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Auditioning follows

Nov 1st, 2009
by lakelady.
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I’ve been playing around with twitter this evening and reading a variety of articles about what lists are, how to use them, what lists are best/worst, why lists are good bad etc. Just as a lot of tweeters have been doing this weekend I’m sure. While going over people from someone’s list I came up with an interesting idea that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned yet – using a private list to audition who you want to follow.

It’s simple really, as much as we hate to admit it, we have a limited capacity for digesting what’s in our twitter stream. I’ve never been one to automatically followback everyone who follows me. The way I use twitter that strategy just never made sense. I try to pick and choose who I think will be a valuable addition to the information flowing across my screen. Up until now I’ve done this by looking at a tweeters page, which provides an instant snapshot of their tweets. Are they repeating ideas of others already in my stream? Do they primarily tweet original thoughts or do they mostly post links? (both can be valuable IMHO) Do they post a high volume of tweets? Do they tweet a lot about products they’re selling (my teeth are plenty white, thank you) However a single snapshot might not be an accurate picture of how they tweet. I know that my tweets can vary in both frequency and patterns over time. I can only assume that at least some others do the same.

So here’s my reasoning behind using lists to “audition follows”. As I come across someone new that I think might prove intriguing I’ll put them in a private “new follows” list. I can then check this list over a period of time and see if what and how they’re posting really is what I want to devote some of my time to. By keeping it private I’m not broadcasting to the world my intentions and thus it avoids potential embarrassment and needless explanations if someone is not followed. I know I’m a small fry in the twitter pond and at this point who cares who I am or am not following, but the point is still valid. Private lists definitely have their place and I think this is one of them.

What do you think? Would you make use of this system? Can you offer additional suggestions for improvement?

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New ipod shuffle – stupid, stupid, stupid

Mar 11th, 2009
by lakelady.
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Pardon me folks while I take a mintue to post a rant at Apple this morning.

What the hell were you thinking Apple??? Putting controls to the new teeny tiny shuffle on propritary earbuds? Earbuds that hurt my ears, fall out of my ears at the slightest move, have inferior sound quality, and just plain suck. You’ve got to be kidding! I have several ipods and I can’t remember the last time I used your crappy headphones with any of them. Now you’ve rolled out a product that will have half of it’s features unavailable to me if I use my regular headphones (Etymotic ER6i) Give me an effing break. I sure as hell hope you don’t intend to make this stupid moves like this on other ipod products in the future. Take a good hard look at your development process and reconnect it with the users of your products. I’m betting there are thousand and thousands of us out there that can’t stand your crappy earbuds. I’ve used macs for years and while not a rabid fanboy I do prefer most of your products. More moves like this one and I’ll start to rail loud and long against you.

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Mac Housekeeping Tips

Jan 16th, 2009
by lakelady.
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One of the sessions I attended at this years Mac Expo was “Maintaining Your Mac” and was offered by Joe Kissel. I found it to be useful and I took some notes so I thought I’d take some time to summarize what I learned add my own insights and pass it on.

Tips to keep your mac running well…

OS and Application Updates

  • Make sure you’re running the latest OS available for your machine. Updates often fix bug/holes/problems. My own caveat to this is to wait a day or more before installing the latest and greatest updates. There have been a few times when these updates have caused major problems so I’ll let the early adopters flush those out and once they’ve proven reasonably safe I’ll run software update. This is also why I never run software update automatically. You can change the settings for software update in the system preferences panel. To see if there have been any major issues with an update I usually check out the MacFixit website. They’ve proven to be reliable in the past.
  • The parallel to making sure your OS is current is to make sure your applications are current. Again I’m not an early adopter of application updates most of the time. This is an area where I’ll wait even longer if the application is crucial to the work I do. For example I’ve never updated Quicken past the 2006 version and from reading the complaints on the Intuit website I’m very happy I never have. On the other hand I’ve recently paid for an upgrade to Adobe Lightroom 2 and couldn’t be happier. My advice would be to have an installation path for an older version of a program available whether it be on disc or dmg or backup. This way if an update causes problems you can revert to a previous version. Before updating make sure any important data is backed up as well before upgrades. More on backing up later.
  • Joe recommended a widget called App Update to check on what programs might have updates available. It sounds good but since I haven’t actually used it myself I’ll refrain from recommending it myself.
  • Removing applications isn’t always straightforward. If all you do is drag them to the trash they can leave little bits and pieces behind in places like Library folders. The simple solution to this is to use a nifty little program called AppZapper. Simply drop the application you want to delete in to the AppZapper window and it does the rest.

Backup BackUp BACKUP

Here’s a biggie. Set Up A Backup System. You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again but believe me having one and using it can save yourself a ton of trouble. I have to admit I need improvement in this area myself. Maybe writing this entry will inspire me to do more. The way I see it there are several components to a good backup system.

  • A bootable duplicate of your OS and applications
  • Archives for data
  • Offsite backups

A bootable backup of your OS and applications will make reinstallation via Migration assistant a breeze in case of a major meltdown. This is also the kind of thing that won’t need updating very often unless you alter your OS or applications.

Archives for data need to be done more often as this involves your most current work, whatever it may be. These backups are generally what’s known as incremental. After running your first backup they are for backing up only new data/documents along with any that have changes. Remember to include your mail folder in this backup as it is often separate from where you keep your documents/files. Having a consistent way of storing and organizing your work as you go will make archiving easier as well.

Offsite backup is an aspect of a through backup program that often gets overlooked. In many ways it’s the ultimate insurance policy in case of major physical damage such as fire, flood, theft etc. Imagine you were on the plane that just went down in the Hudson River. Your laptop is toast along with everything on it. So are the external hard drives you carried with you for backup. An offsite backup will get you back up to speed in no time and will be one less thing to worry about. An offsite backup could be hard drives stored at a the house of a friend or family, placed in a safety deposit box. Or you could use an internet backup system such as mobileme.com (formerly .mac), Mozy, CrashPlan, or BackBlaze. Disclaimer, I have not used any of these internet backups so I cannot vouch for them. They were recommended to me in this workshop and I do know others that use them. Do your own homework so that you take responsibility for your own backups. The important thing is to have one.

Weekly

  • Clean off your desktop. The reason this is important is the more icons on your desk the more RAM is used to keep track of them. The OS sees each icon as an open window and wastes useful resources. How you keep your physical desktop is up to you but I’d recommend clearing it off as well so that you don’t accidentally spill something on your keyboard.
  • Update OS and Applications as needed. For some this could be a monthly instead of a weekly task.
  • Reboot your computer. If you’re the type of person usually just puts your computer to sleep instead of shutting it down a weekly reboot will allow the OS to run it’s built-in housekeeping routines. These run automatically upon startup.
  • Run backup routine. Whatever routine you settle on run it at least once a week, especially for your data.

Monthly

  • Empty your trash. You’d be surprised how much can accumulate and how much hard drive space can go to waste when it’s “out of sight, out of mind”.
  • Update as needed (see weekly)
  • Run Disk Repair in the Disk Utility Program. This cannot be run on a startup disk. Another good reason to have an externally bootable drive.
  • Clean your screen and clean your mouse/trackball. The mouse/trackball cleaning is especially important if the environment your computer is in is full of dust and/or pet hair.

Monitoring your computer’s “health”

  • Check the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives in Disk Utility. If it reads as “not verified” you may be headed for an imminent hard drive failure. S.M.A.R.T. is a built in self check in many newer hard drives. It stand for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.
  • Use a program to like MenuMeters (recommended in this workshop) to monitor various aspects of your computer such as temperature, memory usage, battery life, etc. I personally like the widget iStat Pro for this purpose. Saves on menubar clutter and covers a weath of information with a very customizable interface. Both are freeware.

Well, I’ve reached the end of my notes from this informative half-hour session at MacWorld. I hope you’ve found this article useful. Now all I need to do it put some of these ideas that I haven’t been following into practice myself!

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