Easy iWeb Publisher v5.0.1 Released

February 18th, 2009

Easy iWeb Publisher v5.0.1 is now available for download exclusively from Macupdate. Version 5.0.1 fixes a handful of bugs left over from the user interface redesign.Along with a user interface redesign, Easy iWeb Publisher v5.0.1 dramatically decreases the amount of time needed to publish updates to a web site. The initial upload of a web site to the web host with version 5.0.1 will be the longest. However, publishing subsequent updates will be significantly faster in this version.Here are some figures from a 9.4MB site designed in iWeb ‘08. The first update changed some minor text throughout the site, the second update added six new pictures to the site.

    Easy iWeb Publisher v4.0
  • First Upload - 8:01
  • First Update - 1:33
  • Second Update: 3:13.
    Easy iWeb Publisher v5.0.1
  • First Upload - 8:13
  • First Update - 0:06
  • Second Update: 0:32.

As you can see, the improvement is quite astounding.

Exibia 1.4 Released

February 10th, 2009

We’re very excited to announce the release of Exibia v1.4, which brings some exciting new features to Exibia.

So what does version 1.4 bring to the table? For starters, Exibia v1.4 introduces a “Play Now” feature that allows users to begin playback of uploaded video content immediately, provided there are no videos scheduled.

Exibia v1.4 also introduces an administrator login to the Exibia Web Client. Now, administrators can log in to the Exibia Web Client and delete videos from the schedule and content from the server, regardless of tho uploaded the content or scheduled the videos. This is one of the most highly-requested features that our users have suggested.

Exibia v1.4 also allows more precise scheduling, allowing users to schedule to the minute instead of the previous five minute increments.

After months of development we think that this is the best version of Exibia yet! 

My Favorite Terminal Commands

May 24th, 2007

While many of us use the terminal on a daily basis, there are a number of commands that can really make terminal life fun. Here are a few of my favorite, including some lesser-known terminal commands.

  1. man
    Before I start, it is imperative to mention the man command. Short for manual, man formats and displays the online manual pages for most terminal commands. For example, to display the manual page for the man command, just type:

            man man

    This will display the manual page for the man command. Now, lets get started!

  2. du -h -d1 and df
    du is the terminal command to display disk usage statistics. There are many flags for the du command, -h outputs the directory size in human-readable format, and -d1 specifies how many directories deep to go. In this case, it will list directories one level deep. df, on the other hand, will list all volumes connected to your computer and display the amount of space used and available on each volume. Try it!
  3. last and who
    last displays the last logins of users to the machine. This is helpful in a multi-user environment if you are trying to find out who has logged into a machine. The most recent login will be listed at the top of the list. who displays the users currently logged in to a machine.
  4. uptime
    uptime displays how long your computer has been up since your last reboot. I have found this useful to check when a user complains about their system feeling sluggish. If it has been a long time, it might be time for a reboot. More than anything, uptime gives you bragging rights as to the stability of your system.
  5. top and kill
    top displays the currently running processes on your Mac. This is helpful in determining if an application or process is slowing down your system by taking up all the processing time. If you happen to find a process that you wish to quit, use the kill command:

            kill ###

    where ### is the process ID (PID) of the process listed on the left side of the terminal window.

  6. open
    open will tell the Finder to open a folder or file. For example:

            open ~/Documents/

    will tell Finder to open the Documents folder of the current user, which is specified with the ~.

  7. dscl
    dscl is the directory services command line utility. Most often, I use it to determine if a workstation is bound to an LDAP directory. Specifically, I use this command:

            dscl localhost -list LDAPv3

    which lists the address(es) of the LDAP server(s) the workstation is bound to. Its helpful when troubleshooting Open Directory/login issues.

  8. locate and find
    locate is a case-sensitive file search utility. Locate is much faster than find because it uses a special database, locatedb, which is updated weekly by Mac OS X. To use locate simply type:

            locate filename

    and it will return a list of filenames that match your request. However, this is only accurate if the locate database has been updated recently. To manually update the locate database execute this command:

            /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

    For a real-time, yet slower search, you can use the find command. The syntax is slightly different:

            find -name filename

  9. periodic daily weekly monthly
    periodic runs the Mac OS X cleanup/optimization scripts that normally run on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, respectively. For users who leave their Mac on 24/7, it is unlikely that running these scripts will do much good. However, if you don’t usually leave your Mac turned on, you may want to give this command a try:

            sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

    Placing sudo in front of the command will tell Mac OS X to run the command as a superuser.

While these are only a few of the terminal commands I use on a daily basis, they might come in handy some time.