VPN Unlimited subscription for only $39

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited is a service to secure your WiFi connection on when using public Wifi at coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, or other place that offer public wifi.

The regular price for VPN Unlimited is $199 on their website for a lifetime subscription.

While that is still a great deal to avoid having to pay every year for a VPN service, Engadget and MacHeist have offered special deals in the past for dirt cheap. The current $39 deal for up to 5 devices is on Engadget!

You can also opt to pay $59 and use the VPN app on 10 devices.

Details:

• Reliably protect your data on any public WiFi
• Surf w/ no speed or bandwidth limits
• Access 400+ VPN servers w/ 80+ locations globally, including the USA, the UK, Canada & Australia. Check the list here
• Surf on a variety of VPN protocols, like IKEv2, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec & KeepSolid Wise
• Access servers for US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, ESPN+ & HBO Now
• Enjoy a better browsing experience w/ handy features, like Trusted Networks, Ping Tests & Favorite Servers
• Easily configure your VPN connection on your router.
• Convenient management of connected devices
• Includes torrent (P2P) servers
• Includes kill switch on iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows platforms
• Military-grade AES 256-bit encryption
• Zero log policy
• Proprietary apps for all platforms
• Unlimited traffic and connection speed
• 24/7 customer support

The application window on Mac OS (March 2022.)

SyncBack - Folder Backup Utility that shows file transfer speed and status

SyncBack Free is a backup utility designed more for people who want to have customization options to backup folders.

I use this tool to mirror specific folders on a backup hard drive. Backing up photography and video projects is great with this tool if your entire project or all the footage lives in one folder.

There are several free backup utilities for PC that offer simple backup solutions, but I crave a utility that shows me the file transfer speed so I can get a good sense of how long the backup will actually take. And I enjoy seeing that my USB 3 and 3.1 hard drives are actually transferring files fast!

Other backup utilities sometimes lack showing the total space the backup will take! That's a big UX flaw, because anyone who backups large files or folders needs to know if they will fit on the destination.

Why SyncBack Free works for refined back ups and power users:

• Shows file transfer speeds in real time

• Backup or Synchronize: copy files in both directions

When setting up a backup profile, Backup, Synchronize, or Mirror can be chosen.

• Can backup individual folders on a hard drive
  
• Can exclude subfolders to customize the backup
• Shows the amount of space the backup will take before starting the backup
• Preview what files will be copied to the destination before starting the backup (top screenshot)
• Create many simple profiles for backing up different folders or to different destinations
• Run incremental backups to save time
• Estimated time to complete the backup
• No registration, strings, or catches for the free version.

Setting up a New PC Checklist

Windows updates

Install anti-virus software (if not already included with the computer)

Install Brave Browser

• Turn on prompt for where to download files
• Disable saving of passwords

Install Chrome

Chrome Settings

• Install Last Pass
• Turn on prompt for where to download files
• Disable saving of passwords
• Turn on the bookmarks bar
• Add bookmarks for the 10 most used websites

Install Irfanview

Install Adobe Products (Premiere, Photoshop, and Lightroom).

Install VPN

Install Torrent program

Windows Settings

• Change power settings to prevent laptop from shutting down in 10 minutes.
• Show file extensions
• Change mouse/trackpad cursor speed

Sync Files on Windows Folders and Hard Drives

Lifehacker covered the Five Best File Syncing Tools and within the article they mentioned two programs that can synchronize two local folders (not Dropbox style cloud-syncing).

SyncBack (free version and paid version)

SyncToy (free)

Make Your Own Ambient Audio Tracks

With a free program called Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch you can stretch a pop song or other song to make your own ambient music track for use in videos, background music, or parties.

Here is Justin Bieber's "U Smile" track slowed down 800% and it works well as ambient electronica.

Learn more here:
How to Create Your Own Slowed-Down Ambient Epics [Lifehacker]

Best Screen Recording (Screencasting) software

▶ Best Free Screen Recording Software - HD Nation - YouTube
Screenflow for Mac (includes a built-in editor to zoom, pan, add more voice over audio, and edits your recordings) $100

Two free online options for PC/Mac

Screencast-O-Matic
Runs online.
free version has a 15 minute time limit and puts a watermark on your finished video.
The paid version

Screenr
Fewer options than Screencast-O-Matic

VLC
This popular media player can also capture your desktop.

Photoshop Lightroom 3 and 4 prices

Now that Lightroom 4 is available for purchase, there are some interesting things happening with the prices.

As of 4/2/12, Lightroom 3 is $240 and Lightroom 4 is $145 on B&H.  (In the second week of February 2012, B&H had Lightroom 3 on sale for $70, probably to clear out their inventory before Lightroom 4 was released.)

The only reason I can for not purchasing Lightroom 4 is if the buyer did not want to switch to Lion or Snow Leopard, since it now requires Snow Leopard or later.  Yes, Lightroom 4 also requires a processor with 64-bit support, but according to Apple's support page on processors, everything since the Core 2 Duo and higher has 64-bit support. My MacBook Pro from late 2007 has a Core 2 Duo Processor.

Lightroom 4 System Requirements

Windows:
Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor
Microsoft Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1
2.0 GB of RAM
1.0 GB of available hard-disk space
1024 x 768 display
DVD-ROM drive
Internet connection required for Internet-based services

Mac OS:
Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7
2.0 GB of RAM
1.0 GB of available hard-disk space
1024 x 768 display
DVD-ROM drive

Lightroom 3 System Requirements

Computer: Pentium 4; Intel Mac
Operating System: Windows XP SP3, Vista Home Premium (32/64-bit), Vista Business (32/64-bit), Vista Ultimate (32/64-bit), Vista Enterprise (32/64-bit), 7 (32/64-bit); Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6
Memory: 2GB
Hard Drive: 1GB
Display: 1024 x 768
Hardware: Optical drive

Mac Software Worth Paying For

Parallels Desktop - run windows applications easily and without having to reboot your computer into bootcamp.  Great for running some obscure Windows programs,  Windows-only DVD burning applications, and Internet Explorer browser testing for website development.  Version 7 allows an automated virtual machine setup for Windows XP after your license key is entered.  Once up and running you can create a snapshot of your virtual machine to completely backup it's state at any time.  This will protect your VM should a virus, malware, or anything else compromise it.  Parallels 5 recevied a 4/5 review from Macworld.
[$66, Amazon | $80 direct]

1Password - This is a must have if you are a web developer, project manager, or if you need a way to manage a plethora of web logins.  With extensions for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Chrome?), it allows you to save many logins under one "master password" and then login to a website such as online banking, email, ebay, etc., with just a few clicks and no need to remember each unique login. This tool can save you an incredible amount of time when juggling many, many website accounts.
[$50, AgileBits]

Screenflow - demonstrate how to do something on your mac with this slick screen capture and editing application.  After recording you can add pan, zoom, and other effects and also record new audio tracks to polish your screencast. Many of the recent mac screen casts on Youtube were created with Screenflow.
[$99, TeleStream]

TextExpander - this text-replacement utility runs in the mac menu bar and allows you to save personal "snippets" of text so you don't have to type them repeatedly.  Since I started using this app in 2008, I almost never have to type my email address, or mailing address unless I'm on someone else's computer.  If you're a web developer, you can save snippets of HTML, CSS, or any other string of text.  Secretaries might find it handy for repetitive typing, such as unique email signatures for different clients.
[$35, Smile Software]

Audio Hijack Pro - this app, like its name, will hijack the audio from any application on your system and allow you to record it to a variety of audio formats.  Some great uses for Audio Hijack are:

- record music from streaming sites such as Grooveshark, Pandora, Slacker, or Last.FM
- record Skype conversations
- record webcasts
- record DVD audio
[$32, Rogue Amoeba]


Transmit - an excellent, intuitive FTP application for mac.  Dual panes make this a much faster and more effective than most other FTP apps for mac.  You can also drag files from the finder to a server to transfer them.  If you're a graphic designer, web developer, or in some other position where you frequently make FTP transfers, Transmit will simplify the process.
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Mouseposé - an indispensable tool for presentations, screencasts, and web conferencing, this app puts a spotlight around your cursor so that an audience can easily follow what you're demonstrating.  It also features appearance changes for mouse clicks so those can also be followed.  Watch a video of Mousepose in action.

Easy Cloud Backup with Dropbox

This week my family's iMac ran into some error messages that essentially made the computer unusable. At this point, we're taking the computer to a local certified Apple tech, because one of more of the RAM memory sticks is probably bad.

We've made no backups of any computer files since the iMac computer was setup at our house in August 2010. Luckily, even though error messages prevented the computer from being usable, I was able to transfer all the family's documents to my computer with Target Disk Mode and a Firewire cable. This also reminds me that I should have setup a separate "troubleshooting" account, which would have allowed me to test whether another account was also having problems loading the Finder.

With the near minor tragedy of loosing all of our family's documents, I remembered that I had not made a backup of my own documents in a few months. In comes Dropbox. The DMG installation file is 21.6MB as of version 1.0.28. The installation and setup is dead simple and fast. You get 2GB of storage with a free account and 250MB of extra space for each person you invite that signs-up for Dropbox.



Dropbox uses a folder on your computer to sync your files with their server. Any time you copy files or folders to your Dropbox folder, they are automatically backed-up to the Dropbox server. Your online Dropbox account gives you access to all these files from any computer or mobile device with web access.

While finishing my taxes, I copied my business report spreadsheet as well as my State and Federal tax returns to my Dropbox folder and they are now backed-up in case anything happens to my computer, and in case I don't make a regular backup to my external hard drive.

Why use Dropbox:

• Backup to an off-site location protects your files from fires, floods, and other acts of nature.
  
• Get peace of mind that the important document or project you are working on is backed-up.
• No log-in required for backups once Dropbox is installed on your computer
• Access your stored files from any internet connected computer or mobile device.

Mac Applications to Test Drive

Quicksilver

ShiftIt
(Moves Windows via Keyboard, Is Like Aero Snap for Your Mac)
Coda

Dragoman
(Batch Converts Nearly Anything with Drag and Drop Simplicity)

GMapCatcher
(Browses Online Maps and Saves Them for Offline Use)

Alfred
(Another Nice Application Launcher, Quicksilver Alternative for Mac Users)

Sweet Home 3D
(Models Your Home, Rearranges Your Furniture Without Breaking a Sweat)

Komodo Edit

Highlight

Artisteer
Wordpress/Joomla template builder recently released for Mac.


Tested and kept

Skitch
I use it almost every day now to create screenshots for web development and other geeky stuff.

Macworld March 2010

"The End of Carbon Copies"

A reader switched from Pandora to Slacker Radio because the music better matched his tastes.

A reader said the January 2010 article "Signing Electronic Documents" was very helpful.

The Chrome browser tabs are treated as separate processes. They protect the whole browser from crashing and loosing all your tabs, but they chew up more more memory than Firefox with the same tabs running.

The TruePower UCS wall power outlet includes 2 USB ports to charge devices. ($20)

All 3rd generation iPod touches have the same battery life for audio and video.

IMDB has released an iPhone app.

Blogpress iPhone app for Wordpress publishing on the go. 4.5 stars.

DSLR Camera Remote Pro Edition 1.2 for iPhone, $20. Remotely trigger many digital SLR's.

Dropbox for iPhone, free. Store and sync files online.

Mom should read the security article starting on page 32.

Store files securely with an Encrypted DMG, secured with a password and created in Disc Utility.

Crash Plan backup software. Used by one of the writers in addition to Time Machine.

** Author writes about how a person had multiple accounts hacked because he used the same password for all of them.

Prism extension for Firefox.

Get a Hardware Summary for Drivers Before Reinstalling Windows

Both of these applications, Belarc Advisor and System Information for Windows have been mentioned on Lifehacker.

These programs create a list of all the hardware on a machine and also list the windows hotfixes and software installed. Software license numbers can even be listed with at least one of the programs.

Gina Trampani featured Belarc Advisor in her article about formatting a hard drive and installing Windows XP from scratch.

System Information for Windows was featured here: Download of the Day: System Information (Windows) - Data Recovery - Lifehacker

And Speccy is still in Beta, but looks very promising and received a mention from Lifehacker

Text Replacement Applications

Finding the best free text replacement applications

Texter (made by the Lifehacker crew)
PhraseExpress

Use Texter to Supercharge Your Repetitive Typing - Texter - Lifehacker

PhraseExpress Text Replacement App Updates, Better than Ever - Windows - Lifehacker

Upgrading to Parallels 5 from a Disk Image

After getting Parallels 5 from Mininova, one of my favorite torrent sites, I went about upgrading to Parallels 5 and figuring out how to migrate my Windows XP virtual machine created with Parallels 3.

If you got the DMG (disc image) from a torrent, I recommend first burning this to a CD before beginning, because that was the one step that made me pause half-way through the process.

Be prepared to allow up to an hour for this process. This does include the time to backup your virtual machine to an external hard drive.

The whole process took me about 40 minutes until my virtual machine was converted and ready to be used again. This 40 minutes included 10 minutes to burn and verify the CD from the DMG file on my MacBook Pro.


Backup your old Parallels VM to an external drive.
My Windows XP virtual machine was only about 12 GB. Make sure to backup yours to an external hard drive before beginning. This will save time later. Copy the whole Parallels folder containing the VM and any Snapshots you have created.
Note: You will only be able to back this up to an external drive that is Mac formatted. Most external drives come pre-formatted in FAT32 which does not support files larger than 4GB.

Install Parallels 5
It installs pretty quickly from a disk image.

Disconnect from the internet before doing entering the serial number for activation.

Open Parallels 5 and then open your virtual machine created with Parallels 3 or 4. It will prompt you to begin the conversion to the new virtual disk format. Shown below is step 1. Parallels 5 will prompt you to backup the old version of your virtual disk before continuing, in case anything goes wrong during the conversion process.




Install the new version of Parallels Tools with the Parallels CD.
Parallels will load the virtual machine and then prompt you to "manually continue the process of upgrading the virtual machine". Click Ok, insert the Parallels CD (you should have burned earlier), and ignore any Windows messages. (Follow the instructions that Parallels provides.)




Sit Back and Let Parallels Complete the Process
After running the setup from the Parallels CD, the rest of the process appears to be automated. It will go through two more steps show below and then finish. This should take a few minutes, depending on your configuration.



Voila. Your virtual machine is now migrated to Parallels 5.
It you're upgrading from Parallels 3 you should notice several changes in the interface and huge improvements in the speed of the virtual machine. I noticed that is was no longer suffering from graphics lag issues that plagued Parallels 3.

Mac Software to Try

TextMate
price: ~$60 US
Latest version: 1.5.9
Latest version on the PirateBay: 1.5.8
Why: has autocomplete, try a code editor that mac developers love

Komodo Edit (Open Source)
latest version: 5.2
Why: experience a more full-featured code editor, autocomplete, store code snippets, shows file directory.

Ripping Prince Caspian Successfully

How to rip the Prince Caspian DVD.

Most newer Disney DVDs including Hannah Montana, WALL-E, Prince Caspian and many others have ARccOS and possibly some other form annoying copy protection.

MacTheRipper, DVD Shrink, and DVD Decrypter have a hard time handling the ARccOS copy protection scheme because it uses bad sectors to try and foil DVD rippers.

Tonight I initially tried to copy Prince Caspian with MacTheRipper. If no settings are changed, the application thinks that the disc is 70 GB because of the dummy sectors. This won't work at all. It will take hours for the MTR to work around the dummy sectors and most likely end up producing a VIDEO_TS folder that doesn't work anyway!


I tried the "Main Feature ARccOS extraction" option and after about 40 minutes, found out that the rip didn't work.



After heading over the MacTheRipper forum, some people had success by using the "Title Set Extraction" option and only extracting TS 10. Ripping this way will only yield the movie.

I want more than this. I want to have a DVD menu and be able to browse the chapters visually.

Thanks to This Post which said that AnyDVD for Windows worked and MTR failed, I thought I'd give it a try. This member also said that RipIt for Mac also worked, but the burn failed when Toast 9 returned an error stating that the folder was damaged. On another post, someone reported that Prince Caspian ripped successfully with DVDFab Decrypter for Windows.

AnyDVD comes to the Rescue

I got AnyDVD from the PirateBay in about 5 minutes. After firing up Parallels 3 for Mac, I installed AnyDVD on my virtual Windows XP system. It prompted me to uninstall DVD43 because it said there was a serious conflict, probably because both of them are software drivers that work with the DVD data directly. The prompt provided an option to uninstall DVD43, so I accepted the uninstall.

After inserting the Prince Caspian disc, AnyDVD took about 1 minute to do its magic scanning the disc to analyze the copy protection.



I fired up DVD Shrink, opened the disc, and removed all the extra languages and half a dozen or so previews that Disney stuffed on the disc. I got the movie quality up to about 70% after all the unnecessary stuff was removed.

34 minutes later and I had a working, compressed DVD ISO of Prince Caspian; with no fiddling around with settings in MacTheRipper. ( I have a MacBook Pro with a 8x DVD Burner, so your computer will probably be able to rip the disc faster if you have a desktop.)

Gary Fong's Web Album

Gary Fong - Album Designer Software
* Regular Price: $200
* $100 as of 9/27/09


Photoshop actions for dropshadows, sepia toning, white borders, and others make creating
professional albums easy.

Get Inside Gary's Gear Bag

Serial Box for Mac

A guy in the dorms sophomore year used Serial Box and said it was great.

Serial Box is a database file read by the iSerial Reader application that includes serial numbers for tons of Mac applications.

The iSerial Reader application is less than 15 MB as of this post.
The Serial Box database file is 2-3 MB, also as of this post.

Roundup: DVD player, multirow bookmarks toolbar, up-res images

How do I file a Google Maps bug report? | Ask Metafilter

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar :: Add-ons for Firefox

Free Universal DVD Player
(AVS DVD Player)

How To Build Firefox Extensions?

Reshade, Increase Your Image Resolution Without Losing Quality

Free DVD Burner [DVD Flick]

Wireless : KisMAC wi-fi stumbler, securing a network

KisMAC is an open-source and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X. It has an advantage over MacStumbler / iStumbler / NetStumbler in that it uses monitor mode and passive scanning.

Creating an Uber-secure wireless network

* Disable broadcasting of the SSID (network name).
* Enable Mac address filtering, so that only authorized devices can access the network.

----

Tips for Maintaining Wireless Home Networks

Change the WiFi Channel Number to Avoid Interference

Most devices do not allow the administrative username to be changed, but if yours does, seriously consider changing this name as well.
via: About.com