Year: 2012

RSS Sponsor: Igloo Software →

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Thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the 512 Pixels RSS feed this week!

Work isn’t a place – it’s what you do.

And you might work on a lot of devices – a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad – in a lot of places. You might work on the road or maybe from home (with your Aeropress and clickity keyboard). And that makes it hard to securely use a shared drive, coordinate with clients and collaborate with your team.

Igloo offers a complete digital workplace – you get full access to all your files, project discussions and plans for world domination. The information you need to work is available anywhere in the world, literally at your fingertips.

Igloo has a space for your team. Each team gets dedicated file sharing, Twitter-like microblogs, activity streams and a host of other collaboration tools in one cloud-based platform. Plans start at just $4/user/month.

Work better, not harder.

Enter to win an Aeropress and try Igloo free for 30 days.

WSJ: iCloud to Gain Obvious Features

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Jessica E. Vascellaro at the WSJ:

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

Apple is also working on a new feature that will allow iCloud users to sync their personal videos via iCloud, these people said, as well as allow users to access “Notes” and “Reminders”—two of its apps for jotting down quick thoughts—through iCloud.com. Currently, those items have to be accessed via apps for those features.

This seems like an obvious extension of iCloud, and I think, a great one, as long as it isn’t a clone of the old MobileMe gallery feature and app. Something more like Instagram would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath for something like that.

The addition of Reminders and Notes online is also obvious, but helpful. With Mountain Lion bringing the two services to the desktop in stand-alone apps, having a web interface will be great.

On ‘Going Paperless’

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My pal David Sparks has a new book out, and it’s great.

In The MacSparky Field Guide to Going Paperless, David de-mystifies the process of going paperless, using Apple products as the core tools to doing so. He talks about apps and hardware that make the process as easy as it could be. This is vital, because if a new workflow isn’t easy, people won’t switch. Even as someone who already uses a Doxie Go scanner almost everyday (coupled with Evernote and other apps), I picked up some nice tips in this guide.

As a bonus, the book was built with the free iBooks Author software, so it’s loaded with images, galleries, screencasts and more. It’s like a book from the future.

Pick it up on the iBookstore for just $5.

Adobe: Upgrade to Remain Secure

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Adobe:

Adobe released a security upgrade for Adobe Photoshop CS5 and earlier for Windows and Macintosh. This upgrade addresses vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. A malicious .TIF file must be opened in Photoshop CS5 and earlier for Windows and Macintosh by the user for an attacker to be able to exploit these vulnerabilities. Adobe is not aware of any attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities against Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6, which addresses these vulnerabilities. For users who cannot upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe recommends users follow security best practices and exercise caution when opening files from unknown or untrusted sources.

To be clear, Photoshop CS5 has a security issue that allows remote control of a system via a malicious image file, and Adobe’s only solution is for users to pay to upgrade to CS6.

CS6 was released this week. If it hadn’t been, I’m sure CS5 would have gotten the patch.

Despicable.

Update.

New iOS Maps App Will “Blow Your Head Off”

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John Paczkowski:

Sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple will abandon Google’s mapping back-end in the next major iteration of iOS, replacing it with a brand-new mapping application powered by Apple technology. We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.

Yikes.

How to Send Pocket Items to Pinboard

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I’ve used Pinboard as my “catch-all” on the Internet for some time now. It collects links I tweet, blog posts, and things I save to Instapaper. With a pro account, I know I can always see these pages, even if the originals go away.

(I view Pinboard as my personal weapon against link rot.)

Recently, I’ve been playing with Pocket, as research for a review pitting it against the king when it comes to reading later.

One big draw back to Pocket was that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to send things to Pinboard automatically. Turns out, the service can do it, as long as you do a couple of things.

  1. Visit the Privacy page under the Options section of the Pocket site and turn off RSS Feed password protection.
  2. In Piboard, add your account name under the “Read it Later” section on the Settings page.
  3. Wait for the services to do their thing.

I like Instapaper, and I like Marco. Plus, I know how Instapaper makes money. Pocket doesn’t seem to have a business plan. All in all, while I don’t think I’ll be switching to Pocket, it’s nice to know Pocket can sling stuff to Pinboard for me without any fancy scripting or ifttt magic.