Aint that special

The internet has become as much a part of OS X as Mail.app. But if your like me, your mac is stuck behind several layers of security. My first layer of “protection” is Comcast. Comcast really does not want you running your own server with their cable system. They effectively block IMAP ports to prevent you from running your mac as a mail server. They have even begun to packet shape BitTorrent traffic. There is little the average user can do about this. This outline is about the other layers of security that prevent you from using VNC, Devonthink Server, Omnifocus server and many other applications that now offer data up over the internet. I’ve tailored it for use with the Airport Extreme base station

The first step is to get a static DNS entry and point it at your router. I use DynDNS. I chose something memorable so I don’t have to look it up all the time. If you can remember the IP address of your router, then you can probably skip this step.

Open up the Airport Utility and select your router. Click the “Manual” button in the lower left corner. The IP address that your provider has assigned to the router should appear at the bottom of the next screen. Write that down.

Now go back to the DynDNS web page and enter your routers IP address as the address that you would like traffic routed to. You’re telling DynDNS to make a readable URL address available and point all traffic to your router. Don’t worry, there are TWO firewalls between the internet and your Mac.

Get a static IP address for your Mac

Your Mac’s IP address can be found in the System Preferences. Open the “Network” preferences and select whatever connection you use to get on the internet. Mine is Ethernet 1. On the TCP/IP lozenge, choose “Using DHCP with manual address” as the method for “Configure IPv4″. Most likely, your router is distributing a series of IP address from 10.0.1.1 to 10.0.1.200. You need to choose an IP address outside this range. I suggest using 10.0.1.201. Type that into the box next to “IP Address”. The “Subnet Mask” and “Router” IP address should already be set. Set the DNS server to your router as shown. We only need the router to do the DNS look-up for us anyway.


Firewalls

The Airport Extreme is your first line of protection. No unsolicited traffic can make it past the router. That is, unless we tell the router to make some openings in the firewall. These are called Port forwarding or Port Mapping. To add port mapping to the Airport, click the “Advanced” button at the top of the Airport Utility window.

Now click the “Port Mapping” lozenge

Click the little plus sign underneath the “Allow:” box. The next pop-up window allows you to either choose a common service to add such as Apple Remote Desktop or Windows Sharing. A really useful port to open is the one used for VNC. This will allow you to control your mac remotely from anywhere on the internet.

To add a VNC port, do not select a service. We are going to create one instead. VNC typically uses port 5901, so type that into all the port boxes shown. Enter your Mac’s IP address as the destination of the ports forwarding. This essentially tells the router to send any traffic it receives on port 5901 directly to your Mac.

So now the router understands what to do with the traffic. You have to tell your Mac what to do with it. I said earlier that there were TWO firewalls. The first is the Airport Extreme. The second is the one built into your Mac. Back to the system preferences and open the “Sharing” preferences. Click the “Firewall” lozenge. If you have never done so, turn on your Mac’s firewall and then flog yourself for not maintaining your personal security. Never do that again!

Now click the “New” button to open up a new connection through the Macs firewall. From the pull down menu, select “Other” and enter 5901 as the port number to allow through.

Now the world can access port 5901 on your Mac. That’s kind of scary. You can always go into either Airport Utility or the Mac Firewall and turn off the port again without deleting all the work you did. The same technique can be used to open up BitTorrent or Telekinesis ports. There are several online tools that will tell you if the ports have been successfully unblocked.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Security, Tip, Trick, Web

If I had any doubt that technology was not living up to my expectations, I’m a believer now. I just installed iPhone Remote on my Mac Pro and all I can say is WOW! My iPhone can control my Mac over the Edge network.

iPhone Remote is brought to us by the good people at Google (code named Telekinesis). Maybe they got tired of waiting for the gPhone and decided to make the iPhone the device dreams are made of. The server software is a quick install. It’s a lot like a VNC server. It runs in the background and receives requests from some port that it is told to listen to. The server software then directs traffic to its own applications. Here is a quick run-down of what you can do remotely from your iPhone.

You can take a picture with your Mac’s video camera and receive it right on your iPhone (only one frame, not a video stream). Any file on your Mac at home can be accessed from your iPhone. How about taking a screenshot of your Mac’s desktop? Yup, you can do that. You want to do a Spotlight search for a file? No probelmo. I’ll illustrate a quick tour of the application below. The screen shots are taken from Safari running on my Mac Pro (since there is no way to take a decent picture of the iPhone interface). But you have to trust me, this looks great on the iPhone.

This first picture is of the iPhone Remote software running on my Mac. It’s very simple to use. Just open up the ports in your firewall and start the server. I like to have the “applications” open in a new window on the iPhone just for ease of use.

This is the main application view on the iPhone. Just tap one of the buttons. That background image is automatically pulled from the Mac running the iPhone Remote server. That’s my desktop.

This is the list of applications on my Mac. Did you forget to fire-up your BitTorrent client this morning? No problem. Just turn it on from your iPhone.

You can just as easily access your files. Click through directories and open up that PDF file right from your phone. I found a strange twist, that I don’t think was intended but could have very interesting consequences. When I clicked on a Subethaedit document that contained an HTML snippet, my Mac opened the document in Subethaedit (talk about remote control!) and my iPhone presented me with a rendered webpage, rather than the snippet of code. I don’t know which surprised me more, windows just poping open on my mac, or the iPhone rendering the HTML code. This opens up a very easy way to make your own web applications without having a web server. I’m not sure this method would support cgi though.

And if you don’t remember where that file is, just use the iPhone Remote’s Spotlight function. Here is a Spotlight search for the word “Perl”

A feature that has a lot of potential, is streaming media from your Mac at home to your iPhone. The server software can stream audio or video directly. You gotta have a remote to control that music, right? One is included.

While the Edge service may never be fast enough to allow for true Remote Desktop, there is a work around. You can actually select and then trigger Applescripts from your iPhone. This has potential to allow you to FTP upload to servers, start Backup software, or even secure a stolen computer.

Finally, for all those Leet Mac users, there is actually a Terminal application. Finally, we can run our cron jobs while we’re on the road.

The service works through a secure shttp connection, so you don’t need to worry too much about the data being transmitted. It’s all encrypted. However, it’s a little scary to think that if some nefarious person gets your user name and password, they can have complete snooping privileges. I like a suggestion I found on the Telekinesis Wiki which is to setup some Mail.app Applescript triggers. Send an email with the Subject “iPhone Remote On” and voila, your Mac starts up the server. Send another email to turn it off. It’s really just one more layer of security. You could even have the script look for a particular password in the body of the message before running.

iPhone Remote is a wonderful application. Apple may someday provide an SDK for the iPhone, but until then, a little creativity and elbow grease will carry the device a long way.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Mac, Programming, Review, Security, Software, Tip, Trick, Web

The iPhone firmware now stands at 1.0.2. No real info about what is contained in this update. I’m sure it will make my life approximately 10% more complete than before.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Software

I was quick to complain about the iPhones lack of note syncing. I’m still hopeful that Apple will come through with a patch to implement it.

In the meantime I think I have pretty good work around. If you don’t have an IMAP email account (like .Mac) then you can skip this post.

When I want to make a note, I just create a draft email. I leave the recipient address blank but add a subject title. I can then type away (I’m writing this post using the method now). When I’m done I hit “Cancel” and the iPhone asks if I want to save the draft. Once it is saved, the iPhone syncs the drafts with my IMAP email account which syncs with all of my computers. Now I have my mobile notes anywhere. It’s a lot like just sending yourself an email message, but I find that it is less messy since I don’t have to sift through my entire inbox to find my notes.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhoto, Organization, Productivity, Tip, Trick, Web

If you read through the posts on this site, you will see, on the whole, I love me some Apple products. I’m thinking of declaring Apple as a dependent on my next tax return. However, I’ll be the first to warn a new switcher to stay away from first generation products. They are always buggy! Worse, rather than fix our hardware, they just release version 2 with the added feature of having fewer bugs. Now I know nothing is perfect, but it’s pretty well know that Apple’s Version 1 releases are particularly bad.
I just received my new Apple keyboard to use with my MacPro. Sure, it’s sexy. It’s lightweight. The cord is slightly longer (which means I can recline and write). And… the function keys don’t work. Oh wait, that’s not a feature.

The first 4 function keys do nothing. In fact you can not reassign them to any function. I thought I got around the problem by just using the plethora of other F-keys provided. I just use F13-F16. But then I noticed the buttons on my Logitech MX Revolution mouse stopped working. I had a great work-flow that involved the side buttons on the mouse for Expose modes. Basically it looks like the keyboard breaks Expose and Dashboard triggers.

Has anyone else had this problem? The keyboard works just fine for my new iMac. I’ve installed and reinstalled the Apple Keyboard Software and Logitech Software as well as unplugging the keyboard several times.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Gear, Mac, Review

I just upgraded from iTheme 1.0 to the newest version 1.1. Please let me know it there are any problems. If you’d like to get this terrific theme, check out n.Design Studio.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Wordpress

I recently picked up the Scottevest Fleece 4.0 Jacket. I don’t know if there were even versions 1.0-3.0, but I’m pretty happy with this latest build. It was on sale for $139.99 and I had a discount code. The whole thing came to $130 with 3 day shipping.

The Review
First off, this thing is the best fleece jacket you can get for your gear. Before I get to all of the go-go gadgety goodness, I want to highlight what a great jacket it is. It’s made of pretty thick material. Almost too thick. This isn’t the kind of fleece you would were when it’s 70+ outside. This sucker is WARM. The cuffs have elastic banding, which I’m not really a fan of, but if you are then you’ll love it. The stitching is surprisingly not that sturdy, but definitely adequate. I have a Patagonia and a Northface fleece. As far as construction, the Scottevest is on par with the NorthFace fleece, but inferior to the Patagonia. But hey, this jacket is not about becoming an heirloom for your kids. It’s about hauling all that electronic gear around with you.The jacket has 12 pockets of varying sizes and positions. It almost has too many pockets if that’s possible. I can see losing stuff in this baby pretty easily. The jacket comes with little cards in some of the pockets describing special features. I really appreciate that level of concern for their users (I consider this jacket to be a piece of hardware more than a simple garment). Two of the cards actually have this printed on them:“Special Features: It’s a hidden pocket! Other than creating an extra pocket where there was none before, there are no special features associated with this pocket”. I think that says it all about the number of pockets this thing has.Several of the pockets have magnetic closures. Apparently magnets are the new velcro. They are definitely convenient, but I’m left wondering why some pockets have velcro and some have magnets, while others have zippers. I think I would prefer magnets instead of Velcro for most of the pockets.The pockets are positioned conveniantly for all of the primary gear. Many of the gadgets are accessable from both inside and outside of the jackets (this is a very handy feature). The jacket also has something called a Personal Area Network (PAN) which is essential a channel to route the various cables that usually end up dangling out of your pocket. With the Scottevest, your iPod headphones now run up the inside of the jacket to the colar.There is a microfiber cloth clipped inside one of the pockets. Now this proves the jacket was designed by fellow geeks. Several times a week, I wish I had a microfiber cloth in my pocket to wipe my iPhone screen (I even considered carrying a hanky in my back pocket like grandpa did).
The little extras
There are wide elastic bands inside some of the larger pockets. I mean large enough to put around your phone or iPod to secure it. The shoulders of the jacket are extra thick to help support all the weigh of your gear. My other jacket would really start to slide off my shoulders when the pockets were laden with tech treasures.An id badge clip is included inside the jacket, but it is far too flimsy to be useful. It’s actually surprising how crumby it is, as it stands out from the great quality of the rest of the jacket. The Key clip in the outside pocket is of much better quality, albeit too small for my keyring.The drawstrings at the bottom of the jacket are thick and sturdy. While the front zipper is smooth, it’s feels a little cheap in comparison the outer fabric of the jacket.There is a large pocket on the inside of the back panel. It is suggested that this be used for a hydration pack (such as a Camelbak). I can see using it to hold a magazine or files during a commute. I’m sure it wont go to waste.

Shortcomings
Finally, the two areas I would like to see improved in the jacket, is the quality of the mesh used for the pockets and the quality of the small zippers on the pockets. Considering that the pockets are really what make this jacket unique, I expected more attention to detail here. The mesh is fairly thin and I can imagine it getting ripped pretty easily. The zippers are small toothed and get snagged a lot. I with they would have gone with a more dense mesh and some large tooth nylon zippers like on a Timbuk2 bag. I’d like to see the innovation of Scottevest merged with the quality and simplicity of Timbuk2. I’d pay double for that product.

Conclusion
The Scottevest Fleece 4.0 Jacket is worth more than the $150 price tag. You get some really innovative layouts for your gear and a high quality fleece to boot. This would be a great jacket for the most of the year but I’m a little worried about the durability of the pockets. I’ll have an update at the end of winter on its durability.

Technorati Tags: Clothing, Gear, iPhone, iPod, Organization, Review

You can quickly pause anything playing in the iPod mode of the iPhone without any button presses. In fact you don’t even have to remove the phone from your pocket. Just unplug the headphone jack. Apple was clever enough to realize that if your headphones come unplugged, most likely you don’t want your music to keep playing. You gotta love the attention to detail. I’ve tried this with both the headphones that ship with the iPhone and the traditional iPod headphones.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Tip, Trick

Do you have a bunch of bin files laying around your documents folder from your PC days of using Nero Express. You know, those arcane disk images that fly all over the net. They’re still out there. There is quite an endless supply on the old torrent-sphere. Well if you have a mac, you can open them right up and convert them to an MPEG-4 video file suitable for playing on your iPod or iPhone. It won’t even cost you anything. Here’s the deal:

Download VLC for the Mac

After it’s installed, right click on the “cue” file (it should have come with the “bin” file) and select open with VLC. Sure, VLC will play the video just the way it is, but we want it on our iPhone, so stop the video and go to the “File” menu of VLC. Select “Streaming/Exporting Wizard” (shortcut is shift-command-w). You should have a screen that looks like this:

Now select “Transcode/Save to file” and click next

Select “Existing playlist item” and then Next

Now we choose our video format to create. I like H.264 video and MPEG 4 Audio. Try experimenting and see what works best for you.

On the Encapsulation format, I just choose MPEG 4.

Now click next and watch the video get transcoded to the iPod/iPhone compatible format. Pretty slick if you ask me. VLC is definitely a must have piece of software.

Correction— Sorry about that, but after importing the video to iTunes, you will have to convert it for iPod (which is done by right clicking on the video in iTunes)

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, OSX, Tip, Trick, Video

What if your Mac is stolen? How much personal info do you have just sitting there on those hard disk platters? My Mac has Tax info for the past seven years, copies of bank statements, credit card PINs, and receipts for almost everything I have bought (see this post about archiving it all). It’s rather disturbing to think of all that info falling into mischievous hands.

Up until about 4 months ago, I was using Apple’s FileVault (see this post). This is a great way to keep things secure. It essentially encrypts your data into a disk image that is unlocked on boot up. The problem comes when you want to migrate everything to a new disk, like I tried. FileVaults can not be migrated. You must install a fresh system on the new disk, mount the Apple FileVault disk image, and drag everything over manually. No thanks.

I quickly switched back to using the excellent software Knox from Marko Karppinen. Knox also uses encrypted disk images to keep out prying eyes. They can be opened on any mac (given the correct password), which makes them easily portable. Knox also runs as a system wide extension that will auto-mount an image on boot-up, backup encrypted disks, and (this is the big one) the disk images are searchable by Apple’s Spotlight. Basically, it’s like just keeping a separate secure drive with all of your sensitive data on it. Sure, you can do most of this with Apple’s disk utility, but Knox really makes it all seamless and easy to maintain.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Security, Review, Software, Tip, Trick

Here’s a quick tip. If your browsing session looks a lot like a game of “52 pickup” then go to Safari’s “Window” menu and choose “Merge.” Voila, all of your open windows are now merged into one. Thanks Apple!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Web, Software, Tip, Trick