The new iWeb 09 has the ability to publish your website to an ftp server. Here is how to use this feature so that you don’t need a .mac account to host your iWeb site.  If you have iWeb 08 or earlier, read here.

Firstly, you will need to purchase a web hosting account. This will usually come for free from your ISP with your normal internet access package.

You will need to find out some technical details from you ISP or web provider before you progress. Don’t be scared off by the funny names. They are actually quite simple. These are the details of where your webpage will be stored.

You will need 4 things.

FIRSTLY, the address of the ‘ftp server’ for where you want to put your website. If your website is ‘dubbo.org’ then it will be something like ftp.dubbo.org. (It may be something more obscure like ftp.your_name.members.your_isp.net)

SECONDLY you will have a username and password with it that you will need. Your username may be your email address or it may be something different.

FINALLY will also have what we call a ‘directory’ which is simply the place your files will be stored on the website and it will be something like this: ‘/public_html’. If you don’t know what this is, ring and ask your ISP.

You will need to know all these 4 things before you proceed. It’s no use guessing them. If you don’t know them you need to ring ask your web provider who you are paying for your web hosting what these details are. In summary you need (1) ftp server address, (2) username, (3) password and (4) remote directory (or remote folder).

3. Make and edit your website in iweb. In iweb select your site, and Under ‘Site Publishing Settings select ‘FTP Server’. The first box of settings are not important – they are for your information only.

This second box of settings is the important one:

These are  the settings we talked about above from your ISP.

Fill them all in and press Test Connection.

If it works you are set to go – when you publish your site it will now publish to your website rather than to iWeb.

Yesterday Telstra turned on internet tethering for the iphone! (I think they are the only carrier in Australia to do this.)

Tethering is where you use your iPhone as a wireless modem to connect your computer to the web. It’s useful if you are out with your laptop and you don’t have access to the web. Just plug your iPhone into your laptop via USB and it acts as a wireless modem! Here’s how to get it going.

1. On your iphone go to Settings General Network and if tethering is available with your mobile carrier there will be a pane called internet tethering that looks like this:

Turn it on. Tethering is now enabled on your iphone.

If you don’t see this – go to iTunes when your iPhone is connected and click on the ‘Check for update’ Button to download the new Carrier settings from Telstra.

2. Plug your iPhone into your computer via the USB cable. When tethering is on  you’ll get a message like this:

Click on network preferences and iphone will become your modem like this:

You should now be able to surf the web on your laptop. Your iphone will light up like this to show you are tethering.

Speed is great, ping a bit slow… (Make sure you are on a big data plan!)

NOTE: For other carriers (Optus, Vodaphone etc) you can do this too, click here to get the configuration file. (THis is not yet working for iPhone software 3.1 though.)

I just checked on Google today and it tells me that as of August 1 there are 1,146,787 links to macintshhowto.com!

We average about 30,000 visits a month – that’s 1000 a day.

So hello whoever you are and thanks for reading!

Wayne

It doesn’t matter what kind of wireless network you are running at your home,  be it an Apple Airport base station, or one of many other brands like D-Link, Asus, Billion, Netgear, or even a branded one like a Bigpond home wirless network,  they all suffer the problem of network congestion.  By network congestion I mean there are so many other people in your street or block of units with wireless equipment and they all interfere with each other – a bit like lots of people talking together in a crowded room. This  can manifest itself as reduced range on your WiFi network, a drop in speed, your wireless signal dropping out,  or your wireless  signal strength going up and down  randomly. Here’s  how to change your wireless channel so that you won’t clash with the other people around you.

In Australia there are 11 wireless channels in the USA there are 13. When you go and buy a wireless router and bring it home and plug it in it will default  to one of those channels, most likely the middle one – Channel 6.  If your next door neighbours have done the same thing,  chances are all your wireless networks are on channel 6 and  therefore  they are interfering with each other. This  does not reduce the power that your wireless base station puts out, but it does make it harder to your computer to pick up  the signal because it will be picking up next door’s network as well – it’s a bit like trying to listen to a conversation in a noisy room. The best thing to do is change the channel of your wireless device.   There is a slight complication though,  because although there are 11 channels, they all overlap!  Have a look  at this picture:

wireless channels - click to enlarge

All the 11 channels overlap and so the way to use channels that don’t overlap is to use either channel 1, 6 or 11. It used to be the case  that if you are having trouble on say channel 6 you could just switch to channel 1 or 11 and  find some free space.  But as more and more people go wireless these channels are filling up.  For  an example, look at all the wireless networks where I live. (I have used a ubiqity AirOS on a Picostation to get this information, but you can use an iphone app such as WiFiFoFum or a great app for mac OSX called wifi scanner from here.)

A list of the local wireless networks interfering with my home network!

These are all the signals I get sitting in my lounge room at home! And this is in a rural area  with quite spread out houses!  I’d hate to see what was like living in the city. Notice  that although there are 7 networks, most of them are on channel 1, 6 or 11. So I would be better choosing a channel between these, like  3 or 9. This will overlap with the other channels but it will be better than trying to compete directly with them! All wireless routers come with information on how to choose a different channel –  might be time to dig out the user manual!

A Telstra big pond wireless router

Finding the BEST frequency for your location.

I find the best way to work out  the optimum frequency for your wireless network is by trial and error,  and using a little iPhone utility called WiFiFoFum.

Firstly go into your wireless router – you will need the password for this, and change the Channel to 1.

On the airport base station it  this looks like this under Settings, Airport, Wireless:

Selecting a wireless channel

When you have done this, restart your wireless modem, then measure the signal strength (RSSI) using WiFiFoFum, eg -89.

Change the Channel to 2, then do it again.

You will end up with some results like this:

Channel 1 88-89

Channel 2 92-94

Channel 3 84-87

Channel 4 84-87

Channel 5 82-84

Channel 6 83-85 and so on.

Pick the channel that has the best signal – note that a lower number is better as it is measured in -dB so higher means a weaker signal. For me it was channel 5.

You may want to repeat the test another time and another day  because people can turn their wireless modems on and off at different times in the day.

How do I find my wireless  base station settings?

For most wireless routers  you need to surf to their web page from your browser –  Safari or Firefox. To  do this you need the IP  address of your router. To find it  go into your Apple Menu (top left of your screen) , then  system preferences, then network, then click on Airport, then Advanced, then TCP/IP, then have a look at what it says next to Router:

It will be a number like 10.0.0.138, or 168.0.0.1, or 192.168.1.1 or something similar.

Type that number into Safari as if it were a webpage!

Accessing your wireless router to change the channel

This will take you to your wireless Router page (you will need a password that came with the router – check your documentation)  where you can change the channel settings.

You will need to restart the  wireless router each time you change a setting.

If you  have an Apple AirPort base Station you don’t need to go through Safari, you can just use the ‘ airport admin’  utility in your utilities folder.

This is not really something to set and forget –  because other people might change their settings too!

There’s no doubt about it – Macs are great computers, but they re not cheap, and it’s hard to find them on special! What you may not know is that you can buy iMacs, Macbooks, Macbook Pros, Mac Minis –  almost the entire Apple range,  refurbished from Apple, often at reduced prices. I always buy my Macintoshs  from the Apple refurbished store rather than new  from a retail store.  In my opinion the computers at  the refurbished  outlet  are BETTER   than a new one – as well as being cheaper!  Here’s why, and here’s some tips on how to go about  getting one.

If you go  to the official Apple store webpage (the Australian one is here) ,  and scroll down the  far bottom left there is a  small link  called ‘refurbished mac’.

RELIABILITY:

These are computers that have been returned with a problem. This  problem has been fixed, tested, and now they are being resold. Sometimes they are current models. Sometimes they are older models. I have even bought a refurbished product which appeared to be totally new and un-opened – I assume it was excess stock after a new model was released.

If you look at the graphs of when macs fail here you will see that most Macs, if they are going to fail,  have a problem in the first year. My hunch is that a number of these  break in transit or  develop a fault in the first few days. If you buy a new  computer from the Apple Centre, you don’t know whether you’re going to get a Machines  with a fault,  whereas if you buy a refurbished computer,  it’s already failed,  and been repaired, and fully tested. I  know people who have bought a new Macintosh from Apple and had problems with it and had  to send it back for warranty repair in the first few months.  Buying a refurbished computer  may give you less chance of that happening –  the computer is already ‘ broken in’  yet it still has a one-year warranty from the day you buy it!

PRICE:

The price of a refurbished mac can vary, sometimes it can be 21, 30 or even 50% off the retail price! At other times it can be MORE EXPENSIVE! ( This happens when the price of a model is reduced –  and the Apple refurbished store still has the price from before the price reduction.)

For example this 27 inch imac  currently for sale is an absolute steal –  AU $1700. They begin at $2199 in the Apple Store:

On the other hand, this 24 inch is way overpriced at AU$2429 – that’s $239 MORE than the NEW 27 inch i3 model! This  is because the large iMacs are cheaper than they were a year ago. The ‘save $570′  is a saving off what the price used to be,  not today’s new price.

It’s also worth comparing the specs of the  refurbished mac with the current model. The best place to do that is at everymac here or the apple spec site here.

A refurbished Macintosh  comes with a standard one-year warranty and is also eligible to receive the extended  three year warranty,  so long as you upgrade it in the first year.

You can even save on the purchase of purchase an applecare warranty if you look around. For example a 3 year Applecare for an imac in Australia costs $AU268 but I found one on ebay for US$84 – under half the price. Applecare is international so you can buy it in any country and use it in any country. You just need to register it online with Apple when you get it.  As always, be careful what you buy from eBay, but if the seller  is PayPal guaranteed,  it’s hard to go wrong. The same can be said for software,  I just purchased iWork off eBay for $24 instead of $129, and 3 yr applecare for my iphone for  US$29 instead of AU$99.

Finally, it can be cheaper to buy memory for your Macintosh after you purchase it,  and I have  previously written an article about this here. If you live in Australia there’s often some good pointers to mac bargains here.

I was an early adopter of speech recognition. Despite being a long time Apple user user, in 1999 I purchased my first PC just to run Dragon Naturally Speaking. I would dictate to the PC and then copy the dictated files over to my Mac on a thumb drive! Dragon Naturally Speaking was by far the best dictation software but it was not available for the Appel platform.

Not too long later, Viavoice arrived on the Macintosh. It was not as good as Dragon but did the job. I  used IBM ViaVoice for the next 6 years, with a brief but disappointing trial of iListen in the middle of that time.

So I’ve been waiting for almost 10 years for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to arrive on the Macintosh!  And finally it’s here –  Macspeech Dictate.

‘At the core of MacSpeech Dictate is the world-renowned speech recognition engine, Dragon NaturallySpeaking.’

After using Macspeech Dictate since it’s release 2 years ago,  I can say MacSpeech Dictate is easily the best dictation software for the Mac. It is now up to version 1.5 and with each new release it keeps getting better. For those who for many years were limping along with iListen or Via Voice – you won’t believe the difference! The latest version of Macspeech Dictate achieves almost full accuracy with just 5-10 minutes of training.

There are a few (small) weaknesses. One is that every time it boots up you need to click to select your voice profile –  it doesn’t  have a default option.

Another weakness is that although the accuracy seems on par with Dragon naturally speaking,  the learning as you dictate is not quite as good.  With Dragon NaturallySpeaking  if I retrained a word it would never mistake it again.  I could even retrain it with words that I pronounced  badly,  so that it would  learn my bad pronunciation.  With  Macspeech  Dictate sometimes I have to retrain a difficult word five or six times and even then it doesn’t learn it  exactly how I said it – thinks.  So there must be some difference between the way Dragon Naturally Speaking and Macspeech Dictate  handle the retraining of words.

That said,  it’s a fantastic product. I use it every day,  and I’d totally recommend that you try it out if you do a lot of typing.  At the very least find a friend who has a copy and give it a trial! That’s what I did  10 years ago with Dragon Naturally Speaking and I was hooked.

If you live in the US It’s available directly from MacSpeech for $199, or people from Australia can grab it from Amazon who ship internationally.

There’s also a wireless version for $299 but if you really want the absolute best option, I’d go for the standard Macspeech Dictate version and buy your own separate top of the line wireless headset - I have written a separate article here on the best microphone to buy.

NOTE: You can read my  older and less flattering reviews of the earlier versions of Macspeech Dictate here.

You’ll then be given a screen that displays your processor speed and how much RAM is installed.

My search for a good notetaking app has been a little on the obsessive side, but to me, the one thing a computer should be able to do well is take notes. I have spent 2 years on this one. I’m talking about an application where I can make a short note to myself and come back later and find it easily.

The combination of Notational Velocity on the mac, synced with Simplenote on the iphone, is for me the winner.
Step 1. Install Simplenote on your iphone.

Step 2. Sign up for a Simplenote account.

Step 3. Download Notational Velocity

Step 4. Enter your simplenote account details into the preferences of Notational Velocity.

Step5. change Notational velocity preferences to store the notes as rtf files in a folder instead of a single database file so that spotlight can find them.

That’s it! Now  all the notes in simple text on your iPhone will be synced with notational velocity on your  desktop computer.

Why I like these apps.
Simplenote is very SIMPLE, and Notational Velocity is soooo FAST. They are both elegant, and the best thing of all – they don’t get in the way.

Notational Velocity is a bit of a head spin the first time you use it. It’s so simple and it only has one box to type in – whether you’re writing a new note or searching for an old note you type in the same box!

And it is so FAST to search – the results appear INSTANTLY. It’s almost as if it’s reading your mind!

I use notational velocity for all kinds of things…

- writing down how I did something so that next time I need to do it I can remember.
- storing trivial information like the ranking of poker hands, or a list of things to take on holidays.
- lists of birthday present ideas for people
- poems and song lyrics
- lists where things are stored
- menus, letters, vision-setting, bits of computer code and so on.

I currently have 355 notes in it, and I don’t need to remember note titles, keywords or anything, I just type a word and it finds the note. It’s great.

For a long time SOHO notes was my favourite, but the worst problem is that you have to manually sync the iphone with the desktop app – I never remember to and get caught out looking for a note that is not yet synced to!

Likewise, Shovebox is a nice app  to capture notes into, but harder to search and browse them once they are in.

Did you know that if you hold down SHIFT-COMMAND-4 you can take a picture of any part of your screen? Press SHIFT-COMMAND-4 and your cursor will turn into a cross-hair. (Try it right now!) Click and drag over anything and you can take a picture. It’s how most of the small pictures on this website are made.

Useful for all kinds of things, for example:

Grab a screenshot of a keynote graph:

Grab a heading from pages:

Grab a receipt from a webpage:

The top of your screen:

Or any information you want to keep:

I use Shift-Apple-4 a few times every day!
Also, Shift-Apple-3 takes a shot of the entire screen – I use this much less.

It’s slightly off topic but this is so well done I simply could not resist posting a link to it…

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/09/excellent-mac-classic-converted-to-ipad-stand/