The faster, cheaper, cooler-running WD My Book Studio

Stop reading now if disk drives bore you. You might be able to find some articles up here about storage disaster recovery, because if disks make your eyes glaze over, you’re likely to recover from a disaster. Knowing the basics about disks for your Mac is as important as knowing a cholesterol score. A slow score, or a low score for your drive is going to attack the heart of your business: your data.

That’s why I was glad to review the improved model of the Western Digital My Book Studio. I found it faster, running cooler and a better value than a drive I bought at the start of the year.

The price of external drives, which you plug into your Mac, has dropped dramatically since I last bought a drive. Just seven months ago I paid $140 for a Mercury Elite AL Pro 1.5TB drive with two kinds of interfaces, two FireWire 400, and one USB 2.0. The 3TB My Book — twice as much storage — costs $200 at Amazon.com for three kinds of interfaces, two Firewire (either can be used at 400 or 800) plus a USB port. (The wider range of interfaces to plug in, the better. Your more modern Macs are now shipping with fewer ports on them, and it’s good to have non-USB port choices on the back of a drive.)

One of the biggest upgrades to this My Book — I now run a two-year-old 1TB My Book for Time Machine backups — is the new case. It’s morphed from plastic to aluminum, so it stays cooler. Cool means quieter, and this drive is so cool it has no fan. No fan is one less moving part to break down, plus less electricity to purchase.

I ran speed tests against this newest My Book. A massive file transfer that took 6 minutes, 53 seconds on the older My Book completed in 5:37. That’s about 20 percent faster, time that can really add up in an era when big files of 10MB or more — think recorded Skype calls. or the size of your iPhoto Library — have become commonplace. Read the rest of this entry »

All the detail you need, straightforward and easy

Tracking time is important if you want to stay in business. An employer will always track your time, so when you go into business for yourself it’s one of the tasks you assume. OfficeTime, a Mac program from OfficeTime Software, fills the bill for anybody who works by the hour or the project. In the former you’re presenting a bill to your client. In the latter you’re keeping up with how long you’re working on an engagement.

OfficeTime has a simple interface that is a window to flexibility and power. I used it to track an editing project recently. The feature I enjoyed the most was the automatic invoice generator. I’d been using Synched, the online time tracking tool. I had to export that service’s data into something that Excel would format. Then came the formatting. By the time I was ready to present an invoice, I’d logged another half hour.

OfficeTime gives you easy tools to track time by task, by project — it’s even got a flexible rate feature, so editing can be billed at $50 hourly and first reading at $25. Select a pull down menu and your rate is automatically applied.

Another enjoyable feature: the work session you’re timing increments the money to be billed as you work. Great motivation for anything you’re working at that is less than thrilling and joyful. The interface is so simple: a tap of the spacebar starts a new task, and another tap pauses it. You restart with another tap. Great for interruptions.

OfficeTime shows task's time in minutes (at top left)

The software syncs with iCal automatically after each work session. It will also accept iCal entries as items inside of OfficeTime. You can use this feature to create invoices based on meetings scheduled in iCal — when you’re not billing by the hour, but by the appointment.

The invoices created by OfficeTime operate off templates which you can edit. But only in three programs, and none of them are Word. The RTFD files, which are bundles that include PDF files and images, can be opened with Apple’s TextEdit and Pages, and a third-party free program called Bean. Check-minus, unless you own Apple’s Pages (not a bad investment) or love working in TextEdit (there must be somebody out there who does; at least in the OfficeTime development team.)

In all, a great tool for the pro who can work from a single Mac in an office or from a laptop. The online services like Synchd have a slight advantage here, since they’ll track your work from anywhere you can get online and open a browser. But Synchd is $5 a month, so it can add up over the years. OfficeTime is just $47 and also is available for Windows. A free, fully operational, 21-day trial copy of the software may be downloaded from the developer’s website. The application comes with a “120-Day, No-Questions-Asked, Money-Back Guarantee.” The developers say they’ve got an iPhone/iPad iOS version ready to go

OfficeTime is making a beachhead against Billings, the far better known billing and time-tracking software. Billings has a lengthy learning curve. You need to run through a Setup Wizard. It requires you to enter client data via the Address Book. Each project is made up of Slips. These slips can be created from Blueprints. On and on it goes, until you’ve spent a significant part of a billable day just getting to working and invoicing. You can publish an event in iCal, but synch — well, not that I can find.

Any software with a steep setup curve is going to have to pay itself back. While the reporting features and the outstanding invoice tracking are better in Billings, don’t you have something to track invoices besides this, like QuickBooks or even Quicken? Software you use because it’s the best tool for the job? OfficeTime is easy and powerful and really the better tool to track your time in the least amount of time.

It might be time for me to cancel my Synchd subscription.

Urban Tool’s Pocket Bar is a big enough deal to warrant its own field testing here at Bites HQ. To be thorough, we took this $100 mobile device case outside of headquarters, carrying it on a business trip to San Francisco that put the bag though its paces. Urban Tool bills it as being the perfect fit for the iPad, and they’re right, by one measure.

Urban Tool’s Pocket Bar is flexible, but my iPad had to ride bareback to fit into the best compartment

The Pocket Bar looks like a good match for the iPad, taller than the tablet but with just about the same width. The bag is woven with a nylon and elastane cloth that has some stretch and a waterproofed quality. Inside there’s a full cotton interior to protect sensitive gear. The main pocket is roomy in its thickness, but it’s mouth is a bit tight on the width of the iPad. Only the most spare of iPad cases can squeeze their way through the zippered opening. I stripped off my ZooGue case and let the tablet ride bareback, for the first time in months, inside the Pocket Bar. It was an easy slip in and out at airport security.

The outside of the case is dotted with pockets that stretch to fit mobile phones, point and shoot cameras, wallets and more. A key lanyard is clipped on the outside, and another key yo-yo is inside another pocket. The array of outside pockets is one of the best features of this bag. I was about to discover another one when I stepped off the BART on Powell Street. It was pouring, a classic February California rain. Read the rest of this entry »

The MacBook Air's 11-inch model is a better upgrade from the iPad than the iPad 2

All around the world, people are clamoring for the iPad 2. Apple cannot build them fast enough. The company’s stock lost 7 percent of its value this week, simply on the news that iPad production has slowed in China. It’s clear this device is a hot ticket. But it is one that Apple won’t be selling me soon.

It’s not that the iPad is a bad choice for a business. I’ve worked on websites, articles, spreadsheets, databases, photos and communication (email, social networks and chats). But we already own an iPad, the original model, the unit .3 inches thicker than the iPad 2 you cannot get this month, if you didn’t order on Day One. Our iPad has proved itself to be a business tool that also has a fun side, a home computer as well that’s easy to use.

The iPad 1 has also proved to be a worthy competitor to the iPad 2, once you look at the device in the Apple Store while we’ve held our original iPad. What makes for a better upgrade from the iPad is the MacBook Air. You lose the multi-touch experience when you shift from the iPad to the Air. But I’m counting on Apple to bridge that gap somewhat when the 10.7 Lion release of OS X ships.

That’s why the MacBook Air is going to join the diverse collective of Apple products serving here at our offices. You can make a case for this by the numbers, as well as the feel of the user experience. Apple cares enough about your experience to bring a lot of thought to both the Air and iPad. Read the rest of this entry »

Bento stays in sync between mobile devices like the iPad or the iPhone and your Mac

Over the last three years Filemaker, the division of Apple that builds database software, has created a database for the rest of us: people who run businesses instead of computer departments. With the latest release of Bento, it looks like the product is maturing enough to meet many common and unique needs to manage data.

Today Filemaker begins to sell Bento 4 for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store, as well as Bento 1.1 for iPhone, and Bento 1.1 for iPad. With many new features including the ability to print labels, export libraries with data, automatically add geographical locations to records and lock down forms, Bento 4 is a major next step for the popular personal database family.

“People just love the way Bento helps them organize their lives – especially their work tasks like managing contacts and tracking projects,” said Ryan Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc. “We’ve enhanced the entire product line: Bento for Mac, Bento for iPad, and Bento for iPhone to provide you with a major productivity boost at your desk and when you’re on the go.”

Early customers have praised the product. (We’ll have our own review here soon.) “With Bento 4, I’ll be able to print address labels directly from records and synch my iCal to-do items using Bento 1.1 for iPad and iPhone,” says Robert Terry, educational journal editor, Richmond, Virginia. “It really feels like Bento can do everything.” Read the rest of this entry »

The 4.3 release of the iPad’s OS has boosted the tablet’s performance by 18 percent, according to some reports. (Much of that increase in speed comes from the rewrite of the Safari web browser. It feels snappier on our first-gen model.) If the stories of the newest iPad have you hankering for one right away — instead of the 3-4 weeks Apple is promising today — then the now-faster, first-edition iPad is available at a serious discount from Apple in its online store.

By purchasing an Apple certified refurbished model, you can drive down the price to $349 for the 16GB model with wi-fi only. Refurb is a great way to get Apple’s products for less; the company replaces things like batteries in the mobile devices before reselling them, and the warranty is the same as a new product.

Apple stock shot up $4 a share to $356 this morning on US exchanges, in heavy trading. As of this morning, despite the unavailability of the new model, there are still original iPads for sale. But the 3G models are disappearing fast, if measured by inventory at Amazon. Only four of the 64GB and two of the 32 GB original models with 3G were still for sale at Amazon near Apple’s prices.

The iPad 2 is now being sold, in very limited quantities, at Amazon by third party resellers. (Apple didn’t release the iPad 2 for sale at Amazon as an official channel.) uShop Mall is selling the iPad 2 through Amazon for $400 above retail price for the 3G 16 GB models. iFixit reports that these newer versions don’t have all the advantages over the one-year-old tablets. Servicing an iPad 2 carries a good risk of shattering the protective glass during the repair. Apple switched from clips to glue in redesigning the fasteners for the newer model.

Pogue and his boys review the newest iPad

The only iPad you can buy today is the original generation’s models. Apple sold out its first build of the product in less than a day over the kickoff weekend. Apple built up less than enough inventory to immediately satisfy customers hungry for the iPad 2. Delivery times at 1 AM Pacific were quoted at 2-3 business days, regardless of model. By mid-morning the deliveries were 5-7 business days. Now the orders placed will be fulfilled through Apple’s online store in 3-4 weeks.

That’s right; it means that unless you were up ordering at early morning, the soonest you will receive a new iPad model will be April 1-2. That’s one week after the device goes on sale outside the US. Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray estimated the company sold 500,000 across retail outlets and Apple’s online stores. The first edition of the tablet sold 300,000 units.

Despite the simultaneous outlets of Best Buy, Walmart, Target and the two phone carriers in the US, nothing was available to purchase one hour after the iPad 2 went on sale in retail settings. The tablets disappeared in 37 minutes at a local Verizon shop here in Austin. The ATT outlet across the parking lot had only four on hand to begin with. At Verizon, they were eager to order one, to arrive in the official monthlong waiting period.

The prices at retail outlets are no better than those at the Apple Stores, and an online order costs the same. Free shipping is part of every order now — but the Apple Store online offers free engraving.

The most fun review that I’ve seen so far comes from the New York Times’ David Pogue, who employs his two young sons in explaining what’s improved while we see the boys goof and cavort and even drop the new iPad. They demonstrate the most sizzling apps on the new device, Garage Band and iMovie. The latter obviously has more business uses than the former. Also mentioned is the new gyroscope, which when developers tap into it, gives app users the chance to observe a product in 3D and manipulate moving parts. Great prospect for an interactive sales catalog.

Wallace Wang's My New iPad from No Starch Press

My New iPad was written by a stand-up comic, but the advice in this thorough book is no joke. The 350 pages of this manual ($24.95 print plus ebook, $19.95 ebook) from No Starch Press don’t overlook a thing in the iPad user experience. It’s a guide to the 1st generation of the iPad, written in Deb. 2010. iPad 2 users can look forward to another edition in May, but this book does include specifics on the recent iOS 4.2 release. Apple rolled out version 4.3 of the iOS today.

The new iPad user can rely on this book like a novice cook reading The Joy of Cooking. The tasks explained, from setting up email accounts to synchronizing contacts, all include a novel What You’ll be Using feature.

For example, to transfer ebooks and audiobooks to the iPad, you’ll need 1. The iPad’s USB cable; 2. iTunes on your computer; 3. The iBooks app. The range of possible ingredients is vast these days for Apple owners, with some software on desktop/laptops, and other programs on iPads. This feature keeps things well-sorted-out. There’s a generous layout that leaves plenty of room for screen shots — very important for new-user books.

Another element that’s extraordinary is the “Additional Ideas” wrap-ups for each chapter. After you’ve learned how to do something like set up and customize an email account, it’s good to see the bigger picture and deploy what you’ve learned to do. Establishing separate accounts for work and home, or customizing your signature, may seem obvious to some. But a user who’s new to the Mail in iPad, coming from a Web-based mail service, can find this deeper dive aspect useful.

If you own an iPad already, this book will provide the training to take it to another level. I’ve learned that every onscreen keyboard key can be held down to reveal its alternative characters. Great for speeding up your typing.

Bookmark management is another insider kind of task you might have overlooked if you already own this device. A lot of this kind of technique is hidden away in the Settings app of the iPad. You’ll feel a lot more comfortable with Settings by using this book. Read the rest of this entry »

After almost a year on the market, it’s time to look at whether an iPad can be desktop replacement. If it can’t today, Apple may have another answer to the question, “How can I make my carry-on lighter and smaller?”

I took only my iPad on a couple of business trips this winter, and it served well. Most airports require you to take the iPad out of the carry-on, despite what you may have heard. It has writing and editing tools, the ability to connect to mail and social networks, and bare-bones blog posting and editing tools. I didn’t being along an Apple Camera Connector to hook up my point-and-shoot Canon to the iPad; that would have helped. Instead, I pushed my iPhone camera photos though the web to my mailbox, then pulled them onto the iPad. On that last element, I wished for a nice MacBook Air.

The Air only weighs a pound more than the iPad and takes up just two extra inches in length. What the Air does not have is a multi-touch interface. You can get hooked on that.
What’s more, many of the best apps on the iPad just don’t have a desktop equivalent. Now that there’s an iMovie and GarageBand written for the iPad, there’s a chance for a real iPhoto there. But there’s already plenty of photo editing tools, good ones, on sale for the iPad.

I took along my Kensington Bluetooth Keyfolio (above) on the trip, but that’s become a bit of a disappointment. Between the Keyfolio’s jumpy key repetition, and the ever-vigilant auto-correct on the iPad, it’s actually a bit faster for me to use the onscreen keyboard. It becomes easier to do so if you turn on clicks in the Settings for the keyboard.

Zagg has a nice keyboard and metal case combo, but you still must expose the back of the iPad in that arrangement. Both the Kensington and the Zagg have physical keys, but the Zagg doesn’t use the rubberized keys of the Kensington. I tried out the Zagg at Macworld Expo, and it types faster than anything.

But the recent introduction of Thunderbolt, with its display-plus-disk or printer connections, promises another kind of faster future for mobile computing. This is a category that includes a technology which Apple is not using yet — but there’s still another mobile computer where Apple could use the upcoming Wireless USB. Read the rest of this entry »

Business cards may seem like a throwback to a simpler time, but they’re still in high use today. I carted a sheaf of them to Macworld Expo recently and came back with a fistful of new ones to integrate. WorldCard Mobile from Penpower — which gave me a $5.99 copy of its app to evaluate — makes card entry and organization painless.

It’s a little bit of a miracle for this old dog to point my iPhone at a card, snap a picture and then have it Recognize the card and its fields, and slip them into my Contacts app. Often this happened without a shred of extra work on my part. Sometimes I had to make an edit or two. I even had an arty business card that used a very stylized “A” in the middle of the contact’s name. WorldCard Mobile never blinked at the challenge. Mary got her first name plugged in automatically.

There’s features to share cards and contacts over email, and the app files its own “stack” of cards. It also stores the original photo of the card for reference. A very useful feature gives you the ability to take an email signature block and recognize it into the WorldCard database. There’s more editing needed on a signature block than a card, but it saves a lot of work of cutting and pasting, old-style.

There are not a lot of features in World Card Mobile. That decision follows classic app design, to do something really well and not gunk up the rest of the app. At $5.99 it will pay for itself within the first hour you use it on business cards. You gotta figure it will work with the new iPad 2, which will include the product’s first back-facing camera.

Highly recommended. There’s no end in sight to the business card. But using an iPhone or iPad with WorldCard Mobile to put these into a database is a nice upgrade to the old card scanner + software solutions. This is also a great example of how an app for iPhone can beat any desktop Mac application, just by focusing on one good thing.