Well, I did the unthinkable: went crazy, lost my mind… I ran the upgrade to Leopard overnight, without babysitting it! And it worked! When I woke up this morning my MacBook was sporting a brand new Operating System and asking me for 2 simple screens worth of confirmation information (one for Registration and one for .Mac -so it wasn’t even for setup purposes).
Apple did it again: everything is in its place and running like a charm.
(or maybe it’s the other way around…)
I used to have my Linksys Wireless Router set up to use WEP security and that went well until we brought the MacBook in. I couldn’t connect to it not even once. So, this week my friend Danilo recommended I switched to another protocol called WPA Personal.
It worked like a charm, plus I realized I am now more secure: according to Wikipedia WPA (which stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access) “was created in response to several serious weaknesses researchers had found in the previous system, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).“
Getting the MacBook to be an all-solution for my needs is closer to becoming a reality. In the past few days I’ve spent some time finding solutions to migrate the two biggest items that reside in my computer:
-My e-mail of the past 7 years.
-My personal finances (of the same period).
Dealing with my e-mail is something for which I’ve found a fantastic solution. After reading through some painfully long processes to get the WHOLE mailbox to come over to my Apple (via GMail), Luis made me realize something that I hadn’t thought of: I don’t really need ALL my e-mail from the past 7 years! 
So today I am close to done archiving close to 95% of my e-mail, which I will be burning on a DVD (or two). That will leave me with “only” 260MB worth of mail to migrate (if I end up doing it).
As a permanent solution I’ve opted to use GMail, so all my aliases end up there instead of GoDaddy’s interface. That way, I am pretty much platform agnostic, whether I am on my Mac at home or at work (did I mention we got migrated to iMacs in the office? Pictures coming soon!)
As for personal finances, I am still working on that. I won’t move away from the laptop (where I use Microsoft Money) entirely until the new fiscal year. By then, I hope I’ve identified a good solution for the Mac, hopefully without having to use Bootcamp or Parallels (to run Money on Windows there). It seems more and more, Jan. 1, 2008, I will just start with a new software for this, with starting balances in my accounts, instead of going back 7 years of data and trying QIF files to behave well between Money and any software I go to… but we’ll see.
Any suggestions you have for Mac-based personal (and small business) finance management software, I am all ears.
I am simply astounded at how simple Apple has made creating movies with the new iMovie in the all new/upgraded iLife ’08.
Literally, it took me longer to upload than to create the movie, from shooting to cutting. I just cannot describe how easy it is: just get iLife ’08 and ask questions later.
In particular, exporting the movie to YouTube was a breeze… below is the output:
I was sad to learn that Leopard, the new Apple OS, was delayed until October in favor of focusing resources on iPhone. While this sends a clear signal of the importance Jobs sees on getting in the wireless communications arena, the article something interesting too.
The most important point made is one of resource limitation: how they may be doing more things than they can afford to, given the size of their staff. They are no small company: at 18,000 they clearly passed that threshold a long time ago. But could they be biting more than they can chew? What do you think?
Amy Tenderich, author of Diabetes Mine, one of the best diabetes blogs around, and published author of Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes, wrote today an Open Letter to Steve Jobs.
Her point was basically how dire is the need for an improved design in the world of insulin pumps and blood glucose meters, two “gadgets” which diabetics depend on for their lives (you can live without a pump, by giving yourself insulin shots, but once you begin using the pump, it’s your portable pancreas, pretty much).
In writing this post, Amy draw attention from technology blog TechCrunch, which featured her on the home page today. I am very happy this happened, because it brings attention to diabetes as a true issue, one that is lived by 20 million of us, yet seems to be continually brushed aside and underfunded by the government (this administration, at least) in favor of other uses for our tax money. A TechCrunch home page spotlight on diabetes is certainly publicity for the cause that can’t be bought.
KUDOS to you and for all you do for diabetics, Amy!
To everyone reading this: help bring more exposure to the cause. Digg the story.
OK. Tell me I am not alone in thinking that iPhoto just doesn’t cut it if you want to easily manage hundreds (or thousands of photos). Am I alone? 
I admit I am a bit frustrated with how iPhoto handles our 12 thousand digital photo library taken over the years, mostly the ability to bundle them and tag them. Recently I consolidated our entire picture library in our Mac and I am disappointed at the performance of the software.
So I started to look around: obviously Aperture is an option, but the $299 price tag does not make me too happy. My search continued…
Today I learned about Adobe Lightroom, thanks to my friend Kris Krug. Until February 28, they are still offering the last Beta build for download, so I am taking it out for a spin. I wonder if anyone reading this has tried it, so you can share your insights about it.
If it’s as great as Kris says, I will stick with it… plus at $199 it’s not as elusive! 
Delicious Library is a great way to not only keep track of your books, music, movies and games, but also who has one of them if you ever lend stuff out.
Too bad that there is only a Mac version. I have it installed at work, and started managing my “black list” (people who I have loaned something to) with it. It’s lovely!
Thursday evening I posted the video that my friend Danilo shot and edited on the arrival of 500 Mac Book Pros to Full Sail.
After I posted about that, I dugg the post and within seconds after hitting the Digg home page (after it had been dugg over 100 times), the traffic started literally pouring in.
It’s ironic, because the digg was in front of digg users probably for a matter of seconds (that is how fast content “moves” there -see Digg Spy, if you don’t believe me). Yet the net traffic it drove towards my blog was unprecedented:
-Almost 5,000 visits in the course of Friday alone. There were moments when there were well over 200 people hitting the blog in an hour
-Within ten days of the month of February, my previous monthly traffic record was shattered (I don’t know yet what the total traffic for the month will be, since there is still a healthy residual traffic coming as a result of the digg).
-Over 10 new blogs linked to “Ask Manny”, which had an immediate impact on my Technorati ranking: from somwhere around spot #129,000 the blog rised to #89,758.
Thanks to the blogs and feeds that linked back to the Mac Book Pro post:
http://www.mi3dot.org/news/comments/3196/
http://www.macsurfer.com/
http://tradermike.net/2007/02/links_for_2007-02-10/
http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/02/five_hundred_ma.html
http://www.sdjl.co.uk/2007/02/09/one-million/
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/02/09/a-million-bucks-of-macbooks/
http://www.iphonebitz.com/a-million-bucks-of-macbook-pros/
http://www.iphones4u.info/a-million-bucks-of-macbook-pros/
http://doggdot.us/?page=3
http://www.dwblog.net/
http://corejam.com/
http://apple.feedcollection.org/
Thanks too to all those who paid a visit to this blog in the past few hours.
I am honestly humbled and I thank Danilo for sharing the opportunity of getting so much traffic that, otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten. Indeed the “cult of the Mac” can be a powerful attraction… much more than what I would have ever imagined.
My friend Danilo also works with me at Full Sail. He’s a big Apple fan, so it didn’t surprise me when he disappeared for a few hours to go make this video:
He says:
The school where I work (fullsail.com) started this thing where most new students order their own MacBook Pro for their classes. Apparently this truck is just the first shipment. I wish there was an extra one for me.
(version en español, cortesia de Luis)