What are you trying to accomplish?

As a small business, or freelancer, social media can be great for generating leads and promoting yourself. Larger organisations may be seeking greater brand awareness, brand engagement, customer service or crowd-sourcing ideas and effort. Arguably social media was more successful for smaller organisations in 2009, but larger companies are slowly realising that by letting go of a little bit of control they can reap the benefits.

Companies such as BT (who scanned Twitter for customer complaints and fixed their problems PDQ, without disrupting their conventional support and service mechanisms – an important consideration) and Max Factor (who supplement their online offering with a fantastic Facebook page) are good examples. Ultimately, understanding what the business is trying to achieve with a social media presence should be the first step in developing a social media strategy.

Why social media?

Is your audience there? Do you want to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects? Tap into online word-of-mouth channels? Demonstrate that you’re down with the kids? You have a niche audience that’s otherwise difficult to reach? The best way to avoid recklessly jumping on the bandwagon is to examine why the wagon is the best way to get where you’re going before you hop on. Ask yourself: is spending money on social media going to provide better ROI than other forms of advertising you could be spending money on? And, does it detract negatively from other activities?

What kind of social media will help you best achieve your goals?

Do you need to utilise social networking sites, blogs, real-time updates (e.g., Twitter), social news sites, media-sharing sites, review/directory sites, virtual worlds, or display ads on social media sites? In some respects, talking about a social media presence is like talking about having an advertising presence: you must specify what you’re doing and where you’re going to place it. Examine the characteristics of the type of social media you want to have a presence on and how those characteristics fit what you’re trying to accomplish to help choose the ones that will work best for you.

Let go of your brand?

Self appointed social media gurus talk about letting go of your brand. I say, “phooey”. It’s not about letting go of your brand, it’s about understanding that while you may have control within your organisation, outside you have little to none. People are individuals, with their own opinions, and they say what they like. You should prepare your strategy appropriately, and your company needs to understand that too. Focus on the conversation and relationship, not on brand logos and corporate speak. Negative commentary doesn’t always need to addressed, but making the community aware that a) you’re listening, and b) going to do what you realistically can to make a difference, is being a responsible business. That may sound simple, but in reality so many organisations get this wrong.

What will you do to encourage participation?

There’s nothing more embarrassing than going to a corporate YouTube channel and seeing that the viral video you’ve spent tons of money making has just 127 views. Ditto for going to a company’s Twitter feed and seeing that it has all of 11 followers. What are you planning to do to drive people to your social media presence? And do you have the money to do it? A content strategy is highly recommended, what content will be delivered when, and by who.

Who will maintain your social media presence?

Participating in social media takes a lot of work. You must have something to say and you must have someone (or a team of people) to say it on a regular basis. And saying it right! It won’t happen unless it becomes part of someone’s job, or recruit specifically for that role.

Resources?

Do you have the resources to keep up with the plan, or will it be a short campaign? Similarly, unless you specify that what you’re doing has a limited duration (such as a Twitter feed based on a particular conference), people will expect you to keep it up. Have you budgeted the resources to continue your social media presence beyond the fiscal year? Personally I compare short term campaigns directly to microsites, and avoid them like the plague. They’re resource hungry and generally dilute your social media strategy.

Integration with other initiatives?

How does engaging users via social media integrate into your overall marketing/communications strategy? None of this stuff exists in a vacuum. It has to be part of a larger marketing/communications strategy. How does social media fit into what you’re trying to do in all your other channels, and how will you use those channels to support each other?

How do you measure success?

What constitutes failure? Are you measuring views, followers, comments, or subscribers? What’s the threshold for your success metrics that takes them into success territory? What happens if you don’t get there? Measuring your social media success can prove challenging, but it’s not impossible. The challenge for larger organisations can be conveying success back to the business in a understandable way. Measuring presence, and the associated statistics, works well. The 10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success post is a great read.

Measure, and adjust. Constantly.

Social media is a relatively new form of communication, and I’m willing to bet until you successfully engage with your clients and customers in this way, you don’t actually know a great deal about them. For that reason, you should listen to the conversation, and adjust it appropriately. If I was a salesman describing a sales pitch, I’m sure I’d be saying something similar – except here you’re not trying to sell, you’re trying to have a reasonable conversation.

What will you do less of if you’re spending resources on social media?

Chances are you have a limited budget. If you spend more money on social media and other non-traditional forms of marketing, you have to spend less on something else. How will your overall goals be impacted by taking money away from other forms of advertising/marketing and moving it into social media?

Focus on your objectives, not on the tools.

There are plenty of tools for Facebook, Twitter, etc – and while they certainly help, they’re not essential to a successful strategy. In my experience, it helps to see beyond the tools you use, and to instead focus on the interaction between yourself and the other person.

How does your audience use social media?

Using the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder, understand how your target audience (as defined by gender, age, and geography) uses social media. If your audience skews older, you may not want to engage in a lot of “make a video” contests, since that segment indexes low on the “Creator” scale.

How will you police your own team/organisation?

Here’s a fantastic review of 113+ organisations social media policies, definitely have a look through them. I think it’s a crying shame when an organisation won’t let their staff get involved, but understand the reasons why. Having a good, enforceable social media policy in place should help. The BBC is an excellent example of how to let people get involved, without muzzling them (read their policy in the review link).

Do not abuse your position

Do not think you can game the social media system. Joe Public may well be an idiot, but put Joe and his pals in a group and they become very dangerous. Famously, Habitat tried the game the system by appending trending hashtags to their Twitter posts, in the hope that their messages like “join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” would reach a larger audience. Well, it did, and Habitat felt the full force of an angry mob working against them. They quickly deleted those messages and made a public apology.

Realtime is NOT fast enough

Posting and responding in realtime isn’t enough these days, companies must anticipate their customers needs. Displaying this anticipation, particularly the planning, and involving customers in this process creates a more realistic relationship dynamic between customer and business.

Next steps

1. Produce an overall strategy document

2. Create a team and organisation interaction guidelines document

3. Develop a content plan

Further reading

35+ examples of corporate social media in action

A-Z list of companies using social media marketing

10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success

Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations

11 Mind-Blowing Reasons Your Business Needs Facebook

December! Christmas! Parties! Hangovers

For a few years now, I’ve been searching for the ultimate hangover cure. I’ve heard the weird, the wonderful, the utter bullshit, and I’ve tried it all. Everything from milk thistle, to sex in the morning – and what I don’t know about acetaldehyde, ain’t worth knowing. So, because I love a drink and I know you do too, I’ve condensed everything I know on the subject into 4 easy parts for you to follow -

Before you drink

Eat around an hour before drinking begins. Fatty foods on this occasion are encouraged, as the fat is digested slowly and helps prevent the irritating effects of alcohol. Full-fat milk is also recommended.

While you’re drinking

Avoid drinks with large amounts of congeners (red wine, brandy, whisky, cognac, port) as these generally cause worse hangovers because of the impurities. Fizzy drinks and mixers speed up the absorption of alcohol into the blood stream, so stick to still mixers.

If you can, take a break, eat something, drink something non-alcoholic.

When you get home

Water. Drink lots of it. It’s important you re-hydrate ASAP, and provide your body with enough water through the night. Ibuprofen (which doubles as a prostaglandin inhibitor, also assisting re-hydration) can help take the edge off and prevent the disruptive symptoms alcohol may have on your sleep pattern and therefore you may feel less tired in the morning. Eating some toast will help settle your stomach and raise your blood sugar level. A kebab (though not a donner kebab for reasons I won’t go into here), pizza or chips are all acceptable substitutes but not particularly healthy obviously. And lastly, a Berocca can work wonders – especially as it contains vitamin B6 which plays a key role in re-hydration.

In the morning

Water, again. Re-hydration is crucial. A Berocca is ideal, or fruit juice. Avoid coffee (or anything containing caffeine) and full-fat coke (or any fizzy drinks for that matter). Sports drinks, such as Lucozade Sport, are great. Ibuprofen is better than paracetamol. No aspirin because of the irritating effects it can have on your stomach.

Recent scientific studies have shown a bacon sandwich is one of the best foods you can consume for a hangover (read the article if you’re interested in the science). And right behind that is the “full English” which provides the fat, proteins, carbs and vitamins your body is craving (if baked beans are optional, make sure you have them) – remember to wash it down with a cup of tea, not coffee. Bananas are a super-food in their own right, and definitely help.

Sleep. Give your body time to sort out the mess you’ve made of it. If the room is spinning, or your head is pounding, you definitely need at least 2-3 hours more sleep.

Get up, shower, brush your teeth, go out and get some fresh air. Although it’s probably the last thing on your mind, do a bit of exercise (even if it’s just a walk). Psychologically you’ll feel better, and the increased circulation may help. Don’t over-do it though, you don’t want to dehydrate yourself again.

(Click to enlarge)

The low-down

Top left: that’s DateLine, a handy visual indicator of the month and any events that are coming up. Underneath is the Adium contact list showing who’s online to chat.

Bottom left: I wrote a script which pulls the most popular 15 torrents from ThePirateBay.org. GeekTool puts the info right on my desktop and updates it every 15 minutes.

Menu bar (left to right): Adium (multi-IM client), Skype, smcFanControl (to control the fans on my laptop when it gets a little hot), DropBox (for sharing files and remote backup), LittleSnitch (stops apps calling home), Growl (displays app notifications in a unified way) using the “iPhone popup/Noir” style, the usual gubbins…

Dock: the theme is Dark Glass (sorry, don’t remember where I found it). In order: Finder, Dash, Settings, Firefox, Skype, Adium, Transmission (torrent client), Interarchy (FTP client), iPhoto, Aperture, Spotify, iTunes, MixMeister Fusion (for creating mixes), Quicktime Player, VLC, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Color Picker Pro, VMWare Fusion, Microsoft Entourage, Microsoft Word, Things (to-do list), TeamViewer, Tweetie (twitter client), TextMate (text editor), Terminal, Activity Monitor.

On the right of the separator I like to have Applications (Grid view), Downloads (Fan view, order by Date Created) and Home (Grid view).

Wallpaper: download it here.

1. Download the latest jQuery framework from jQuery.com. It comes in two flavors – development, and production which is a compact version to keep your pageload time down. Unless you’re intending to tinker with jQuery internals (unlikely), you can go ahead and download the production version.
2. Download and print out the latest visual jQuery cheat sheet (or the original jQuery cheat sheet) to help you along your way.
3. Install the latest version of Firefox (no, Internet Explorer 7/8 does NOT cut it for front-end development) and then install the Firebug add-on and FireQuery add-on.
4. If you’re using Visual Studio, download and add the VSDOC to make IntelliSense work. Oh, and if you’re an ASP.NET developer, you’ll probably find this article useful.
5. Add a jQuery reference to your web pages. Assuming you’ve added the jquery-1.3.2.js file to your /scripts folder, you should have something like this in your page <head />…

   <script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>

6. At this point you’re all set to go experimenting. To get a leg-up, you should probably visit jQueryList.com where there’s a massive list of existing jQuery add-ons! And here’s a fantastic list of lightbox/modal window type add-ons. And finally, don’t miss the jQueryUI – arguably one of the coolest add-ons. The default namespace is $
7. Use Twitter? Follow @jquery for the latest news, and @pupunzi who tweets about cool jQuery-related stuff.

Luckily, I found an AppleScript that did much of the hard work for me, I just customized it slightly. This is my first foray into the world of AppleScript – so coders go easy on me! There’s a couple of interesting features -

1. if iTunes or QuickTime Player are playing, the script will pause them temporarily while it announces the email
2. if the volume is turned down low, it’ll temporarily set it to 50% to announce the email
3. if the screensaver is active, and the volume is low, it’ll temporarily set the volume to 60% (assumes you’re not far from your computer)
4. if the email arrives during office hours (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm), it won’t announce (because I use my Mac at work)
5. if Entourage is the foremost window when the email arrives, it won’t announce

Being a script, you can change the settings as you please, and modifying it to use Apple Mail instead of Microsoft Entourage should be a doddle.

Speak new email.zip (16KB)

Once downloaded, all you need to do is create a rule to run the script when a new email arrives in Entourage…

If you’ve not seen BgInfo before, here’s the description from the Sysinternals site -

How many times have you walked up to a system in your office and needed to click through several diagnostic windows to remind yourself of important aspects of its configuration, such as its name, IP address, or operating system version If you manage multiple computers you probably need BGInfo. It automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop’s background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.

I’ve cut back the config to show just the info I need, and also added a script to output the installed .NET frameworks. It’s designed with our Windows 2003 and 2008 web servers in mind. Here’s my config…

bginfo.zip (384KB)

Just extract the zip to C:\Program Files\BgInfo. Update.bat can be added to the All Users start-up group so every time a user logs in, BgInfo will update the desktop.

What is Twitter? Twitter’s home page says it best:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Tweeting requires very little time. For starters, you can only enter 140 characters at a time. This means that you must post very short, direct-to-the-point messages. In practice, this means that, as a tweeter, you update several times a day, but it takes almost no time at all. (You don’t have to visit Twitter.com to post your tweets, there’s a variety of ways to post via your iPhone, Blackberry or straight from your desktop – see below).

So what’s the advantage?

1. It allows family, friends, and others to follow your activity throughout the day and keep up with your life. If you’re thinking you really don’t care about what other people are doing, or that perhaps your life isn’t interesting enough to publish, that’s fair enough – but see points 2 and 3 below.
2. It allows you to meet new friends, who tend to be on the cutting edge of technology. I am following several people that I would have never met otherwise. These are relationships—or potential relationships—that may prove very fruitful for the future.
3. Twitter also has many organisations, business, clubs, etc – following these can help alert you of things going on you may be interested in. For example, I follow a rugby tweeter who often posts about last minute tickets.
4. It allows me to experience first-hand a new technology that millions of people are using. By using the technology, and understanding it, it helps with overall computer literacy and Internet/social media trends.
5. It allows me to think consciously about my life. What am I doing now? What kind of story is my life telling? Is this really what I want to be doing? Is it worth telling people about?

Seven steps to getting started

1. Set up your account
   Go to Twitter.com and click on the Get Started—Join! button. Enter your username, password, and email address. Click on the I accept. Create my account button.Next, Twitter will give you a chance to see if some of your friends are on Twitter by checking your online address book. However, your contacts will have to be in one of the supported services: GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN.
2. Tweak your settings
   Make sure you are on your Twitter home page: http://Twitter.com/home. Click on the Settings link. Now enter your full name in the “Name” field. Make sure the “Time Zone” field is set correctly. Enter your location. Do not check “Protect my updates” unless you only want those whom you approve to be able to get your updates. In my experience, if you check this, your Twitter experience will be quite limited.
   Now upload your picture. A picture of yourself makes quite a difference and goes a long way to personalizing your account. It also makes you easily identifiable in a feed of other tweets.Assuming you are still on Twitter’s home page, click on the Settings link. Now click on the Picture tab, select your file, and then click the Save button.
3. Follow some family or friends
   If you haven’t done so already, add your family and friends by clicking in the “Search” field at the top of your home page. You can type in a username or first and last name. When you do, you will get a list of the Twitterers who match your search criteria. You can also do a more advance search (e.g., searching by location) on the Twitter search page or see who is tweeting nearby using Tweetmondo.You can begin “following” them by simply clicking on the Follow button. You will be able to see everyone you follow on your Twitter home page.
4. Learn the basic commands
   Important note: if you use a Twitter client (there’s a few recommended at the end of this post), it makes learning these commands much simpler!Think of Twitter as a room full of people, all sitting in a circle. It’s a conversation. When you update your status, you are speaking to the whole group. Everyone can hear what you have to say.Replies. If you want to direct your comments to one specific person in the circle, but loud enough that everyone else can hear, you use the “Reply” function. You address the person by using their Twitter user name preceded by the “@” symbol. For example:

   @jamesward I thought that website you posted was great!

   Everyone who is following me will see the message, but I am specifically directing it to James Ward.

   You can also use the Reply function to refer to someone by name. For example:

   Meeting @NTCeline and @jamesward for a pint in the Fenton. Anyone else coming?

   The thing about replies is that they are clickable links. If someone who is following me, clicks on one of the names, they will automatically go to that person’s Twitter page. This will give them the opportunity to follow that person, too.

   Direct Messages
   Continuing with the metaphor of a conversation with a room full of people, you can also use the “direct message” function. This is like whispering in one person’s ear. They can hear you, but no one else can. You are directing the message to them and only them. For example:

   d jamesward shall we sneak off for a pint now?

   Hashtags (#example)
   Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr or YouTube, and were developed as a means to create ”groupings” on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. They’re not really necessary while you’re getting it started, and only really mentioned here for completeness. If you’d like to know more about Hashtags, there’s plenty of info here.

   You can find answers to almost every other Twitter question on the FAQ page.

5. Start twittering
   Now you are all setup. It’s time to start Twittering. You can do this from your Twitter home page or from your mobile phone. The main thing you need to know is that the message can be no longer than 140 characters long. If you use the Web page, the entry field will automatically count your characters. After a while, you’ll instinctively know how long this is.How often should you Twitter? There’s a balance – I’d say no more than 7 times a day, and certainly not more than 2 times in an hour. Depending on your popularity and what you’ve got to say, this may be more or less of course.

   No one probably wants to hear the blow-by-blow of your life. However, some color commentary is good. However, this is definitely art not science, so there are no hard, fast rules. But you should consider every Twitter update as a branding impression. You are developing a reputation with your online friends, so make sure you are adding something to the conversation.

   This is really no different than a face-to-face conversation. You want to say something that is interesting, helpful, or just plain entertaining. I don’t think you should over-think it, but I don’t think you should just text the first thing that pops in your mind.

   You should consider reading this How to really use Twitter (and not annoy your followers) guide.

6. Be careful
   You need to think about the fact that crazy people and criminals have Twitter accounts, too. You especially need to be cautious about sharing too much private information that could compromise your safety or that of your loved ones. You may only want to Twitter after you have gone somewhere, not before.
7. Don’t just use Twitter.com
   Being able to send and receive tweets without the clunky Twitter.com website is essential – especially if you’re on-the-move. Here’s some of my favorite Twitter clients -Tweetie (ad-sponsored) is my favorite Twitter client for Mac OS X.

   Twitter for Facebook application. This application automatically syncs all your Twitter updates with Facebook. Once you set this up, you won’t ever have to make another Facebook update. (If you have trouble, you can find a brief tutorial here.)

   Twhirl (free). My favorite Twitter client for Windows.

   TweetDeck (free). Another great Windows client. Often described as “Twitter on steroids” so perhaps overkill for your average new user, but definitely one for power users. Available for both Windows and Mac.

   TwitterFon (free). Arguably the best iPhone (and iPod Touch) Twitter client (and I’ve tried quite a few!)

Now you’re all set, you can find me at @Davenicoll

Need professional help or have a team who need to get up to speed with social media? James Ward is your man! He’s a professional digital coach, very friendly, and what he doesn’t know about social media isn’t worth knowing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep my music on a server – not my MacBook Pro. Occasionally iTunes has a hissy fit and declares some of my music missing. But it’s not – it’s just I’m not connected to my home network. One day Apple will fix this issue (which has been around for years), but until that happens there’s an easy way to cure this… just hold down Ctrl (aka “Option”) while starting iTunes (tested on a Mac).

If you’ve landed here looking for a solution to remove real missing tracks, you can’t go wrong with Doug’s “Super Remove Dead Tracks” script.

Frequently, the things I download most from The Pirate Bay appear on the Total Top 100 page. There’s no RSS feed, but with a handy shell script and GeekTool for the Mac, I can slap the latest updates straight onto my desktop – where I can keep an eye on it…

Here’s how…

First up, download and install GeekTool.

Next, download and unzip this script to your /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Scripts folder.

TPB Top Items.sh.zip (1KB)

Open GeekTool in the System Preferences and create a Shell entry. The command should look like…

sh "/Users/YOURNAME/Library/Scripts/TPB Top Items.sh" -12

If you want to show more items from the list, just change the “-12″ part to the number of items you want. And if you want to scrape a different page on TPB site, open up the script and change the URL. For example, to grab a list of the latest Mac applications submitted, you would use this URL: https://thepiratebay.org/browse/302/0/3

IMPORTANT! You should change the GeekTool refresh value to over 600 (I’d recommend 1200 – 20 minutes), otherwise TPB may ban you for constantly hitting the website, and you’ll probably get me into hot water too.

Here’s a quick tip on how to remove the ads from Facebook. If you’ve not installed Adblock yet, you’re in for a treat. It’s a fantastic little plugin for Firefox (get it here) or Safari (get it here) which removes ads from websites (not just Facebook).

Once you’ve installed it and restarted your browser, open Adblock’s preferences and look at the filters. If you’ve just installed Adblock, you may want to choose a filter subscription (free) – I use the EasyList (USA) filter.

Add a new filter, and enter:

facebook.com#div(class*=sponsor)

Once applied, the Facebook ads should be gone and you can let out an evil cackle!

I store all my music on an external hard disk which is connected to Windows Server 2003 in a cupboard hidden away. This means my music doesn’t clutter up the hard disk on my MBP and it can be shared to other devices like my Xbox, without having my laptop on. Accessing the server from Windows XP or Vista was fairly straightforward – I’d just map a drive and iTunes was happy. Unfortunately, persistent mapped drives on Mac OS X 10.5.6 (or earlier) isn’t really a feature, so I’d just plug the external hard disk into my Mac via USB.

I needed a way to get my Windows iTunes database onto my Mac, and a way of mounting a persistent network share for iTunes, and a convenient way to add new music to the networked folder and iTunes. (Oh, and I kinda like things being in the right place – you know, documents in the Documents folder, music in the Music folder – so we’ll be creating a symbolic link to make our music appear as though it’s in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Clever, eh?) So, without further ado, here’s what we’ll be doing -

1. Setting up a shared folder for your music
2. Create a symbolic link (& mounted drive) to the network share
3. Creating a crontab entry to keep the network share mounted (alive)
4. Modifying the location of your music files in the iTunes database

1. Setting up a shared folder for your music

If you’ve got a NAS you should go into its admin area and create a file share, call it Music or something useful. Depending on what NAS you have, you’ll be able to specify a username and password for the shared folder, or for the entire NAS. Either way, note the username and password to access the share – we’ll need them later.

If you’re using an hard disk (internal or external) on a server, go into Computer Manager | Local Users and Groups – and create a new user. For security reasons, this user will only have access to your music. I created the user “music”, but you can use whatever. Note down the username and password. Still in the Computer Management window, go to Shared Folders | Shares in the tree, then Action menu New Share. Create a new shared folder for your music folder, and add the user you just created to the permissions – give them Full Access (read, write, modify).

It’s probably a good idea to test accessing the share from your Mac. In Finder, go to the Go menu, and click Connect To Server. In the server address box, type smb://192.168.0.2/Music (change the IP address to your NAS or server, and the folder from Music to whatever share name you used). Click Connect, and you should be prompted for a username and password – use the details of the user you just created.

2. Create a symbolic link (& mounted drive) to the network share

Quit iTunes if it’s running.

Here’s the command we’ll be using to create the symbolic link – this will place a drive icon on the desktop for the mounted network share, and when you go to your ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder, it’ll actually be the networked folder.

/sbin/mount -o nodev,nosuid -t smbfs '//username:password@192.168.0.2/Music' '/Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music'

And a explanation -

• /sbin/mount is the utility which mounts drives and shares
• -o nodev,nosuid parameters are necessary to create a symbolic link (symlink)
• -t smbfs specifies we’re connecting to a Samba (SMB) network share
• username is the name of the user you created on your NAS or server
• password is the password you specified for that user
• 192.168.0.2 is the IP address of your NAS or server
• /Music is the shared folder name
• /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music is the folder we’re going to make as a symbolic link. You should change YourName to your Mac username

We need this command to work properly before we move on, so it would be a good idea to open a Terminal window and try it out. If you already have a /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder, you should move the contents out of it for now and delete the folder. Alternatively, if you want to use a different folder, go ahead – just make sure it’s empty before you execute the command.

At this stage, two errors are quite common -

mount: realpath /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: No such file or directory
and
mount_smbfs: mount error: /Users/Yourname/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: No such file or directory

The first error is because the /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder doesn’t exist on your Mac (it should, but it must be empty). The second error is usually because the remote share isn’t accessible (is your NAS online, is the share available?).

Ok, so if you’ve got a Music disk mounted on the desktop, proceed to the next step!

It’s a bit wasteful to blindly execute this command every 10 minutes, so we’ll put it in a script with a couple of checks. So, open your text editor and copy and paste this code snippet (you’ll need to change the parts in bold):

if [ -d '/Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ChangeThis' ]; then
    exit
else
    /sbin/ping -c 1 -t 5 192.168.0.2 &>/dev/null
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]
    then
        /sbin/mount -o nodev,nosuid -t smbfs '//username:password@192.168.0.2/Music' '/Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music'
    fi
fi

What does this do? Well, firstly it checks to see if the drive is already mounted by looking for the folder /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ChangeThis – and if so, exits. Note: ChangeThis needs to be a folder on your mounted drive.  If you change the script to check for the existance of /Users/YourName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, the system will always find it even when disconnected.

Next it’ll ping the IP address of your server and if it gets a response, it’ll try to mount the share. If it doesn’t get a reply – probably because you’re on a different network or not connected – it’ll exit. This prevents needlessly sending login attempts across your network.

Ok, save your script in ~/Library/Scripts – call it MountMusic.command or something you can remember.

3. Creating a crontab entry to keep the network share mounted

In a nutshell, a crontab is a set of commands which can be run at set intervals – perfect for refreshing our mounted network share, and especially handy for mounting the drive shortly after you’ve logged in or woken your Mac from sleep. Editing the crontab isn’t difficult but it can be fiddly. I use a great little utility called CronniX which I’ll be using for this tutorial.

Now the thing is with cron is that when it does something, it likes to send you an email about it. And left unchecked, it can create a whopping great big mail file. And we don’t want that, do we! In CronniX go the Edit menu, and click Env. Variables. – add a new environment variable “MAILTO” (sans quotes). For the MAILTO value, type double quotes (“”).

I run the mount command (above) every 10 minutes. If the network share has already been mounted, that’s fine, otherwise it’ll mount it again. If there’s no network share to mount – maybe you’re at work or school – it’ll fail silently. Using CronniX, create the following entries -

Min  Hour  Mday  Month  Wday  Command
0    *     *     *      *     ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command
10   *     *     *      * ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command
20   *     *     *      * ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command
30   *     *     *      * ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command
40   *     *     *      * ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command
50   *     *     *      * ~/Library/Scripts/MountMusic.command

So you’ve created 6 entries, set to run at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 minutes past the hour, and it’ll be running your mount command. Once you’ve done that, click Save in the main CronniX window.

Chances are you still have the Music disk mounted on your desktop from before – right click on it, and Eject it (or drag it onto the recycle bin). If you wait until your clock shows 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 minutes (i.e. 10:40), a few seconds later the Music disk should reappear on your desktop – if it does, move on…

4. Modifying the location of your music files in the iTunes database

I have a fairly substantial music collection, all nicely tagged and with genres, ratings and play counts – which I don’t want to lose. If you don’t care about this extra info, you can pretty much skip most of this step.

I’ve searched high and low for an AppleScript or app to go through my iTunes database and mass change the location of my music files, but let me tell you – there is NOTHING that does it without serious effort. There are a few alternative techniques, but they don’t preserve your folder structure or meta data. So, we’ll be using the “corrupt iTunes database” method…

Go to your iTunes folder (~/Music/iTunes/) and in there you should find two files – iTunes Library (or iTunes Library.itl from the PC) and iTunes Music Library.xml. Rename the iTunes Library file to something else and create a file with the same name in TextEdit. Next, open iTunes Music Library.xml in TextEdit (or whatever text editor your prefer) and not too far down,  you’ll see something like this -

file://localhost/Volumes/MyDisk/Music/Albums/Band/Track.mp3

You need to search and replace the /Volumes/MyDisk part so you end up with something like -

file://localhost/Users/YourName/Music/Albums/Band/Track.mp3

Save the file and start iTunes. You should see iTunes recreating your library from the XML file – this may take some time. Fingers crossed, iTunes will eventually open and your music library should be intact!

Done

Update: iTunes 10

iTunes 10 has a slightly different folder structure, however this post still works fine. In fact, I advise you to keep the “iTunes Music” folder separate from the new folders (in it’s original location), so that if you decide to use the “Automatically Add to iTunes” folder, iTunes still works without any modifications.

Reboot holding down the SHIFT key to boot in Safe Mode. It may take a while to boot (this is normal), log in as yourself, and then restart your Mac. Once you’ve restarted and logged back in, you should hopefully find your wifi connection working properly again. I guess the safe mode boot clears out some old caches or kick starts something back to life. Who knows, but it worked!

Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)
Host Name: smtp.o2.co.uk
User Name: youro2username@o2.co.uk
Password: youro2password

Outgoing Settings
Use SSL: Off
Authentication: Password
Server Port: 25

A solution

If like me you don’t want to use the o2 mail server (probably because you have your own setup or want to use your work email) you may be able to use authenticated SMTP. By providing a username and password, and using port 587 (the authenticated SMTP port) instead of port 25, you should be able to connect. You can change this setting in Outlook/Entourage where your account details live, or on your iPhone in the settings.

Alternative solutions

If your email provider doesn’t allow authenticated SMTP access on port 587, you can try…

1. ask if they allow authenticated SMTP access on an alternate port.
2. if you can’t get access to an alternate port, you could use a service like http://www.smtp2go.com
3. and last but not least, http://www.mail2web.com provide free access to your email through your browser.

There’s some more information here if you need it.

• MP3 Tag & Rename … Media Rage
• uTorrent … Transmission
• eMule … aMule
• SoulSeek … SolarSeek
• Picasa / ACDSee … Apple Aperture 2 (Adobe Lightroom may look nicer, but I didn’t think it was as good as Aperture)
• DVDShrink … Handbrake
• any IM client … Adium
• SmartFTP/CuteFTP …  Cyberduck (I did used to rate Transmit but lately it’s not been as reliable)
• WinZip/WinRAR … Stuffit Deluxe / SimplyRAR (just RAR)
• stop apps calling home … Little Snitch
  
• NetStumbler … KisMAC
• Nero Burning ROM … Toast

Useful Mac applications

• AppZapper (uninstaller, helps with app data dropped around the place)
• VLC (plays most video files)
• Flip4Mac (play WMV files)
• Evernote (for note-taking and sharing)
• Growl (app extension to manage desktop alerts)
• iAlertU (stop your Mac being stolen)
• Adobe Master Collection (most of the Adobe products)
• Microsoft Office 2008 suite (Word, Excel, but on the Mac)
• iWork suite (word processor, spreadsheet and database – if you’re not bothered about Microsoft Office)
• iLife suite (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand)
• Serial Box / Serial Seeker (my software is paid for because I use it for work, but I’m sure a few friends will appreciate this)
• TextMate / Smultron (better text file editor)
• BBC iPlayer Grabber (download from the BBC iPlayer)

For developers/sysadmin

• VMware Fusion (see below)
• Paragon NTFS driver (read & write NTFS formatted disks)
• NTFS-3G (a free alternative to the Paragon NTFS driver)
• TeamViewer for Mac (remote control for PC desktops/servers and Macs)
• RealVNC Viewer for Mac (download Enterprise edition, and just use the viewer)
• Remote Desktop Connection for Mac (connects to Windows Remote Desktops)
• HamachiX (this is woefully bad, and apparently an official OS X version has been in the works for some time – not good)

Handy links

• VersionTracker (software for your Mac)
• Chris Pirillo’s top 100 Mac apps
• freemacware.com (lots of free software)
• coolosxapps.net (more free software)
• Mac Buyers Guide (keeps track of when to buy Mac kit)
• Mandolux (high-res, and dual-monitor, wallpapers)
• InterfaceLift (icons)
• PixelGirl (icons)
• Another list of cheap/free software for the Mac
• Keyboard shortcuts (essential reading – everything from taking screenshots, to alternative Home and End keys)

Entourage 2008

Rather than using Mail as my mail client, I’m using Microsoft Entourage (the equivalent of Outlook) because I need it for work. Getting data between Entourage and Outlook is not easy, unless you pay up for a tool to do it. However, if you install Thunderbird on your PC, you can export your Address Book and Email into a format you can import into Entourage.

You can sync your Entourage Address Book with the Mac Address Book by going to Preferences – Sync Services and ticking the appropriate box.

VMware Fusion

As much as I hate to admit it, we still need Windows sometimes – especially if you’re a Visual Studio developer like I am. Fortunately VMwave Fusion allows you to run a virtual machine of most operating systems – including Windows XP SP2 and Vista. And if you create a bootcamp partition for a Windows dual-boot, VMware Fusion will even allow you to run that in Mac OS X seemlessly!

I’m happy to report there’s no funny business with hosting IIS under a VM, and infact everything runs as fast – or faster! – than my old dual core Sony laptop. To make life a bit easier, I changed the Windows VM keyboard from UK to US to make the @ and ” keys the right way around (Control Panel – Regional and Language Options – Languages – Text services and input languages).

If you’re considering Parallels, I wouldn’t bother. Most users agree VMware Fusion is a more stable product and generally performs better. Afterall, it comes from a long line of VMware products.

Hosts file

Quite often I’d add a host to the Windows host file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) when I was developing (it meant I didn’t have to wait for DNS updates to take hold). There’s a way to do it on a Mac too.

The missing # (hash) key

Update: see my post above to fix this in a Windows virtual machine, and make others keys work properly.

For some unknown reason, Apple didn’t put the hash symbol on the keyboard on European Mac Book Pro’s – but it’s there! Just press Alt + 3 and voila.

No right-click?

I don’t care what the Mac guys say (oh arse, that’s me now), I much prefer having a right-click on my mouse. If you do too, there’s the Mighty Mouse from Apple, or if you’ve got an old Microsoft mouse you can use that without any extra software (just plug it in) or install Intellipoint for Mac if you want access to the extra buttons.

For those of you who don’t know what TechCrunch is, it’s an editorial website that reports on new technology (primarily Internet startups, and computer-related geekery) over in the U.S. In the past, it’s got a lot of attention and has built a good name for itself by reporting honestly and being fairly successful with their predictions.

So, TechCrunch50 has just been and gone. 52 startups got up on stage and pitched their ideas for $50k, and there were some great ideas – but two things struck me. Firstly, the amount of crap being developed and being pitched as innovative (as a senior developer, I’ve been around the block a few times, and this stuff is NOT innovative), and secondly the need for these startups – their products have such small niches or fill a void only temporarily until a bigger player comes along and wipes them off the face of the net. Ok, ok, so that may be a bit harsh but I’m being realistic!

As for Yammer winning the $50k, I’m stunned. Nothing new, nothing revolutionary (lots “borrowed” from twitter and facebook) and not even that difficult to knock up from a tech perspective.

What do you think? Watch the presentations here: http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/

In simple terms, the idea behind encoding videos is you divide up the picture into blocks, and estimate the motion between the blocks. This allows you to store the difference between frames, and not the whole frame, which reduces the file size. MPEG4 h.264 is particularly wonderful at doing this, but when packets of information get delayed or lost while traveling through the Internet, you get small glitches in the picture. SVC to the rescue! Those clever boffins at Fraunhofer have devised a way to enhance the existing codec to accommodate these packet drops. And the best news is that it seems we won’t need to change the players to make it work.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we implement SVC in the Kensei encoder…

Here at Kensei, we’ve been streaming MPEG4 h.264 content since February this year and we’re very excited about the way things are going. Not only does h264 play exceptionally well in Adobe Flash (so you can view it on the web), it’s supported on an ever-growing range of products. With a day or two of development, we’ve added support for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod video, N-series Nokia handsets, Xbox 360, PSP (and probably a bunch of other kit we’ve not seen yet) to several of our sites. Oh, and before you ask, we’re using our own encoding engine, not something we bought.

And with IPTV (TV over an Internet connection) looming large, and h264 at the forefront of that technology, we’re happy to be riding the wave!

Getting started…

• The missing iPhone ringtone
• The progressive volume version of the missing iPhone ringtone
• Some really nice iPhone wallpapers
• A video on “Jailbreaking” – what it is, why you should care, and how to do it
• PwnageTool and WinPwn to Jailbreak your iPhone, or QuickPwn for iPhone firmware 2.0.1
• iPhone Dev Team portal

There’s plenty of apps in the app store these days, here’s my favorite freebies…

• Last.fm iPhone client (free) – stream music and browse Last.fm from your iPhone
• Eventful (free) – uses the iPhone GPS to show you events, gigs, etc going on in your vicinity
• Midomi (free) – capture the radio, tv or just sing a tune and Midomi will tell you what the song is!
• Evernote for iPhone (free) – not heard about Evernote yet? Go take a look!
• SearchQuest GPS (free) – share your GPS location so friends can find you
• Palringo (free) – an instant messenger client for the iPhone. Supports iChat, AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, Jabber and more.
• LocalPicks by TripAdvisor (free) – TripAdvisor is a great site for hotels, restaurants, etc – and this shows you what’s good nearby based on your GPS location
• TubeStatus (free) – London Underground service info
• Mixology 101 (free) – 10,000 drinks at your fingertips (webapp)

Lastly, some folks don’t know you can rearrange the icons, or delete them (yeah, I know!). Just hold your finger down over an icon, and wait for them to start “wiggling”. You can then drag them about, or click the X to remove an app. Clicking the home button finishes.

I was speaking to Magnus last night and he was asking if I had a W3C cheat sheet. While I do have a couple of cheat sheets for things like Script.aculo.us and Regular Expressions, I thought a W3C cheat would be a good addition, so I set out along the path of Google. It wasn’t long before I’d stumbled across several other useful cheat sheets – no substitute for knowing your stuff, of course – but handy as a quick reminder…

• Regular expressions cheat sheet
• CSS cheat sheet
• Javascript cheat sheet
• Script.aculo.us cheat sheet
• Prototype cheat sheet
• Microformats cheat sheet
• SEO cheat sheet
• A very useful accessibility checklist
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) cheatsheet

Don’t see a cheatsheet you’re looking for? Try here, there are lots more…

Missed it? You can download the torrent from The Pirate Bay…