in its internal database... Meaning? You cannot have the pictures exported with the GPS data included.
Facebook: Being a big facebook fan, I loved this feature until I realized that it is not very functional. So I tag people here, then I upload the pictures, but the names are not actual tags. You cannot click on them to see the friends profile. So you have to retag the pictures, which is a bummer and on top of that, when the iPhoto syncs the info, will re-import the new names on top of the previous... It just becomes a mess.

So the new iPhoto has some great features, that need some work to become even greater. The face recognition is great, and honestly I could not ask for more. The Places has two major bummers; does not read the GPS info of the pictures in the library and if you geotag pictures in does not translate the information to GPS exif data.