Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

a visit to Iliad/free.fr offices in dec'11 with Xavier Niel and Om Malik

I had not published these pictures, waiting for my friend Om to publish his piece, which came out today. 

nota: my Leica and iPhone were definitively not the proper cameras to take pictures in this visit, a Canon/nikon with quick autofocus, and automatic settings would have rendered better...

We had visited Xavier together a few years back, and myself many times when Xavier served on the advisory board of my previous company, vpod.tv. Suffice to say that I am still very impressed with him, every time we meet, by his frankness, willingness to innovate and very strong drive. Om's paper will tell you more. Free mobile's offering came out today, and the presentation is well worth watching. 

Free : lancement de l'offre mobile par Free

Xavier gave a nice candid interview on french TV later today:

FreeMobile: Interview de Xavier Niel sur France 5 par SuperBeurkMan

Here's an interview less than a year ago with Xavier:

Visite des installations techniques de France Télévisions à Roland Garros 2011

Merci à Bernard et Arthur pour une belle visite et exhaustive des installations techniques à Roland Garros cet après-midi. J'y étais avec Olivier Ezratty, et nous attendons tous son compte-rendu exhaustif ;)

En pêle mêle j'ai vu enfin un premier service HbbTV (une norme européenne qui mêle un contenu TV et du contenu venant de l'internet), de la 3G super haute-définition (SDI), de la 3D passive, de la 3D active, un car régie 3D impressionant, les sous-sols télécoms, les plateaux de direct, les plateaux de commentaires, les coulisses, les équipes d'IBM qui fournissent les stats en temps réel, les salles de travail et de repos, qui seront intégralement démontées (3 ou 4 étages) dans 1 semaine...

Le président de France TV, Rémy Pflimlin, est même passé voir la démo en même temps que nous avec des invités VIP tels que le journaliste Nicolas Beytout que j'avais déjà croisé il y a fort longtemps ! Et il faisait très beau dans le village pendant que la sublime Sharapova perdait son match...

mise à jour : voici les photos d'Olivier, vous m'y verez dans ma tenue de vélo ;)

 

Mac OS X software I use all the time (3rd update)

Original post :21 May 2009 - updated 13 February 2010, 9 October 2010

I have several macs both at home and at work, and I keep asking myself all the time the same questions when I have to re-install a Mac. What software do I really use all the time and that I'd reinstall ? So here goes my personal list, feel free to add any piece that I should have added. Optional software in italic as well. I'm not adding standard software provided with OS X.

Internet

• Adium: multi-chat IM tool -> deprecated as I only use Skype, facebook chat and Gchat. maybe sometime again
• Cyberduck : ftp client (see also Transmit)
• Eventbox: flickr, twitter, facebook client -> It's now called Socialite.
• Firefox : my favourite browser with tons of stuff from userscripts.org. Testing out Chrome now as an alternative.
• Google Earth : best cartography of the world
• Skype : chat and VoIP

Multimedia - photography

• Apple Aperture : manage and edit your photos professionally (use this for pix taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II) - I use Aperture version 3 that has all the great features of iPhoto.
• Apple iPhoto'09 : manage my old picture collection (over 80,000 of them...) -> deprecated by Aperture 3
• Cooliris : see your pix and videos in a nice 3D environment
• Duplicate Annihilator: remove iPhoto duplicates -> deprecated. Need to find a similar tool for Aperture
  
• DxO Optics Pro 6: correct chromatic and optical aberrations on your pictures
• Flickr Uploadr : upload pix to Flickr
• iPhotoBuddy: manage multiple libraries in iPhoto easily -> deprecated
• Photomatix Pro : create HDR pictures
• Doubletake : create panoramic pictures (Hugin is a nice contender)
• PhotoBook : a desktop Facebook picture browser

• TrailRunner : sports route / GPS mapping - great for tagging and displaying pix

• facebook exporter for Aperture: plugin -> deprecated
• gmail exporter for Aperture : plugin -> deprecated
• Flickr lite exporter for Aperture: plugin -> deprecated
  

Multimedia - video

• Apple iMovie'09 : video editing
• DivX Player : exactly that ;)
• Flip4Mac : read wmv videos on mac
• handbrake : rip your own DVDs onto a MP4 on your mac ;)
• minitube: watch youtube in a nice offline program. Great to create playlists
• MPEG Streamclip : video converter
• Perian : all the missing video and audio codecs for your mac
• Turbo.264 : compress videos into mp4 with an external USB key from El Gato
• VideoMonkey: video encoder and transcoder. replaces iSquint (not available anymore), also FFMpegX
• VideoSpec : understand the codecs and settings of a video file
• VLC : universal video reader
• boxee: organise all your content
• hulu desktop : access USA catch-up TV
• Zattoo: watch TV online -> it's a paying system now. deprecated

Multimedia - audio

• Audacity : open source MP3 and sound editor
• Audio Hijack Pro : record the audio output of any application... (Wiretap Studio Pro also ;)
  
• Spotify : online library of music

Personal Productivity

• 1-Password: password management
• Adobe PDF Viewer: read PDF files
• Blue Phone Elite: manage your phones (SMS, backup, etc.) with bluetooth - I don't use it anymore as I've switched to iPhone
• DropBox : share hard disk with someone else online
• Evernote: take notes (i use mainly textedit now... although I like this app)
• Gmail notifier : shows emails unread in title bar - optional
  
• MailPlane : cocoa frontend to google's Gmail (also check Postbox, great mail client)
• Microsoft Office 2008 (the standard. Neoffice is an alternative) - Version 2011 is coming up
  
• Paparazzi : little tool to grab an HTML page 
• PDF SAM : split PDF into separate pages
• SnapZ Pro : screenshot and screencam 
• Teleport: manage several computers and screens with just one keyboard and mouse
• VueScan : scanner software

System management

• Fugu : ssh client
• growl: manage all notifications in a single place
  
• KISMac : detect and work with wireless networks
• Launch2net : tool to manage 3G key modem
• OmniDiskSweeper : clean up your hard disk by looking for large files (check also DiskInventoryX) -> deprecated now by Drive Genius 2
• Drive Genius 2: system management tools including Defrag and Drive Slim
• Data Rescue 3: undelete files
• Drive Warrior 4: rebuild directories 
• Onyx : tweek some secret OSX settings
• Parallels : emulator for WinXP, Windows 7 and Ubuntu on your mac
• SMC Fan Control: control the temperature of your mac 
• SuperDuper! : full backup of your mac (see also
• unRarX : uncompress .rar files
• ChickenVNC : VNC client (see also JollyFastVNC)
• xTorrent : P2P client (seems Acquisition and Transmission are other favourites) - I'm now using mainly Transmission
• AppFresh : keep all apps updated
  

Development

• Coda : text editor
• textmate : text editor (some swear by macVIM)
  
• MAMP : install PHP, Apache and MySQL on your mac - I don't code, took it off
  

Update: optional

• Bookpedia / DVDpedia : software to manage your home library - Delicious Library seems a great altenative
• xPad : a better text editor than textedit

• TuneUp: re-label your MP3 music - great, but paid version
• Senuti : backup your iPod or get music off it ;) (check also iPodRip)
• Mojo: share and download music with/from your friends...
• The Gimp : great free picture processing tool
• TorrentDam : search the torrent... (check also iSwipe)
• OmniDazzle: enhance your screenshots and presentations
• iWatchTV : track your favourite shows online
• Tor : surf the web anonymously
• MacTubes: youtube video player
• CoolaToola: backup to a DV tape
• FileJuicer: extract images from almost any document
• LittleSnitch: little software router to control what app talks to servers on the net...
• MenuMeters: stats on your menu bar
• Celtx: media pre-production workflow tool
• Burn: manage CD and DVD burning
• SuperCal : display calibration
• iDefrag: optimize that hard disk (check also Disk Genius) - deprecated, I bought Disk Genius
• DeepVacuum: download a site offline (check CocoaWGET too)
• iTerm : better terminal app
• Locomotive: self-contained package for Ruby on Rails development
• Snapflow: turn videos into pictures
• AppCleaner : cleanly uninstall stuff
• SecureFiles: create an encrypted virtual disk

Syncing Socialite across multiple Macs

I was looking to do just that with Socialite (by far my best client for the social web on OSX), and came across this great how-to guide, but that needs precisions.

I'm assuming Dropbox is installed (very nice service - highly recommended. I guess you could use any file syncing service, such as MobileMe as well) :

• Steps 1 to 5 are instructions for the FIRST computer. You will have to do different steps (and repeat) for each computer you want to sync with afterwards.
• Step 4 assumes your Dropbox folder is in ~/ (home directory). Change command to whatever you are using. If the folder name you created in Step 1 is not the one proposed, change the name correctly here.

On a new computer :

• no need for Step 1: the folder should sync automatically if Dropbox was correctly installed
• step 2: yes, quit socialite on the 2nd mac if it was running. I'm assuming here it was installed properly. DON'T RELAUNCH IT until all the configuration is done.
• skip step 3 : it should sync automatically. Make sure the other Mac is in sync already (menu bar icon comes in handy here)
• step 4 : DELETE the local Socialite folder first. you won't need it. Then make sure the directories match for Dropbox location (I did a nested symlink, because I have my Dropbox on a RAID config)
• step 5 : not yet. You need to sync keychains first.

Setting Keychains on the 1st computer:

• Step 4 is a bit confusing. I had 2 twitter.com entries (maybe another program was using it too. But I only use socialite anyways. You should only have one entry, the others are either from previous installs, or from another program).

Setting keychains on the new computer :

• well this was not described.
• Launch "Keychain Access.app". Import Items menu. Navigate to your Dropbox folder, and select the Keychain file created in Step 2 of "keychains on the 1st computer).

And with that you're all set, to sync across several macs. All your searches, feeds, read/unread, starred, etc. will appear.

The remaining problem, is that YOU CANNOT USE 2 open socialite.apps at the same time (unless I'm wrong here). That's because each will try to write to the SQL file, and you will get conflicting copies. Dropbox will treat them as separate files. So good hygiene is to open Socialite only on one computer; but whenever you open it on another one (after closing it on the 1st computer), you should be fine.

Usages :

• home computer vs. office computer
• laptop vs desktop computers (me)
• folks tracking customer support (for example) on different shifts.

Hope this helps.

thoughts on the cloud : part I - history

When the first commercial computers came out in the 60s, they were so expensive that time-sharing was invented: people had to queue to get time on them (read accounts of those days: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution or Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire). In the 70s, minicomputers allowed for a larger distribution on computing power, opening the era of client-server computing. The 80s were then ready for the Personal Computer era, where most semi-basic work (spreadsheet, accounting, word processing, desktop publishing, etc.) could be done locally.

That paradigm lasted until the mid-90s when the world-wide-web arrived on the consumer scene; and we all started putting back processing power in a central computer, the web server associated with a site. Local computers tended to behave again like a dumb terminal (à la VT100) with a browser. But users still did lots of stuff locally (email, photography, video editing, etc.). 

10-15 years later (around 2004 with Flickr's API launch), the paradigm changed again. Browsers got intelligent (with AJAX and HTML5 soon), enabling local processing power and more importantly, mashups (Wired magazine had a very interesting article covering this trend very early on - maybe I'll find it), allowing (either on client-side or server-side) mixing of several sites/services, to create a new service. The central computer (company) is not one anymore, but a number of them. Hence the term cloud-computing was minted to described this new "central computer" consisting of many "central computers" (actually in the tens of thousands now, to compensate for scalability. Check slideshare for horror stories).

There's an interesting way to look at all this, analogous to the MVC model in software engineering:

1. the presentation layer : what you see. Basically it's now your browser and may of your "web 2.0" applications. But with HTML5, it's soon going to be your operating system as well (Jolicloud is doing this for example). It's like a super-charged VT100, capable of rich user interfaces. Processing power there should be limited to displaying intelligently whatever information you're looing. It's already "cloud" enabled with native Internet protocol
   
2. the processing layer : see the history above. We started with mainframes, moved down to computers, moving up to "cloud" servers on the web. There's no real reason now to buy computing power for your desktop or laptop, since MOST of your processing is done on the web now. So unless you have to do video rendering or serious gaming (but Bigpoint could prove you wrong), get a cheap computer (on the CPU side, ultra-fast on disk and memory - but that's another post)
   
3. so we're left with the data layer. If we assume that computers have lost their value, then there's a whole new space here in moving the value to the data:

• you might want your data all the time with you, WHATEVER the computer you are using, which means you need access or a copy of your data + your environment (settings) + your apps (bookmarks, passwords, or even installable apps) to read the data. Many computers are somehow addressing this : Dropbox, Allmyapps, exoplatform, AgileWeb... It's a complicated market, as most apps are not setup to host their settings, and data on a remote drive. And it's complicated to do for each app. So either you set up all locally, or all remotely... in terms of simplicity #fail
  
• In addition, a lot of your experience is done online with no local copy, nor backup (think blogs, facebook, twitter...). Since you're relying more and more on this, companies such as Backupify or LaCie are helping you access but also secure this data. The problem is that users don't understand the value of backups, unless they experience a disaster once. #fail
  
• since the world has gone quadruple-play (mobile, web, TV, connected device), you want to have access to your data with an appropriate "presentation layer" on each screen, wherever you are. Folks are attempting this: Dropbox is doing a great job, twitter and gmail are available almost anywhere, Pogoplug has a solution, but we're not quite there yet... #fail ;)

Hence, to me, the real challenge of cloud computing now is not the processing layer: that was solved with the evolution of the web. It's still the presentation layer for many devices (but many folks are working on that now). It's all about the data layer. It's how do I get a seamless computing experience, whatever my device (even if it's not mine), wherever I am, today and tomorrow ?

(Pix from Flickr)

is your Mac running slow ? a few tricks to improve hard disk performance !

Every now and then, I feel my laptop (MacBookPro 4,1) starts to feel slow again. There are a number of ways to improve the performance of it :

- clean reinstall of the OS and all programs (yuck! takes forever) : this should take care of all those unwanted programs running

- full backup to an external disk, and full restore : this should take care of fragmentation on the disk

- replace your existing hard disk with a faster one and of larger capacity. I've never done this, although sounds tempting :) and I'm pretty sure you'll be voiding your Apple warranty... (anyone has tried this already ?)

- add more memory (unless you've reached the physical limit like me), or use some smarter memory manager (there used to be some memory defragmenting tools)

- there's another way: step-by-step hard disk maintenance:

Here's how I do it :

1) full backup of your laptop (works for any desktop too) to an external hard drive using firewire or USB. I love SuperDuper (free for a full backup, $27.95 for incremental backups - well worth it in my opinion) for this. I wouldn't miss this step, as you never know what might go wrong in the next steps.

2) boot your laptop from another computer (Mac) in target mode (press T on your laptop keyboard when you boot it, after connecting it with a firewire cable to another Mac). Your laptop has now become just an external hard disk, it's easier to work with it, and you'll be using only programs on the other computer. Make sure you use the same operating system version on both computers !!! (I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.2).

3) run a full disk check with Disk Utility (a standard tool on OSX). Make sure you run "repair" on your external laptop disk, until there are no more errors left. These tend to occur every now and then (bad directory count, bad file count, etc.).

4) Now, let's optimize the directory structure so that the OS finds your files really fast. DiskWarrior 4 ($99,95 - a very expensive tool, but sometimes necessary for other purposes, such as a crashed disk) will do this for you. Think of it as a directory defragmenter, although it builds it from scratch.

Before:

After:

5) now let's defrag your disk. Indeed all official Apple literature will tell you it makes no difference, but indeed, the disk tends to become fragmented, and therefore add the milliseconds for reading, moving the disk head, etc. and it starts to slow down. Another utility, Drive Genius 2 ($99 - very useful, and it does other things for you too) will do that for you. 

This operation might take a long time (sometimes a few days), so make sure you won't need your laptop for that period (or otherwise plug it in several nights in a row), and that NO ELECTRICITY problem might occur...

6) (optional). Drive Genius also has an option to find useless files (PowerPC or x64 versions), duplicate files, etc. you might want to run this to free up some space, although it won't really impact performance.

7) one you're done, boot your laptop again, it should be faster and run as smoothly as before. If you get any problem after a while, just restore your backup to the previous state. If after one day everything is working just fine, then you can do a new full backup with SuperDuper to an external disk (unless you had 2 disks, then you could immediately do a new backup of your optimized laptop. It's actually a great idea to have 2 backups that you use on a rolling basis). Remember that in case your laptop is stolen, or your laptop falls and is broken (both situations have happened to me), you can immediately boot of this external backup, and start working. How much is your data and your time worth ? Much more than the small money and time spent doing regular backups I'm sure !

I know it's a chore to use all these different programs (that should have been included by default with OSX), but a proper power user should not live without them, and not have at least 2 backups of his data (in addition to a potential Time Machine backup drive for incremental versions of files). There's another program I use to undelete files I deleted by accident (mainly on my picture external CF cards, but you never know): Data Rescue 3 ($99 - save $49 if you buy it as a bundle with Drive Genius).

I'm eager to read about your power user tips as well.

Time Magazine Twitter

Time Magazine Twitter, originally uploaded by Stephane Zibi.

my indispensable internet services

With the economic downturn, I was wondering what were the indispensable services that I need to continue my daily life, even if some of them disappear ?

Personal online presence:
- my blog is on Typepad
- my pictures are on Flickr (a Yahoo! company)
- my links are on del.icio.us (a Yahoo! company)
- my videos are on vpod.tv, although I've started putting them on Youtube (I hate their 10min limitation)
- my radio programming is on blip.fm
- my micro-blogging is on twitter
- my travels are on dopplr

Productivity:
- my personal email is now on gmail.com, and our corporate email is also on enterprise gmail
- google search for internet searching
- wikipedia for everything related to knowledge
- skype for interpersonal communication : chat, VoIP, video calls (excellent tool) (I use FRING on my phone)
- techmeme as my start page for news on the tech world
- mobissimo, easyvols and opodo to check for the best deal on flights
- tripadvisor and tablethotels to book nice hotels
- dl.free.fr to share big files by email. I'm sure there are better services out there. any suggestions?
- maps with either maps.google.com or Google Earth

Online entertainment:
- I really like Spotify, although I occasionally use deezer.com, last.fm. Blip.fm is already a favourite up there already.
- Facebook is a big time waster, but great to connect with family and old friends
- to some extent I still subscribe to a rare few audio and video podcats on itunes (the excellent Cédric Ingrand shows for example)
- every now and then I catch up on a missed TV series episode online, somehow :)

Personal Hobbies:
- my genealogy is at geneanet
- and I like reading about photography at KenRockwell.com and dpreview.com.

News
- I now occasionally go to read up on gigaom.com, techcrunch.com for tech news. occasionally.
- and also occasionally for geek stuff on engadget.com.
- A big absent here is news of the world (main news and financial news): it seems to me it has become a total commodity, and google is a better alternative to search for a story than a main media site although I would still check 20minutes.fr, lemonde.fr, nytimes.com, cnn.com every now and then.

Note that RSS readers and other blog search platforms are not there anymore (technorati & co).

In each category (except for travel, as I look for the best price), I'm down to just ONE service, and have no interest in being present in others. Some of the big guys are still there (Yahoo!, Google), some others not (Microsoft, News Corp), and still a few small independent services manage to grab a lot of my attention (twitter for example).

I've never been a player, so no online gaming for me (WOW, Warhammer, Konfabulator & co.);
no real online video for me (Hulu.com - great interface but I don't use it, ditto for joost.com) ;
only ONE service is different on my mobile phone, and i use many of the mobile versions (Google Maps, Gmail, ...).

I don't seem to trust online services for my backups (as in me.com & other storage services), and have no real need for cloud computing on a personal level.

And I don't yet really use any of the SaaS toots either : Google Docs, Salesforce & co.

That's a huge narrowing down of services isn't it ? From all of what is out there...

new MBP announced for Oct 14th ;)

(via techcrunch)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

For sale: GeForce 8800 (early 2008) video card for Mac Pro

Computer gear for sale, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

I bought this card by mistake last month at the Apple Store in San Francisco. I told them I had a 1st generation MacPro; but this card if for newer Mac Pros (early 2008).

It's in pristine condition, although I only have the card, cable and little bag, as I left the packaging in the USA.

More details on the official page:
store.apple.com/us/search?find=geforce

Please send your offer to rodrigo(dot)sepulveda(at)gmail(dot)com