SAN FRANCISCO, CA — At this week's Macworld Expo, Cloak announced the release (previously in public beta) of their Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution for both iOS and OS X. Dave Peck, Founder, gave us an overview of the benefits of their product. Everyone loves public Wi-Fi access, be it through your ISP, or available…
John F. Braun
John F. Braun is a software and computer engineer with over 20 years of development experience, and has AS, BS and MS degrees in various computing disciplines, so his friends and colleagues are somewhat surprised that he?s a Mac enthusiast. Having worked in an environment comprised largely of PCs, and watching others wrestle with the horror that is Windows, he's glad to come home to a MacBook Pro and Mac mini at the end of the day.
Articles by John F. Braun
HP Demonstrates World's Fastest Desktop Printer
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — HP was demonstrating a soon to be released inkjet printer that rivals both other inkjet and color laser printers in terms of speed. We received a demo of the unit from Larry Tracy, Manager, Business InkJet, at the Macworld/iWorld Media Preview Reception. HP Officejet Pro X551 One unique feature of the…
Daylight Viewfinder: The Camera Viewfinder for the iPhone
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Daylight Viewfinder is a combination of hardware and software to help you take photos on your iOS device, and Paul Anderson, Sig Innovations Engineer/Owner, gave The Mac Observer a demonstration at the Macworld/iWorld Innovation Showcase. The showcase gives exhibitors a chance to display their products to the media before the chaos of the show…
ACCELL UltraAV USB 2 to HDMI Adapter Provides an Easy HDMI Connection
The ACCELL UltraAV USB 2.0 to HDMI Adapter allows Mac and Windows users to send audio and video to an HDMI display by connecting it to a USB port. The convenience of this solution versus others is that one doesn’t need to connect to separate audio and video sources to produce an HDMI signal; all…
Samsung SSD Provides a Speedy Upgrade - for a Price
The Samsung 470 Series Solid State Drive is this company’s first entry into the consumer SSD market. As a producer of many of the components used in other SSDs, as well as providing OEM SSD solutions for various computer manufacturers, we were surprised that they haven’t entered this market earlier, having introduced this drive in…
Get Down with Your Optical Discs & Burn with Disco
The preferences allow you to customize the disc as soon as you insert it. You can auto append the date to the discs name, auto append the date when it’s untitled (often the default) and even have the program warn you when a disc is untitled. To make the most of your write-once media, you…
Lantronix xPrintServer Allows iOS Devices to Use Network Printers
The xPrintServer is a small unit (4.5 x 2.37 x 0.87-in) about the size of an iPhone, with two connections, one for power, and an RJ-45 jack for a 100BASE-T connection to your network. It can also connect to nearby Wi-Fi enabled printers. Once connected to your network or in range of wireless printers, it…
Map Your Wi-Fi Coverage with NetSpot
NetSpot allows you to do a site survey for your home or building. A site survey is a diagram that shows various Wi-Fi parameters for a floor or section of your house or building. The first step is to create a map, first by giving the maximum dimensions (in feet or meters) and then using…
Schneider Expands iPhone Photography Options with iPro Lens System
The first component is a study metal case that both protects your iPhone, but also provides two tripod mounts, as well as enabling the attachment of the additional lenses contained in the kit. The second component is a combination handle/lens case. It can be a handle, when attached to the case, to help stabilize shots,…
SanDisk Introduces Memory Vault to Store Memories for 100 Years
SanDisk Memory VaultIn order to have quantifiable data to show how the Memory Vault Chronolock technology can support 100 year data retention, accelerated temperature cycling and the Arrhenius acceleration factor was used to simulate the effects to data retention over long durations of memory usage. The 8 GB Memory Vault is US$49.99, and the 16…
Browse Files on Your iDevice with iPhone Explorer
iPhone Explorer Browser WindowWhen you start up iPhone Explorer, you’ll see your attached device, along with the amount of space used, and total space. Clicking on the triangle next to the device should reveal two directories: Apps and Media. If you prefer, you can choose a column or icon view, instead of the default list…
CalDigit AV Drive & SuperSpeed ExpressCard: a Zippy Combination
The CalDigit AV drive is a 1TB external drive designed to be used for audio and video applications. These applications often demand high throughput, so the AV has two of the fastest interfaces you can find, two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 3.0 port. To provide USB 3.0 connectivity, we used the CalDigit SuperSpeed…
Find Out Who’s Messing with Your Drive with fseventer
Every Mac needs to interact with a drive, be it a traditional mechanical hard drive, once of these fancy new SSD (Solid State Drive) devices, or even a network drive, often referred to as NAS (Network Attached Storage). Sure, you can use Activity Monitor and its Disk Activity tab, or a utility like iStat Menus to…
Altigen Shows iFusion Docking Station for iPhone
iFusion from Altigen The iFusion dock will accept the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4, and provides power, battery charging and data synchronization via an integrated USB cable. There’s both a handset and a hands-free speakerphone, and the five buttons on the phone control Bluetooth pairing, mute, speakerphone, volume up and volume down. A 3.5mm stereo port…
H-Squared Shows Mini rack for Mounting Mac mini
Mini rack from H-SquaredEach Mini rack can accommodate up to six Mac mini (mid 2010) computers which have a removable bottom panel. The Mac mini is mounted in a vertical orientation, allowing easy access to all of the mini’s ports, and allowing the mini to vent heat via the exhaust port. The cables attached to…
iPhone 4 Glif Stand: Concept to Product in Five Months
The GlifThe concept for the Glif came to Tom and Dan in July 2010. To receive funding for their concept, they approached Kickstarter, the the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world.Pledges for funding started in October of 2010, and the initial goal of $10,000 was reached by November 2010. During this time,…
Dolly Drive Introduces First Time Machine Online Backup
As many Mac OS X users know, Time Machine allows one to back up the content of their hard drive to another attached hard drive, a Time Capsule, or a drive connected to an AirPort Extreme. Dolly drive extends this concept by also allowing you to back up to the “cloud,” or a network drive…
Anonymize Your Internet Connections with Anonym
When you first start Anonym, you are given the choice to either Start Using Anonym, or Automatically Build My Proxy List. If you’re new to the use of proxy servers, your best bet is to choose the Automatic option. This will download a list of proxy servers, showing the IP address, port and type. Each…
Configure Your Mac’s Firewall with WaterRoof
WaterRoof (that’s the opposite of FireWall, get it?) is a GUI that allows you to interact with ipfw without all that nasty mucking about on the command line. When you start WaterRoof, you may be taken aback by the initial dialog, which provides buttons for Rules and Logs, and a Help button. Your first choice…
StreamWatcher: More Info on Your Mac’s Bandwidth
StreamWatcher displays a widow which shows all network connections between your Mac and other computers, be they on your local network, or on the Internet. For each connection, or stream, it displays the protocol being used (TCP or UDP) the source machine and port, the destination machine and port, the current upload and download speed…
Eye-Fi Pro X2 Lets Your Digital Camera See the World of WiFi
The Eye-Fi Pro X2 is a SDHC memory card for your digital camera. What sets it apart from other memory cards is that it contains a tiny WiFi radio. This gives you the ability to send your pictures to your computer or online sharing site, without having to plug your camera or memory card into…
Want to Get the Most Out of Your Remote? Check Out Remote Buddy!
Remote Buddy gives you the ability to control nearly any application using your Apple Remote. To get you started, it comes with Behaviors for over 100 applications, so you can start launching and controlling them immediately. If an application you’d like to control isn’t one of these, you can use the Behavior Construction Kit to…
Give Your WiFi Performance a Serious Boost with the Wi-Fire
INTRODUCTION Apple introduced AirPort wireless technology, aka WiFi, to the masses at the 1999 Macworld Expo in New York City. Since then, there have been many advances in the WiFi technology, which started with a modest throughput of 11 Mbps using 802.11b, then 54 Mbps using 802.11g, and 240 Mbps and beyond with 802.11n. One…
Want to Get More Disk Space? Check Out OmniDiskSweeper!
OmniDiskSweeper is a utility that will scan your entire hard drive, and display how much space is being used by both files and directories in an intuitive, hierarchal display that is also color coded to help you zoom in on the largest space wasters. Items that are in light purple are measured in gigabytes, dark…