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MySpace Employees Speak Their Mind. Lots Of Yelling Going On, Apparently.

We’ve had lots of emails from MySpace employees with their response to our most recent post about the crumbling mid level management structure. “If you’re a MySpace employee and feel differently, please contact us anonymously,” we said. And they did contact us. But they don’t feel differently. There was also a great discussion in the comments section to that post where a few MySpace employees chimed in both pro and against the company.

But the emails were most telling. One wasn’t anonymous and the writer asked to keep it off record, and we’ll respect that. But he wrote at length about high level execs “chewing out” the lower ranks, in public. And lots of exec level nepotism hires.

This is a theme brought up by another employee, writing anonymously. He or she confirmed that too many mid level managers are leaving the company, and talks about more yelling at employees in public (“Maple” refers to 407 North Maple Drive, the address of MySpace HQ, “Jason” refers to Co-president Jason “Hell Yeah” Hirschhorn):

Dear TechCrunch-

I always enjoy your article on the drama at my company – MySpace but I’ve never felt the urge to write until now. I guess I’m writing you because your article was ABSOLUTELY dead on. Because of that, my morale isn’t really high and I really don’t give much of a shit anymore.

Well, the hole goes deeper than that. Many departments are losing much of the middle layer of actual star performers, but people who can’t get anything done due to the crazy BS in Maple. For example, 2 directors in Jason’s product org are gone recently: (Director of Analytics – Joe Schantz who went to Yahoo), Director of Product Mahesh Angadi. Other senior middle managers like Sr Product Manager Charles Pham, who went to CitySearch and Sr. Online Marketing Manager, Laura Coltrin left and is now at EventBrite. What do these particular people have in common? Besides being huge losses for MySpace, they were all re-orged under his royal heighn-ass, Jason. People don’t want to work for that moron – he’s just consolidating power.

Today, Jeff Webber – Director of Engineering in Seattle – gave notice (no idea where he’s going.)

Oh, and Jason really doesn’t get along with Mike. Jason was witnessed ripping one of his VPs a new one when the VP was trying to explain why he was doing something that Mike requested (in front of 6 other people.) It’s a mess – but it should be fun watching one run the other out of town.

A bunch of other people have their foot out the door – spend some time around Maple, SF or Seattle near the front entrance and watch people disappear for hours at a time or for “long lunches”. Its almost comical. You see a lot of people going into empty conference room and talking on their cell phones or people “going to grab coffee” by themselves and chatting on the phone walking down the street. And yeah, I’m one of those people.

Anyway, this isn’t just due to the fact these idiots are running the company into the ground. The reason why people are leaving now is that MySpace gave out these big secret retention bonuses that had a 2 tier payout. Overall, the ENTIRE bonus was for anywhere from 20% to 100+% of a person’s base. The key is that they pay out in two segments – you had to be working in December so that you get 25% of the bonus amount). If you’re employed here until June, you get the remaining 75% of their bonus. As you can imagine, this is a LOT of money – especially at a place that gave tiny annual raises last year (<5% was the average), where we cancelled profit sharing last fiscal year (not sure you knew about that) and with no stock incentive.

It’s a huge sign of how bad things are that they are leaving 75% of the bonus on the table. However, since we all know that the ship is sinking, taking 25% in December was good enough. I don’t blame them. I’m out of here as soon as I get a new gig. I earned that bonus money but I’m sick of this place.

Oh – and the guy who thought of this bonus plan? Mike. These were given out after the review cycle (August.)

So yeah, you want to write about more defections? Wait until June and then everyone will get paid and bounce. I and others are counting the days. Its kinda funny – it was supposed to be a total secret from everyone in the ranks (yes, some people didn’t get bonuses, but those people kinda suck so who cares right?) but now everyone is joking about it privately.

-Disgruntled

And one last employee says it’s ok to paraphrase and quote parts of his/her email. This one still has some fight left in ‘em. Here are some of the better parts:

Until a recent reorg of the engineering group (did you cover it? I don’t recall seeing it.), the whole company was segmented into horizontal layers so there was an operations group, a database group, an api group, a front-end group, a search group, a datawarehouse group, etc. Anything but the most minor feature required an obnoxious amount of cross-group interaction and took huge effort just to get everyone on board and the work scheduled. Some of that layering is being done away with, at least that is the stated goal.

In addition to the extreme layering there was a group of people who sat in the middle of the process, able to accept or reject any project; people who didn’t have the business sense to be in bizdev or be product managers and didn’t have the technical ability to be developers. When they accepted a project for development they would (randomly?) select some developers to build it. There were no clear lines of responsibility, no reason for anyone to really care about what they were working on, no reward for success and no punishment for failure (except for layoffs which seem to happen more or less randomly so they don’t fall on either the reward or punishment side). This structure was called ‘the matrix’ and thankfully was a casualty of the reorg. Plus in the big layoffs last spring (before my time) the hardest hit groups were front-line employees, the developers and testers who do the actual work; you had these big design committees arguing back and forth for weeks or months about how and what to do and no one to do it at the end of the day.

A lot of the people who are leaving and have left recently were in charge of this dysfunctional process and are unable or unwilling or just plain sick of trying. Yes a lot of good (better anyway) technical people are leaving or have left and yes there is a lot of detailed knowledge about keeping the current code running going with them.

…

There are other problems besides all of that, God I’m getting sick of writing about this. The technology platform (.net) and development methodology (scrum) and general caliber of developer (although there are exceptions) is more reminiscent of a poorly run enterprise development shop than an Internet company, certainly far far far from what you would find at a startup or Facebook or even Microsoft.

…

Will Mike & Jason succeed at creating something functional out of this godawful mess? Too soon to tell, I think. The first all-hands meeting a couple of days after they took over felt like an old fashioned tent revival or something, I almost expected Zig Ziggler to show up. But I will say that there has been more communication from them in a few weeks than from Owen in several months and they are reaching out to meet with developers working on interesting or important new projects, in short they seem engaged in a way that Owen never did. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

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Ask TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about replacing a MacBook hard drive, refreshing a NFS mount, getting a simple clock on screen, improving iCal’s note handling, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify), or if it’s an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Felix asks

I’m a iMac user in search for a USB hub and a FireWire hub with a Mac-like design. Sure there are several of them (especially USB hubs) that have a Macish look but then theres the thing about performance. Some years ago I bought a USB2.0 hub just to find that some of the ports feel much slower than others and that sometimes my iPod (now my iPhone) just don’t get recharged at all when connected to the hub. So my question is, what do you think are the most Mac-like looking and well performing USB and FireWire hubs available?

Here are a couple of combo hubs you might be interested in from Belkin and IOGEAR. The Belkin hub does not feature its own power supply (apparently it draws more current from the FireWire port), whereas the IOGEAR does have an independent power supply, so if you’re concerned about power you might want to go in that direction. In general if you want particularly “Macish” hubs, I’d recommend searching for ones made for the Mac mini (there are quite a few out there).

Derek asks

I recently replaced the LCD in my aged Powerbook 15″ 1.33 (A1095). When it arrived on my doorstep there was a plastic film applied on the face to protect it during shipping. I’ve always had a problem with the LCD on this Powerbook (and my old G3 Wallstreet, for that matter) touching the keyboard when the lid is shut, thusly leaving permanent marks on the face of the display. So, I left the film on the replacement LCD, and it has worked very well to protect the new screen. However, it’s starting to peel and bubble on one edge and I’d like to replace it. Does anyone make screen protectors such as the variety of stick-on protectors for iPod Touch/iPhones in sizes for laptop screens? I have considered hitting the local megamart and just getting several to piece together, but I think the seams would be more annoying than the bubbling.

There are several different film screen protectors available, such as this Crystal Screen Guard at Amazon. The biggest problem is finding one that will exactly fit your PowerBook, since most everything sold today is made for the MacBook Pro line. I think that the PowerBook actually had a 15.2″ screen, rather than the 15.4″ screen on the MacBook Pro. So I’m guessing you’d have to trim down a MacBook Pro Screen Guard to fit your PowerBook.

SMartenup asks

I would like to find a way to save all of my open programs / documents, and then restore to that same set of programs & documents. Is there any way to do this?

OS X does have a feature called Safe Sleep, which is much like the hibernation features on other operating systems. When invoked it saves the state of your Mac to the hard drive and then actually shuts the computer off. When you restart the machine, it will be restored to the state that was saved. There’s a handy Preference Pane app called SmartSleep that will allow you to invoke Safe Sleep automatically.

I get the sense, however, that what you want is something analogous to session saving a web browser’s tabs, but for all your open documents. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of anything that does quite what you want.

ooglek asks

I have a 250GB SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS. I’ve had it for about 3 years, and it works well enough. Now on Snow Leopard both my 2008 Mac Pro and my 2006 Macbook Pro can access the NAS via NFS Automount setup in the Disk Utility (new for Snow Leopard). My problem is that when I take my laptop out of my home office, when I come back, I have no way to “refresh” or reconnect to the NFS mount. I’m not sure if it is hung (used to have to kill nfsd in Leopard), awaiting some user action or just not set up right.

I don’t have much experience with NFS mounts, but if I’m understanding the problem correctly you need to flush the cache with the sudo automount -vc command. That should cause it to essentially “refresh.” Check out this thread over at Apple Discussions.

vulgo asks

I am a long time Mac user and as far as I can think back I was using Microsofts Entourage as a calendar and before that Outlook for Mac. Since I got my iPhone 2 years ago I always wanted to migrate to iCal to use that as my main calendar application because of synching reasons. Unfortunately iCal is in my opinion a bad solution. It sure does allow notes in the notes field but there is no way to work properly with lots of text in the notes field like you can easily do in Entourage. You cannot just drag the corner of the window and make it bigger to get a good overview about what you write or copy/paste there. The column is and stays just too small. Do you have any idea for a good solution to make iCal fulfill the task of a proper note field without moving to another software?

I know you asked for a solution that involves iCal, but I don’t really think there is one. I completely agree with you that the iCal notes interface is terrible, but I’m not aware of any way to make it work better. However, if you are willing to drop a little coin, you should check out BusyCal ($49), which offers iCal / MobileMe / iPhone compatibility and superior better features, including a much more robust notes field (especially in List View).

David asks

I desperately need a bigger drive for my MacBook. Everyone says it’s pretty easy to replace, I just need to buy a 2.5″ SATA drive. But I’m so afraid of buying the wrong drive that I can’t make a purchase. Here’s why: Some folks have strongly recommend not using a drive that is larger than 250GB, and/or faster then SATA 150, 5400RPM. And most of the drives available out there are at least 320GB and often SATA 300 and 7200RPM. Am I being too conservative in my desire to stick to the recommended guidelines? Should I just stop worrying and buy a bigger/faster drive? If I understand the articles, I could/should be safe with a bigger drive as long as I don’t use more than 250GB of the drive? I’m nervous enough about replacing my drive so any advice you have would be much appreciated.

Frankly, I don’t really understand why anybody would tell you that you have to be limited to 250GB. I am aware of no reason whatsoever that you would need to limit yourself to a drive that small. You should be able to install any 2.5″ SATA drive you like, including SATA 2 (SATA 300) / 7200 RPM drives. One thing to consider is that faster 7200 RPM drives will be more power hungry, thus reducing your battery life and increasing heat (your MacBook likely shipped with a 4200 RPM drive, so a 5400 RPM drive might be a good compromise). If you’re particularly paranoid you could get a Mac-specific upgrade kit, like those from MCE Tech or OWC, but you don’t really need to do that. One nice thing about some of these kits is that they include an external enclosure allowing you to continue to use the old drive as an external hard drive.

No matter which drive you end up with, it’s a good idea to get an external enclosure, or at least a USB to SATA adapter (like this one). That way, as soon as you get it you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! ($27.95) to clone your existing drive to the new drive. Then install the new drive into the computer and you should be able to start right back up where you left off without reinstalling anything. Good luck!

Brent asks

I am running dual monitors with my macbook and I don’t need a menu bar on both, but I would like a clock running on the second screen. What is the best thing I could use?

There are a gajillion little clock apps available for OS X. Check out this search at MacUpdate for a sense of what’s out there. You’ll probably have to churn through a few of them until you find one that fits your style. If you want a place to start, check out SimpleFloatingClock.

David asks

For the upcoming iPad my wife and I are planning on sharing one. Our question is about the email. Is there a way to switch users so to our email is not available to the other. I don’t see any way of doing that on the iphone, but we don’t share them.

Obviously we don’t know for sure yet, but everything so far indicates that the iPad will function more or less like the iPhone. That being the case, just as the iPhone doesn’t support multiple users, I consider it extremely unlikely that the iPad will either.

TUAWAsk TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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feature: Collaboration 2.0? Twitter team-ups for fun and profit

Even if you’re a compulsive tweeter, you probably didn’t know what Twitter was a year ago. The 140-character broadcast machine has gone far beyond updating your friends about dinner plans, and, for those who use it, Twitter is slowly melding with the fabric of life and work. Turning the simple Twitter mechanism to creative uses has created a whole new toolkit, and I’m routintely surprised at some of the Twitter-based collaboration methods that users have come up with.

Of course, for many tweeters and former tweeters, Twitter is primarily yet another form of Internet-based distraction. “Twitter” and “productivity” are antonyms for a significant chunk of the service’s users. That’s why I set out to catalogue some of the productivity-enhancing, collaborative uses of Twitter. The survey below isn’t anywhere near exhaustive, which is why I hope you’ll drop into the comments section at the end of this article and fill in the gaps by sharing non-distracting Twitter uses with the Ars community. After all, if we’re going to keep a Twitter client open, we might as well get some work done with it.

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Ask TUAW: Power adapters, Windows 7, iWork refresh, and more

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about MacBook power adapters, Windows 7 in Boot Camp and virtualization in general, resetting the Mac Setup Assistant, the next iWork refresh, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify), or if it’s an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Tofa asks

I have a 15″ MBP (unibody 2nd gen) and a 13″ MB. I noticed that their power supplies are different. There is a 60W(13″) and an 85W(15″). Is it bad for the battery if i use one on the other?

Check out this Apple Support Doc. Basically it comes down to this: it’s fine to use the higher wattage adapter with the lower power device, but it may not work so well in the other direction.

Matt asks

I’ve installed Windows 7 on my (late) 2006 24″ iMac. The best thing about Windows 7 is Windows Media Center, which I’d like to be able to use while still being logged into the OS X side of things. First question, can I now buy Parallels or some other software to run my Windows 7 from the Bootcamp partition? I don’t want to have to reinstall Windows 7 again if I can help it. Second, can you recommend a USB Tuner that will work with Windows Media Center to capture over the air broadcasts?

Both Parallels and VMware Fusion allow you to use a Boot Camp installation in virtualization. That is, you can run your Boot Camp partition as if it were a virtual machine. As far as tuners go, I’d probably try for something cross-platform so you could use it straight from OS X as well. Check out this site (scroll down) for some suggestions from Equinux and Hauppauge.

CozartDono asks

I have a late 2007 Macbook Pro running the latest Snow Leopard and a Boot Camp partition running Windows 7 32 bit. I have the retail upgrade version that includes 64-bit and 32-bit.The last time I checked, there wasn’t a way to install 64-bit Windows 7 with Boot Camp. But I noticed the Boot camp update has a download for 64-bit Windows 7. Whenever I’ve tried to install 64-bit, I can’t get the disc to boot up and start the installation. Is there a way to install 64-bit Windows 7 with Boot camp that I was never aware of? Is there a guide I can look at? And most importantly, can I do an upgrade from my existing installation of Widows 7 ?I’m thinking most likely this is case.

According to this Microsoft FAQ the only way to upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows 7 is to backup and reinstall. The most recent version of Boot Camp 3.1 supports 64-bit Windows 7.

John.B asks

After doing a fresh install (assuming Leopard for my Blackbook, but interested in the Snow Leopard answer as well), can’t I log in once with an administrative account to get the Mac fully updated with the latest updates and patches, then blow away that user’s home directory to get the Welcome screen to run for the new owner.

It is possible to do this, but it’s not completely straightforward as you’d need to do it from the terminal in Single User Mode. Check out this hint from Mac OS X Hints for the low-down. There also this Clean Install.app that’s a bit easier to use, but you’ll need to be booted onto a different volume.

James asks

Hi, I recently got a 27 inch iMac core i7. In general I’m thrilled with it but the dvd player software that comes with it isn’t that great. I’m not keen on using front row because I want to be able to do other thing’s while the dvd’s playing. Is there a decent dvd playback programme for the mac ? I’ve tried myself to find one but mostly they seem to be about ripping and burning dvds rather than watching them !

You don’t say what you dislike so much about the built-in DVD player application, so I’m not sure what you would think is decent. That said, I can suggest you have a look a VLC for a free alternative.

Jo asks

Since the January event is over, and we still have no iLife X, will we see it anytime later this year? I’m considering getting iWork and iLife now….

trevor asks

Will there be an iLife 10? I’ve looked everywhere and found no sign of it. Am I better off just buying 09 now as I am still running 07’s version.

As with all Apple hardware and software releases, there’s simply no way to tell for sure regarding unannounced products. As it happens, there was about a year between iWork ‘05 and ‘06, but 19 months between ‘06 and ‘08 and 16 months between ‘08 and ‘09 (source). It’s been a little more than a year since iWork ‘09 so I would expect to see something this year, but I have absolutely no hard information. Personally, I think it’s likely that an update would come on the heels of the release of iWork for the iPad in the late Spring or Summer, but that a pure guess.

behindthecurtain asks

I LOVE using Remote on my iTouch to control iTunes on another computer, but hate being limited to that device. Is there a widget or app that does the same thing on my Macbook Pro?

There are several applications out there designed to do this, but it seems like none of them have been updated recently. You might want to check out TuneConnect 2 iTunesRemote and iTunes Remote Control.

TUAWAsk TUAW: Power adapters, Windows 7, iWork refresh, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ask TUAW: Automatic file sorting, Disk Utility, iPod battery replacement, and more

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about automatically sorting downloaded files, using Disk Utility to change partitions and format external drives, using a KVM in a multi-platform environment, replacing an iPod touch battery, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify), or if it’s an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Creesh asks

My Downloads folder is always cluttered with different types of files. Is there any way to have the files I download automagically move to their associated folders? For example, have PDF files go to Documents, movie files go to Movies, pictures to Pictures….etc. Is there a solution for this? I would be cool with paying. But any solution would be welcome.

You want Hazel ($21.95) from Noodlesoft. We’ve covered it quite a bit, and I use it myself. It installs as a Preference Pane and allows you to set up custom rules for sorting files in selected folders (somewhat similar to email rules in Mail.app). Once you have Hazel installed it would be quite easy to set up the sorting system however you like.

I should also mention that you could accomplish something like this for free using Folder Actions and AppleScript or Automator. However, I would still recommend Hazel for its power and ease of use.

Claire asks

I’d like to know what the best settings for formatting a flash drive or external hard drive using Disk Utility are. What does the ‘Journaled’ in “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” refer to, e.g.? Or the ‘case-sensitive’ in the other options? Do I need to do anything in the Partition tab? Or does that only matter if I want to be able to boot from the drive?

This really depends on what you want to use the drive for. If you ever want to use the drive on a Windows (or other non-Mac) machine you should probably format it as FAT32. If you’re only ever going to be using it on Macs it would be best to format it as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) Journaled. Apple has a nice explanation of journaling; the upshot is that it helps protect from data corruption & speeds up integrity checks after unexpected disconnections or crashes; it should be turned on. The case-sensitive option refers to treating files with upper-case and lower-case names differently (e.g. “Test.txt” would be different than “test.txt”). Unless you have a specific technical requirement to do it, you don’t want to turn that on for general Mac usage.

Partitioning allows you to create multiple logical volumes on a single physical drive (e.g. some people like to separate their data from the OS volume). You probably won’t need to create more than one partition. In short, if you want the most cross-platform versatility go with FAT32 and if you want the best performance on Macs go with Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

There’s one more important note, if you intend to use the drive as a boot volume (system startup) or a Time Machine backup volume on any Intel Mac: click the Options button in the Partition tab and make sure the drive is using the GUID volume format instead of APM or MBR. We’ve mentioned this requirement before in the context of building a USB recovery drive and dealing with Time Machine backup issues. Also note that MBR volumes cannot be resized non-destructively — we’ll be discussing that feature of Leopard & Snow Leopard’s Disk Utility a bit further on.

Ni_Knight asks

I work at home, and I have a 15″ Macbook Pro (mid-2006) running Snow Leopard (10.6.2) for personal use and a Windows XP SP3 laptop on a docking station for work. I’d like to greatly simplify my home office setup, and wanted to ask you what’s the best way to do it. I’ve thought of getting a simple KVM to connect both computers to it and control them from one single screen/keyboard/mouse, but I have a lot of questions about this setup that Google couldn’t answer for me: Are all KVM’s Mac-compatible? Is there the possibility to use two screens with the same KVM? Do these KVM’s support wireless Keyboard/Mouse (also very important)?

Most USB KVMs should work fine on both the Mac and PC. There are multi-monitor KVMs available (e.g. this one), but I don’t really see how it would be practical with your setup since they require two DVI inputs and your MacBook only has one output. The KVM should support a wireless keyboard and mouse as long as they use a USB dongle; they generally won’t support Bluetooth devices.

Given your situation I think I might actually suggest something else, namely a virtual KM manager. The cross-platform Synergy allows you to control two different computers with the same keyboard and mouse. Basically the computer connected to the keyboard and mouse acts as as server and the other computer acts as a client. It’s true that you’ll still have to have two monitors, but it will clean up desktop and allow you to keep your hands on the same peripheral hardware.

crazyandlazy1995 asks

i hav a first gen ipod touch that is about 3 years old and every nite i charge it in my iHome and now, after 3 years, it’s battery life has diminished so much that I can’t watch more than 15 minutes of video (and like 30 seconds of any medium-sized app/game) and my friend says the battery is worn out. TUAW, what do i do???

Apple has some tips and battery info. It might be worth trying to restore the iPod, but I suspect your friend is right. So you’re looking at a battery replacement. Apple will do it, but it’ll cost you $79. If you’re handy you can find a lot of third-party kits online, though it will require soldering. There are also third-party companies that will perform the replacement for less than Apple (e.g. iResQ and milliamp.com). Finally, you could also just get an external battery; there are many options available.

akfromrhill asks

I am a photographer on the go, looking for a portable 2.5″ HD to store images. I have two 1TB external drives at home where all my work is backed up, but I need something that can keep up with me, and store a few gigs on the fly at events. I would also like to partition this portable drive to keep a clone of my MBP HD at all times. Is it a bad idea to be using the hard drive day in and day out, if it contains a valuable clone of my actual hard drive on it?

I don’t really foresee any problem with doing that as long as you’re reasonably careful handling the drive. I don’t really see why it would matter that it was partitioned and contained a clone of your main drive. After all, you use that main drive “day in and day out” as well. I would suggest, however, that you also think about off-site backup with a service like Carbonite, Mozy, CrashPlan, etc.

Greg asks

I have an external hard drive that has been partitioned. One of those partitions is for iTunes and I’m coming close to filling it up (podcasts take up a lot of space and I’m not as quick with them as I should be). Is there a way to tweak the partition sizes to accommodate the growing collection? Alternatively, can I store them on the other partitions while keeping the bulk of it in the iTunes partition?

Disk Utility now supports non-destructive partition resizing. You should just be able to go to the Partition tab to make the changes without destroying the data on the disk — if you have enough free, unpartitioned space on the drive. If the existing partitions are filling up the drive now, you cannot resize them without backing up one and deleting it.

That said, you really should not re-partition a disk without a full backup as there’s always a risk of data loss.

TUAWAsk TUAW: Automatic file sorting, Disk Utility, iPod battery replacement, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ask TUAW: recovering deleted files, encrypted backups, cheap scanning, and more

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW

Welcome back to a new year of Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about cheap scanners, encrypting backups, recovering deleted files, troubleshooting new hardware, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify), or if it’s an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

FunFred asks

I am looking for a scanner similar to a ScanSnap or NeatReceipts for my dorm. I get a lot of handouts from classes (among other things), and keeping track of them all is a hassle (and makes studying more difficult). However, ScanSnap and NeatReceipts mobile scanners run along the lines of $200… perhaps you know of a cheaper alternative, or a place to get them for less?

It hasn’t been released yet, but there’s been some buzz around the net for the Doxie Scanner at $129. Now you’d have to ask yourself if you could really stand the pink hearts, but it does seem like it might work out for you. That said, I recently picked up a ScanSnap 300M on eBay for $150 and love it (it works great with Evernote), so you might also be able to score one that way.

Matthijs asks

Is it possible to make an encrypted backup using Time Machine? I am worried that if I make a backup on an external drive and lose the drive (or it gets stolen), all my data will be accessible. I would really like to make use of Time Machine.

Ah, possible is one of those tricky words. I have found a tutorial for creating an encrypted Time Machine sparsebundle, however it’s frankly quite a bit of a hack. My suggestion is a bit different. Do you really need your whole backup (music, videos, etc.) to be encrypted? For most people I would think that there are actually only a few things you’d need encrypted (e.g. financial documents, etc.). In that case, what I would do is create an encrypted disk image to store the sensitive stuff and then just let Time Machine do its normal thing. Keep in mind that any change to the contents of the encrypted disk image means that the whole thing will get backed up again, so don’t make it any bigger than you need it.

If you happen to have a hard drive that does encryption in hardware (like this one), then you don’t need to worry; your Time Machine backups will be uncrackable along with any other data on the drive.

khirbat asks

I have an early 2009 Mac mini that I use as my regular computer and and also as an HTPC. I have a 17″ 1280×1024 LCD on my desk connected via a mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter. My 720p (1368×768) TV is connected via a DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter. I am considering getting a bigger monitor for my desk. What would be the maximum resolution I could go that will allow me to continue to use my TV the way I am using it right now?

Another reader helpfully pointed to this Apple Tech Spec for the mini which reveals that the mini “simultaneously supports up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on a DVI or VGA display; up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on a dual-link DVI display using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter.” In other words, you can pretty much get any monitor you want to replace the 17″ up to and including a huge 30″ dual-link. Now I wouldn’t expect much 3D performance out of it, but it should get the job done for normal usage.

phillpafford asks

I accidentally delete my video files on my external hard drive, how do I recover these? Running two machines, one with Snow Leopard and the other Leopard. Any solution that’s FREE?

In a case like this the first thing to do is stop using the drive immediately. There is a free command line tool that you could try first: Photorec. It may be a bit tricky to use, but the price is right. Traditionally the go-to application for data recovery on the Mac is Data Rescue III from Tech-Pro ($99). They do have a demo that should at least tell you if it’ll work for you before you buy.

Steve asks

Santa brought me a new 500GB HDD and 4GB of RAM from OWC for my black MacBook 2.4 running Snow Leopard. I used SuperDuper! to clone the drive and I noticed when I was done the original drive had 224.49GB on it while the new cloned drive had 221.49. I contacted the folks at SuperDuper about the 3GB lose and they said it was normal to loose files so I went ahead and installed the new drive and RAM and it booted just fine but now Safari, iTunes, Handbrake and others crash constantly. I can’t have multiple applications open without crashes. Syncing an iPhone will cause iTunes to crash. I get notices of plug-ins missing like Flash for Safari, etc. I don’t know if the problem is with the HDD, the new RAM (which seems slower than the 2GB I removed) or with the cloned made with SuperDuper!. Any thoughts before I reinstall everything to original and return the gifts?

Here’s what I would do: I doubt it’s the RAM, but it should be easy enough to switch your old RAM back in and see if you’ve still got the problem. If so, what I would do is get a cheap USB to SATA adapter (like this one) and try booting from you old drive to see if you still have the problems (or just get a cheap USB or FireWire case and then you can use the old drive for backups). If the old drive still works as the boot disk, you could try cloning that drive to the new drive one more time, perhaps this time with Carbon Copy Cloner, just to see if it might help.

George asks

When I got my new MBP 17″ I used Time Machine to move my apps and files over from my old MBP 15″. Since then, I have upgraded to snow leopard, and cut the cords and went all Intel apps, and didn’t install rosetta. This has been fine for months, but all of a sudden, I am getting the message “To open Microsoft Sync Services, you need to install Rosetta. Would you like to install it now?” I don’t know what application/service is prompting me for this, but I would like it to stop!

It’s almost certainly Microsoft Entourage that’s causing the problem. Are you trying to use Office 2004 perhaps? If not, perhaps there’s some crud (technical term) from an older upgrade of Microsoft Office? If that’s the case it might be helpful to re-install Office 2008 to get rid of the problem.

In any event, it’s fine to go ahead and install Rosetta automatically — it won’t slow you down.

lewis asks

I was wondering if there is a program out there for organization that would be a kind of mind mapping meets Spotlight (for documents, images, keywords, whatever) meets Voodoo Pad meets Tinderbox. I would love to be able to jot notes down and have a program organize it based on other information it had in live updating, whether it’s other notes or information I’ve linked to it. Is there anything out there like that? The best would be if it gave it in a visual medium much like a mind map, but linked through multiple bubbles.

It’s not a visual mapper, but I would point you toward DEVONthink Pro. It features some automatic sorting and filing technologies that sound somewhat similar to what you’re trying to do. That said, it doesn’t display these relationships in a visual way like Tinderbox.

I’ll enlist the help of our resident mindmap maven and see if there are any other suggestions to add.

TUAWAsk TUAW: recovering deleted files, encrypted backups, cheap scanning, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why and How Embargoes Work in Tech Blogging

An embargo is something that tech companies use to set a time when their product will launch and the press can publish their reviews of it. Embargoes aren’t as simple as they sound and they aren’t uncontroversial, either.

We believe they can be a good idea, though. Below we discuss why and share thoughts about how we think an embargo can be run well. If you’ve got comments to share, don’t be shy, that’s what the comments section of a blog is for.

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Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’ll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Why Embargoes?

Not every announcement needs to be embargoed, but complicated ones involving new technology can benefit from such an exercise. Tech blogging is really competitive, some blogs won’t write later about something discovered by one of their competitors. None of us like to, we don’t want to give our readers the impression that we’re slow on the news or have people skip our posts because they already read about something elsewhere.

Here’s why embargoes can be good.

• They give multiple blogs a chance to review a technology in depth, instead of making it a race.
• This means readers get to read multiple perspectives on an interesting topic. Different bloggers have different strengths and ways of looking at things.
• Embargoes lead to more total coverage than exclusives. If you’re someone for whom the only thing that mattered in high school was to win the approval of the most popular kid in school and you want to extend that philosophy into your work life as an adult – then the richness and breadth of your work and life experience will suffer accordingly. Exclusives are the tactic of people with weak products and of reporters who compete better in bullying than in writing.

How to Run an Embargo

This is one way to do it, but we think it’s a good way.

Ask Writers if They Want Pre-release Info Under Embargo.

Sending an email briefly describing what’s being launched and asking if a writer wants more pre-release info under embargo is a good way to entice people into engaging in conversation and to receive an explicit reply accepting the embargo.

A lot of people have been sending emails lately with all the information in them and asserting that it’s embargoed until a particular time. Apparently accepting the embargo is assumed, but it seems a stretch to hold someone responsible for something they haven’t agreed to.

Additionally, having a conversation is much more effective than shooting out one complete email and crossing your fingers.

Right: From ICanHazCheeseBurger, a blog you can always trust with an embargo.

Make Sure The Subject of the Embargo is…Embargoed

There is no sense in telling writers they can’t write about something that’s publicly available on the front of your website until a later date. An embargo involves an agreement hold off writing until a given time – in exchange for a chance to take a look at something before it’s publicly available. If it’s live and easily found – then anyone could find it. Thus anyone could write about it and it’s fair game at any time.

Reach Out to Bloggers Large and Not so Large

A handful of top blogs in any niche are used to receiving press inquiries. Medium sized, up and coming blogs, usually only get spam or press releases for unexciting things. Offering to include an up and coming blog in an embargoed release is a sign of respect that will be appreciated. It will lead to more coverage, more links, and more perspectives. Readers don’t read every post on the big blogs, many people will discover you through a post on a smaller blog or they will take the time to read about you after noticing that a number of people have written about your launch.

There’s a sprawling network of tech blogs online and ideally your release would hit big and medium ones with such compelling news that an even larger number of smaller blogs would follow up with posts of their own. Blogging is a long tail world – choosing instead to put all your eggs in one basket (with an “exclusive,” for example) isn’t necessary or necessarily in your best interest.

That said, the only incentive bloggers have to respect embargoes is that they want to receive more embargoed information again in the future. It’s serious or aspiring news-type blogs that have that incentive.

Send the Info and Offer to Talk

Some companies refuse to send launch info unless a blogger agrees to talk to their CEO on the phone. Co-incidentally, those CEOs are often particularly obnoxious. The best PR agents will accept a request to just send out a release and other pertinent info – along with an offer to talk. Many times it won’t be necessary.

What is much more helpful is to make yourself available in the days and hours leading up to the embargo to answer any questions that come up. Providing a phone number, email and IM contact info for someone who can answer questions promptly is a big help.

Then, Lift the Embargo!

At the agreed upon time, push whatever you’re launching live and go check out your blog coverage. Best practices for engaging with that coverage are subject enough for several other blog posts.

Questions

Will Bloggers Respect My Embargo?

If you do it right, they most likely will. At least 95% of the embargoes we see get respected by all the blogs that were included. Some are better than others, a few are downright awful. You can figure it out. Most are great, at least in our field.

What Do I do If A Blogger Breaks My Embargo?

There’s a number of ways you can handle it but here’s one option. Leave a matter of fact comment on the post (”This was embargoed until 4 hours from now and I would have appreciated it if you could have respected that.”) and then let the other blogs you’d reached out to know that the embargo has been broken. You probably don’t need to tell them by who, they’ll check and find out on their own. Then they’ll either run their story about you, or if they hadn’t written it yet then they may not cover you at all.

Then ask yourself honestly if this was actually your own fault due to unclear or inconsistent communication. All serious news bloggers try to respect embargoes because that’s part of the business. Sometimes they are thick headed, though, and that’s how it goes.

How Much Lead Time Should I Give an Embargo and What Day of the Week Should It Lift?

It’s up to you but we’d recommend three days lead time, lifting Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday – depending on an honest assessment of how exciting your product is. It’s a crap shoot.

That’s How We See it, How About You?

The above is just one take on embargoes in tech blogging. We know there are lots of other ways to look at it. See, for example, Louis Gray’s excellent post this month where he makes similar arguments in more detail or pro-journalist Mathew Ingram’s contrary post Embargoes: Thanks but No Thanks.

Thoughts? Feelings? Suggestions? Leave them in comments, because that’s one of the things that makes blogging such a great form of media.

Title image: Untitled, CC from Flickr user Lauren.

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Widgets: "iPhone apps, I am your father."

Filed under: OS, Freeware, Internet Tools, Widget Watch, Snow Leopard

Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPhone and its App Store juggernaut, it’s just sometimes it seems that people have forgotten all about the iPhone app’s father: the Dashboard widget.

First introduced in Mac OS X Tiger in 2005, widgets changed the way people quickly accessed simple information on their Mac. And though Apple did not create the concept of a widget, it did present them in the best way.

With the press of a button I had access to my portfolio, my Yahoo! news, my local weather, calculators for everything, translators, you name it. Widgets were small, simple, and beautiful. They performed one function and did it exceedingly well. Widget ports created half of the first apps ported to the iPhone (think the Weather app, Calculator app, Clock app, and Stocks app).

So in honor of the widget being partially responsible for the origins of iPhone apps, I’d like to present you with my four favorite ones. I hope you’ll list your favorite widgets in the comments section too.

Continue reading Widgets: “iPhone apps, I am your father.”

TUAWWidgets: “iPhone apps, I am your father.” originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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