Recently I had a ‘backup’ failure, we didn’t lose any data, but our back-up strategy failed.

Basically what happened was a new external drive was bought (we actually used the Apple Store as they had drives at a good price with a free ‘24 hour delivery’), and plugged in for a routine back-up.

However, the backup failed. Odd…. Tried again, same failure. Copy error. Copy error on a brand new disk. So what gives?

Well, it turns out that the LaCie drives that Apple sells are formatted for DOS, and every time the back-up reached 3 GB plus the backup would fail! Weird. Why would Apple sell DOS formatted drives? How many other customers are experiencing that problem? Very annoying….

Anyway, the problem was easy to fix. Fired up ‘Disk Utility’ and reformatted the drive for ‘Mac OS Extended’, and now everything works….

So, if you have a new external drive and are lovingly backing up all the photos you have geotagged, or added meta-data to, with PhotoInfoEditor or PhotoGPSEditor, and you keep getting a ‘copy failure’, you might want to check the format of the external drive….

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

Back on the 14th March (read post) I posted on how the Sony GPS CS1 was working with Mac OS X 10.4.9 on Intel based Macs, but not with PowerPPC Macs.

Well, the problem appears to be with IOUSBMassStorageClass in PPC (it users an older version that in 10.4.9 for Intels), and the guys over at macgpscs1.blogspot are looking for a developer to compile the Intel IOUSBMassStorageClass for PPC Macs and test it. Unfortunately this is beyond my skills so I can’t help. If you are a developer, and want to give it a go, you can find the source code over at http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/.

I have also had some people ask me if the setup went as easily as I claimed in A BT Home Hub and a Mac, yes, I can assure you it did, I was very surprised. In the Mac world we are used to plugging things in to our computers and everything working, however, as soon as we cross over to ‘peripherals’ that are not Mac orientated, and which have been produced assuming everyone uses Windows, things can go wrong. I have lost count of the number of times I have battled with wireless hubs from Macs (and on some times had to resort to using a Windows machine) in an attempt to configure them so they connect to the net, and/or allow Macs to connect, but with the BT Home Hub it just worked. We had one hitch, which was sorted out by the BT help-line in a matter of minutes, and the annoying problem of ‘registering domains’ (see earlier post for details and a solution using UK2.net) but the rest was easy…

The hub has now been working for just short of 2 months and it has been great. The client has experienced none of the annoying ‘internet drop-outs’ experienced when using the previous provider, and the hub gives a good strong signal.

All blog posts on the BT Home hub can be seen at here.

P.S. Since the initial report of the ‘blaster virus’ (see earlier post) it has not occurred again.

PhotoInfoEditor is free. It is a fully functional program with no time or ‘registration’ limited features. However, support for PhotoInfoEditor through donations, has been very poor (the same was true for PhotoGPSEditor – see earlier post). Therefore it was decided that a new ‘nag’ screen should be added to the program. This decision was not taken lightly.

The new ‘nag’ screen, unlike the previous version in the program (which was clearly not have the desired effect), does not have a ‘Do not show again’ setting (it, along with the ’service’ buttons on the main view only appear after the program has been used a number of times).

The PhotoInfoEditor ‘nag’ screen – to make it go away just make a donation (via PayPal) or use TrialPay

Now, the ‘nag’ screen can be made to vanish, and not appear again, by making a donation (via PayPal) or by using services, or purchasing goods at TrialPay (see earlier post on TrialPay).

How does this work? Well, if you do make a donation (via PayPal) or use TrialPay then MMISoftware will send you an ‘activation code’ that will stop the ‘nag’ screen displaying when you launch the program. As an added bonus you will also get a nice warm feeling as a result of helping to support the development of the program!

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

Added drag and drop support:

• this feature was requested by a surprising number of users. Photo files (any of the supported photo formats (ps, epsi, epsf, epi, eps, iff, xbm, hdr, exr, cr2, dcr, dng, srf, nef, crw, raf, orf, mrw, icns, jpg, jpeg, cur, fax, tif, tiff, jpe, and pef [please note, not all have been tested due to a lack of available photos in the correct formats]), can now be dragged on to the program icon, or into the window, to be loaded in to the program

Added ‘completion’ indicator:

• as you complete the geocoding process the indicator shows the amount done. A white ball, no data assigned; one-quarter green, description or summary completed; half green, latitude and longitude added (plus city and country – added automatically), or summary and description completed; three-quarters green, latitude and longitude added (plus city and country – added automatically), plus summary or description completed; fully green, all data added. It should be noted that you do not have to add all data for the photo to be available for export.

Added improved sorting function:

• Photos can now be sorted by name, date taken and ‘degree’ of added meta-data

In addition to the above major changes support was added for PEF files, the latest version of the excellent exiftool was incorporated, the ability to import photos from multiple directories can was added, ‘double-click’ zooming for the map (control-double-click to zoom out) and support for TrialPay was added (visit the PhotoInfoEditor Store at TrialPay – more info on TrialPay)

Besides the new features a number of bugs were fixed:

• Dealt with a number of user-interface inconsistencies reported by users
• Resolved a bug that was causing Google Maps not to display correctly
• Tracked down a really nasty and sneaky memory leak

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

More details to follow in later posts…

PhotoInfoEditor – new features, and bug fixes (read post)

PhotoInfoEditor – new ‘nag’ feature, and how to make it go away (read post)

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

The other change was the result of some feedback from users. A number of users were kind enough to send GPS data files that were not importing correctly and causing PhotoGPSEditor to ‘hang’. The program will now report the problem and not ‘hang’.

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

On my last visit it was pretty much the same as the previous 2 visits, i.e. it was a store selling Apple Mac computers and iPods. I would now guess that around 50% (possibly more) of the floor space is dedicated to the ubiquitous iPod. They had everything you would ever need for an iPod, plus some things I didn’t even know were made for an iPod. Walls and walls and walls of accessories.

There were three or four Apple TVs (hooked up to Sony screens), a lot of MacBooks (I didn’t see many MacBook Pros), a few mac Minis and I can only recall seeing a couple of Mac Desktops. I was really surprised at the lack of desktops, I know the line is getting a ‘bit-long-in-the-tooth’ now, but there lack of on-floor presence was noticeable. This has got me thinking – and so I reached for my ‘Apple Rumour’ sheet… (see earlier post)… Is this a sign that the desktop line is due to be refreshed very soon?

One other thing I noted was there were still a lot of boxed copies of OS X 10.4 on the shelves…. read in to that what you want..

Now, the observation – whilst walking around the train trying to find a seat I couldn’t help but notice the number of Macs being used – they were everywhere, on carriage I wandered through had 4 Mac users and two ‘Windows’. It was only a few years ago that I would be the only Mac user on a train, and I would catch people glancing over wondering what sort of ‘weird’ computer I was using. And don’t get me started on the number of iPods in use….

P.S. Work on PhotoInfoEditor is progressing well and the new version should be released in the next week or so…

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

PhotoGPSEditor is free. It is a fully functional program with no time or ‘registration’ limited features. However, support through donations has been very poor. Therefore it was decided that a new ‘nag’ screen should be added.

This ‘nag’ screen, unlike the last one, does not have a ‘Do not show again’ setting (it, along with the ’service’ buttons on the main view only appear after the program has been used a number of times).

The PhotoGPSEditor ‘nag’ screen – to make it go away just make a donation (via PayPal) or use TrialPay

Now, the ‘nag’ screen can be made to vanish, and not appear again, by making a donation (via PayPal) or by using services, or purchasing goods at TrialPay (see earlier post on TrialPay).

How does this work? Well, if you do make a donation (via PayPal) or use TrialPay then MMISoftware will send you an ‘activation code’ that will stop the ‘nag’ screen displaying when you launch the program. As an added bonus you will also get a nice warm feeling as a result of helping to support the development of the program!

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download: