ExpanDrive

For those of you out there who have BIngodisk accounts – please be aware that at the end of the month Bingodisk, an only disk service formerly run by Joyent – is being turned off. We are offering all Bingodisk customers a simple and hopefully painless migration path into Strongspace. Simply log in to www.strongspace using your username@bingodisk.com username and password and you will be presented with a path to migrate in. More on this soon, but we wanted to make sure the word was out. Thanks!

In case you’ve missed one of the many many reminders we’ve sent – please note that Strongspace v1 [Joyent Strongspace] is closing down this weekend. To migrate over to the all-new Strongspace just sign in at www.strongspace.com and you’ll be presented a transition page. For those who get this notice late, we’ll still be accepting migrations through mid-August. If you’re having trouble logging in, please email support@strongspace.com letting us know you need help or a password reset – please include your username!

BingoDisk migrations will be starting in a few days, so be on the lookout for that. Thanks!

We’ve just released ExpanDrive 1.8.4! To upgrade you’ll need to download the new installer and install overtop your existing installation. It will require a reboot to complete the installation as we have made a variety of tweaks to the filesystem driver.

This is the first ExpanDrive for Windows release in a bit and we want to let you know we haven’t forgotten about any of our loyal Windows users. We’re currently hard at work on merging ExpanDrive for Mac and ExpanDrive for Windows into a single product with a shared feature set. It’s our highest priority.

ExpanDrive v1.8.4 fixes most outstanding bugs as well and adds in a new automatic update system based on WinSparkle. Additional, this release adds in provides licensing for users of our upcoming Strongspace online storage service.

This is a solid update and we recommend you install it.

• NEW All new auto-updater based on WinSparkle auto-update framework
• NEW Automatic licensing for users of Strongspace.com online storage – ExpanDrive’s upcoming online storage service
• CHANGED Updated to OpenSSL 0.9.8l crypto library
• CHANGED Improved support for running in unprivileged environments
• CHANGED Updated command line processing to include support for passwords
• CHANGED Improved browsing performance of drives
• FIXED Fixed issue causing playback to fail on Windows Media Player 10
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would cause DFS mounted drives to function poorly while ExpanDrive was running
• FIXED Fixed licensing issue that could incorrectly warn of a corrupted license
• FIXED Fixed and tweaked many other small issues

We’ve just released ExpanDrive 2.1.0! To upgrade you can use our auto updater in the Preferences tab for Software Update or download and install by hand.

This release brings a major improvement to our S3 engine. It is a near-complete rewrite with a new high-speed connection engine that will really boost performance for most users. Large files still take time to transfer, but browsing and interacting with S3 is even better. We’ve also fixed a variety of of small bugs and made a number of small but meaningful improvements.

In addition ExpanDrive 2.1.0 adds a Strongspace drive type for our upcoming online storage service. Keep your eye on this blog for more info about Strongspace coming soon.

This is a great update and we highly recommend you install it.

• NEWStrongspace drive type for easy connection to ExpanDrive’s upcoming Strongspace online storage service.
• NEW All-new high-speed Amazon S3 connection engine that will drastically performance during transfers and while browsing.
• NEWImprovements to ACL handling with S3 – Access-control policies on existing files are now preserved through modifications, including renames.
• NEW Sequential polling in large directory structures to improve browsing performance in large trees
• NEW S3 Files now have an r/w extended attribute named “com.expandrive.s3fs.ContentType” allowing access to set MIME-Type.
• NEW Symbolic links are now emulated. When viewed in earlier versions of ExpanDrive, these will appear as empty directories; when viewed in other S3 browsers, they will appear as keys containing the link target.
• NEW [Experimental] If a file has not been assigned a MIME content type, then when it is written back to S3, a content-type is inferred from the file’s contents and its filename. The result can be overridden using the extended attribute.
• NEW [Experimental] Experimental support for inheritable S3 ACLs on directory keys.
• CHANGED Improved stability against temporary network errors
• CHANGED Increased timeout for connection and slow operations
• CHANGED Updated logging interface
• CHANGED Updated to use Python 2.6.5 internally
• CHANGED Updates to German, Dutch and Lithuanian localizations
• CHANGED More robust handling of FTP servers with broken SSL implementations.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would occasionally not notice unmounted drives.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would not correctly clean-up its mount point.
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue which could cause a stall launching ExpanDrive on Snow Leopard
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue that could prevent a password from correctly being saved
• FIXED Fixed an issue that could prevent automatic updates from being noticed
• FIXED Several fixes to the FTP directory-listing parser.

gfxCardStatus by Cody Krieger is a nice utility which lets you know if your new i5/i7 MacBook Pro is running integrated or discrete graphics. Version 1.6 let you manually switch between modes, but any app could still force a switch. As of v1.7 you can force integrated graphics or discrete graphics.

This is a killer feature that should be built into Snow Leopard. It is still a tad buggy – switching tabs in Chrome while Flash video is on occasionally freaks out. Overall it does wonders at keeping an extended battery life while mobile at no noticeable expense unless gaming or watching HD video.

I’m a full-time Pandora listener. Spend the time and make yourself a good station. There really isn’t any going back.

Surprisingly enough, no enterprising Mac dev has made a good native Pandora player. There are a fair number out there that embed the Flash player into a thin WebKit shell. That works well enough but it’s no improvement over a background browser tab or Pandora’s Desktop client based on Adobe Air. Although Flash 10.1 should bring improvements, the continuing holy-war between Apple and Flash remains testament to sub-par performance and stability of Flash on the Mac. Having the Adobe AIR runtime[Flash] loaded with Pandora chews a minimum 7%-10% CPU and can be much worse. ArsTechnica reported 40-50% usage.

Check out the Pianobar client, which is arguably more full-featured than any other solution and uses minimal resources. You’ll need to have MacPorts or Homebrew correctly installed in order to install Pianobar, but you probably do if you’ve made it this far into my post.

To install with MacPorts:

1. sudo port install libao faad2 libmad cmake git-core
2. git clone git://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar.git
3. cd pianobar
4. cmake . && make && sudo make install


Then you run it with the pianobar command:

Welcome to pianobar! Press ? for a list of commands.
[?] Username: jmancuso@gmail.com
[?] Password:
(i) Login… Ok.
(i) Get stations… Ok.
0) Classical Music Medley Radio
1) q Hemancuso Radio
2) Ray LaMontagne Radio
3) Stevie Wonder Radio
…
[?] Select station: 1

And you’re up and running. While playing you can get a list of available commands by pressing ?

+ love current song
– ban current song
a add music to current station
c create new station
d delete current station
e explain why this song is played
g add genre station
h song history
i print information about current song/station
j add shared station
m move song to different station
n next song
p pause/continue
q quit
r rename current station
s change station
t tired (ban song for 1 month)
u upcoming songs
x select quickmix stations
b bookmark song/artist

As you can see, it’s full featured and then some.

Apple’s move to Mini DisplayPort on the unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro line has caused me a fair amount of consternation regarding upgrading given that my Dell 3007WFP-HC only supports dual-link DVI and Apple’s $100 Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter has gotten quite a lot of bad press with respect to its stability. Last year Michael Tsai wrapped up the the current state of affairs quite well:

The current state of affairs is that:

• The software update is not yet available, and Apple has no estimate of when it will be.
• Nobody sells a 30-inch display that can directly connect to a Mini DisplayPort.
• Dell makes a 30-inch display with a full-size DisplayPort, but (as far as I know) there is no adapter to connect it to a Mini DisplayPort.

As I happily type this post on a new Core i7 MacBook Pro connected to my 3007WFP via the adapter I’m happy to say that this issue with the adapter appear resolved and I thought I’d issue a short public service announcement letting others know. I’ve had not a single issue and have spent considerable time with the monitor connected directly to the adapter as well as through my IOGEAR GCS1782 2-Port Dual-Link DVI KVMP Switch. Also, Circuit Assembly now makes a $13 DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort adapter that Jon is quite happy on his Dell 2408WFP, which supports DisplayPort.

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.

Click through and watch at 760p resolution. (via jwz)