Sorry for the lack of updates. I’d like to say it has been because I have been ridiculously busy at work and just haven’t had the time to post, but the opposite has been very much true - work has been particularly uninspiring, to the point where I just don’t want to sit and write at a computer for a while about techy stuff. Anyway, some inspiration has hit me this morning, so I’m going to bash out a post on making your Mac work with your M600i in a friendly way. It’s also worth noting that the P990i also runs on UIQ3 like the M600i, so all the steps below also apply, as do the problems outlined with the M600i communicating with the Mac.

To explain a bit more, the Sony Ericsson M600i is a particularly nice phone, but along with the P990 it really doesn’t play with well the Mac. Out of the box it’s not possible to sync contacts or calendars, or even mount the internal memory or memory card on your desktop. Basically, it’s a pretty closed system. So, what follows is a quick round-up of how to accomplish basic transfer and syncing capabilities, and ways to go beyond that if you really want.

This is a post I have been meaning to write up for a while, and have been putting off as I think it could get quite big, quite quickly. That’s no excuse though, so I thought I’d split it up into several posts in order to keep things easier for me to write, and for you to read. Without further ado, here’s part 1. I’ll keep links to the following parts as they get posted below:

• Part 1: At point of capture

Firstly, a brief introduction. I like to take photos, lots of them in fact. So far this year I’m up to a couple of hundred shots that I want to keep. I also like having things neat, tidy and in their place, and this applies equally to my iPhoto library too, which is growing at a steady rate of knots and currently stands at about 3,500 photos taken over 3 or 4 years. Not loads, but enough to start losing nice shots in which is an ever increasing problem as more photos get added.

Second, I’m on a Mac. Sorry PC users, that’s the way it is round here and the way it will continue to be. That’s not to say that any of the processes that I through or tips that I throw out aren’t relevant, I just won’t know the best way of doing on a PC, sorry.

Third, these processes/this workflow is not intended to be ‘better’ than anyone elses, or provide any advantages over your own - it’s just mine. If you find any of the tips helpful then I’m really happy; if not then no big deal, hopefully you got to feel smug as your own way of doing things must suit you better. On with the show…

This post is going to deal with everything that I do at the time of taking a photo (with the exception of actually taking it, as I’m no pro, so don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to ‘real’ photography!). As I explained before, organisation of the photos back in my library is important to me, so whenever I’m out with a camera I like to mentally record what’s going on around me, and more specifically where I am geographically so that I’m able to tag the photo in iPhoto and ‘geotag’ the photos when they get back to my mac. It’s the geotagging part of processing the images that I found especially interesting, as I find playing around with the photos, showing them to friends/family etc. when placed on a maps such as Google Maps or Google Earth.

The basics - it really makes your life easier to have your camera setup properly before taking any photos, mainly in respect to timezone and current time. Some digital cameras have both settings, but all have an option to change the current date and time. As this information is embedded into the photograph and is used when referencing the photos against a location at a certain point in time (more on this later), it’s pretty essential that it’s as accurate as you can get it.

In order to geotag your photo further down the track when you get home, clearly you’ll need to know the location of the photo. There’s essentially two ways of doing this - using a track log from a GPS of some kind, or remembering (roughly) where you are in relation to your surroundings to then get a more precise location when you get home. Now, you may think I’m talking complete crap here - of course you remember where you took a photo, right? Well, that’s true, but as time goes by it will become harder to remember where less memorable photos were taken, which for me is one of the benefits. of geotagging your photos- so that you can come back to them at a future date, and not have to rack your brain as to where it was taken.

So, having been on a three month tour of South East Asia, after you return home one beach pretty much looks like another. Having some kind of hard record as to where you where and when means that you can Google (or search on Google Earth) that place, find the location and geotag that photo. There are of course limitless ways you can do this; but for me noting down a date and place on paper has got to be one of the easiest. Alternatively, get a map (tourist, something more accurate, guide book, whatever) of where you have been and briefly annotate it with dates and times.

If you want a digital way of doing it, many digital cameras (well, from my experience every Canon I have had) offer a feature where you can annotate any image with a brief audio recording. I’ve yet to use this, but that could also prove very useful for tagging later down the track if you have a large enough memory card. Finally, logging your rough journey around a city with times, street names etc. around the time that you shoot using an internet enabled mobile phone, and a service like Backpack, would also do the trick.

The idea is to build up some references to know where you have been and when, so that upon returning to process your images you can apply relevant tags, descriptions and location info. Whether you do that in your head or in some other form is up to you. For me it depends on the length of time between taking the photo and when I’m likely to be processing it on my computer - the longer this is the more likely I am to write something down.

In addition to this, if you are serious about getting location metadata attached to your photos (as well as viewing tracks of your travels/ski runs/walks/bikes etc) then investing in a cheap GPS is a must. You can pick up something like a Garmin etrex fairly cheaply on ebay (~£50 in the UK), or for something for photography specific, check out the Sony GPS-CS1, and my review of it here. The GPS will log your position every few seconds to a simple text file which you can copy back to your Mac when you get home, and you can then convert the file to something that would be viewable on Google Earth. By matching the location recorded at the time a photo was taken, software can then embed the location (latitude, longitude, city, state etc, and possibly even altitude) into the photo’s EXIF headers.

In the real world, it’s a combination of both of the above that works for me. Having the GPS on and attached to part of my backpack for times when I really won’t know where I have been that day, as well as mentally or otherwise recording places and times that I took photos both work for me for Geotagging my photos further down the track. In the next few posts I’ll cover how to actually use the information that you have recorded to get the precise location embedded in your photos as easily as possible, the way I like to tag photos in iPhoto, sharing them online with this information using Flickr, and other ways of showing off your photo creations to the world.

I’m aware that some of the content in this post might seem a bit, well, obvious. I really wanted to go over the first steps you might need to take in order to start tagging your photos more completely, but if you’ve found it annoying or wish to let me know any criticisms you may have, please do so in the comments!

My latest post at The Apple Blog:

For about 8 months now I’ve been a proud owner of a Mac Mini thats sole purpose in life is to reside underneath my TV. Of course it functions as a media server, but it is a full blown mac after all so can do pretty much anything you want. Here’s the rundown of what mine gets used for:

• iTunes Library Sharing
• Serving downloaded and personal video via airport
• PVR (for Freeview Digital TV here in the UK) via EyeTV for DTT, recording both TV and Radio
• Spam Filter for 2 email accounts (using Spamsieve)
• Downloading torrents using Transmission
• Watching/Downloading Video podcasts with Democracy
• Front Row/Media Central playback via the TV (of course)
• Quick, accessible backup server for important files from other computers in the household or at work via FTP

I guess what I’m trying to point out that having a machine that is reliable and always on, doing things in the background for you so you don’t have to is just plain cool. On any given day you can expect Mail, Spamsieve, EyeTV, iTunes, Transmission and Democracy to be open, all doing their thing in the background.

So how are Apple going to sell me one?

Read on for more…

For the uninitiated, Basecamp, from 37 Signals, is a web application aimed at project management. From 37s themselves:

“Basecamp is a unique project collaboration tool. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration. Basecamp makes it simple to communicate and collaborate on projects.”

At work I have to deal with a lot of small (and some large) pieces of information, questions, to-do items and more being thrown at me every day from around the world. Although not everyone I work with is Basecamp savvy, they know at any time that they can log in and the current status of a job, task, or larger project from our Basecamp account. Plus, it makes me look super organised and efficient - never a bad thing in your bosses eyes! If you want to try it out there is a free plan which let’s you use just one project at a time, or there are one month trials for their other plans - just click the banner below. Trust me, if you work in a role where you are responsible for keeping track of, well pretty much anything, it’s well worth trying out.

Easy access to the flow of information, contacts, tasks etc. is pretty critical when it comes to actually getting work done. Now, Basecamp itself is pretty accessible anyway, but a widget never hurts and makes things that bit easier. This is where I have a confession to make - I work on a windows box. Bummer eh.

Headquarters Basecamp Widget from Clearspan Media

As such, the widget I use most is ‘Headquarters’ from Clear Span Media. This runs under Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly Konfabulator), which has to be installed on your Windows machine first. I think the widget is fairly fresh, and at the minute only gives read-only access to your Basecamp account. This however is a pretty good start, and it’s now permanently embedded on my work desktop. You can drill through to-do’s, contacts, messages and milestones on a per project basis pretty efficiently. I look forward to the time when you can write changes back to your Basecamp account with this - I’d definitely consider paying for it too. Another example of a widget well done - saving time by having a focused purpose.

The Mac still gets some serious Basecamp Widget loving though, with a well rounded widget from Kennedia Consulting. In true Apple Dashboard Style it’s extremely slick looking, again with all the relevant info that you might need close to hand. A former Apple pick of the week, is thoroughly usable and makes accessing simple Basecamp info from your Dashboard dead easy. Thankfully I try to avoid using it as much as possible - it’s Macs at home, Windows at work for me so it doesn’t get used as much as maybe it could.

Mac Basecamp Widget

It’s still read-only from your Basecamp account - so (for now) no editing back to your account without logging in via your Browser. A sneak peek at version 2 bodes well though, offering resizeability and write access - I just wish they would hurry up and release it already.

It looks like I may be using an old version of this widget - or I may just be plain wrong. I’m going to reinstall this one, get it working properly and rewrite this - the Apple Download page seems to think differently to me.

Update: I can’t get this widget working for me any more. It just sits there and does nothing. You may have more success though - give it a try.

Finally we have the Telescope widget (again for Macs). Until recently this was a plain vanilla rss reader widget with some Basecamp orientated design going on (selecting projects from a dropdown for example). When I checked back on it though to write this article I noticed that it was updated in late October to provide some more advanced features, making it a good competitor for OS X Dashboard space to the widget from Kennedia.

Telescope Dashboard Widget

It’s main use is as a quick overview of Basecamp project status. In order to accomplish this it’s a bit of a beast and takes up a fair bit of screen real estate, but I think that’s a bit of a necessity to really accomplish this well. Flicking through projects is quick… and, wait for it… Telescope also offers write access to your account in the form of to-do completion! Super useful for checking off what you have completed in the course of a day’s work without having to dip into Safari or Firefox.

It’s not quite as beautiful as the widget from Kennedia, but it’s still nice and otherwise it does a good job. The best thing about all of these widgets is that they are currently free, so you can quite happily run all three if you so desire - there’s nothing stopping you.

A final, honorable mention goes to Sundial, a Dashboard widget designed specifically for time tracking within Basecamp. I haven’t signed up for a high enough plan for time tracking, so I can’t really evalute it’s functionality - it sure looks nice though!

Sundial Dashboard Widget, image courtesy Clearwired.com

If you’re a Basecamp user already I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve looked for something like these already. If you haven’t fallen under the spell of Basecamp already, get stuck in and get organised.

In a new series of posts I’m going to give a quick rundown of my favourite widgets for the OS X Dashboard.

The Snow Report Widget is one of the stock widgets that apple supply with OS 10.4, yet I recently rediscovered as winter, and ski trips, beckon.

Quite simply it’s just brilliant - all the info about your chosen resort, a nice UI, and with a very focused task. Basically, just what a widget should be. Waiting for winter just got a bit more exciting :)

I’m not a big gamer. At the age of about 10 I was given an original GameBoy - I think I used it for about a year or two, off and on, and got all of about 5 extra games, and then it fell by the wayside (probably to bigger and better computers - I would imagine about the time I gave it up would have been about the time I first got into Macs). One summer holiday a couple of years later I discovered the original Gran Turismo on the PS1 at my friends house. Now that’s a way to kill a summer. Since then, my gaming has been limited to the occasional bit of Playstation 2 at friends places when it first came out, a lot of Dreamcast Virtua Tennis action at Uni and Japanese PSP grey import (this one I actually bought out of my own money - the first) which I sold after a year as I couldn’t justify its ownership.

So, I’m not particularly qualified to talk about gaming and games, console rivalries or anything like that. However… I am a freak about getting things to work my Macs. So, with the anticipation of the girlfriend leaving me for a couple of weeks (to help the poor in Guatemala, damn selfish if you ask me) I went to Game in Camden Town and bought me a slimline PS2 and Gran Turismo 4 to help me relive those early PS1 days.

Now, this isn’t a post on how great (or not) either the PS2 or Gran Turismo 4 may be. Yes, they are great, but that’s not the point. After a couple of days of playtime, as the PS2 was sitting right by Mac Mini under the TV, I started wondering if they might talk to each other… I mean, the Mac’s a friendly guy, he’s all open and waiting to chat with anything and anyone that comes his way - after all, via PSPware, the PSP and he were great buddies. The PS2 though is a bit of a hardcase - a rather private guy and a tough nut to crack, and no obvious way of making the Mac and him live in harmony.

What follows is a brief list of ways, off the top of my head and some googling, that you can bring some Apple love into your Playstation 2’s closed life. They’re pretty round the houses and often a bit ambiguous, but it’s the best I could come up with!

Charge your iPod!

The PSP has 2 USB ports for plugging in thumb drives and other accessories. USB provides the necessary power to juice your iPod… so, with the cable, a ready made iPod charger! One caveat - the newer, slimline PS2’s won’t charge anything but an iPod shuffle it would seem. Bummer, I think sony has disabled power to the USB ports unless they are actually being accessed for a game or what have you. However, the older fat PS2’s are reported to work well charging up your iPod Photo, Video or Nano. As far as I can tell, slotting the shuffle into the Slimline PS2’s USB port also gives juice to the shuffle, I’m guessing because it is accessing the hard drive.

Play multiplayer games across the net by plugging the PS2 into the back of your Mac!

Grab yourself an ethernet cable and plug into the back of the Mac Mini and back of the Playstation 2. Next, think ah that was easy, let’s go get me some multiplayer action! Erm… not so fast. Man, I hate networking issues, especially since Telewest decided to completely lock me down on my broadband options. However, following, this setup, I think there’s no reason why you can’t use the Internet Sharing feature on your Mac to get some network action on your PS2. Just dedicate some time and patience to getting it set up and you’ll be there.

I couldn’t actually get this working - but then I didn’t have the patience or will to try, and only spent about 15 mins on it. It seems doable though!

The other option for multiplayer gaming via the internet, is to use the Kai gaming network and a super juicy app called Amaryllis from the makers of PSPware. Again, through a bit of long-winded setup (but with a higher chance of success it would seem), you can connect to a free network of gamers worldwide to play against. Amaryllis acts as the gateway on your Mac to the Kai network.

Some links to help you out:

• Amaryllis
• XLink Kai Network
• XLink Mac Forum

Use your Shuffle as a hard drive for data transfer!

So, Sony weren’t nice when making the Playstation. Wanting some of that memory card profit, you can’t just save games for easy transportation, sharing or otherwise to a thumb drive connected via USB. However… some games, such as Gran Turismo 4 for example, let you do “fun” things like take photos of your cars in action or in situe at various world landmarks. These can be saved to a usb drive, and what’s the iPod shuffle’s main second use? Yup, as a USB thumb drive.

It works like this - 1. take photo as required. 2. Save to ‘USB’ on the playstation. 3. Extract shuffle, plug into mac, and you’ll see a folder conveniently named GT4 with your images on! Use how you see fit. Kidding aside, the quality is actually quite nice, and some will be thoroughly usable as desktops if cars are your thing. It’s worth a few minutes of your time experimenting anyway.

Access your movies, music and photos on your Mac via your PS2!

I have to be kidding, right? The PS3 is meant to be the daddy of media centre action from Sony, surely? Well, according to a product called Medio, I think made by Broadq, the PS2 can get in on the action too, viewing media from your Mac or PC’s hard drive on your TV via your PS2 over the network. Details are sketchy, and in my internet travels I haven’t come across anyone claiming to use one, but it would appear that this baby can do just that, albeit with a few limitations.

From the Medio Website:
What media can I play?
Music/Audio – MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AC3 (video only)
Movies/Video – MPEG 1, 2, 4, DivX 3.11, 4.X, 5.X, OGM
Pictures/Images – JPEG, PNG

At €29 from their online store it’s not going to break the bank, and if it works as claimed then you should be able to view any video up to 420p on your TV. For those of you who can’t afford a Mac Mini or the forthcoming iTV, it may be worth checking out.

Well, I warned you the list may be pushing it a bit. The PS2, understandably as it was released in 2000, is a very closed system and this was about the best I could come up with. If you have any other ideas or success stories, leave them in the comments. For me at least, it looks like the PS2 will remain very much unloved by my Apple gear.

The ‘upgrade’ is coming along smoothly. I have moved all written content that’s worth keeping across from the old site, which you can now find under http://newformula.org/words/

The downloads section is the next to be tackled. As all of the icons that I have made aren’t quite complete yet, I am weighing up whether to either do the icons page in stages or keep nothing on it and release it all in one hit. As Sony Ericsson and Motorola Icons are pretty much complete I might get them online first and then add to them later. We’ll see.

I also wrote up a new overview of a great little program in beta called teleport, which is perfect for those who have multiple macs and want to control them from just one keyboard and mouse.

Teleport, which is still in beta and from abyss software, is a genius little app. It’s aimed at mac users who have more than one machine and want to use one without switching to the other machines keyboard or mouse, i.e. those with a desktop and laptop side by side at work.

You specify one side of the screen on the machine which a keyboard and mouse or trackpad is connected, and when you move your mouse across that boundary, it ‘teleports’ the cursor control across to the other mac, and makes keyboard functionality transfer too.

Read on…