Just a quick one as my post on where to find the hashtag on an Apple Mac keyboard seemed to help a lot of people out.
I have VMWare installed on a few Macs running Window XP and Vista on various computers and it has recently become necessary to type a backslash when entering a user name and password. Unfortunately the key is not in the same position as in the Mac OS.
Bottom left hand corner, the ~ key (I think its called the tilde key next to the z)
Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.
Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.
I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.
Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below, or choose Control Panel > Classic View > Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.
With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!
If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?
See how I got this to work on the PS3
I often want to take a few of my favourite movies away with me when I go away. It is possible to convert your DVD’s into a format that will play on your iPod, iPhone or any portable device to save you physically carrying the discs around with you. I am going to talk about a software I use on a Mac but you can download similar software for windows, just look on download.com or softpedia.com.
I use Handbrake to convert my DVD’s it’s really easy to use and now comes with present for most popular portable devices. Open up handbrake and insert you DVD, if you DVD Player software loads up just quit out of this as you don’t want the computer doing two things at once. 
Choose Source in the top left hand corner and locate your disc, you don’t have to go deep into folder structure, top level is enough for handbrake to assess the disc. 
Once selected Handbrake will review all the chapter on the disc. Make sure you have selected the first chapter right through to the last chapter to ensure you convert the entire DVD.
Select the preset for the output video using the drawer on the right handside of the interface. Handbrake now has presets for iPhone, iPod and iPod Touch to make things nice and simple but if you are worried about file size then you can fine tune the settings yourself.
Once you are happy and have selected where you would like your file to be saved hit the Start button next to the Source button at the top of the interface.
Open the file in iTunes and it will be copied into your iTunes Media Folder, next time you sync you device the file will be uploaded.
Also see Duplicating DVD’s and CD’s using Mac OSX’s Disk Utility
The other night I finally grew tired of rebooting my Macbook to use windows programs, saving work to hard drives and rebooting back in Mac OS X.
I downloaded the latest trial version of VM Fusion fully prepared to delete the drive partition and re install all of my software (that would have taken hours) but VMWare luckily had thought of that.
I installed the virtual desktop and fired it up. To my surprise the first option on the list of windows choices was to boot from Bootcamps partitioned drive. Without hesitating I went for it. It does some stuff at the beginning which takes a minute or so but then I was in. Fusion needed to install VM Tools in order to get full functionality and for some reason went through installing device drivers again.
I did get the blue screen of death at one point but I think this was down to installing too many drivers and updates at the same time, but this lead me to start it up again in the old fashioned Bootcamp way and fix it so that still works too.
Very pleased! Took a little time to get fully functional but saved me a lot of time and will save me a in the future!
This might solve the media streaming to the Xbox issue, watch this space.
As if it wasn’t annoying enough that on the Apple Mac Keyboard sometimes the @ sign and ” are sometimes not as displayed on the keys (mine is right in the Mac OS and wrong in my Windows XP environment) but just wait until you write your next Tweet and need to emphasis a word with a hashtag, where is it? this was only brought to my attention in the past week and reminded me that there were a few other characters I have been meaning to find without having to google it and then paste it into my work. Here’s a few useful symbols and characters.
# = Alt + 3
€ = Alt + 2
© = Alt + G
• = Alt + 8
And one just for fun
= Alt + Shift + K
Thanks Nick Buckley for raising the #hashtag issue
Unfortunately, though I tried to avoid it, I do have a need for both Microsoft software as well a Mac based software, both at work and at home. I am fortunate enough to run two different set ups for running windows on an Apple Mac machine. At work I have a VMWare environment known as VM Fusion running Windows XP and on my home MacBook I have Windows vista running on a partitioned part of the drive, set up using Apples Bootcamp which comes pre installed on the Mac. For both situations you will need a working copy of windows.
VMWare Fusion Environment
The VMWare environment essentially loads a program and within this program loads the Windows operating system. All programs such as Microsoft Office work as usual within the environment. Fusion also has a handy little feature known as Unity which hides the VMWare surround displaying you windows programs in much the same way as you mac software. If, for example you minimise Word it slinks down to the Dock and not the Windows taskbar. If you take the time to set up VMWare Fusion you can also conveniently save down your files to convenient places within the Mac system so as to avoid the need to drag and drop files between the operating systems. We have VMWare fully integrated on the company network which means full support from the IT department.
Bootcamp
Bootcamp is relatively easy to install, it happens in two stages. First, you partition the drive, then you install your windows operating system on the partition. The benefit of running the Windows OS separate to Mac OS you would think would be less of a drain on resources but I have to say that when I boot up in Vista the Apple Mac hardware reacts in a completely different way. The fan kicks in pretty early and the system gets hot. Granted the speed seems to be good but if I’m honest with the processors and ram I am operating with I don’t think I’d notice a difference in speed between my windows programs running in Bootcamp and the windows programs running in VMFusion, the downside being running two operating systems at the same time. The main disadvantage is the fact that the two are separate, you can create a drop box to pass files between the two setups as you can see the partitioned drive from each system but it means rebooting.
In summary, if you are prepared to folk out a little extra for a VMWare licence it is well work it. It just means a more seamless work flow between applications. If you want to copy and paste from a window in outlook to Photoshop you can do, if you want to drag and drop from your windows desktop to an application you can do. As a time saver and for ease of use I’d say VMWare Fusion is the winner.
Although not strictly good practise to take video from the internet for use in your local projects it is something I am asked a lot about and how do I do it.
There are two stages to this, firstly the ability to download the file and secondly encoding the file for use. Thanks to various firefox addons downloading the files are not an issue. I use Video Download Helper as I have the most success with it from multiple sites. Recent improvements allow you to convert the file server side and download it although as this does not come packaged it means you need to install ffmpeg locally. To install ffmpeg on a windows machine follow the instructions in this link. For a Mac however watch this space as I am currently installing it. In the meantime I recomend the shareware ffmpegx, this provides a reasonable desktop solution. You will need to download some codecs but the location of these are shown on the softwares start up window. Save these down to a folder that you are not likely to change I have a folder called ffmpeg in my profile folder. Browse to these files at the start up screen and you are set to go.
Using Quicktime Pro
Once I have downloaded the flv I currently open it using QuickTime. To do this you will need to install perian, a codec bundle that improves the amount of video files that QuickTime can handle, while your at it go to Apples site > Quicktime and install as many codecs as possible too. Using Quicktime Pro (you will need to upgrade) you can export to most popular formats and even more if in the Quicktime Preferences under the Advanced tab you click Show Legacy Encoders and check the box. To export to windows media video I have flip4mac studio installed to export to wmv for presentations.
