Mac users have the benefit of being easily able to back-up their files with Time Machine, but it can even prove a chore for us to connect our Mac to an external hard disk. Time Capsule provides an alternative, as users can back their files up by WiFi, but this is an expensive product.

Online back-up services hold a number of advantages over backing up files locally. For example, data is safer with them, as an external hard disk could easily be destroyed. It also allows portability; laptop users can effectively back up their data anywhere as they don’t have to carry around a spare hard disk!

Several online back-up services exist, but the two largest are Carbonite and Mozy. I recently bought a year’s subscription to Carbonite and in this article I shall review it.

Carbonite is an incremental remote back-up solution, available for Windows and OS X. Basically, after an initial back-up, any new or modified data is uploaded to their servers and backed up. This means only data that must be uploaded is, instead of all data being uploaded again.

Carbonite allow you to back-up any files, except Applications. Free trial users can’t back up their music or movie library, but paid customers can back photos, films, documents and music up. At the moment, I have backed up everything except my music library, because that will take some time to upload.

Users can upload an unlimited amount of data to their servers, where it is encrypted.

It takes quite some time to upload your files. I had to leave my computer on over a few nights to upload 5GiB of data, but I expect this is due to my Internet connection rather than Carbonite. I did experience a few problems though: it doesn’t automatically configure my firewall or ports. The lack of documentation resulted in my having to speak to their customer service, who readily provided me with a solution. They were slightly abrupt but got to the root of the problem.

I will share a few of these solutions for Mac users:

1. Allow ‘/Library/Application Support/Carbonite/CarboniteDaemon.app’ to receive incoming connections (the log is in the same folder)
2. Forward ports 25, 53, 80 and 443 to your machine
3. Ensure no folders which are constantly being written to, like cache folders, are included in the back-up

Users control Carbonite through a prefpane in OS X. This preference pane allows users to see how much data is left to be backed up, allows them to exclude data from the back up and allows them to restore files. I would like there to be a few more options in this pane, such as the ability to see the file currently being uploaded and access the log. The icons of the Mac folders are also outdated.

An interesting features of Carbonite is that users can access their uploaded files anywhere, such as their office or at family’s. This effectively allows Carbonite to act as Remote Access.

Restoring files is as simple as simply selecting the file and the location to which you would like it restored.

So, down to the details. Carbonite is $55 a year, however Subscription.com (who provided the software for me to review) offer a Carbonite offer code for a 20% discount. This is remarkably simple to apply: one simply has to go to Carbonite through their website, it is simply one extra click to save $11! I have gone through this process and it is remarkably simple. Subscription.com also offer codes or similar click-throughs to offer discounts on everything from antivirus software to newspapers to magazines!

MyNevermind is a nice freeware game for OS X I have been using to kill time lately.

The game is very similar to the 1970 boardgame Mastermind but it is slightly harder because instead of having 6 colours, you have 10 numbers and the game is single player. Basically, the aim of the game is to find a 4 digit number in less then 10 turns!

To help you find these digits, you would be told whether a digit is correct, but in the wrong place, or whether it is in the right place. You will not, however, be told which digit is correct and you have to deduce this yourself.

The game is timed, for purposes of score calculation, but there is no time limit. I generally spend about 5 minutes to play the game, but depending on your skills of deduction, this may be much longer or much quicker!

The game is not the most attractive application, but it is fit for purpose and still exercises your brain!

If you have a Mac, you might as well download it and at least give it a try. It’s only 308Kb big!

ShareTool is Mac-only software, made by the Speed Download’s developer, which simplifies the process of accessing your Bonjour services (such as file, printer, screen and iTunes sharing) from any Internet-connected place in the World.

ShareTool automatically configures your router, through NAT-PMP or UPnP, so you can remotely connect to a Mac network you have at home/your office from another Mac.

Using ShareTool, you can easily share files between the Mac, print something off remotely to your printer or even access your iTunes library. There are also many other Bonjour services you could use ShareTool to access remotely (for example, Skype or IM).

ShareTool does this through an SSH (which by definition is secure) tunnel, meaning it will work with or without a VPN or even a static IP. An SSH tunnel ensures that your data is transmitted pretty securely, so it’d be pretty hard to decrypt any data you send, and it also allows you to secure the web more securely if you’re being forced to work on a network you don’t trust, so a man-in-the-middle couldn’t read everything you are!

That all sounds terribly complicated, but ShareTool simplifies the whole task into an easy-to-use GUI as opposed to the difficulty you’d face without it!

ShareTool only costs £17.70 for a 2 machine licence, £45 for a 5 machine licence or £12 for a single machine licence (but you need at least 2 or there’s no point!).

YazSoft have kindly provided me with one 2 machine licence to give away (worth £17.70!). If you want it, either send me a message on Twitter (twitter.com/computerjoe), email me using the contact form or leave a comment. I will choose the winner in a random prize draw.

8th September: Stephen Shambaugh wins the licence!

I love Adium, which is a Mac multi-network IM client. Today saw the release of Adium X 1.3, which added some essential features, which have been missing for some time.

One of these missing features which this version adds is particularly useful for me: MSN personal messages. MSN is the most popular IM protocol in the UK and this, therefore, is particularly important. Ever since my switch to OS X, I’ve been missing the ability to see people’s personal messages (whether it be their status, their juicy gossip or their wit). In fact, the only way I could view them before was using a single-network MSN client, like aMSN or Microsoft Messenger, or this dated, homebrewed and unreliable custom build of Adium. Adium achieves this by using the msn-pecan plug-in for its library, libpurple (the library it was in common with Pidgin).

Another useful option is adding a search option to contact lists, allowing you to quickly get someone’s email address or quickly provide the IM address of a buddy to another buddy.

The new version also adds support for Facebook IM, MobileMe, several new icons, redesigns the ‘Get Info’ option on contacts to be more Inspector-like and performance upgrades.

Adium 1.3 supports Adium’s position as the prime OS X chat client and adds some much needed features and in general just makes Adium much more intuitive.

Adium 1.3 will run on a Mac with OS X 10.4.0 or higher.

(Direct download link)

Last week, I received my MacBook Pro (running OS X Leopard) and have ‘enjoyed’ setting it up over the past few days. Below are my initial thoughts, both positive and negative:

• iTunes is more tolerable than I thought it would be. Whilst it did frustrate me initially by copying all my music, I managed to find the setting which stops it copying all music into the iTunes music folder (preferences>advanced>detick ‘Copy files to iTunes music folder…’)
• The Apple remote is amazing for productivity. I can continue typing/clicking but skip through a song. I wish more non-Apple applications, such as VLC, supported it though.
• My major frustration is with Boot Camp. Unless I format it with the Windows installer (and not Boot Camp Assistant) I get Disk error. Press any key to restart and in fact pressing any key besides the power button renders no effect. Then, when i format it with the Windows installer (as either FAT or NTFS) it says that hal.dll is missing. If anyone could tell me how to fix this I would be eternally grateful! Oh, and I can’t get into recovery console as I’m using a streamlined OEM version of XP Home.
• Parallels Desktop is great… at least for everything besides 3D graphics. It doesn’t support DirectX 9.0 and consequently most 3D games won’t work. I find it laggy even trying to handle the pre-2000 Theme Hospital! It does integrate remarkably well with OS X, though, and I’ve set Publisher files to open in MS Office Publisher through Parallels.
• I’m extremely challenged when it comes down to choosing a graphics program. For several years, I’ve been a PSP guy but the main OS X graphics program seems to be Photoshop. I dislike the idea of paying several hundred pounds for a licence and decided to give Seashore a shot which to be honest I’m very disappointed with… and The Gimp 2.0 doesn’t like my MacBook Pro much!
• Time Machine is great – really great – but is fairly demanding on disk space having used nearly 50GB on my external partition… and that’s after excluding folders like Movies!
• I’m also very impressed with the degree in which Adium, Mail and the Address Book integrate. The OS X address book is so far beyond Windows’ Address Book I’m amazed. I’m actually using my Mac Address Book whilst I didn’t ever bother with the Windows one!
• iDVD is very impressive and puts Nero 7.0 to shame. It did, however, take several hours to encode a 100 minute long film.
• I’m fairy disappointed with the DVD drive. The lack of a hardware eject button makes some situations hell and I find OS X is very fussy with optical media. Roxio Toast refused to write much onto some dual-layer DVDs I bought from eBuyer.
• Mac games are very expensive! Sims 2 for Mac costs about £30 whilst the PC version costs £10… hence my desperation to get Boot Camp functioning!
• Installing software is splendidly easy… twice as easy as installing software in Windows and infinite easier than under Linux.
• Skype seems buggy, refusing to open on the first boot after its installation (resulting in many reinstallations of it).
• Stacks and Exposè are awesome!
• I love the compose key (⌥)which allows me to easily add accented letters and other foreign/obscure characters. Ubuntu had a similar feature and both are about equally as efficient.
• The ambient keyboard provides hours of endless fun by covering up the sensors and watching the keyboard light up. The sensors are in the speakers
• Despite what most people say, Firefox runs smoothly
• Transmission is the coolest torrent client ever… beating μTorrent by far!
• Photobooth is cool too. I like the ‘flash’ it generates by making the screen go white for a short burst of time!
• The ease to add podcasts into iTunes has finally got me listening/watching them!
• Mail produces a lot of false positives for spam.

If someone could help me with my Boot Camp problem and my DVD writer one I would be REALLY grateful. Just comment or email me at computerjoe@gmail.com .

Tags: apple, os x, leopard