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Little Snitch 3 your network connection monitor I have a couple of applications that I always install on a new Mac. Little Snitch 3 is one of them. They are the essential software I need to have installed to be productive and secure. Little Snitch by Objective Development is one of them. I’ve been using it for more than ten years now, and I wouldn’t dream of running a Mac without it installed. What Little Snitch 3 essentially does is monitor all outgoing traffic from your open applications and processes and gives you the ability to allow or deny that traffic. It is an excellent way of seeing what kind of information is sent from applications without your knowledge or consent. And it’s a great way of stopping traffic that “Phones home” without your explicit permission. When an application tries to send out something over the network, it gets intercepted by Little Snitch, and you can then allow or deny the connection, either temporary or permanently via the dialog box that appears. So Little Snitch is always there, protecting your privacy. ...

Blogo 2 Update: After using Blogo 2 for a while I decided to use Marsedit 3 instead. It’s a much more mature product right now. I decided I wanted to try a new blogging application and stumbled onto Blogo 2. After installing it I had problems at first because I could only see the first 16 pages of content on my blog. But after contacting their support, they found out the problem (a weird character in one of my posts) and even logged in and fixed it. So my initial impression of the support for the application is very good. I just wished that the application supported Markdown and have a way of synchronising to Dropbox so I can switch between my computer and my iPad. But for quick posts like this (and if everything works because I haven’t pressed the Publish button yet) this could be a useful application. And there is sync with Evernote so that might work in a pinch. ...

JPEGMini What if you could reduce the size of all the jpeg pictures on your hard disk? Do you have problems sending full resolution jpeg images via email because of size restraints? Is your iPhoto library too large? Let’s face it; pictures is one of the things that sucks up space on your drives. It’s even more annoying if you are using a newer Mac with an SSD disk where cost is premium. Upload speed when sending emails or uploading images to the web can be slow and annoying. An application called JPEGMini claims to help you with reducing your pictures with up to five times while retaining all the quality. I got a bit curious if the team at JPEGMini and their patented image compressor really could reduce large JPEG photos without losing quality. I’ve tried the application before when I wrote my article about comparing the best jpeg compressor applications for web use. But even though JPEGMini is geared more towards large megapixel pictures, not small images usually used on web pages, my test shows that it stacks up well against the competition even on more modest photographs. Many web pages now use pictures optimized for high-resolution images like for Retina display and high-resolution mobile devices, so the use of an image compressor is getting even more useful for web use. But how well does JPEGMini retain quality on megapixel images in JPEG format? How much do you lose in quality by using compressing? ...

Trying to display color corrected images on an iPad A couple of weeks ago i bought the Spyder4Elite so I could color calibrate my Retina MacBook Pro 15“ and my Asus PA246 24” monitor. And the calibration works really well. There is no way of color calibrate your iPad, because Apple has not given developers the ability to create or change the calibration of the screen. But Datacolor, the makers of the Spyder4 line of calibrators has solved the problem by making an app that connects to your Mac via your network and use the calibrator to calibrate their app called SpyderGallery. This enables you to see calibrated versions of your pictures inside the viewer. But the calibrated data only works in the SpyderGallery app. ...

Non-local backup I’ve been going back and forth trying to find a good off-site backup for a long time. I do have an Apple TimeCapsule where I do backup locally, but it doesn’t backup my external drives where I have all my pictures that goes back many years and that would be a nightmare to lose. I use Arq and Amazon Glacier to backup my pictures off-site and I also use rsync to a local NAS for a local backup. But I want a way of doing backup of all my stuff, so I’ve tried both CrashPlan and Backblaze but always found them to slow for my liking. Another reason for giving up on CrashPlan was the client software that uses to much processing power and I think the client is written in Java which would explain why it’s a resource hog. Not so with Backblaze that uses only about 3% of CPU even when the settings for upload speed is set to full upload speed and it doesn’t use much memory. ...

There are several JPEG image compression tools available that takes a jpeg file and reduces the size of the photo without altering the quality. But which one works best for posting images on a website? I was curious, so I took the tools I usually use and put them through the compress photo function. All applications tested claims not to lower the quality of the image. I’m concentrating on testing jpeg files here, and do a followup article later with results for optimizing PNG files. ...

Using a Clicky PC Keyboard from Corsair on a Mac If you have followed this blog, you probably know that I love clicky keyboards. But getting a Buckling Spring or even a Cherry MX Blue keyboard specifically made for Macintosh isn’t easy, at least not here in Sweden. So the way to go for me was to get a PC gaming keyboard. ...

SqueezePlug problem where Squeezelite refuse to start I installed a Raspberry Pi in my livingroom as a Squeezebox music Server/Player, using a SqueezePlug[1] image. But when I tried to install the Squeezelite player, it refused to start. I tried to uninstall and reinstall, selecting another USB Audio Interface, but the problem persisted. After checking around and doing a some experimenting, I found that I could start Squeezelite manually from the terminal prompt, but if I tried to start it with the init.d or service script, it refused to start. So I started to dig around and experimented with changing the settings for Squeezelite and I found the problem… ...

Update to the update 2018 Still my favorite email client, and I’m now also blessed with a version for iPad and my iPhone. It’s up to version 3. It never crashes, and the search is fast and excellent. Best email client ever! Update 2016-02-16 I’m still using Airmail now, two years after I wrote this post. It has never failed me in any way. It’s now up to version 2. I guess Apple has probably fixed a lot of the problems they had back then when connecting to Gmail. And let’s face it, Google changed a lot from the original IMAP standard, so everyone had to keep up. But I’m sticking with Airmail 2. Now there’s even an excellent version for Airmail for iOS. And you’ll feel right at home. It also syncs your settings from your Mac OS X application, so now I have an HTML signature on my iPhone. Yay! The only complaint is that they did the app for iPhone only and not an iPad version. In a perfect world, it should have been a universal app. But hopefully, they’ll fix that in the coming months. Airmail, my new favorite mail client After Mac OS X 10.8, Apple Mail has been going downhill by every update. It’s weird because the iOS Mail app is rock solid. I have my email domain on Google Apps, and I know that Gmail doesn’t follow the IMAP standard, instead choosing to do it their way. So they use tags instead of folders, etc. The blame has to be put on Google for not following standards but is a significant player; you can pretty much set your own rules. Anyway, Apple Mail has become a slow, unreliable application although they have fixed some of the more severe problems in the latest release. For the first time in many years, I was on the lookout for a new email client software. Time to find a new Mail Client I wanted to be able to have both of my private and work email accounts in the same program but have them separate to make life easier, and after searching the net, I found an application called Airmail. The feature list is comprehensive to the point of me not wanting to list all the features here, but follow the link to get a lowdown on all the things the application can do. I’ll go through the things that persuaded me to switch. ...

MacBook Pro 15" Retina Mid2014 Calibrated compared to sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 A couple of days ago I got my new Spyder4 Elite Color Calibrator for color calibrating monitors. After doing a calibration on both on the latest MacBook Pro 15" retina and my factory calibrated Asus PA246, I saved the comparison charts for the two displays to see how they stack up. ...