For now, Adobe Flash is the closest web video comes to having one single unified standard, but unfortunately it has its own set of problems.The full version is not at all ubiquitous on mobile devices, which are becoming increasingly important. The iPhone, for example, does not have Flash. The plugin is notorious for crashing browsers, hogging CPU resources and performing poorly. Even if Adobe were to address all of these issues, placing full control of web video in the hands of a single company and their proprietary format is a bad idea.

Another format war?

What is needed for Web video is one single unified, efficient, and hardware-accelerated standard that is not under the sole control of a single company. The W3C tried to get us there by adding <audio> and <video> tags to HTML5, but was drawn into a controversy over which format to support.

Apple, Google/YouTube, and Nokia favor H.264, which is widely implemented and has hardware acceleration. Mozilla, Wikipedia, Opera, and Dailymotion favor Theora, a completely open format. Apple and Nokia fear unknown patent issues with Theora, and Google doesn’t consider it efficient enough. Theora’s supporters dislike H.264′s royalty fees. YouTube uses H.264 but not Theora, and Firefox 3.5 does the opposite.

Uncertain conclusion

Both codecs have some important proponents supporting them, but in some key areas H.264 has advantages over Theora. It’s built into commonly used video editing software, used by YouTube, and has hardware acceleration so that it works in devices like the iPhone. Microsoft has a possible conflict of interest and has yet to announce Internet Explorer support for the <audio> and <video> portions of HTML5. It’s unfortunate that standardized web video is being held back by this mess, but I hope it will eventually come to be.

See also: “Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate” by Ars Technica’s Ryan Paul.

As a student, I’ve made wikis for specific group projects for collaborating outside of class. Unlike phone calls or email, information was preserved and available for the entire group to see. We could update them whenever we wanted, from wherever we wanted. We could build on each other’s work, make changes a little at a time, and even search. Once the projects were done, their wikis were simply deleted. Throwaway wikis can be very useful.

There is an overwhelming number of wiki solutions to choose from. You might be tempted to choose based on number of features, but a wiki is a collaborative tool. It should be simple and easy to use. PBworks is free, takes about a minute to set up, is hosted for you, and will be extremely easy for the other people to use. If you want a self-hosted wiki and your server supports PHP, I recommend PmWiki. If you don’t have PHP, WikiMatrix is a comparison site that may help you decide.

MediaWiki is noteworthy for powering Wikipedia and having many features, but in my opinion there are easier-to-use options available.

Tangerine! from the Potion Factory is a $24.95 shareware application that quickly analyzes your each song in your iTunes library and automatically calculates the BPM and beat intensity. Within its very well done, very Mac-like interface, it lets you create iTunes playlists following a desired pattern. For example, you can make a workout playlist which becomes faster and more intense, reaches a climax, and then slows for your cool down. You can also control the playlist’s length, BPM range, and/or beat intensity range. Perhaps most importantly, BPM data can be exported to iTunes so that you can make smart playlists such as the two I described earlier.

A competing application which may be worth looking into is beaTunes, which is $31.95 shareware that runs on both Windows and OS X. Personally, I prefer Tangerine for its interface.

If you’re new to the Mac, welcome. I hope you enjoy it, and I’d like to point you to some resources to help you get started. Apple, of course, provides some help itself. The Mac comes with a useful but often forgotten Help menu. Apple provides a support site, AppleCare phone number, and genius bars at their retail stores where you can go to ask questions. Then, of course, there’s Google. Let’s move beyond those, though.

Even in the age of the Internet, there’s nothing quite like a book to give you a nice starting point. David Pogue has written some excellent books, such as Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard edition and Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual. Reading either of those from start to finish would get you off to a great start.

Popular Mac magazines include MacWorld and Mac|Life, but frankly I’ve come to prefer the Internet because it’s so much more up-to-date.  Don McAllister has a video tutorial podcast named ScreenCastsOnline, which has both free and paid lessons. Victor Cajiao has a free audio podcast called Typical Mac User. For Mac news, there’s Adam Christianson‘s MacCast and the TWiT network’s MacBreak Weekly. As for regular websites, you can try TUAW and Mac Forums.

The best places for finding software are IUseThis, MacUpdate, and VersionTracker. Each are directories of Mac software from all over the web, but IUseThis puts an interesting twist on that. People can register on IUseThis and tell it what software they actually use. Not just have, but actually use. IUseThis then ranks all apps based on number of users or recent spikes in interest. It’s a great way to discover new apps, and I’ve only scratched the surface. It’s worth pointing out that many of the best Mac apps are either freeware or inexpensive shareware.

Hopefully this helps. If you’ve got any further suggestions, please share them in the comments. Also, notice the “Share” link below for passing this on to someone you know.

RSS Menu is a free menu extra for OS X, and its interface is very simple. When closed, it’s just a little icon that sits in the right side of your menu bar, and when open it looks like a standard OS X menu. Choose a feed, then a headline and the web page opens in your default web browser. It’s like having Firefox’ Live Bookmarks without having to use Firefox. It also has scheduled checking of feeds, notifications via Growl and/or speech, and optional integration with iTunes podcasts and Safari RSS. RSS Menu is free as I said, but if you like it the developer accepts donations via PayPal or Kagi.

What feed reader do you use, and why? Sound off in the comments.

Folding@home

An important biological function that scientists still don’t have a firm understanding of is how proteins fold (assemble themselves). By studying the results of computer simulations, they hope to find cures to diseases resulting from proteins misfolding. These simulations are extremely complex, to the point that they require massive distributed computing. Nobody on their own has enough computing power to do the work alone. The Folding@home project needs the help of many computers from around the world. Further information can be found in their FAQ.

Introduction to smart playlists

iTunes has a feature called smart playlists. Unlike manually populated regular playlists, smart playlists are automatically populated by iTunes based on criteria that you specify. Also, they can automatically update as content is added to your library, or as information about an item changes. For example, you can make a smart playlist for a particular decade, or for songs with particular ratings. As you add more music from that decade, or as you change the ratings of your music, those smart playlists will automatically reflect those changes.

You create a smart playlist by choosing “File” -> “New Smart Playlist…” For more information, see the iLounge.com article, “How to create smart playlists.”

How this will work

Smart playlists can work together with each other by requiring their items to be in a particular playlist or not be in a particular playlist. This very powerful feature is critical to this guide: four playlists will be working together to produce a single playlist, which we’ll call “Balanced.” That may sound complicated, but you only have to set it up once, and the results are absolutely worth it.

Playlist 1: “Blocklist”

You might have some content you don’t want coming up on shuffle. Create a smart playlist called “Blocklist” of items which meet “any” of your unwanted criteria. Give it some thought. Some examples: Christmas music, videos, items below a certain rating or above/below a certain length, and spoken word like podcasts or audiobooks.

Once you have a playlist containing everything you don’t want, other smart playlists will be able to exclude anything found in that playlist. By doing it this way, you can block unwanted items in multiple smart playlists without unnecessary duplication of rules.

Playlists 2 & 3: “Been a while” & “Forgotten”

Half of “Balanced” is going to be the least often played of the least recently played music in your library. You will need two playlists to accomplish this. You will also need to decide how much content you ultimately want in your “Balanced” playlist, in terms of either time, file size (MB/GB), or number of items. You might want to base it on, for example, the size of an audio CD (80 minutes) or MP3 CD (X number of MB) for easy burning.

Create a smart playlist called “Been a while” with this rule: “Playlist” “is not” “Blocklist.” Below that, tell it to “limit to” your desired limit (see previous paragraph), selected by “least recently played.”

Next, create a smart playlist called “Forgotten” with this rule: “Playlist” “is” “Been a while.” Give it half the limit you set for “Been a while,” selected by “least often played.”

Playlist 4: “Randomness”

The other half of the Balanced playlist is made up of just one playlist. If “Balanced” was purely made up of the previous playlists, then over time your content would keep playing in a similar order. To mix things up, you still need some true randomness.

Create a smart playlist called “Randomness.” Tell it to match “all” of the following three rules: (1) “Playlist” “is not” “Blocklist,” (2) “Playlist” “is not” “Forgotten,” and (3) “Last played” “is not in the last” [some threshold]. I personally chose two weeks as my threshold. Give “Randomness” the same limit as “Forgotten,” but make it selected by “random.”

Finally, “Balanced”

The  “Balanced” playlist itself is very simple. Tell it to match “any” of the following two rules: (1) “Playlist” “is” “Forgotten” or (2) “Playlist” “is” “Randomness” and press “OK.” Choose “File” -> “New Playlist Folder” and create a folder that you can tuck the other playlists into. You’re done! Now sit back, relax, and enjoy a library that is always fresh!

1. Check if you have a compatible router. If you do, follow the installation instructions carefully, realizing that you are modifying firmware at your own risk. Set your router as you like and then continue to step 2.
2. 

   Administration -> Scripts -> Init

   
   

   In your router’s config panel, go to Administration -> Scripts. Paste the following in the “Init” script, which will run when the router is booted. This will create an empty text file called adblock.conf

   sleep 3
   touch /etc/adblock.conf
   sleep 2
   logger adblock.conf created




3. 

   Administration -> Scripts -> WAN Up

   
   

   Once the router obtains an Internet/WAN connection, we want it to download the latest ad server list. Still under Administration -> Scripts, choose WAN Up and paste the following:

   logger WAN UP Script will execute after 30sec please wait.....
   sleep 30
   wget -O /etc/adblock.conf "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=dnsmasq&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext"
   service dnsmasq restart




4. 

   Advanced -> Scheduler

   
   

   Now we want to set the router to update its ad blocking rules on a regular basis. Go to Administration -> Scheduler.







5. Check the box labeled “Enabled” under Custom 1, 2, or 3.

6. For the time, choose a reasonable update interval that isn’t overly aggressive. I chose to update once a week (every 10080 minutes, Everyday).
7. Paste the following into the box labeled “Command.”

   wget -O /etc/adblock.conf "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=dnsmasq&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext" && service dnsmasq restart;

8. 

   Advanced -> DHCP / DNS

   
   

   Almost done! Go to Advanced -> DHCP / DNS, and make sure that “Use Internal Caching DNS Forwarder” is checked.







9. Paste the following into the box labeled “Dnsmasq custom configuration.”

   conf-file=/etc/adblock.conf

10. If you ever suspect that the adblocking is breaking a particular website (such as streaming video), you can temporarily disable it just by removing the text in step 9.