Bye PC, Mac Got Me

Now that Starbucks has finally begun to offer WiFi access to iPhone customers, it was only a matter of time before those iPhone customers started to look for a way to make the iPhone access work on laptop computers, such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro (this should also work for PC’s). With a little tweaking and configuration, you’ll be able to “trick” the Starbucks wifi network into thinking that your laptop is actually an iPhone.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Select attwifi from the available networks list.
2. Open your web browser, it should redirect you to an AT&T page.
3. Enter your 10 digit mobile phone number.
4. You will receive a text message from AT&T (the text is free) with a secure link to the AT&T wifi hotspot.
5. Type this link into the web browser on your laptop and you’re good to go.
6. Enjoy your free wifi.

written by Brady \\ tags: AT&T, free wifi, iPhone, Starbucks, wifi

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http://twitter.com/macgotme

written by Brady \\ tags: twitter

I have slowly been learning my around my new MacBook Pro, and in doing so, I’ve been searching for software and applications that allow me to do the same tasks that I was able to accomplish on a PC. Thus far, I’ve been able to find replacements that are as good, if not better than their PC counterparts. In this series, I’m going to attempt to outline my desktop setup and my software setup that I allows me to be my most productive while blogging.

As with most of you, the blogging platform is the most important part of your blog, in my case, that platform is Wordpress. Without our blogging platform, we’d have no blogs. There are 10’s if not hundreds of blogging platforms out there, it is more or less just a matter of choosing one that you like. I’ve chosen Wordpress for two primary reasons:

1. Wordpress is a free software, and very powerful. It does what it says it does.
2. Wordpress is community driven. This is probably the best feature because it means for hundreds of thousands of available themes and plugins, and the Wordpress platform itself is updated constantly.

Initially, my primary method of publishing posts to my blog was through the built in Wordpress web admin system, but as I became a more “seasoned blogger”, I began using local tools that would allow me to write and save posts to my local machine prior to publishing them to my blog. The first tool that I began using was on a PC, and it was offered by Microsoft – it was called Windows Live Writer. This tool was great and really introduced me to the idea of “offline blogging”. Since converting to a Mac, I’ve found a comparable software that makes offline blogging an absolute breeze. That program is called ecto and it is actually available for both Windows and OSX users.

written by Brady \\ tags: Apple, best programs, blogging, offline blogging, OSX

After searching and searching for a remote desktop client that I could use on my new MacBook Pro, I came up with CoRD, which seemed to do the trick. Until I tried connecting to a Windows Server 2008 machine. Apparently there are some signatures or something that don’t line-up between CoRD and Windows Server 2008, so as of now, CoRD is unable to connect. Having not seen another remote desktop option while searching, I thought that I was just up a creek until CoRD released a new update, until today, when I randomly came across a page at Microsoft that has the Mac version of their Remote Desktop Client. Now, I don’t know why this didn’t come up in any of my original searches, but had I known about this client, I would have been using it from the start since 99.9% of the server that I need to connect to are Windows Servers.

If you’re having the same problem that I was having with CoRD, try downloading the Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.

written by Brady \\ tags: remote desktop, remote desktop client

Since switchin to Mac, I’ve been looking for a good FTP program that will get the job done with features similar to that of FTP programs that I used on my PC – Ipswitch’s WS_FTP Pro, CuteFTP, etc. After searching for quite awhile, it was obvious that there were 3 leaders.

1. Fetch – Shareware: $25.00
2. Transmit – Shareware: $29.95
3. Cyberduck – Free

Seeing that I just spent over $2G’s on my new MacBook Pro, I decided to go with the freeware version of Cyberduck to start, and I must admit that thus far, I’m very happy with it. It really is plain and simple, and took no time to learn or get used to. I installed it and immediately was able to FTP to my site and transfer files. Some of the best features of the Cyberduck FTP Client for Mac are:

• Browser – Simply open and FTP site and browse the documents just as you would on your Mac. You also have the option to use QuickLook, the handy new feature that is built into OSX Leopard.
• WebURL – If you specify the corresponding website when setting up your FTP connection, you’ll be able to open up the corresponding web URL without having to open your browser and type in the address. Handy, especially when editing and working with non-dynamic HTML based sites.
• Integration – Cyberduck allows integration into the OSX platform, allowing Cyberduck to become the default handler for all FTP/SFTP connections.
• Activity Window – Gives a current status of all open transfers.
• Keychain – Stores all passwords in the System Keychain.
• Amazon S3 – Allows easy connection and access to Amazon’s S3 file storage service. Great for backing up files.
• Synchronization – One of the best features, this allows you to directly synchronize local and remote directories, and prior to synchronizing, Cyberduck will display a listing of affected files and directories so that you can see what will be changed/updated prior to starting the sync.

written by Brady \\ tags: FTP

As I’ve stated before, I am a web developer and I’ve always got the need to connect to a Windows Server somewhere via Remote Desktop. CoRD (Cocoa Remote Desktop) has given me the perfect solution for connecting to Windows Servers and Windows based PC’s, just as easy as using the Remote Desktop Client that is built into Windows itself. CoRD has given me the perfect option for connecting to my office Terminal Server, as well as managing and maintaining my other servers.

CoRD Remote Desktop for Mac OSX is a great option if you need to connect and manager any of the following:

• Windows Server 2000
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008 (hopefully coming soon)
• Windows XP (Home, Professional or Media Center Edition)
• Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business, Ultimate)

written by Brady \\ tags: CoRD, Microsoft, remote desktop, Windows Server