Is It Worth It?

I’m generally not in a hurry to rush out and buy the latest and greatest OS. It’s always worth reading the reviews, and following reports of bugs. In this case, it’s been a while since Snow Leopard came out, and there’s already been a .1 maintenance release that seems to have dealt with most of its known issues.

Snow Leopard is, by all accounts, not that heavy on new features, but it’s also relatively inexpensive. Most of its advantages are under the hood, with 64-bit processing and better memory management. But one feature caught my eye: the ability to synchronize the Address Book (including pictures) with Gmail or Google Apps — a feature that’s been around for a while, but which, for some reason, was previously only available to iPhone users.

Can Your Hardware Handle It?

This is an important consideration. Windows, in particular, is notorious for increasing its memory and disk space requirements with every release. And with computer prices falling all the time, it’s often tempting to just buy a new computer with the new OS pre-installed. But I decided that my Mac could work with the upgrade.

Is Your Software Compatible?

Planning for an upgrade made me realize just how much outdated and unnecessary software I had accumulated on my hard drive. Luckily, a couple of sites have compiled lists of what works, and what doesn’t, under Snow Leopard. I looked at several of them; I found this one particularly useful. It even has an application called SnowChecker that can be used to find what programs you have, and display information about their compatibility.

When you discover programs that are listed as incompatible, you can either find an upgrade (sometimes a beta version), switch to an alternative app that is compatible, or decide that you don’t need the functionality it provides.

Do You Have Backups of Everything, In Case Something Goes Wrong?

When preparing for major upgrades, I probably spend more time making sure that all of my data is backed up than I do anything else. Of course, I use the OS’s built-in tools like Time Machine, and I store multiple copies of customer data on an external drive, in the cloud through Dropbox, on my smartphone through Missing Sync, and on my company’s development server (which itself gets backed up). But it never hurts to make manual backups of really irreplaceable data, so — for example — I made backups of my address book in VCF, CSV and Address Book Archive format. You might think that I’m overdoing it, but I felt that the time was definitely worth taking after learning of Sidekick’s data loss and an apparent bug in OS X relating to guest accounts that could cause it to lose data. As Kevin over at jkOnTheRun says: “Services fail…what are you doing about it?”

Do You Have the Time to Plan and Execute the Upgrade?

Of course, doing all of this takes time, which is why I prefer to undertake projects like this after business hours. Even if it means missing a beautiful fall weekend. That way, I don’t have to interact with clients or put out fires, and being offline for a while won’t make a difference. I picked up a couple of good books at my local college bookstore where I bought Snow Leopard, and got to page 50 of Terry Pratchett’s “Nation” while waiting for the installation, so it was time well spent!

So far, I have been extremely pleased with how much faster many of the programs I use run under Snow Leopard, especially those that are available in 64-bit mode. And I’m happy with many of the OS’s new features. So for me, the time spent has definitely been worth it.

Have you upgraded to the latest operating system? How has it worked for you?

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First, I started using social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook heavily. As a result, my address book ballooned from a few hundred contacts to over 1,100. The additional contacts were all people I knew, but I hadn’t seen many of them for a long time — being able to see photos makes it much easier to find the right contact. Second, I switched to a Mac as my main machine, and I started using the Mac OS X Address Book. It’s a very well-designed application, and it makes adding pictures to contacts incredibly easy.

Just open the Address Book to the appropriate contact. You don’t need to click the edit button. Then, use your web browser to find a photo you want to use as that person’s image, from a web site like Facebook or LinkedIn. In the browser, click on the image, hold your mouse button down, and drag the image to the Address Book. Let go of the mouse when you’ve dragged the image to the pale-grey square immediately to the left of the person’s name. A green circle with a white plus sign in it will appear when you’re in the right place. You may then crop the image as you wish. I like to crop tightly so that the person’s face is easily recognizable in the small space provided.

Most other address books have a way to attach photos to contacts, including the address books for online services like Gmail. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any others that allow easy drag-and-drop of images like the Mac Address Book does.

There are programs that allow one to sync pictures between Facebook and the Address Book; I haven’t tried them, as I prefer to select my own images.

Finding images of your contacts is generally easy. Use an image search in your favorite search engine. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, and sites like Twitter, encourage people to post pictures of themselves. I sometimes don’t like the pictures that people select, though; I prefer headshots that actually look like the person! For that reason, I’m not thrilled about cartoon avatars, either, unless the caricature is really good.

I suspect that more and more people have growing address books. If you want people to remember you, post picture of yourself that can easily be added to address books.

Do you add images to your contact list? Do you post headshots that can easily be imported?

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Google Quick Search Box is available as a free download for OS X. On the surface, it seems fairly simple. Just like with Quicksilver, you hit a keyboard shortcut and up pops a box where you can run a search. You can access applications and files from there, too. But Google Quick Search Box also has some additional capabilities:

• Find contacts within your address book
• Complete calculations
• Open your bookmarks in new browser tabs
• Look up dictionary definitions
• Launch songs in iTunes
• Launch files saved in your Google Docs account
• Perform a Google search

That’s not an exhaustive list, and you can even add features, like the ability to send messages to Twitter.

You can also perform a variety of actions on any file you find through Google Quick Search Box. With a couple of clicks, you can access information about the file, move it to the trash, and even open files in larger type. There are also a number of application-specific actions you can take, like ranking a song in iTunes or composing a new email to a contact.

It may seem like the wide variety of tasks that Google Quick Search Box can handle could be overwhelming when you sit down and use it, but it’s very adaptable. As you use it, it learns which files you’re most likely to launch, speeding up the process.

If you’ve used Google Desktop in the past, you’ll be familiar with the concept behind the Quick Search Box — but there are some important differences between Google Desktop and the standalone launcher: the ability to perform actions on your search results and access to calculations and definitions are unique to Google Quick Search Box. The Quick Search Box can also be extended with plugins, and the code is available on Google Code if you want to make changes of your own. Google Desktop does offer one advantage over the Quick Search Box: the ability to search cached and deleted files.

Google Quick Search Box makes it possible for you to significantly speed up your work. Even if you operate more in the cloud than on your desktop, you can access the applications and files you need to work on quickly. The features of Google’s launch application set it far ahead of applications I’ve used in the past.

What are your favorite ways to use Google Quick Search Box?

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The Spaces function is one of the nicer features that I discovered in OS X when I started using a Mac as my main machine a couple of years ago. Spaces allows me to open programs in multiple virtual desktops, then move between them using mouse movements or hotkeys.

Space 1 (the default workspace) is where I do most of my work. My browsers (Firefox and Safari) live here, along with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, iCal, Address Book, and Mail (which I still use, despite my earlier comments, as it’s the best way to manage multiple email accounts and move messages between them). Adium lives here, too, taking up a few pixels of space on the left of my wide-screen monitor, as my colleagues and I use instant messaging to communicate frequently between our home offices.

Space 2 is dedicated to a Remote Desktop Connection to my Windows XP computer. There is still some software that’s Windows-only, so I keep an old XP machine around. If preferred, you can set up a virtual Windows machine in this space through Parallels or other virtual-machine software.

Space 3 is where I put the communications that I look at when I have some extra time: RSS news feeds, Twitter and Facebook. For RSS feeds, I use Prism, which turns Google Reader into its own desktop application. For Twitter, I’m currently using Nambu, but am testing a bunch of other software, as Twitter apps seem to be progressing very rapidly. I’m not sure why RSS feeds aren’t more widely used. Dawn has written several great posts on how they can help improve efficiency. Updates from Facebook and LinkedIn can be collected via RSS. Even Twitter updates can be turned into RSS feeds with Gtweet.

Space 4 is used for fun stuff, notably Songbird, so that I can control what I’m listening to while working.

You can control the layout, mouse shortcuts and hotkeys for Spaces from “System Preferences > Expose and Spaces”. You can also make certain programs always start in a particular space. Finally, you can move between these spaces using Control+(arrow keys), a combination that I actually had to look up as I was writing this, as my fingers have it so memorized!

By keeping different kinds of programs in different Spaces, I can focus my time more effectively, but easily switch to other tasks on the fly.

There are similar programs for other systems. Windows and Linux users, which do you prefer? How do you organize your desktop(s)?

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A compelling reason to use CrossLoop is the innovative Marketplace, which is a great place to find and offer tech support services. With thousands of registered support experts, you can get help with just about anything you can think of. The CrossLoop folks facilitate the connection and transaction, and handle the payment processing. The latest figures released show over 5 million sessions have been conducted through CrossLoop. With the Mac version available, support providers can now offer their services to Mac users, or use their Mac to provide  services. As more households are switching to Mac, or going multi-platform, being able to support everyone makes a lot of sense. Obviously, for Mac users needing support, this also makes the full Marketplace of support providers available to you.

In the CrossLoop community, the demand for a Mac version has been loud and strong. With this milestone reached, they can now work to appease the Linux crowd.

The CrossLoop client is a free download for Windows 2000 or later and, now, for Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Costs for using Marketplace services vary, depending on the services required and choice of provider.

Have you used Crossloop for screen sharing? Does the availability of a Mac version make it an option for you?

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Virtualization software has come a long way since the days of Virtual PC on PPC Macs. Microsoft’s Windows-enabling program was more of a parlor trick than fully functional software. These days, Parallels Desktop version 4.0, available today for purchase, makes running a virtual machine more of a pleasure and less of a chore.

Earlier this fall, VMWare Fusion, the primary competitor of Parallels, released version 2.0 of their software. VMWare’s updated product added DirectX 9.0c and Mac OS X Leopard Server support, features which gave it a significant edge over the 3.0 release of Parallels. Parallels Desktop 4.0 evens the field, introducing both DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 support, and the ability to run OS X Leopard Server.

Read about the rest of Parallel 4′s new features, as well as a head-to-head comparison of the new Parallels vs. Fusion 2.

Personally, I’ve been happy with VMWare Fusion 2…is it worth taking a look at Parallels 4?

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A preview version is trickling out to newsletter subscribers. For those who can’t wait, the developers are promoting a screencast of the application’s main features. Looks promising. Much of the same functionality as OmniFocus, including a quick entry window for doing a brain dump of tasks to process later. But Things doesn’t force a project/context/task structure the way OmniFocus and other GTD-focused apps do.

So now I’ll wait to get my preview invite before deciding which application I’ll end up paying for. As with email, I’ve found that I prefer using a stand-alone application for task management instead of a browser-based one.

Are you already overloaded on to-do apps or are you giving these newbies a try?

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