iPad - the almost perfect device for my mother

I've tweeted it before. I really like the iPad, but it's not a device i need. Between a MacBook Pro and an iPhone which i already have, there simply isn't much use for a device mainly made to consume.

My consuming device is the iPhone, which is where i consume my twitter-feed, rss and occasionally even hook it up to a TV to watch a movie. For this, the screen size doesn't matter at all. When screen size does matter, which is mostly when i create things, there's the MacBook Pro which might even be hooked up to a 30" Cinema Display (which will be a perfect setup once Apple fixes the flaws of the Dual Link Adapter).

So who is it for?

The iPad is the perfect device for someone which does neither have an iPhone or any personal computer at all. Like – my Mother. She's in her late seventies, learned how to type when she was young but never used the internet. She's alone and i bet an iPad would help her kill some time by communicating with friends and relatives, browse the news on the web and maybe connect with like-minded.

Deal breaker

As many of you probably know from experience, the first line of support for a mother is not AppleCare, it is FamilyCare, which would be me. And that is the deal breaker. At least as it currently seems. There is no screen sharing for iPad yet.

So how would i be able to support my mother and quickly show her how to address an email again or where to go in order to make that type display larger so she can read it? I wouldn't and that, i believe, is a big omission from Apple for an audience which seems to be the perfect target for an iPad.

So here's hoping that Apple will quickly come up with some kind of back to my iPad. As there's no daemonizing for 3rd party apps, the chances are slim that someone like TeamViewer can fill this gap any time soon.

How to avoid system.log from being flooded on Mac OS X

Recently i had noticed my system.log being flooded by messages from mDNSResponder which is Bonjour (or Zero Config and formerly Rendezvous).

I had tons of messages like the following flood my system.log every 10 seconds:

04.03.10 12:56:16	mDNSResponder[18]	Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress._tcp.local. Application protocol name must be underscore plus 1-14 characters. See <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>
04.03.10 12:56:26	mDNSResponder[18]	Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress._tcp.local. Application protocol name must be underscore plus 1-14 characters. See <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>
04.03.10 12:56:36	mDNSResponder[18]	Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress._tcp.local. Application protocol name must be underscore plus 1-14 characters. See <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>
04.03.10 12:56:46	mDNSResponder[18]	Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress._tcp.local. Application protocol name must be underscore plus 1-14 characters. See <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>

The cause of the logs seem to be an older Mac OS X Server 10.3.9 box announcing a bonjour service which has a name longer than 14 characters. Short of being able to fix the cause, i was looking for a way to exclude such messages from being logged at all.

Syslogd and Filters

After a lot of googling, i discovered that on Mac OS X, syslogd not only uses /etc/syslogd.conf – as you probably knew – but also uses /etc/asl.com which offers some nice ways of configuring exactly what you want to be logged (see: man asl.conf and man asl). You can filter by log-lever, sender and even the specific contents of a message which is being logged.

Filtering by Sender

I my case, the sender of the log messages was mDNSResponder. So if i wanted to exclude anything from mDNSResponder is trying to log, i could add the following line to /etc/asl.conf:

? [= Sender mDNSResponder] ignore

After you made any changes to asl.conf, you need to restart syslogd to read the changed configuration. Syslogd is restarted with: sudo killall -HUP syslogd

Filtering by Message content

Filtering by Message content is equally trivial. In my case, the annoying message being constantly logged was Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress._tcp.local. Application protocol name must be underscore plus 1-14 characters. See <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>
You could just filter by message content, but to be save, i filter on both, sender and message content. Thank god, asl not only lets me filter by Message content but also by substring like so:

? [= Sender mDNSResponder] [S= Message Bad service type in ._MacOSXDupSuppress] ignore

Again, don't forget to restart syslogd after a change to asl.conf!

As it took me rather long googling a solution to my problem, i hope this post is being indexed nicely and will help others with a similar problem!

Update 2010-03-04 17:48 CET

It seems the above only really affects logging to the asl datastore. Messages filtered like above are not being displayed anymore if you use console.app and select ":All Messages" but unfortunately will still be written to /var/log/system.log.
Too bad.

Blue Beanie Day 2009. We have a hero.

Blue Beanie Day, showing our support for web standards by wearing a blue beanie.

Analytics to Earth for Mac OS X

Analytics to Earth is a Mac OS X Utility which lets you view Google Analytics Geo Reports in Google Earth

Download | Release Notes

I believe, looking at Geo Reports in Google Earth in 3D offers far more insight into the world wide usage of your site than the flat, colored map in Google Analytics. Therefore i developed Analytics to Earth. Maybe one day, Google will integrate KML export right into Google Analytics.
In the KML files generated by Analytics to Earth, each page view is represented by a logarithmically scaled yellow line. Red lines represent more than 1.000 page views.

Using the Google Analytics API, Analytics to Earth downloads geo reports of a given timeframe, displays them in the built in browser or converts them into a .kml file which you can open in Google Earth.

Usage:
After you launch the App, simply enter your Google Analytics Email and Password (needed to log in to the GA API), then specify a timeframe by setting a start- and end date. Clicking on the "Save" will then save the KML file to disk, where you can open it using Google Earth. Clicking on "View" will display the report in the built in browser using the Google Earth Internet Plugin.

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or newer
• A Google Analytics Account
• Google Earth to view the KML file

Installing:

• Download
• Unpack the ZIP by double clicking on it
• Double click Analytics to Earth to start

If you like it, please:

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Donate easily and securely via Paypal using your credit card or Paypal account.

All traffic to the Google Analytics api is done securely via SSL. Application updates are downloaded from https://secure.spiceislands.net which is my only domain with an SSL certificate.
Software updates delivered with the beautiful Sparkle framework.