MAUS Administrator

Malware on the Mac

Ars Technica is a well respected site that happens to have published a great article on Mac Malware. Discussed at length at the recent User Group meeting, I thought it appropriate to publish a link to this article for those that are interested and want to follow through. A quick synopses of their conclusion – but I highly recommend the full article – and the link to the TUAW article as well.

So what do you do if you find yourself with a variation of MAC Defender on your machine? TUAW recently posted a complete guide to protecting yourself, but the general gist is this: uncheck “open safe files after downloading” in your Safari preferences so that apps that are downloaded automatically through something like a crafty Google Image search don’t just pop right up and start running.

If something that looks suspicious does pop up and you haven’t installed it yet, delete the app immediately. If you have installed it, you may need to start killing some processes in order to get it out of your life, but as long as you don’t enter any credit card info, you’re not likely to get scammed any further by MAC Defender. For now, that is.

In addition, a quick reminder of the link to Sophos, who provide Malware software. This is the software that Rick discussed at the meeting.

I personally have no experience of it, but the company is well reported on the bulletin boards, and discussed alongside of solutions like Norton (part of Symantec), McAfee and Kaspersky

Full Article :: Malware on the Mac: is there cause for concern? Ars investigates

Passed on – with thanks to :: Ars Technica

By MAUS Administrator, ago

The New iMac is Here

… and what a beauty it is, you can read all about it here.

From the Apple site :

New quad-core Intel Core i5 processors are standard on the new iMac. Choose a 21.5-inch iMac with a 2.5GHz or 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5. Or expand your view with a 27-inch iMac featuring a 2.7GHz or 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5.

Full brightness with no waiting. That’s the advantage of the LED-backlit iMac display. Unlike displays that take time to warm up before they reach maximum brightness, an LED-backlit display is instantly on and uniformly bright. LED backlighting also lets you finely tune the iMac display to suit the ambient light in even the dimmest room.

The 21.5-inch iMac features 1920-by-1080 resolution. The 27-inch iMac boasts even greater resolution of 2560-by-1440.

Premium display technology called in-plane switching (IPS). IPS gives you a bright picture with excellent color — even if you’re viewing the display from the side.

With advanced AMD Radeon HD graphics processors across the line, iMac performs even better than before — up to three times better, in fact.1 So you see more frames per second in 3D games, and you can edit HD home videos with more speed and responsiveness.

By MAUS Administrator, ago

All Gadgets Have Superpowers

THis is NOT all about iPhones/Pads, Macs or even Apple.

The article was originally shared by Jared Spurbeck, published on Apr 19, 2011, by Becky Worley on Yahoo News and was in turn picked up by our very own Deborah Pozin. Enjoy.

Our gadgets these days have superpowers. But they also have secret powers: Things you didn’t know they could do.

Becky Worley shows us some hidden features, plus surprising tricks that you can use to get the most out of the gadgets you already own.

iPhone – An App that measures your heart rate with the iPhone’s camera and battery

The free Heart Fitness app from Senscare measures your heart rate, by using your iPhone’s camera and a light source to watch blood pulse through your finger. Just follow the directions, and it’s pretty accurate! It shows your beats per minute, plus the pulsing heart rate graph we all know and love from medical dramas. It even charts your resting heart rate over time, as a measure of overall fitness. Heart Fitness works best with the iPhone 4, since its camera flash lights your finger up nicely, but it can work with the iPod Touch or iPhone 3GS if you hold it up to a bright light. Got an Android device? Try Instant Heart Rate on the Android Market, instead! Both apps are free to download.

(more…)

By MAUS Administrator, ago

AirPrint Activator from Netputing

This is one of those rare cross over applications between iOS and your Apple. You are all iOS enabled – apps installed and ready – but you either need to buy one of those special ‘air printers’ to turn your iOS world into hard copy – or ‘fu-gged about it’.

Until now.

AirPrint Activator is a small application that will enable a Mac OSX 10.6.5 + iTunes 10.1 hidden feature to allow your shared printer to be visible on your iOS 4.2.1 devices.  AirPrint allow you to print from new generation of Apple iPhones, iPad and iPod Touch to a printer shared over your personal WiFi network.

You only need to run AirPrint Activator once.  Once AirPrint has been turned on it will remain on even after a reboot.

AirPrint Activator from Netputing is the application, check it out.

By MAUS Administrator, ago

Meeting Summary : April

The whole meeting was run through an iPad – topic was ‘all things mobile’

  • reviewed some of the more popular apps on the iPad
  • discussed back up and security
  • looked at cloud based file systems like dropbox and iDisk
  • went through MobileMe

    • Those of you out there that attended – please contact me at jphilpin@me.com if I missed any significant topics – and I will edit this post.

    We also had a 5 minute overview of The Maui Camera Club from John Hugg – see his web site here. Personally, I see a great deal of overlap and commonality between our two organizations – hope we get some cross pollination between us – particularly those mac using photographers out there.

    A couple of posts to follow that will pull up other articles on other sites – but well worth a read.

    Robert Cringely is an excellent write on all things technology (and other things). At the meeting, we discussed the security of the phone, how you protect the data etc. We didn’t discuss physical protection. Robert – in this piece does.

    Nothing to do about it – but the fact is the iPhone is now so valuable in other countries – they are being ripped, cleansed of all your data immediately and shipped off to the new buyer. Kind of makes our discussions moot!

    Another great blogger on both Apple and Tech is John Gruber. Some of you might have heard about his blog ‘Daring Fireball‘.

    One topic discussed on the night was a new app available in the App Store called Square. Essentially for $10 – you get an adapter that plugs into your iPhone and you are good to go with a built in Credit Card Reader. Needless to say – the ‘big boys’ have come out with guns a blazing about how Square just isn’t secure and how much better Verifone is.

    Read the Gruber comments here – but to get to the nub, Gruber comments that (some of the claims made by Verifone are “pure, unadulterated FUD.” – Gruber is good at calling it.

    By MAUS Administrator, ago

    FInal Cut Pro

    Videographers get ready – Final Cut Pro – Version X was just announced at the NAB show in Vegas. Available for $299 in June. We will work on doing one of our meetings to totally drill into the app as soon as we can.

    This review caught my eye – so I wanted to share.

    The new Final Cut Pro is a bold move – a totally redesigned interface, 64-bit memory addressing, multi-processor support, tight integration of metadata in the project file with metadata stored in the clip not just in the project, heavy use of automation to simplify tedious tasks, and a rethinking of the entire concept of what it means to edit.

    I can’t think of any other company that could so totally redefine what a non-linear video editor is than Apple. Since the release of Final Cut Pro 1, each version of FCP has contained incremental improvements. This is a complete restatement at every possible level.

    As Phil Schiller, senior VP for world-wide marketing for Apple told me after the presentation, “This is a total rethinking of how we tell stories visually.”

    The link to Apple’s information can be found here Full Article :: The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping Passed on – with thanks to :: Larry’s Blog

    By MAUS Administrator, ago

    JBL introduces OnBeat speaker dock for iPad, iPhone and iPod

    The musicians amongst you are already aware of the JBL brand name.

    Now – according to this announcement – they are bringing out an iPad/Phone/Pod docking station with built in speakers – so that you can rock on down to the highest audio quality – for just $150!

    OnBeat is JBL’s first foray into the iPad dock market. They’ve obviously put some thought into the design, building a swoopy design big enough to comfortably hold an iPad in portrait or landscape orientation and packing a pair of Phoenix full-range transducer speakers that can pump out your favorite tunes with great clarity and volume. The OnBeat produces 7.5 watts of computer-optimized, DSP-equalized audio per channel.

    Full Article :: JBL introduces OnBeat speaker dock for iPad, iPhone, iPod

    Passed on – with thanks to :: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

    By MAUS Administrator, ago