Seriously though, I will go Blu eventually, but right now the players cost way too much, the spec implementation hasn't matured, and neither of those huge problems is looking to be solved this year. I'm frankly surprised and dismayed that HD-DVD lost. Every decision Toshiba made was pro-consumer: they drove the price down fast, they had a solid and stable spec, they had good hardware from good partners, and... well, they're not Sony.

At any rate, I'll enjoy my 6 HD movies, and maybe pick up a couple more when the media goes on clearance, just to tide me over until Blu-ray gets affordable and functional. Personally I'm a big supporter of VoD, having had good experiences with iTunes and the XBox Live Marketplace, but realistically downloaded "HD" isn't quite as nice as what comes off a physical disc -- not yet anyway.

• Watch the demo to see all its features.

Fortunately, iBeast provides this handy RAID Calculator.

Redhat's online documentation provides a good refresher as well.

• In your "Advanced" Mail account settings, set the IMAP Path Prefix to "[Gmail]/"
• (The trailing / is added automatically)

Now your folders will look flatter and much prettier. This works in Mail.app on your desktop Mac too! And don't worry -- it'll still be able to find the Inbox on its own.

Some of these might seem a little basic to long-time users, but lets remember that not everyone has been using a Mac since OS 7 (or earlier!) and cut the newly Mac-faithful some slack...

Evan asks: Absolutely perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Well, almost. How about adding a 3rd account?

Eric asks: I would like to attach to the script the mail icon or a similar icon. Then when I added it to the dock, it is more obvious to click it to run.

Eric, having figured out the above on his own, then asks: My 2 problems are: 1, I can not add the script to the dock. 2, when I click the script icon, it take me to the editor where I then have to click RUN.

Under most circumstances you won't want to check the box for 'Run Only' because once you do, you cannot edit it in Script Editor again. Also, uncheck the box for 'Startup Screen' to make it run a little more gracefully.

You may also find that the Dock is not the best place for your script -- since it will essentially give you two Mail icons. What I did instead was to enable the AppleScript menu and use that for all my common scripts.

If you want to do this, open the Application AppleScript Utility in the AppleScript folder and check the box for 'Show Script Menu in the menu bar.' You may also want to uncheck the box for "Show Library scripts" to hide the example scripts Apple includes to make your menu shorter.

Note: For scripts to show up in this menu you'll have to save them where your Mac expects your scripts to be: In your user's Library folder you'll find a folder called "Scripts." Put them, or an alias to them, in there.

For purposes of security, I want to tunnel my traffic through SSH... on a Mac... behind a Proxy.

You'll find lots of webpages when you search for "ssh through proxy" that tell you how to use SSH as a proxy server. But I already know how to do that. I want to put that to use, but behind an existing proxy which limits Internet access. This isn't nearly as well documented.

For starters, on Windows you can use Putty, or the excellent app Tunnelier to establish an SSH tunnel to your home server, even behind a Proxy. You simply need to provide the proxy settings.
This is very useful because if you're in a coffee shop, or somewhere else with open and exposed WiFi, it might be important to you that your passwords or online banking are encrypted.

On the Mac, there's a decent app called SSH Tunnel Manager that provides a UI for connecting to a tunnel. Its not much easier to use than a command line, but it does make things simpler. The only problem is, its not proxy aware either. It only works on an already unfettered Internet connection.

So we're back to the command line, trying to teach SSH how to use a Proxy server for its 'Net connection. What I've learned:

• SSH does not natively know about Proxy servers, but it does provide extensibility so that you can configure it to get help from another program
• You configure this by editing the /etc/ssh_config file using a text editor
• man ssh_config reveals that the parameter you want to add is called: ProxyCommand
• A *nix app called Corkscrew provides this functionality for other flavours
• The app has been ported to Mac via the Darwin Ports project
• You can download DarwinPorts and make it work like apt_get by syncing it with its server
• Then you can tell it to install Corkscrew for you
• The DarwinPorts app uses rsync to get the latest sources to install on your computer
• rsync does not natively know about Proxy servers, so the sync will fail and you won't be able to get Corkscrew...

I'll try to get Corkscrew installed when I'm not stuck behind a Proxy and see if I can't figure out how to edit the ssh_config file to make it use a proxy server. What's frustrating is that the Mac has the Network System Preference that claims to be global, but that none of the command line apps they provided in their BSD flavour respect that configuration...

I'll post more if I figure this out.

According to the Connect360 Support website, you can't use Connect360 on your Mac to connect to your XBox 360 if your network uses a Linksys WRT54g with homebrew firmware on it. They're right -- it doesn't work.

The solution is pretty simple, however. Abstract the Mac and the XBox from the router using a good* network switch. The switch will allow the two devices to communicate (via broadcast) with each other without having to go through the router, and all will work as expected.

*Note: The Connect360 site also warns that some switches may cause a similar problem. I'm using a NetGear Gigabit Switch to accomplish this, and it works perfectly. YMMV.

Here's the setup: my wife and I share a Mac at home. For memory reasons, among others, I don't want to use Fast User Switching, and because of my automated tasks, I don't want the primary account to ever be logged out. So all many of our programs need to be set-up for two different users. Firefox has user profiles, that once configured, works perfect. Mail.app has no such thing. What I decided to then, was write an AppleScript that would switch Mail.app between users for us. This example is for two users, but it could be edited for more. Here's how to use it:

• Setup Mail accounts for each user
• Modify the script to prompt for each user you have, and reference their account name
• Replace your Mail.app dock icon with a link to your AppleScript (you can even give it the Mail.app icon)
• Whenever you launch Mail, you'll be asked which user you want to use
• Even better than that, you can switch users just by clicking the Mail icon in your dock again. You don't even have to close down Mail!

The result looks like this whenever you invoke the script, and launches/reconfigures Mail within two seconds. Set the delay to longer if Mail.app takes longer to start on your Mac.

The code is dead simple, and took me only moments to put together. Note that the delays and the order in which things are done is important so that it doesn't hang waiting for Mail to start if its not already open.

-- Mail Account Chooser, by Jonathan Wise
-- Add user profiles to Mail.app
display dialog "Choose the Mail account to use" buttons {"Jonathan", "Elizabeth"} default button 1 with icon note
if the button returned of the result is "Jonathan" then
  tell application "Mail"
    activate
    delay 2
    set enabled of account "Elizabeth Home" to false
    set enabled of account "Jonathan Home" to true
  end tell
else
  tell application "Mail"
    activate
    delay 2
    set enabled of account "Jonathan Home" to false
    set enabled of account "Elizabeth Home" to true
  end tell
end if


• Mouse Wheel Fix for VB6

…i’m looking all over these internets, and I have a feeling you can point me in the right direction.

Short short version: how can I mirror/sync the itunes database file (just the database, not the song files themselves) between two macs on the same home network, so that any changes made on one mac will show up when itunes is opened on the other mac? Foldershare doesn’t seem to be working…

I’m looking to:

• Store my itunes library (the files) on my mac mini, storing no mp3’s on my macbook pro (this is done, easily, by sharing the mini’s itunes folder and pointing the mbp to it…got that done already…it’s the sharing of the database file that I’m having trouble with)
• Either NAS or external fw/usb drives for saving music/movies/photos attached to mini (raid 1 or 5…I’d love to hear suggestions of why a NAS or external would be a better bet…I’m leery about capability of NAS to stream high quality handbrake rips through my elcheapo linksys wrt54g router…would love to get lacie Ethernet RAID, but I don’t think it will cut it)
• Use that repository of files on the mini/nas/external drive whenever i’m on my home network…rip a cd on the mbp, consolidate, it shoots over to the mac mini, and occasionally clean off the mbp so it’s got no MP3’s stored on it
• Reference either the same library database file or have a mirrored library file on my macbook that updates/syncs regularly, so I can access the library (add new podcasts, new music from cd’s, etc.) even if I’m not on my home network

Advantages:

• if i’m out and about, and add a cd to the mbp, or a podcast, I can still sync my ipod…the easiest solution of just pointing the MBP to the itunes library database on the mini is problematic, because if I’m off the network, I can’t use that library database, and I’ll get a blank itunes library, and not be able to sync the ipod. If, however, I set it up like I’m wanting to, whenever I’m out and open up itunes, I’ll just get the ‘grey exclamation point’ by all of the songs (because the actual files are still housed on the mini/external drive). Then, when I get back home and onto the home network, any changes I made to the itunes library (playcounts, playlists, etc.) would be mirrored back to the mini…and vice versa, if I happened to change the playlists on the mini…though I’m not so worried about changes from the mini being mirrored back to the MBP…that won’t happen all that often.

Problems:

• I can’t get the damned itunes database file to mirror. I’ve tried foldershare to link folders between the two computers, and it *will* copy the itunes database over into each folder, but it loses some file information along the way: somehow, whenever it’s copied, the itunes database “turns into” a ‘unix executable file’, and is no longer recognized by itunes as a valid database file…I’ve looked at rsyncx (for about 15 minutes), but couldn’t figure out how to use it to do what I needed automatically.

Great question, Shawn. As you've found, this is much harder than it should be. I do have some tips you might try, but I never got all the way to a solution myself, and eventually settled with a one-way solution. I've posted everything I've discovered in the comments below. I'd love to keep this discussion going and see if we can't find a way to get this done right...