The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

I’ve had this wonderful little freeware application for many years now. And, since I had to yet again refer to it to definitively answer a call that just came in to the OnDeckTech helpdesk, I thought I’d pass it along to y’all as well. MacTracker is a database with a nifty-looking front end, that does just as it says. It gives you information about every model of Macintosh computer ever made. It even does iPods now as well. You can read more about it, and download it here . And, since it is freeware, if you find yourself relying on it, please consider donating, so that the authors can continue to develop it.

Panic Software , the makers of the fantastic FTP application Transmit (and other Shockingly Good Mac Software) have outdone themselves with their newest product Coda . If you are the hand-coding type, Coda is a wonderful way to improve your workflow. It combines everything you need for web development (file manager, text editor, preview, CSS editor) and then some (a terminal window and a great help book ) into one window. Coda is $79, or, if you already own a license for Transmit 3, $69. That’s a pretty great price for such a complete product, from an independent Mac software developer. If you’d like to try it, you can download a demo here .

If you have attempted to partition an external drive to include an OS boot disk on a new Intel Mac, you may have noticed a few options. In Disk Utility, you have three options for partitioning.

GUID Partition Table - used to create a boot disk for an Intel-based Mac.

Apple Partition Map - used to create a boot disk for Power PC Macs, or non-startup disk for any Mac.

Master Boot Record - used to create a boot disk for DOS/Windows machines.

Ever wonder what the /Library directory is for, and why there’s more than one of them?

The time has come. The time is now. I’m reviewing the basics, getting ready to recertify as an Apple Certified Systems Administrator (ACSA) for 10.4, Tiger, yes, just about in time for Leopard, 10.5 to come out (Spring actually seems very, very far away at the moment). It actually doesn’t come at too bad a time, I’m working less this week to help my wife with our new, third baby, and I’ve got time at all sorts of odd hours now to review technical details, and share tidbits with you!

Among the principles that may guide your deployment of enterprise collaboration software (aka “groupware”) such as Zimbra, many experts agree having a sense for the value of such a solution to your company should be your first priority.

Your team may be just you, your laptop and PDA, or it may many coworkers spanning the globe… how do you not only measure your company’s ability to communicate under day-to-day, common, often less-than-ideal circumstances, but also understand the prospective value of investments meant to improve collaboration?

A local, long-time Mac enthusiast has maintained a useful list of select Apple technology links here: Chuck’s Mac Links .

For those of you who want a better understanding and want to go beyond the basics, there’s amazing depth of features available in Apple’s Mail.app. As of this writing, not updated since last Summer (2005), this site from Sam’s Publishing still has valuable information.