How to get a T-Mobile Web'n'Walk stick to work on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yesterday, I had a momentary lapse of reason and bought a T-Mobile Web'n'Walk stick to be able to connect to the internet whenever and wherever I want.

The girl in the T-Mobile store in Groningen was very helpful and sold me the last Web'n'Walk they had, sending me on my merry way to the hotel where I discovered the stick didn't work. At least, not out of the box it didn't.

Figuring this had to be an issue with the Mac software T-Mobile ship with the stick, I decided to be sensible and call customer service. Their first response was "I'm sorry sir, we don't support Mac." At which point I curtly stated this was unacceptable as I had asked this in the store (and gotten a yes), and checked it on the package (which states they do support Mac). The inevitable cop-out was a callback appointment that they failed to live up to.

Which left me to solve the problem myself. As it turns out, it's very, very easy. Here's what I did to get the app to install.

• Command-click the app and select "Show package contents" from the contextmenu.
• Enter the "Contents" folder, then the "Resources" folder.
• Doubleclick the MobilePartner.mpkg file and follow installation instructions.
• Done!

Everything installed without a hitch. And after installation the software even updated itself to the latest version.

So it would seem T-Mobile ships a faulty installer with otherwise working software. Very easy to fix that. But they haven't yet.

FiRe Field Recorder

After reading lots of reviews, I decided to buy FiRe Field Recorder from AudioFile Engineering today. It won out over the also excellent iProRecorder from Bias, the creators of Peak, because of its integration with SoundCloud. I'm amazed with the sound quality and the ease of use. My very first recording came out good enough to post here. I didn't even have to put it through Levelator!

20091030 FiRe Field Recorder Review  by  laurensbonnema

My Favorite iPhone and Mac Photo Apps

I had lunch today with a friend who's a bit of a photography-nut (which is a Good Thing mind you) so naturally we ended up discussing iPhone photo apps. He recommended CameraBag to me to do some sweet image post-processing on the iPhone. Trusting his judgement, I downloaded it as soon as I had a chance to, i.e. ten minutes after lunch. And it rocks! With CameraBag, you can add filters to you photos before you upload them or send them. It's a simple and fast way to improve you plain vanilla iPhone pics.

Of course, using CameraBag got me thinking what else I'd been missing out on so far. After some googling and review reading, I've come up with the following must-have iPhone photo apps in addition to CameraBag:

• Photogene, for on-phone editing and filtering beyond CameraBag.
• ColorSplash, which lets you quickly and easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color.
• AutoStitch, a fully automatic image stitcher for the iPhone.

Of course, I do most of my post-processing and editing on my Mac. For that, I use Photoshop Elements for post-processing of RAW files and correcting stuff like lighting and red eyes, Pixelmator for all edits I can't do with Photoshop Elements such as advanced filtering, and Photomatix for creating HDR images.

And now, let's go take some photo's...

UPDATE 2009-10-16: In addition to the aforementioned iPhone photo apps, I've completed my collection with the following apps:

• Darkroom, for taking steady shots.
• Photo fx, to complete my set of filters by adding everything but the kitchen sink. I don't need all of this, but boy do I want it!
• TiltShift, simulates a tilt-shift lens that tricks your mind into viewing a photo as a miniature scene like a model railroad for example.

My Favorite Mac Apps

Last December I switched to Mac and have since entered a very, very happy period in my personal computing experience. I'm running a clone of my corporate laptop in VMWare Fusion for my remaining Windows needs, and must admit to using a Palm Treo Pro running Windows Mobile 6.1 to stay connected to HQ whilst on the move. For everything else, I use my 15" unibody Macbook Pro. Which means I had to find alternatives to my favorite Windows programs. And you know what: some of the alternatives are actually better!

Functionality: WinApp » MacApp:
• Application launcher: Launchy » QuickSilver
• Virtual desktop manager: VirtuaWin » Spaces (built in!)
• Archiver: 7Zip » iArchiver
• Subversion client: TortoiseSVN » Versions
• RSS reader: Feeddemon » NetNewsWire
• Mindmapping: MindManager 8 » MindManager 7 for Mac
• Texteditor: UltraEdit » TextWrangler
• Diagramming: MS Visio » OmniGraffle
• Project Management: MS Project » Merlin
• Screencasting: uTipu » ScreenFlow
• Video conversion: Videora » Handbrake
• FTP client: FileZilla » Cyberduck (you don't have to switch, because FileZilla is also available for Mac, but I did, because I like Cyberduck)
• RSI monitor: WorkPace » MacBreakZ
• Favorite screensaver: Despair Inc » Matrixsaver
In addition to the items above, I use the following Mac Apps:
• Getting Things Done: OmniFocus
• Writing: Scrivener
• Blogging: MarsEdit
• Tweeting: TweetDeck
• Instant messaging: Skype and MSN
• Audio recording: Audio Hijack Pro and Fission for recording and editing with The Levelator for postprocessing of aiff files.
• WMV plugin for Quicktime: Flip4Mac
• Desktop notification system: Growl
• Timer: FlexTime
• Prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers: Caffeine
• Switch your audio input and output sources with a single click, and even adjust their volume settings: SoundSource

Get Things Done with Nozbe

Today I discovered Nozbe, quite possibly the best GTD app around. It's simple, minimalistic even, but exactly what you need if you're looking for an online GTD system. When you're not at your computer, you can connect to Nozbe through your phone with the nozbe.mobi app. And if you forgot your phone, the option to print your next actions in a sleek Hipster PDA cut-out version will save the day. If you add DIY Planner templates and a calendar, be it GCal or Time/system, or both, you're set to become highly productive and get things done.

iPod Video on Ubuntu

One of the things I found most annoying about switching from Windows to Ubuntu, was the lack of decent iPod connectivity. I use the excellent gtkpod to sync music on Ubuntu, but getting it to work with video involves compiling a special version of the software, thus ruining the automatic updates via synaptic packet manager. Of course, compiling your own software isn't that hard, but I want things to work (almost) out of the box as much as possible. Especially things like adding video to an iPod. Enter Floola: a cross platform iPod connectivity app. It's still in beta, so it might have some quirks, but for adding video to your iPod when you don't have iTunes, it's the best app I've come across so far.