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With the arrival of the Squeezebox I’ve taken on a task I should have completed ages ago: cleaning up the mess that is my music collection. There is more than one – tons of MP3 files are sitting around on external drives waiting to be added to iTunes. Multiple copies of the same file have been placed in my initially carefully considered hierarchical directory structure, resulting in many duplicate titles.

Whilst there are various ways of trying to identify duplicate files, I wasn’t in the mood to rely on iTunes‘ ability to display duplicate tracks. There are command line utilities for checking and identifying duplicate files. Once again, that isn’t something I’m interested in: quick identification and easy deletion or archival where at the top of my list of priorities. A quick Google search resulted in me downloading the first program I came across on a legitimate link: Araxis FInd Duplicate Files. The application appeals because of a very simple user interface and an ability to check each file for its size and checksum, amongst other attributes. The fully-featured application is free to use for a couple of days. After a quick test, I purchased it at USD 15, a very reasonable price.

Find Duplicate Files provides a simple user interface: select the folders or locations to scan, then start the scan an walk away. Various preferences can be set that allow only certain file types to be identified and the action to take once duplicate files are processed.

One improvement I would suggest is that the list of found duplicates be populated in real-time. My current music library was roughly 340GB in size, requiring a fair bit of searching to run through – during the entire time, the results section of the application stayed empty, until the search operation had concluded. A minor gripe, but something that would alert the user to the fact that something is busy happening.

Once the identification of duplicate files has been completed, a list of all attributes is presented, with various colours being used to separate individual groups of duplicates. In the case of the music tracks, cover art is displayed if available.

I performed a few rudimentary checks to ensure the application had indeed found five or so examples of where I knew duplicates to exist. Instead of deleting the duplicates, I decided to archive them to another location just in case. Over 10000 duplicates existed, freeing up over 50GB of disk space. Not bad going, and certainly a great way to rid the iTunes library of additional burden.

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Or so I thought. As one of our favourite applications on the Mac, Photo Booth is often launched. A few days ago, Photo Booth showed little more than a black screen. Hugely disappointing, of course. The usual Windows fix of rebooting the machine made little difference. It was only on the reboot that I noticed the constant glow of the green iSight light – normally, that light is off until the camera is active.

My initial reaction was to believe the iSight had died a sudden, if peaceful death. Then I remembered hearing about a PRAM reset, an operation that clears the PRAM which stores certain system and device settings in a location that Mac OS X can access quickly. The PRAM reset is not complicated and requires a bit of dexterity with hands and fingers. Read about the procedure here.

With the PRAM reset performed and the machine running again, we were relieved to see Photo Booth operational.

If you have a misbehaving Mac, try this as your first remedial action. For misbehaving kids, there is, unfortunately, no PRAM reset. Yet…

eWallet has always been my application of choice when it comes an electronic database of passwords that I can carry around on a mobile device. Since my move to the iPhone, I was eagerly awaiting the release of eWallet for that platform. With the desktop version on Windows, I had the opportunity to replicate my previous experience of being able to synchronize data between the iPhone and desktop – at least on the Windows system, I had access to password-relevant information.

But as someone who is moving between Macintosh and Windows fairly frequently, I was disappointed that no Mac-compatible desktop version of eWallet was available. For some time, the promise of a port to Mac OS X has been made, without any timeline of when the product would be available. Thankfully, the wait for that is almost over. Ilium has provided a first glimpse of their eWallet desktop application for the Mac. In conjunction with the release of eWallet 7.0 for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Windows, I have had the opportunity to download and install a preview edition for Mac OS X.

The application looks and behaves very much the same as the Windows version. The software sports a new look and feel and provides a variety of additional views that may be hidden or displayed by clicking a button in the status bar.

Not all features are supported in the preview edition – search functionality is missing and most notably, the ability to synchronize with a mobile device is not yet supported. Other than that, all the necessary information is accessible, which is the most important feature for me. I had no problem copying my Windows eWallet file to the iMac for use there.

With the preview edition almost complete, the wait for the finished product shouldn’t be too long now. A nice change to the licensing policy means that a purchase of eWallet no longer restricted the use of the software to a single device. Finally, seamless synchronization of important information from and to Windows, Mac and the iPhone will be a reality.

On the Mac I use VMware Fusion to run various other operating systems and applications. The new release of VMware Fusion features many optimizations and some great features that integrate applications running on a foreign OS directly into the host environment. VMware achieves that with Unity and even provides a quick search  button from which applications can be found in a VM. In the past, I’ve used the VMware Converter to convert physical systems into virtual machines – it’s a great way to create an exact duplicate for reference purposes or hive off an SAP development system for use elsewhere, for example. A standard feature in the Fusion product is the ability to create a mirror image of a Windows system for use on the Mac. I unsuccessfully attempted to run this a number of times whilst G2S was still running the Windows 7 RC. The Migration Assistant is a small executable that is installed on the source machine – Bonjour is installed, and in true Mac fashion, the source is found by simply keying in the four digit value the Migration Assistant displays. On the RC installation, G2S would simply freeze and require a restart. No migration would take place. With the full install of Windows 7 Ultimate, I had absolutely no trouble. One requirement: after the installation of the Migration Assistant component for the PC, a reboot of the Windows machine seems to be necessary – I could not get the Migration Assistant to find the source machine, by Bonjour or IP address. After a reboot, the connection is instantaneous and the copy process begins.

For the 57GB or so of data to be migrated from G2S, about five hours was estimated. That’s over a wired connection. In practice, that estimate was too high. The operation completed after approximately three hour or so.

Startup of the VM on the iMac took a bit of time, especially since Windows needs to find a bunch of drivers and determine its new base of operations. After that, all functionality of the system together with all the data is available for use.

The VM will be a handy system to have access to when I’m out an about and have only the MacBook with me.

I tried rather hard to get the new Mindstorms NXT 2.0 software to install on the iMac, but to no avail. Though the installer ran through without any hint of trouble, and even after following the suggestion to install Rosetta, no NXT application icon ever appeared in the Applications folder. I tried a number of times, had to shut down Firefox each time due to an update required to Adobe Flash and even had to sit through a number of system restarts. Nothing much helped. Removing the existing installation and then re-installing likewise had no effect. The only thing I could think of was that the trouble with the installation was somehow related to Snow Leopard. A good guess: a brief Google and I found a solution.

It’s not exactly complicated, but is something I would never have considered. The workaround involves the opening of an installer package and the removal of the preflight script.

Once that has been done and the package closed, another try at the installation yields the desired result: a working installation of the Lego Mindstorms NXT software on a Mac running Snow Leopard.

Here’s a rundown of the steps to get the software to work on Snow Leopard:
1. Copy all files from the MINDSTORMS CD to a folder on your desktop.
2. Open that folder and look under “Parts”.
3. Locate MindstormsUnivEdu.pkg or MindstormsUnivRet.pkg.
4. Right-click (control-click) and choose “Show Package Contents”.
5. Navigate into the Contents » Resources directory and delete the “preflight” file.
6. Close this package and run the meta-package (LEGOMindstormsEngRet.mpkg) from the desktop to install MINDSTORMS NXT.

The rising up of the robots may commence…

Apple Software Update is adequate to keep your Mac humming along with the very latest official software that your Mac arrived with. But over the course of any time period it is unlikely that your Mac will be filled with only Apple software. Keeping up to date with a variety of applications downloaded from who-knows-where can be a challenge. That’s where AppFresh comes in. It takes on the task of creating an inventory of all the applications you’ve installed on Mac OS X, then goes out into the wide Interweb to determine whether a newer version of any of those applications is available.

The great thing about AppFresh is that it checks the status of your Mac at any point in time, so no persistent databases are created that may ignore a very new piece of software you may have installed. It’s also a free application, and as a bonus, developed by Germans. Has to work well then, right

After it’s been installed, AppFresh checks what’s in the Applications folder and then goes out to check for updates to those applications.

A concise list of all updates found is displayed. Even better, clicking on an entry that links to an update causes that update to be downloaded and, at the user’s behest, automatically installed.

The automatic installation is a great feature, though I’ve turned it off for the following reason: certain updates require user intervention – entering a password, for example. In the case of the Drobo Dashboard, the Drobo needs to be ejected before an update can be applied. In this sense, AppFresh wrongly assumes the applicatin was updated properly. I’m assuming that no proper error codes are returned to indicate that the application update failed. Whatever the case, for a better overview and to possibly transfer updates to the Mini and the MacBook I simply have AppFresh download the latest updates to my Downloads folder from where I manually install them.

To show that this is not just about third-party applications, AppFresh also provides information on the latest Apple software updates and, of course, about itself. It’s a great utility that makes life a lot easier and makes worrying about finding all the necessary updates to applications a thing of the past. Further details for any software component are provided. Simply click on an application to see a description of the suggested upgrade and read comments posted by users.

Integration with i use this provides a backend from which the latest application updates are read and from where application ratings can be determined, based on user opinions. Registration on the i use this service is free and optional – not a bad service to have access to at all. It’s also available for Windows users.

For anyone who needs to maintain upgrades to various applications on the Mac, AppFresh is worth a look. Highly recommended.

The daily review of my RSS feeds indicated good news with regard to Snow Leopard support for the Fujitsu ScanSnap: a new driver has been made available and may be downloaded here for all models.The update was promised to be available by the end of November – an earlier release date is great news for those who have held off on the Snow Leopard upgrade to ensure their scanners will still function as intended.

I downloaded the update and did a final check for any new software updates for Leopard. With nothing new to install, I plugged the Snow Leopard Install DVD into the iMac‘s optical drive and allowed the upgrade to 10.6 proceed. As a check before the upgrade, the internal hard drive had about 409GB free space remaining. Less than one hour later, the iMac had rebooted twice and Snow Leopard had been successfully installed. About 40GB of disk space had been freed up during the upgrade and a cursory check indicated that most everything seemed to be working. I shutdown the ScanSnap Manager and installed the update: I’m happy to report that the direct scanning function with the Save to File option works as it did before on Leopard.

Last task: to apply the combo update 10.6.2.

Update: since I use the S300M and am not fussed about any of the OCR features provided by FineReader, I neglected to indicate that full OCR support is still not available on Snow Leopard. If you require this, check this link to be notified once FineReader has been readied for Snow Leopard.

MacHeist bundles are a great way of getting a bunch of software at a greatly reduced price. Sure, the bundle contains only one or two applications that one would normally consider purchasing, but given the price of the bundle and the ability to unlock additional applications as more purchases take place it’s certainly an attractive proposition.

The MacHeist nanoBundle is a take on the same theme, except that all applications in the bundle are available without charge. As the number of downloads exceeds a certain threshold, one additional application will be made available.

Six applications are offered in the bundle. ShoveBox is similar to DropBox, but is geared towards capturing web snippets and notes and making them available to other connected systems, including the iPhone. WriteRoom is a bare-bones editor that blanks out everything on the screen with the exception of the text being processed. The application should assist writers with the task at hand without providing extraneous functions. Twitterrific probably needs no introduction. It’s a client for Twitter and is the one I currently use on the Mac. TinyGrab is a screen capture utility that is able to share a screen capture by email automatically. Hordes of Orcs is a tower defense game. Lastly, Mariner Write is the application that is waiting for sufficient downloads to be unlocked for everyone. Mariner Write is a word processor with an impressive number of features and the ability to open Microsoft Word documents.

As with any bundle, there are programs that interest me and those that don’t. In this case, getting a registered version of Twitterrific is worth the download alone. ShoveBox and TinyGrab are applications I’ll probably use and stick with, whilst the word processors and the game won’t get much airtime. In any case, a download of registered software that carries no charge is not to be scoffed at. Get the MacHeist nanoBundle quickly – only six more days to go!

Both the Mini and MacBook have been running Snow Leopard since its release date and without much trouble. I held out upgrading the iMac simply because I wanted to be sure that all my peripherals and software products would work. A good thing, too. After upgrading to Snow Leopard on the MacBook, I discovered that support for the excellent Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M was lacking. Nothing too serious, but the scan to folder functionality is exactly what I want to use and I had no intention of working around the current software release’s inability to do just that under Snow Leopard. The partial fix provided by Fujitsu is simply another workaround and is not able to match the functionality as it’s intended to exist.

Long story short: after waiting for an update on when the new driver and software bundle would be ready to support Snow Leopard, Fujitsu has finally indicated that the end of November has been targeted. That’s great news…

I’ll try the update on the MacBook first and then move to Snow Leopard on the iMac once I’m satisfied that the update solves the issue of being able to scan directly to a folder without manual intervention. Looks like the iMac is getting a Snow Leopard for Christmas…

Backing up data is one of those tedious tasks that simply have to get done. On Linux, I relied on a script containing rsync that was scheduled using cron. On Windows, I like to use robocopy, a very handy command-line utility that is still around (and even updated) in Windows 7. Robocopy functions very much like rsync, and it’s the kind of backup I feel most comfortable with: no dumping of precious files into bit buckets hampered by specific formats. Instead, the source is replicated to the target drive and, if necessary, deletions on either end are carried over (or not) to ensure the source and target stay the same. Even better, once the initial copy has taken place, subsequent synchronizations are incremental and finish up in a jiffy.

On the Mac, Time Machine is certainly worthwhile using and a great backup utility. Unfortunately, Time Machine isn’t all that easy to use with network attached storage, such as my set of Drobos. The Drobo is quite happy to be seen by Time Machine when connected to the Mac via the fast Firewire or slower USB 2.0 ports. Workarounds exist to make a Drobo connected to a DroboShare unit be seen by Time Machine – use of sparse bundle images or BackMyFruitUp. Neither of those options gives me any high degree of comfort, primarily due to the fact that they’re not officially supported. Data corruption isn’t high on my wish list…

Whilst I could easily have utilized the humble command line rsync command under Mac OS X, I  searched for something a bit more user friendly. I settled on ChronoSync. Simply put, ChronoSync does exactly what rsync and robocopy do; it synchronizes files by copying from a source to a target. But that’s really just a tiny part of its arsenal. For USD 40, ChronoSync performs file synchronization, archiving of file versions, creation of bootable backup disks and much more.

Best of all, there is no need to code command line scripts or employ cron for job scheduling: that’s built in and permits a slew of backups to be run at intervals that are suitable.

For the paranoid, there’s even an option to synchronize a file the moment it has been altered. With the aid of a tiny piece of AppleScript, I am notified of the successful completion of my ChronoSync backups via Growl, on to Prowl to the iPhone. Scripting support may be employed for a number of other reasons, such as to shut down a database prior to copying, for example. I generally synchronize entire directory trees without filtering out specific files, though ChronoSync includes support for complex filters for file selection during archival and synchronization operations. In fact, the options provided by ChronoSync are very extensive and should cater for almost any specialized requirement.

Though it may be considered expensive, ChronoSync works without fail and puts my mind at ease. What more would one want from a backup solution?

There’s a time-limited trial version available for download here and so far, I’ve had no issue with ChronoSync running under Snow Leopard.