AJ Morris

Just testing the wordpress app for the iPhone. I think this is a good idea for smaller posts but I’m not sure I’d want to use this all the time on the road.

I found this to be pretty funny. Hope you guys like it as much as I did.

An Apple Product Security technician has identified multiple vulnerabilities with Ruby, which if exploited could be used in denial of service attacks. It does not have to be just Mac OS X that this afects. It looks like it’s all versions based on the official post from the Ruby development team.  To find out what version of Ruby you are using open up Terminal or your command-line prompt client and type

ruby –version

You should get something like this

ruby 1.8.6 (2008-06-20 patchlevel 230) [i686-darwin9.3.0]

Now you can see that’s I’ve already went ahead and updated my version, so yours might have patch 110 if there was a patch level. To update your Ruby version all you need to do is visit the link above and choose which patch you need to install.  For us Ruby on Rails developers you’ll need to upgrade to Ruby 1.8.6 patch 230. You can download it here and type the following in your command-line prompt.

curl -O ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6-p230.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-1.8.6-p230.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.6-p230
./configure –enable-shared –enable-pthread CFLAGS=-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=1
make
sudo make install
cd ..

You can then check your version by typing.

ruby –version

If you have any problems, feel free to comment below.

UPDATE: After posting this I was having a hard time keeping an instance of monrel running.  I did some searching and found out that the option they have offered us does have a bug still in it.  So what that means is that we either update and have issues or stay at what we’re currently at and deal with the possibility of denial of service attacks.  Keep your eyes posted to the Ruby on Rails blog for an update. I’ll post another update here as well once things are figured out.

I had some free time today and started looking for some new sites that were iPhone friendly and saw this great plugin that can turn your WordPress blog into an iPhone friendly site. I found the instructions very simple to install and definitely worth adding to your site. Even if you have few readers, it’s always a good thing to reach out to the masses. I highly suggest checking it out.  I hope I’ll have some free time to play around with the look of it so that I can customize it a little bit, but for a quick and simple option for making your blog iPhone friendly, it’s worth it.  Perhaps I’ll even make a screencast of changing the layout/theme.

Speaking of iPhone web development I also came across this Mac only application called iPhoney that allows you to view what your site will look like in an iPhone without actually having one! The site says it’s NOT a simulator, but for all purposes of testing your web site/app inside of the 320 by 480 (or 480 by 320) screen area that the iPhone has.

The last thing I thought I would share with you is this tutorial of creating your Rails apps so that they have a different layout/theme for the iPhone, check it out here

It’s that time of year again!!! That’s right, it’s MacHeist Bundle time!! You can get 10 great apps for a very small amount of money. This year’s lineup includes some programs that are worth getting, like CSSEdit and Pixelmator! Last year’s bundle sold 16,000 in one week and made a wave in the Mac community. This year they hope to “shatter” last year’s numbers ($200,000). Some other programs include 1password, Cha-Ching, TaskPaper, Awaken, and more! So go on over to MacHeist and order you bundle today!!

This time of year there always seems to be a slew of people asking me about what Mac software I’m using, if there’s some quality open source apps to use, etc. Since it’s Christmas/New Years time, I figured I’d put together a list software I use for a variety of tasks. So without further ado, here’s my list.

Productivity

• iWork - A suite similar to Microsoft’s Office suite, from Apple. This includes three programs: Keynote, Numbers, and Pages. Keynote is a presentation software, Numbers is a spreadsheet application, and Pages is a Word Processor. It retails for about $79 USD directly from Apple.
• Office 2008 - While this isn’t released to the public till after the New year, those of us that are fortunate to have a copy of the BETA (or know some people that will give you a free copy before it’s publicly released) are in “like” with it since it’s the first native intel app from Microsoft. It hits store shelves January 15, 2008 (opening day of MacWorld 2008).
• Anxiety - This is a great ToDo application. If you’re like me, you are always creating todo lists and either saving them on stickies (use Spotlight and type in stickies to see what I’m talking about) or writing them down. Anxiety takes these ToDo lists further. Using Leopard’s technology, Anxiety is able to sync tasks between iCal, Mail, and Anxiety. Best of all, Anxiety is free, so go get it when you’ve finished reading this article!

Imaging

• Pixelmator - If you need a lighter-weight easier to use than Photoshop application, this one is for you. With Pixelmator, you are able to make photo enhancements and design logos, images, etc. with ease. It’s still relatively new, and I’ve actually stopped using it due to having Photoshop CS3, but while I was using it during their BETA stage, it was definitely something you should check out. They offer a 30-day trial and costs about $50 USD.
• Skitch - A quality screen capturing tool that’s currently free, however,sounds like it’s going to cost something down the road. It allows for you to take screen shots and pics using your iSight. You can then add text, drawings, point out things, and then upload to your FTP server, .Mac, or Skitch.com. Skitch is from Plasq and is invite only during its private beta stage.
• Photoshop CS3 - An image editor with a lot of power. It is the best editor in the World, and if you’re okay with spending in upwords for $649 USD for it, great! Photoshop is created by Adobe.

Screen Recording

• Jing - A light-weight screen capturing/recording client from the good folks at TechSmith, makers of Camtasia Studio, (the people I work for). There are several limitations with Jing, such as saving images as .png’s and videos as .swf’s but for a quick sharing tool, it’s perfect!! It allows you to upload to Screencast.com (their hosting service), your FTP server, and FLickr (images only).
• iShowU - The godfather of screen recorders (or at least till TechSmith makes Camtasia Studio for Mac! :P)!!! This has it all! It costs $20 USD and can do just about everything you’ll ever need in a screen recorder. You’re able to record your mic and even your application audio! You can check it out here.

Web Development

• Cyberduck - An open-source FTP client. Simple to use, and FREE!! We all like free stuff, so go out and get this!
• TextMate - The king of all text editors! For code editing, specifically Ruby on Rails development, it’s perfect. TextMate provides a lot of features the average code editor doesn’t. TextMate is created by Macromates and costs $59 USD.
• CSSEdit - By the title you would assume that it’s for CSS editing. And guess what, you’re right!! The best part of it is that it allows you to extract any CSS file from any website and preview what the site would look like with your own custom CSS styles. It is available from MacRabbit and costs $29.99.
• iTerm - An open-source Terminal replacement. Allows for tabbed-instances (although the new Terminal does the same). It’s free, so if you’d like to try it out, go here.
• svnX - For those of us who work with groups developing applications. It provides a nice UI so that you can see what changes have been made and what files are going to be uploaded to the SVN.

These are the programs I use pretty much on a daily basis. I thought I’d include a few more “odd-ball” applications that I use for a few different things. I couldn’t think of a heading for them, so I’ll call them:

Miscellaneous

• Burn - A simple to use burning application that allows you to burn three kinds of images, normal disk images, cue/bin images and toc images. It also allows you to copy data disks, audio disks, and video disks. This is a great little utility that works better than Mac OS X’s built-in burning utility.
• VLC Player - A highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast in IP4v or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
• Handbrake - A GPL’d multi-platform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter.
• MacTheRipper - Another DVD ripper, but this time rips the VOB files.
• Visual Hub - Yes another DVD ripper, AVI converter to DVD, do-it all type application. It is the one stop program for converting video to various formats for various devices.
• Flip4Mac - a codec needed to play WMV files on the Mac. Get it here.
• TechSmith EnSharpen - A lossless screen recording codec for the QuickTime format. Does cost $149, but is worth it if you want the lossless quality that this codec offers.
• Adium - An open-source Instant Message Client
• Colloquy - An open-source IRC client
• Transmission - An open-source bittorrent client
• VMWare Fusion - Virtual Machine application that allows you to run Windows or other OSes on your Mac.

If you have any other applications that you use, please feel free to add them as a comment below! Keep a look out after the new year for some tutorials on installing Ruby on Rails, MySQL, SVN, and some other development goodies. I’ll be getting a list together here in the coming weeks what what I’m gonna be working on. If you have ideas of something you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll see if it’s something I can’t pull together.

Tuesday Apple Inc. announced a new generation of the iMac. Something the rumor mill has called, as well as what most of us have been expecting. But why not make a business mac? Isn’t that what we are all lacking? Let’s take a look at Apple’s computer lineup. First off we start out with the Mac mini. A cheap starter PC that’s really rather useless except for the people that are only going to sit on the internet. It doesn’t pack a big enough punch for businesses to use it. It also doesn’t offer dual-link AVI. Something us designers and developers require, since most have dual monitors around the office today. What’s also strange about this computer is the lack of customizable options. Let’s take a look at their next computer, the iMac. So the iMac has a little more in the feature category, you can customize things like RAM, Hard Drive, but that’s about it. Still no options when it comes to video cards. Jobs said that he expects the business users to like the iMac, however, I tend to disagree. Monitors are something that lasts 2, 3, maybe 4 generations of computers. Business users aren’t going to get rid of a perfectly good monitor because the computer goes bad; they usually need to save money!! The next class of computers are the Mac Pros. Now these are powerful! A little too powerful for the daily business user, and expensive at that. Why pay $2,000-$3,000 dollars fora PC that’s too powerful for you. Yes you can say that it’ll last long, however, do we really need server class processors for daily work? Why not take the server class processors out, bring in some other features to compare with Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. and knock off a couple hundred dollars or so. Personally, working in the software development environment, it would work. You seem people carry around MacBooks and MBPs but when you ask them what their work computer is you usually hear them say Dell. If Apple were to compete with Dell (and others), I think we’d start to see a higher market share with Macs in the business environment.