A very common problem Mac users have is playing Windows Media Video (WMV) files. When your Mac tries to open WMV files by default in QuickTime, commonly you’ll receive an error message along the lines of “This is not a movie file.” The reason for this is because WMV files use Microsoft proprietary codecs that don’t work in OS X. This is really annoying if someone sends you a WMV video clip by e-mail or if you want to download a WMV clip from the net.

In 2006, Microsoft discontinued making Windows Media Player for Macs meaning there was no longer a tailor made player for the WMV format for OS X. Fortunately, there are a few free and easy solutions to this problem:

Flip4Mac Plugin This is probably the easiest solution as it enables QuickTime to playback WMV files.  This plugin created by Telestream allows you to import, export and play Windows Media video and audio files on your Mac. The Flip4Mac WMV plug-in also works with other QuickTime based applications such as iMovie and Final Cut Pro meaning you can even edit WMV files on Mac too.

VLC Media Player The most versatile player out there allows you to play WMV files as well without the Flip4Mac Plugin. However, this is just a playback solution - it won’t allow you to edit WMV in QuickTime supported applications such as iMovie and Final Cut. The great thing about VLC Media Player however is that it’s lightweight, fast and can handle almost any media format.

MPlayer OSX This player emerged out of the Google Codes project as an attempt to create an all-round player. MPlayer OSX is a simple but powerful video player designed specifically for Mac and can handle WMV playback. It features more options and preferences than VLC Player with the only drawback that the first time it plays a video, it has to build a font cache which can take a while but only has to be done once.

Since first trying Spotify earlier this year I’ve become a firm convert and even more so now that they’ve introduced some handy little features to enhance the listening experience. If you haven’t been using the service long, you may be unaware of everything that Spotify can do. Here are a selection of tips from sharing links to searching by record label to help you get even more out of the app:

Link To Your Favourite Track Moments

Want to share your favourite guitar riff or solo with a friend? Spotify allows you to link to a specific moment in a track with a little trick. While you are listening to a song, simply go to the Edit menu and select “Copy”. Then just add “%23″ with the time in the song that you want to share e.g. http://open.spotify.com/track/4caRcqZl3JyrxwhgV5HGQ8%23.

Share Tracks in Facebook or Delicious

You can now share tracks to Facebook or Delicious simply by right-clicking on a track and selecting the “Share to” option.

See What The World Is Listening To

To see what you, your country or Spotify users worldwide have been listening to most, click on “Home” in Spotify and then select the “Top Lists” tab. Clicking on the tab allows you to select top lists from around the world which is an interesting way to assess music tastes in other countries or see which artists you might be missing out on. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year I wrote about my enthusiasm for music app Spotify and today I’m pleased to read it’s going to get even better with CD quality streaming for premium users. A premium account currently costs around $10 per month and essentially means that your music doesn’t get interrupted by adverts. However, for the time being, only the most popular tracks will be streamed in CD quality with the rest being converted over the coming weeks.

To enable higher quality streaming, simply access Spotify’s service’s preference menu and tick the “enable high bitrate” box. The move will effectively double the quality of streaming on Spotify with the company claiming they now offer the highest quality music streaming site on the net. I may be tone deaf but as far as I can tell, the current 128kbs streaming quality is already pretty good so I’ll be very interested to hear what the new quality sounds like.

However, signs are that Spotify users are still opting to use the free service rather than upgrade to premium and this latest move is another tactic for Spotify to try and change this situation. They’ve already tried a few other methods to encourage people to convert such as releasing exclusive remixes to premium users, allowing them to enter compeititions and offering exclusive releases of new albums.

Free users haven’t been neglected though. A new mobile service is due to be rolled out shortly and will allow you to sync Spotify with your mobile device and will be available to all users. There have also been plenty of cool new features added to the free service since it was released which I’m going to cover shortly to help your get more out of Spotify.

Since switching to Mac, I’ve abandoned almost all of the programs that I used on Windows with the exception of Microsoft Word. This is mainly because Word is so widely used by others that I’ve effectively been “forced” to install it even though I hardly use any other application in Microsoft Office. This is annoying for two main reasons: Office is expensive and takes up over 500MB of my hard drive. However, there are a selection of free and highly accomplished alternative word processing applications for Mac, some of which not only handle Word documents, but that you may even find improve on Word itself.

Writer Part of OpenOffice which is a cross platform multilingual Java based office suite that’s designed as a free replacement for Microsoft Office. Writer is the word processing component and allows you to open and edit Word documents (including .docx), export to PDF and even use it as a WYSIWYG editor for creating web pages. Some prefer to install NeoOffice which has taken OpenOffice and customised the interface for Mac.

AbiWord A better solution than Writer for those working on slower Macs. Like Writer, it allows you to open Word documents, save to .doc format and export to both PDF and HTML. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t support .docx format and may sometimes alter the formatting in Word documents so that they appear a bit messed-up. For those working on older Macs though, it’s an excellent alternative.

Bean Designed specifically for Macs, Bean is based on Cocoa so it looks great. Bean can also open and save in Word format but note that it can’t handle footnotes, images or pre-defined styles and is only partially compatible with Word’s file formats. In addition, it doesn’t work with .docx, hyperlinks are imported as text and exporting of tables doesn’t work well. However, in terms of speed and interface, Bean is excellent.

Google Docs Google’s online office suite is handy replacement for opening and saving Word documents. All you need is a Google account to get started. Google Docs features a clean interface, autosave feature, spell check and it can save your documents either to your account, publish it as a web page or automatically e-mail it as a Word document. You can even invite others to collaborate with you on a document.

ThinkFree Online The ThinkFreeOffice suite isn’t free but it’s online counterpart ThinkFree Online is. It only allows you to open and view any kind of Office document, including .doc and .docx and then embed, convert, share, upload or search them for free. You can perform basic functions for free but you have to sign-up for extra features such as the offline file management “Power Tool”.

If you’ve never performed a backup of your hard drive, then you’re risking potential disaster if it fails or that “on” switch simply doesn’t work one day for some reason. We all come-up with poor excuses for not doing so - our external drive is full, we don’t have time, we simply forgot etc. but CrashPlan is an application that definitely leaves no room for excuses. These are some of the ways you can backup with CrashPlan:

• Online Encrypted and unlimited size hard drive backups online for a modest fee
• PC/Mac Backup your hard drive to another PC or Mac and vice versa
• External Drive Backups performed in real time to USB and Firewire drives
• Friends You can even select a friend over the net to backup your files to

Best of all, not only does it work across platforms and is free but using CrashPlan couldn’t be simpler.  I setup CrashPlan on a Mac and within a minute, a backup of my entire hard drive was being performed to my USB drive. Note that the program is only free for personal use (they’ve got a special CrashPlan Pro for companies) although it is supported by a few ads. Read the rest of this entry »

In the world of iPods and iPhones, there’s nothing more annoying than not being able to copy your music from them onto your hard drive. This is because Apple have locked both devices so that you can only copy music onto them but not vice-versa. This is incredibly frustrating if you want to replace a song you’ve lost or deleted in iTunes, your Mac has crashed and your iPod/iPhone is the only place you’ve saved your music, or if you simply want to transfer some songs between computers.

Fortunately, there are two excellent “unlocking” solutions for Mac in the form of Senuti and iPodRip. Both applications used to be free but now require a modest fee to use them. Both have free trial versions however and I put them both through their paces to see which is best.

Senuti

Firstly, Senuti supports both iPod and iPhones so if you own the latter as well, then it’s a no-brainer which to choose. The interface of Senuti is very clean and as soon as you connect your iPod, your music and playlists appear pretty much instantly. To transfer a song, you can either drag and drop them or select the song and click the clearly labeled “Transfer” button in the top left corner.

That’s about all there is to it. Once a track is transferred, it is denoted with a blue dot which tells you that it has already been transferred to your hard drive. You can also play songs simply by double clicking on them. The demo is limited to 30 days and 1000 song transfers but there’s no nag screen and the full license costs $18. Read the rest of this entry »

Although it started over three years ago, the Twitter phenomenon has gone into overdrive in 2009. Its importance in breaking news and reaching the areas that traditional news outlets simply can’t have been well documented and the current political situation in Iran is a perfect case in point. Even the US State Department has asked Twitter not to perform maintenance and thus risk blocking crucial tweets from emerging out of Iran. Meanwhile others have suggested that Twitter may be the most important thing to hit the net since Google.

However, are we getting a bit carried away with the reliability and effectiveness of what Twitter can do? Isn’t it a bit worrying when even the US State Department starts relying on Twitter to maybe formulate foreign policy? And the more popular it becomes, isn’t there a danger that an over reliance in it could be both politically dangerous for governments, embarrassing for news organizations and potentially taint how authentic tweets actually are as spammers, commercial organisations and governments join in.

We’ve already seen a study that has punctured the myth of exactly how popular Twitter is. Harvard University found that a paltry 10% of Twitter users generate over 90% of the content. When you see how much content high profile tweeters like Stephen Fry, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher create, this isn’t as hard to believe as it may at first sound. It also found that half of all users update their pages less than once every 74 days and that most people only ever tweet once during their lifetime. It’s clear then that relying on Twitter as some kind of “democratic miracle” is fraught with problems.

In the case of Iran however, there’s no doubt that Twitter has provided an invaluable outlet in a country where getting a true picture of events isn’t easy. During the 20 year commemoration of the Tienanmen Square massacre in China, Twitter also proved one of the few ways of people getting their voices heard despite authorities trying to block them. As a blogging man myself however, I’m prone to agree with bloggers such as Muhammad Saleem who point out that one of the “hidden” dangers of Twitter is the brevity of tweets. There’s no scope to write any detailed analysis or context in a microblog of just 140 characters.

Saleem also makes the salient point that with Twitter, there is a far greater danger of information overload. It can take a while just to filter the wheat from the chaff when you’re trying to filter hundreds of tweets, many of which are garbled in order to fit more words in. A search for #Iranelection provides the perfect example. In the time it takes you to scan the first five to ten Tweets, you’ll be told that there are already another 150-odd new messages matching your search. It is simply impossible for anyone to accurately stay on top of, let alone filter, such a vast weight of opinion.

There’s no doubt that there’s some valuable information being tweeted every day on Twitter. But there needs to be a much better way to filter genuine breaking news from inane tweets. And the more popular it becomes and the more organizations like the US State Department start taking an interest, the more skeptical you have to become.

Although some bloggers are hailing it as a “new” release from Google, Google Quick Search Box was included as part of the Google Codes project earlier this year but it’s now been given an official release by Google with its own webpage. And you can see why Google think the tool is fitting of a major release. Google Quick Search Box is a basically a Spotlight style app that can search for just about anything both on and offline as well as launch apps.

In this way, it’s very similar to Google Desktop except it’s far more discreet and lightweight and there’s no annoying indexing to wait for. Rather, Google Quick Search Box floats on your desktop ready for action whenever you need it. Previously, it only performed basic searches on your hard and online but this official release makes it an altogether more powerful proposition.

Google Quick Search Box can performs more through hard drive and online searches and even launch applications. As you’d expect from a Google product, searches are incredibly detailed and quick and results are displayed clearly. Search for “Firefox” for example and it immediately brings-up the Firefox icon ready for launching. In this way, Google Quick Search Box acts not only as a search tool, but as a launcher as well.

You can even customise Google Quick Search Box to search only those online sites that you choose such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail and Google Docs. To search both your Gmail and Google Docs account, you need to enter your Gmail account credentials in the “Accounts” section in preferences. However, when I tried to search my accounts using Google Quick Search Box, the search seemed to hang for a while and no results were found. Whether this was an error on my side or a bug I’m not sure but it was a little disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s prestigious Worldwide Developers Conference got underway in San Francisco yesterday and delegates finally got to see the long awaited next incarnation of Mac OS X - Snow Leopard - in action. I wrote about what to expect from Snow Leopard a few weeks ago and there seems no reason to refute any of the claims made there, except that Safari will no longer be in beta stage when it will be released, probably in September. There are however some new revelations that weren’t originally mentioned:

Higher Resolution iChats - Better video quality yet only consuming a third of the bandwidth

Support for Chinese - Including those written on a trackpad writing and predictive typing

Enhanced Exposé - Click and hold a dock icon to reveal windows for that program

Drag and Drop Features - Drag and drop items and images between different programs

Cheap Upgrade - Leopard users can upgrade for just $29 (family license is $49)

Those that we already knew about but now have more details on include:

Enhanced Stacks - Handles a larger range of files and allow you to drill-down sub folders

Microsoft Exchange Support - Browse global Exchange addresses and integration with iCal

More Discreet Quicktime - The interface hides as soon as your cursor leaves the window

As I mentioned before, the most noticeable benefit for most general users will probably be speed enhancements. That said, the long-awaited support for Microsoft Exchange is bound to be a big pull for business users. And for programmers, Snow Leopard presents the most exciting developments of all with support for 64-bit architecture, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Many of the other subtle enhancements mentioned above aren’t exactly essential but they will streamline your workflow. And for just $29 dollars to upgrade, you can’t really go wrong.

Google entered the browsing wars with Google Chrome for Windows just under a year ago and according to a study by Net Applications, it’s already become the fourth biggest browser out there with almost 2% of the market. Mac fans can now try Google Chrome for themselves although it’s worth noting that this is strictly a developer release meaning some features (such as bookmarking and Flash movies) are not working yet.

This release only works on Intel Macs and is prone to bugs and instability but it’s enough to give you a good idea as to what the finished product will look and feel like. The first thing I noticed about Google Chrome is that it’s unbelievably lightweight. While Firefox was consuming anything from 20-30% of my Mac’s CPU, Chrome barely registered on the scale occasionally touching 3%.

For anyone who’s plagued with Firefox memory leaks and crashes, this alone is surely going to be a compelling reason to give Chrome a go. As you’d expect, Google Chrome also features a type of tabbed browsing which improves on Firefox’s slightly cramped user experience.

Google Chrome is also extremely quick. Surfing the Softonic site, page loads took less then a second and all images were loaded very quickly. YouTube in particular loaded with lightening speed but unfortunately, because the Flash player is disabled in this developer release, it wasn’t possible to test watching videos.

However, sometimes, it simply produced nothing when trying to find the YouTube homepage and maybe this is one of the bugs Google are working on. Overall however, the handling of sites using JavaScript in particular was mightily impressive. I also like the way that when you open Chrome, it displays windows of your most visited sites so you can click on them to go straight to them.

If only there were more extensions for Google Chrome, I’d seriously consider converting when the final build is released. Before that happens though, it will need to get much more popular. Based on this first proof, Safari and Firefox may well have a real fight on their hands.

My favorite tool for downloading YouTube clips on Mac is the DownloadHelper extension for Firefox. It’s convenient, quick and even converts videos into the format of your choice while it downloads. For a while however I’ve been plagued with a ”Conversion requires external application” error message when downloading certain clips.

The exact error read: “Conversion requires an external application that appears to be missing on your system. Configure conversion? > Cancel > OK.” When I selected OK, it opened the Preferences for DownloadHelper highlighting in red the location path for the selected converter option which is either FFMpeg or MEncoder.

I eventually found the start of the solution was to install the ffmpegX video/audio encoder for Mac. ffmpegX is basically a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to operate more than 20 video and audio processing tools including ffmpeg which is a very fast video and audio encoder.

For the purposes of correcting the DownloadHelper error, you don’t actually need to use the ffmpegX interface. You do however need it to use it to install the mpeg2enc binary for ffmpegX. Once you’ve installed ffmpegX, you’ll be immediately taken to the main interface where you’ll be prompted to load 3 binaries. You only need to load one binary to fix DownloadHelper - the mpeg2enc binary - which can be found here.

You don’t have to worry about the mencoder or mplayer binaries but you do need to check the box next to mpeg2enc and locate the binaries that you’ve downloaded onto your hard drive. The resulting installation places the binaries in your Mac’s application support library. The final step is to re-open your DownloadHelper preferences (in Firefox’s Tools menu) and enter the path where the binaries are located. For most people, it will be “/Library/Application Support/ffmpegX”:

When the DownloadHelper logo animates next to the URL bar while you are using YouTube, you should now be able to download videos again with it. However, it hasn’t worked perfectly for me. For some reason, videos are being downloaded to a temporary file on my Mac rather than the directory I’ve configured downloaded files to be saved in DownloadHelper. In addition, the files are not being converted to QuickTime format they were previously. However, I can sort-out all of this by manually moving the files and converting them myself later. The important thing is that this work-around allows you to download YouTube clips again using DownloadHelper.

I recently lost the USB cable for my digital camera and so tried to connect it to my Mac with another one that I thought was exactly the same. However, when I connected the camera, I received the following warning:

My immediate reaction was that there was something wrong with the USB port. However, I tried to connect the camera with the same cable, to a Windows laptop and received exactly the same warning. Most forums suggested that the problem was due to a short-circuit in the cable but I knew this wasn’t the case because it worked fine with an older camera I have. One unlucky forum user spent 1 hour on the phone to Apple trying to solve the problem and even resorted to reinstalling OS X!

However, I found the solution was much simpler than that. I bought a new cable and hey presto, it worked fine. So what was the problem with the original cable? When I compared them, I noticed that the “faulty” cable had a slightly bigger coil at the end of it (pictured here in grey) than the new one that worked. I presume that this somehow “supercharged” the power being drawn from the USB port when the camera was connected.

What I don’t understand is why the USB cable needed to draw any power at all from the port at all. The camera is powered by its own lithium battery and so doesn’t need any extra power from the cable in order to transfer photos to the Mac. The moral of the story is, if you do ever encounter the USB Over Current warning, don’t panic. Change the cable first before you call Apple or presume your USB ports are fried!

One of the best innovations in iMovie ‘09 has been the improved ability to upload directly to YouTube. Before, you had to export your clips to QuickTime format and then compress the video for web streaming but now all of this is done for you in one go. The only downside is that iMovie ‘09 doesn’t allow you to upload in HD format which is one feature Apple will hopefully add to the next release. For every other format, editing and sharing your video clips via iMovie has never been easier and you don’t even have to visit the YouTube site. Here’s a step by step guide about how to do so:

1.  Once you’ve completed your project, go to the “Share” option in the main menu bar and select “YouTube…”

2. Enter your account name and password. Below this you can add title, keywords and a description for your video.

3. Select the size to publish your video i.e. Mobile, Medium, Large or HD although as mentioned earlier, you can’t select HD.

4. Click “Next” and you’ll be given a warning to ensure that you’re not uploading copyrighted material. Click “Publish” and iMovie automatically starts uploading your project to YouTube.

Remember that YouTube clips can only be a maximum of 10 minutes. If you select the largest size to publish, expect to wait around 10 to 15 minutes while the whole process is completed for a 10 minute movie clip. When it’s done, iMovie issues you with the YouTube link where you’ll find the video although it may take another 5 minutes or so to appear. In addition, even when it does appear, you may receive a warning when watching it that it’s still not fully completed uploading and therefore the quality may be degraded until it is.

From start to finish then, you need between 20-30 minutes for a large size 10 minute clip to be fully uploaded in all its glory. Note that you’ll also notice a handy “Published to YouTube” message in the top left of your project window to let you know that you’ve definitely uploaded it. You can also remove the video from YouTube at any time by going back to the “Share” menu and selecting “Remove from YouTube…”.

When it comes to troubleshooting friend’s and relatives computers from afar, one of the best remote access applications I’ve ever used is CrossLoop. When I switched to Mac, however, I had to dump it but I’m pleased to see the developers have finally launched a Mac version.

The great thing is that the Mac version supports access of both Windows and Macs so you can help out people on both platforms. In addition, Crossloop now serves as an online marketplace, where you can connect not only to friends, but to online experts who, for an hourly fee, will help you with technical issue.

The key to CrossLoop’s appeal is its simplicity. After installing CrossLoop, you are prompted whether you want to create an account although this is optional. Afterwards you are presented with small panel with two tabs. Select the ‘Join’ tab if you would like to connect and control a friend’s Mac. Select the ‘Host’ tab if you would like someone to access to your Mac i.e. to receive technical help.

This host tab contains an important 12-digit access code that your friend will need to enter to connect to your PC. Obviously, the only requirement is that the other person has CrossLoop installed too to initiate a session. Once done, you’re ready to go. A separate window opens on your desktop with your friend’s desktop and you can tinker with it to your heart’s content.

Obviously, the main concern with such desktop sharing applications is speed and security. As regards speed, you can choose whether to share in low or high quality, the former being faster and recommended for slow internet connections. It’s great that CrossLoop now offers this choice because there’s nothing worse than trying to share over a slow connection.

As far as security is concerned, the developer maintains that all sent information is highly encrypted with a 128-bit algorithm using the randomly generated 12-digit access code mentioned earlier. There’s no need to worry about anyone accessing your PC without permission either – a pop-up requesting permission from you alerts you before any information is exchanged. Most recently, CrossLoop has introduced file sending plus an online marketplace of experts which enables you to find professional Mac specialists who can help with your problems with fees ranging from around$50 an hour.

The only minor drawback of CrossLoop is that it doesn’t support multiple connections, although for most people seeking technical help, this is probably neither desirable or practical either. The bottom line is that CrossLoop really is an excellent application for what it offers i.e. simple and effective remote connections. The fact that it is free only adds to its appeal considering similar programs such as Copilot charge anything up to $5 for just 24 hours of use.

Although Apple haven’t given an official release date, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is widely expected to be unveiled this summer. As Jon wrote a few weeks ago, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference takes place in early June where the unveiling will almost certainly take place. However, this doesn’t mean it will necessarily be released in stores at the same time and Apple may well wait until after the summer to launch it.

So what can we expect? The first thing Mac users should be aware of is that there’s nothing eye-popping in Snow Leopard that’s going to have you scrambling to upgrade. The focus of OS X 10.6 is simply to improve overall efficiency and reduce it’s footprint. However, there are a few interesting new features that will certainly interest some users. Here are some of the most notable:

Slimmer QuickTime Player

Maybe inspired by the success of VLC Player, “QuickTime X” will feature a simplified GUI with a greater focus on codec support

Cocoa Based Finder

Finder is expected to include a glossy new Cocoa Desktop Window and Contextual Menu

Safari Beta 4 Default Browser

In an unusual (and some might say slightly desperate move) Apple will include a beta version of Safari 4 with Snow Leopard presumably in a bid to give it a leg-up against Firefox.

Microsoft Exchange Server Support

A smart business move that will surely attract more corporate users. Mac users will now be able to connect to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers via Mail, Address Book, and iCal

Faster Installation Time

May not be of much interest to single users but network administrators installing Snow Leopard on multiple machines can expect to install it in around 15 minutes compared to around an hour for Leopard. Testmac.net completed an install in an incredible 13 minutes.

More Stacks Control

Stacks will be improved to allow users to drill-down the contents of sub-folder

In view of all these relatively minor revelations and for the expected cost of around $130, it’s unlikely Mac users will be flocking to upgrade. However, if you’re finding your Mac is operating increasingly slowly, then for speed alone it might be worth the upgrade. Those that have tested Snow Leopard confirm that its the under the hood improvements that you’ll really notice when trying Snow Leopard. Testmac.net reports:

Snow Leopard is fast. Very fast. Like, surprisingly fast. From boot times to general application usage, Snow Leopard was noticeably quicker than Leopard when using the same system. Apple and 3rd party applications alike, they all launched faster and performed smoother. I’m sure this can be attributed to the new 64-bit architecture, but its amazing how much of a difference it really is.

In addition, its also fair to say that developers will find much to be happy about about in Snow Leopard. The integration of Grand Central, OpenCL and a 64 bit kernel will finally allow them to take full advantage of the dual processing power of Intel Macs and produce some stunning applications.

So there you have it, we’ve already got a pretty good fully formed picture of what Snow Leopard will look like. Now the only question that remains is when will Apple run out of cat names for their operating systems?