Ask TUAW: Permissions problems, html email, Quick Look and Illustrator, RDC, SugarSync and more

I am thinking of an application, but I can't remember it's name, and I can't find it via searching for the life of me!

It was talked about on TUAW, and what it does is, it allows you to make a bookmark of a website, and it treats the bookmark like an application that you can open separately, and keep on your dock and stuff.

I'd really like it but I can't remember what it's called!!!

: )

-Joel

ok, If I have a 1st gen iPhone and want to get a 3G one, could I just buy a 3G phone and put my 1st gen sim card in?

Okay, so I've got a question concerning my MBP and I am not totally for sure if this is the right forum.

I need to restage my mac (i.e. delete everything using the CDs provided, and slowly reupdate and install the programs I love). I like every other person who uses a mac as their main computer, have got random bits of data that is slowing my machine down.

I have a MacBook (a little newer, however no where near the specs of the MBP) however it will open safari almost 3x times faster, M$ word is actually smooth on it, etc...

Does anyone know of a decent program that will catalogue my files, back up the ones i need, etc so that I can accomplish this task in a weekend instead of a week?

I have so much data (emails, PDFs, 3D Designs) that I cant get ride of, but they are scattered which makes this process painstakingly difficult.

Any Help?

Question:

For reasons which aren't particularly interesting i need to be able to set my MAC address (ethernet address) on my ethernet port to a specific value.

On 10.4 it was simply a matter of opening Terminal and then:

sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
or
sudo ifconfig en0 lladdr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

i even wrote a boot-time startup item to run this shell as admin at launch

I now have 10.5 and currently have to dual boot into tiger to be able to change the MAC address.

none of the command line stuff I have tried has worked in 10.5 - i pulled across my startup item and that ran without problems [eg no errors] but still didn't change the MAC address.

It seems to me that although the command still exists, it no longer does anything.

I'd quite like to be able to use a MAC address of my choice without having to reboot in and out of it!

What would happen if i was somehow able to locate the bit of the kernel responsible for this and lift it from tiger into leopard? bad things?
Obviously it's not a hardware issue since 10.4 and 10.5 are running on the same machine.

Can anybody see waht is going on here? Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks

please help! my installer.app 3.1 messed up! where can i download it on a computer as an independent package?
i have an 8GB 1.1.4 iPod touch .

thankz!

QUESTION FOR NEXT WEEK

I'm so very close to my own little digital utopia and I need some advice on how to take the last step. I have a plethora of computers that I need to combine into an efficient & safe backup plan/system.

1. Macbook Pro, 2.33GHz, Leopard; main home computer
2. IBM Thinkpad T41, XP; my work laptop
3. Dell Inspiron D630, XP; my wife's work laptop
4. PPC Mac Mini Media/Web Server, Leopard; stores & distributes iTunes & iPhoto libraries to all the other computers, iPods, and Apple TV hooked into living room home theater. Hosts personal website via dyndns.

My utopian goals for the backup system are 1) to have an automatic system that takes the responsibility out of it as much as possible, 2) have an offsite - preferably, online - backup of my photos and music (because those are virtually irreplaceable - especially the photos), and 3) if possible, have online access to all my personal files for when I travel (a lot).

My iPhoto library is approximately 20GB, and my iTunes library is approximately 35GB. Both are growing and have nearly taken up the 80GB of disk space on my Mini.

If it helps, I also have an AEBS & 160GB iPod Classic at my disposal.

I have looked into buying a huge External HDD to use as a NAS in combination the AEBS. While I think I've determined that will allow for a clone via SuperDuper, I don't think Time Machine will work very well and, as best I can tell from online forums, not at all for backing up multiple Macs. The XP machines seem like a lost cause.

I have also looked into Mozy, but it seems impossible to pull down individual files for an online file system (goal #3).

I don't mind spending some money to get this done, but am still looking to control cost to a certain extent. I think that buying a Time Capsule would be a good first step b/c I could back up both Macs and set up a FAT32 partition for the XP machines, but I have to admit that I'm miffed at Apple for not allowing me to use all this equipment (particularly the AEBS) to get this done without buying a second router I don't need and an overpriced External HDD.

Some less clear ideas...
- Is it possible to use the Mini as a backup & Time Machine server (with a huge HDD attached via USB) without having to buy Leopard Server ($500) to expose the external disk?
- Should I run Linux on the Mini and use it as a file server?

I'll admit my sights are set pretty high - but if you can somehow help me get this backup system sorted out in a slick fashion, I would be more than willing to write up a post with pictures and an explanation of this Mac-based, high-end Audio/Visual, hosting utopia that I have spent over 2 years researching & building.

Sorry about the length and thank you so much for your consideration.

Hi. I am running a Macbook C2D 2.0 GHz with Leopard 10.5.2. I am wondering if there is a way within the parental controls, or a third party app, that will allow me to not only disable but hide certain applications on certain user accounts. I know that the parental control panel will allow for the requirement of an Admin password on certain applications, but I want them to be hidden completely. I know that I could install the applicationsx to each user account individually instead of to the /applictions folder, but that would mean I would have to uninstall and re-install a lot of applications. I'm hoping there is an easier way.

Is there something particular to the USB port on the MacBook Air power-wise?

A colleague purchased one recently and has several USB devices that she wants to use, typically at the same time. A powered USB hub (from Tripp-Lite) gets most devices to be visible, except the External Optical Drive for the MBA (which is understandable). Remove the power though, and even a single USB flash drive is not visible.

My MacBook Pro works fine with a single device via the hub (powered or not) and requires the power adapter only when using two or more devices or a hard drive.

Any insight would be appreciated.

I have many *.nfo files on my system. In the "Kind" column of Finder's list view some show up as "Simple Text Document" while others show up as simply "NFO File". Even though I have set OSX to open all files with the NFO extension with TextEdit, only the files with kind = "Simple Text Document" will display as plain text with Quicklook. (The others simply show as a generic page icon as Quicklook normally does when it doesn't have a viewer to handle the given file type)

Is there a way to tell OSX to treat all files of a certain type or with a certain extension as plain text so that Quicklook will display their contents?

Question for next week:

I have a Rage 128 video card that came with my old iMac. I've looked an looked, but I can't seem to find a driver anywhere. ATI's website only has drivers for Windows. I wanted to set up Extended Desktops but my Mac won't recognize it. Apple Technical Support @ 1-800-My-Apple said to get a driver, but I can't find one:).
Any solutions/suggestions?