Blaze New Media

I’ve become increasingly impressed by Skype over the past few months. It was first introduced to me as an easy way to get Mac to PC video conferencing to work.

Since using it, I now have my whole family using Skype. Some are on Macs, others on PCs, making video conferencing platform independent with Skype has been a great help.

Anyway, video conferencing wasn’t supposed to be the focus of this article. Instead I want to talk about my experience using Skype as a fully fledged office phone line.

Calling Regular Phones

Calling between computers using Skype is completely free, lets get that one clear to start with.

However, Skype also offers the ability to call mobile or land lines with a service called “SkypeOut“. If you are based in USA or Canada, then this service is a flat $14.95 US for a whole year ($29.95 after January 31, 2007). The flat fee gives you unlimited calling to anywhere in the United States and Canada.

Yep, you read that right. Let me repeat; $14.95 for a full year of free calls to anywhere in USA and Canada.

For someone whose business is primarily operated in Canada with clients dotted all over the States, paying $14.95 for a year of phone service is going to save me hundreds of dollars.

Outside of North America you can load up your Skype account with SkypeOut credit, and then call from as little as 0.02c a minute.

What About People Calling You?

Now, there is one catch. With SkypeOut you can make calls to anyone, but it doesn’t let you receive any calls. You won’t get an incoming phone number unless you subscribe to the “SkypeIn” service. SkypeIn is a one time yearly fee that gives you a dedicated phone number from one of 14 different countries. Interestingly Canada is not currently one of the countries that you can get a phone number from. If anyone knows why, then I’d be interested. I suspect it something to do with Telus or Bell.

Considering most of my clients were in the States, opting for a US number instead of a Canadian number was not a big issue for me. Canadian numbers are formatted identically to US numbers, all that changes is the area code.

The Skype in service costs around $40 US after conversion from euros. You even get the option to pick the number you want, or search for specific number combinations.

What’s The Call Quality Like?

That’s the big question. It’s all very good paying much less for a phone service, but if you end up getting choppy or dropped calls frequently, then it’s not going to be worth it.

My experience with voice quality on Skype so far has been superb. The audio is clear, it hasn’t dropped any calls and the audio has only become choppy in a few isolated cases. Even if a call was choppy in parts it was still better than most cell phone calls and didn’t affect the conversation at all.

As long as you are on a broadband connection and you’re not tying up your bandwidth by downloading large files all day, you can expect to get call quality at least as good as your regular phone line. Using a Wi-Fi connection doesn’t seem to cause any problems either.

I also configured my router’s firewall to allow Skype to make and receive calls directly to my computer without it having to use clever techniques to bypass firewalls. This is supposed to improve call quality and call reliability. It’s dead simple to do, check out these instructions on setting up port forwarding for Skype.

So, You Talk Into Your Computer?

No. If you are serious about using Skype for making and receiving important calls then it’s definitely worth picking up an actual handset. I picked up a USB desktop phone from Ebay for about $35 US. By using an actual phone with Skype you almost completely forget that it’s running through your computer. You can dial and accept calls all through the handset, and it even rings like a normal phone.

What If My Computer Is Turned Off?

Unless you decide to buy a Skype Wi-Fi Phone that doesn’t need a computer, then you’ll need one to use the Skype service.

This works just fine for me as it’s an office phone, and I’ll have my computer turned on the whole time anyway. However, Skype also offers the ability to forward calls when you are away or have your computer turned off. So if I pop out for a coffee, or even decide to do some work away from an internet connection, I can still get my calls forwarded to my cell phone. I believe this only costs around 1c per minute (you get around an hour of call forwarding credit with SkypeOut).

If you buy a SkypeIn number then you also get free voicemail with Skype. The application will alert you when you have any voice messages as well as the number of missed calls. Without SkypeIn you can get voicemail for around $20 US a year.

Totaling It Up

Overall $14.95 for SkypeOut and $40 for SkypeIn gives me a years worth of calling for just under $55 dollars. That’s basically less than one month of my cell phone service (which charges me 30c a minute long distance).

Even if you don’t want to buy a USB phone to use on top of that, there are some cheap standard phone to USB phone converters available that will let you use your regular phone with Skype.

Skype is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows Mobile.

Thank you Adobe, you made my Christmas by showing me how fast my Core Duo can actually be (it’s about time).

If you haven’t heard, Adobe released a beta version of Photoshop CS3 today.

It sports a much refined interface – dare I say “Macromedia” like? Most importantly for Mac users like myself, it comes in universal binary format. This means you can enjoy the full speed of that shiny Intel chip, rather than chugging along in Rosetta like a clapped out old G4.

I’ve also noticed a few nice Mac touches like transparent interface window headers, and window fading when Photoshop looses focus. I guess these are all down to the fact that Adobe re-coded Photoshop in Xcode. They now have access to libraries like Core Image and the new Core Animation.

Overall, a it’s a great step forward for Photoshop on the Mac for me, even at this beta stage. Users with a CS2 license can use the beta for the next little while, otherwise there is a two day usage limit. I fully recommend giving it a go.

Download link (Adobe login required)

I’ve had Parallels Workstation installed on my Macbook Pro for around two months now. It’s been a real joy to test websites in IE6 without bleeding from the eyes using Virtual PC. However, I’ve come across a problem using virtual hosts.

Virtual Hosts allow me to access any of my local website development copies through an easy to remember local URL. An example would be this site, where I have an exact mirror accessible through:

www.cssdev.local

This way I can play around with the site in exactly the same conditions as if it were live.

The issue is when I want to access these sites in Windows through Parallels. The virtual hosts just plain don’t work, and if I type in the direct path:

http://10.0.1.2/Sites/cssdev/index.php

the links to the CSS, Images and JS all break as they’re pointing to the root directory.

So, what would be great is if I could just boot up Parallels, open IE6 and just type in ‘www.cssdev.local’. Things would be seamless and that would just make me a happy man.

After a bit of fiddling, I managed it. Here’s how to set up a virtual host in OS X Tiger using the built in Apache installation, and get it to work in Windows XP through Parallels:

Step 1

If you already have a virtual host set up in OS X, then you can skip straight to step 7.

First of all, turn off ‘Personal File Web Sharing’ in ‘System Preferences » Sharing’ by un-checking it. We want to disable Apache because we’re going to make a couple of changes to its configuration.

Step 2

Boot up the ‘Terminal’ application which is in ‘Applications » Utilities’. If you have Textmate installed then type the following command:

mate /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

If you are not running Textmate, you should be. Go and download a trial copy and see how good it is for yourself. Otherwise you might want to use “VI” which is a built in editor, just replace “mate” with “vi” in the command above.

Step 3

You should now see the ‘httpd.conf’ file in your editor of choice. This is the Apache configuration file and it’s in here that you can set up a virtual host. Search for the words “NameVirtualHost” and you should come across the same lines that you see in the screen grab below.

Remove the ”#” from the NameVirtualHost line, and change the ”*:80” to the IP address of your computer. If you don’t have a static IP address, you may want to get one (most routers can be configured for this). If your IP changes frequently then your virtual hosts will break.

Step 4

Now we are going to add our virtual host. Copy the following code, replacing your own IP address, ServerName, and DocumentRoot.

<VirtualHost 10.0.1.2>
ServerName www.cssdev.local
DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/Sites/cssdev/
</VirtualHost>

Place this in the httpd.conf file below the commented out example, which ends with ”#”. Your httpd.conf file should now look something like this:

Step 5

Save the “httpd.conf” file as we’ve made all the changes we need to. Next we need to modify your hosts file, so that your computer knows that ‘www.cssdev.local’ points locally. In ‘Terminal’ type the following command:

mate /private/etc/hosts

After the commented section of the file ending in ”##” type in the following line, replacing your own IP address and virtual host name:

10.0.1.2      www.cssdev.local

Make sure you place a [tab] after the IP address, and not a space. Your hosts file should now look something like the following:

Close and save the file.

Step 6

Now we can test. Turn on ‘Personal File Web Sharing’ by following the instructions in step 1, but checking the box instead.

Open up your web browser and try typing in your virtual host URL. If the site displays, then well done, things are working in OS X. Now we can make a quick change in Windows and we’re done!

Step 7

Boot up Parallels Desktop and get Windows XP loaded and waiting for you. Head to ‘Start » Run’ and type in the following:

wordpad c:\\windows\\system32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts

Now, we want to make this file a carbon copy of our hosts file in OS X, so, same as in step 5, add the following lines after the header comment:

10.0.1.2      www.cssdev.local

Save and close the file.

Step 8

Things should now work perfectly under windows in every browser but IE. Here’s the final thing. Open up IE and go to ‘Tools » Internet Options » Lan Settings…’.

Make sure that ‘Automatically detect settings’ is unchecked.

That’s it! If you followed everything perfectly you should now be able to access your virtual host through OS X and Windows. You can of course add as many virtual hosts as you wish by repeating the steps for each site.

I hope this step by step guide helps people out. Virtual hosts are really handy, especially if you are having path issues between live copies and development copies. Enjoy!

The first release of the CSS Tweak dashboard widget is done! Now you can optimize your CSS from the comfort of your Mac’s desktop.

This is the first widget that I’ve ever made, it’s been really great to get into the guts of how they work.

For those of you that have never seen inside a widget, they are simply a combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript. So if you are a web developer, you most likely already have the knowledge and skills to make a fully functional dashboard widget.

Actually, I cheated a little with the CSS Tweak widget. Well, not so much cheated, but I didn’t code the whole thing in Textmate. I managed to be one of those lucky people who had an installed version of Dashcode on their new MacBook Pro. I used Dashcode to develop this widget from start to finish and I really only have great things to say about it.

Despite the program crashing a fair bit (which is understandable considering it is a pre/non-release version) it provides wysiwyg and debugging features that go a long way to help you set up your widget and get it working exactly how you want it. Plus, it has a gorgeous interface as you would expect from an Apple developed tool.

Anyway, more about the widget itself. The widget will accept CSS files dropped onto it (which is annoyingly unintuative, but Apple fails to provide file input any other way). Once you drop a CSS file in, you are presented with tweaking options. You can choose to enable or disable any of the options, just the same as on the CSS Tweak website. Once you hit tweak, the CSS file is sent to the CSS Tweak server, tweaked, and then sent back and saved in the same location as your original file.

I hope that people find this tool useful. It will definately save time not having to visit a website, you can simply drop your file in from anywhere and you’re done.

This is of course the first version, and there will no doubt be a few bugs to iron out. Please let me know via email (andy [at] this domain) if you find anything out of whack. I should mention, you do need to be connected to the internet for this widget to work.

Download Widget

I’ve got a couple of decent Macintosh computers for sale for those who are interested.

Mac Number 1 ~ SOLD!

The first one is a 3 week old Mac Mini, it’s the dual core 1.66 with a 1GB RAM upgrade installed by Apple.

It runs really fast and I’m very impressed with it, but to be honest I really want to buy a new 17” MacBook Pro, so this one’s going to have to go.

Here are the specs in full:

• 1.66ghz Intel Core Duo CPU
• 1 GB DDR-2 667 RAM
• 80GB 5200rpm Hard Drive
• Intel 64mb Video Card
• Dual Layer DVD/CD burner
• Apple Remote

The full specs can be found on the Apple Mac Mini site.

I have all the original boxes and software – everything, all in perfect condition. I paid $1250 canadian including taxes for this brand new mini, so make me a decent offer and it’s yours.

Mac Number 2 ~ SOLD!

The second Mac for sale is my trusty 15” Aluminum Powerbook. This guy is in excellent condition and is around 2 years old (manufactured in April 2004).

Here are the full specs:

• 1ghz Power PC G4
• 1GB DDR RAM
• 60GB Hard Drive
• 64MB ATI Radeon 9600 Graphics
• CD-RW Combo Drive (DVD reader/CD Writer)
• Airport Extreme & Bluetooth
• Firewire 400, 800 & USB 2
• Gigabit Ethernet & 56k Modem

I also have all the original box and packaging for this. Again, make me a decent offer on this and it’s yours.

I can ship either of the Mac’s using UPS, or by regular ground mail, whatever you would prefer.

Payments can be made over Paypal (preferably), certified bankers cheque or on local pickup (I’m in Victoria, British Columbia).

I’m a decent guy, and these are genuine offers, so if you are interested send me an email and we’ll sort something out!

I’ll post a couple of photos of the macs this evening.