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In Depth: How to tweak and fine-tune Time Machine

Trevor Middleton — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:00:00 +0000

You might use your Mac to keep your music and photo collections organised, upload a blog to your web space, or keep in touch with friends and family through email. However you use yours, most of us have some of our most cherished memories stored on our hard drives.

All of which means it's essential to keep those precious files backed up, just in case a hard disk failure strikes your system. Until the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), backing up was left to the individual Mac user. With Leopard, however, Apple introduced Time Machine, which you might call 'backup for the rest of us'.

The first time you plug an external FireWire or USB 2.0 hard disk into your Mac you'll be asked if you want to use it as your Time Machine backup disk. If you do, click Use as backup disk, and Time Machine will automatically take over.

However, it's a good idea to find out more about how Time Machine ticks so that you can fine-tune it to your exact requirements. You might, for instance, want to change the interval between backups, or perhaps exclude certain folders from being backed up in the first place.

Disk formats

The first thing you should know about Time Machine is that the external hard disk you use needs to be formatted in a specific way in order to work properly; if you don't do this, backups might stop when the amount of data backed up reaches around the 10GB mark. Many manufacturers – LaCie and Western Digital, for instance – make a selection of products specifically targeted at Mac users that offer plug-and-play capability, while other products might be more suited to use with Windows, unless you reformat them first.

If you're at all unsure when buying a disk for use with Time Machine, check the specification. Once you have the disk you can use Mac OS X's Disk Utility to confirm that the disk will work properly and make changes to the formatting if needed. Here's how:

1) With the disk plugged into your Mac, launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities).

2) On the left of the Disk Utility window you'll see a column that contains icons for all the disks attached to your Mac, either internally (your Mac's startup disk, for instance) or externally. Each disk has a
physical description – for instance, '111.8GB Fujitsu' – below which (and slightly inset) will be one or more icons describing the volumes into which the disk is subdivided. Click the main physical description of your intended backup disk, and look at the status information in the bottom right-hand corner of the Disk Utility window. If you're going to use the disk with a PowerPC Mac, the Partition Map Scheme should read Apple Partition Map; if you're using it with an Intel Mac it should say GUID Partition Table. If it reads Master Boot Record, the disk has been formatted for use with a Windows PC, and must be reformatted.

3) Next, turn your attention to the formatted volume listed below the main description of your external hard disk. Click its name and check the description of its format in the bottom-left corner of the Disk Utility window. This should read Mac OS Extended. If it reads MS-DOS (FAT32), the disk must be reformatted.
A guide to preparing and using disks with Time Machine follows.

Time Machine and AirPort Disks

If you're lucky enough to have an AirPort Extreme Base Station and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later, you can connect a USB 2.0 hard disk to the Base Station for use as an AirPort Disk for sharing files across the wireless network. Unfortunately, if you have Leopard, you can't (at the time of writing, anyway) use your AirPort Disk with Time Machine. We understand that Apple regards this as a system bug and is working on a fix; it's certainly something we'd like to see – soon!

If you've installed any antivirus software on your Mac, you'd do well to exclude your backup disk from virus scanning, as this can slow down Time Machine – the files have, after all, already been scanned.

Check the Help section of your chosen antivirus product for details on setting exclusion policies.
If you're using Aperture, Apple's image management and processing software, Apple advises that you should have at least Mac OS X 10.5.3 if you intend to use Time Machine to back up your Aperture Library. The only reason given by Apple for this is that "earlier versions of Leopard did not provide full compatibility between Time Machine and Aperture".

Using certain characters in your Mac's name in the Sharing System Preferences pane can cause some backups not to appear when you attempt to restore a file using the Time Machine interface. You should therefore go to System Preferences > Sharing and make sure that the Computer Name field contains only numbers and upper or lowercase letters.

Backing up multiple Macs

You can use a single disk to back up multiple Macs, as Time Machine will create a different backup folder for each. If you're moving the same disk between a number of Macs or sharing a Time Capsule, you should make sure that each Mac is given a different name in System Preferences > Sharing, using the guidelines above.

You can, incidentally, make backups across an Ethernet or AirPort network using a FireWire or USB 2.0 drive attached to one of your Macs: just remember to enable Personal File Sharing in System Preferences > Sharing. This is probably not the most efficient way of backing up, as network traffic is greatly increased during backups.

If you dismissed the Time Machine dialogue the first time you attached your external disk, no problem. Once you're ready to start backing up, go to Time Machine's System Preferences pane, where you can choose your backup disk and get started. We'll show you how in our step-by-step guide later on.

You don't have to back up every single item on your Mac's hard disk: for instance, you might want to exclude all system files. This makes sense if you want to conserve space on your backup disk; you can always use either the installation discs that came with your Mac or a bought copy of Leopard to install a clean copy of your system after a system crash. You won't, however, have the option of using your Time Machine backup to perform a full system restore should the need arise.

Creating your first backup

When Time Machine creates its first backup, it takes quite a while to do it. This is because it's making a complete copy of everything you've chosen to back up. After this initial backup, Time Machine will make copies only of those files that have been changed since the previous backup – a so-called 'incremental' backup.

Time Machine makes backups every hour, as long as your backup disk is attached to your Mac and your Mac is turned on and active (that is to say, not in Sleep mode). In fact, it takes backups every hour out of the previous 24 hours, daily backups to cover the past month and then every week until your backup disk is full. Unless you're happy to overwrite your oldest backups, you'll need to attach another disk once your current one is full and choose it in System Preferences > Time Machine – just make sure it has a different name to the previous one. If Time Machine is unable to take a backup it will resume its duties the next time your Mac is awake and the disk is again available.

Depending on the way you like to work, you might feel that one backup every hour is too often (or not often enough). To change this, open Terminal (from Applications > Utilities), and type the following (all on one line), then hit the [Enter] key:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 3600

Replace 3600 with your desired backup interval in seconds. For example, you could set a two-hourly backup like so:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 7200

If you'd rather not use Terminal, TimeMachineEditor (free from http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor) has a much friendlier graphical interface, and enables you to set either short backup intervals measured in hours or schedule daily, weekly or monthly backups to take place at specific times. You can also set up combinations of daily, weekly and monthly backups.

The Time Machine icon is usually located in the Dock; if you can't find it there, try your Mac's Applications folder. The first thing you should notice when you launch it is the vertical timescale to the right of the screen. This enables you to navigate back and forth through Time Machine's snapshots of your system using the large arrows near the timescale – you should see your deleted files repopulate the window from past backups. Once you've found the file you're looking for, click the Restore button, and it will be returned to the appropriate place in your current system.

When you want to restore some types of file, your best starting place is the folder or Mac OS X application from which you deleted it. So, if you deleted an email, launch Mail; for a photo launch iPhoto.

Time Machine is integrated with every aspect of Leopard, so when you launch it, those application windows will remain open, allowing you to search for your lost files. The same thing will happen if you navigate to the folder from which you deleted a misplaced file. Alternatively, if you remain in Finder as you launch Time Machine, a new Finder window will open.

Time Machine and Spotlight

As you might expect, Time Machine can work alongside Spotlight, Mac OS X's desktop search technology, in order to make it even easier to find that deleted file. Simply open a new Spotlight window using the default keyboard command (O+ C+[Spacebar]), and add as many search criteria as you need to, both by entering text in the Spotlight field in the top right- hand corner, and by using the + button to add more information, such as the date the item was created.

Note that you can't start up your Mac from a Time Machine backup. Instead, you'll need to use your Leopard installation disc, either by inserting the disc and rebooting while holding down the [C] key on your keyboard, or by double-clicking the Install Mac OS X icon when the disc mounts on the Desktop. If you think your problem might be a faulty startup disk, we'd strongly suggest you at least use the First Aid section of Disk Utility (from the Utilities menu in the Mac OS X installer) to verify and repair the disk. Sometimes, zeroing out the data on the disk will eliminate file system conflicts, and allow you to start afresh.

Once you're satisfied that your startup disk is okay, restore your system by going to Utilities > Restore System from Backup. Use the onscreen instructions to select the Time Machine backup you want to use to resurrect your system.

Now read the essential guide to deep-cleaning your Mac

In Depth: Redesign Gnome for a better looking desktop

Andy Channelle — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Gnome typically comes with a bar across the top of the screen with the clock, notification icons and menu items and a second at the base of the screen containing window lists, workplace switchers and, in the Ubuntu incarnation, a trash can/recycle bin.

But, unlike OS X and, to a lesser degree, Vista, there's nothing to stop you playing with the way things look.

In this tutorial we're going to take a vanilla Gnome desktop, strip out a few things, add a new dock to the bottom of the screen and reinstate the recycle bin to its rightful place (in our opinion) on the desktop. We'll also take in a few other desktop tweaks as we go along.

Note that we're not concerned with cuboid animations, wobbly windows or transparent toolbars here (that's for another time), but with the general appearance of the desktop.

Changing backgrounds

Our first step in making a change is to alter the window decorations. This aspect of the desktop can be edited by doing System > Preferences > Appearance. Look under the Theme tab to see the available looks. Select the desired theme to have the screen updated immediately.

If nothing here floats your boat, take a trip to Gnome Look to find a ton of other themes. Download one of these, then go back into the Appearance window and select the Install button. Navigate to the previously downloaded file and select it. The new theme will be added to the list and can be selected immediately.

We've gone for calm wateriness of the Glossy theme. While we're at it, let's also change the background image and toss out the (admittedly very nice) heron screen. Again, Gnome Look offers hundreds of different desktop images on various themes under the Wallpaper section, and there are many more on the wilds of the internet.

Try to find an image that matches the resolution of your monitor so that it doesn't look odd once installed (you can find your monitor's resolution by doing System > Preferences > Screen Resolution).

To bring up a new desktop image, right-click anywhere on the desktop, select Change Desktop Background and then click on Add to launch the file browser. Find the image you want and select it, and the desktop should update immediately.

One of the things that annoys many users is that the Ubuntu developers have removed the recycle bin from the desktop. This doesn't have to be a permanent omission though, as putting it back is not a difficult task, though it does involve a trip to one of Gnome's slightly hidden settings. This is the GConf editor, and it can be accessed by typing gconf-editor into a terminal.

You can now remove the trash can from the bottom panel by right-clicking it and selecting Remove From Panel, and you can rename the bin something a little more exciting by right-clicking it on the desktop and selecting Rename – just the same as with any other folder.

Paint a pretty panel

We're going to take things a little further now and make a radical change to the way Gnome works. Surgery begins by removing the bottom panel from the screen. Right-click on any vacant space on the panel and select Delete This Panel – it's a drastic move that make the screen look oddly lost, but we'll fix that next.

Now we're going to install an application called Avant Window Navigator (AWN). This is one of a number of available task bar replacements. You could get a basic edition using Ubuntu's standard package manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager), but this version doesn't include lots of the nice additions that the third-party does.

Unfortunately, we'll need to add a couple of repositories to Synaptic to get the better version. With Synaptic open, go into Settings > Repositories and look under the Third Party tab. Click the Add button, select Binary from the Type drop-down menu and enter the following piece of text in the URI space: http://ppa.launchpad.net/reacocard-awn/ubuntu

In the Distribution space, type 'hardy', 'feisty' or 'gutsy', and in Components type 'main'. Click on OK and the close the Repositories window. Back in the main Synaptic window, hit the Reload button, then select Search and enter AWN as the search string.

From the results, select the most recent version of AWN (0.3.1 at the time of writing) and also select awn-extras-appletstrunk, which should have the same version number. Hit Apply and wait as the software is installed

The dock of the bay

AWN can be launched from Applications > Accessories > Avant Window Navigator. When it's launched a sparse OS X-style dock should appear at the bottom of the window and the configuration toolbox should open. If the toolbox doesn't open, right-click on a blank space on the dock and select Dock Preferences.

There is a lot going on inside this toolbox, so we'll go through the most important jobs here and leave the more esoteric options as happy surprises. The main configuration sections are listed down the left of the window. Selecting one of these will display options or more tabs on the right Click on the General section.

In here we can ensure the application starts on launch (a good idea), hide the bar when it's not in use, and make it so that ordinary windows don't go into the dock when maximised – basically making applications aware of the top of the dock.

We can also choose one of the many 'hover' effects for icons, which will change the icon on the dock in some way to make it clear that the mouse is on top of it. OS X has its fisheye-type magnification, but there are quite a few different ones in AWN – LXF is particularly partial to the Spotlight effect, which puts a shaft of light over the icon when the mouse hovers.

The Task Appearance tab enables us to define the text labels that appear on hovered-over icons and also to add a small arrow beneath active applications. The Bar Appearance tab, meanwhile, allows us to set the colours and borders of the dock background.

There's also a 3D Look checkbox which, when clicked, will angle the dock into the screen so the icons look like they're sitting on it, complete with reflections. You can also give this 'platform' rounded edges and, under the Glass Engine tab, change its opacity.

Add more apps

There are many different small programmes in the Applets section, which you can add to the dock. Select one from the list and click the Activate button. The selected applet will shift to the bottom section of the window and appear on the dock.

To remove an applet, select it from the bottom and hit Deactivate. One of the useful applets is the Stacks Applet which can display the contents of a folder in different ways, including the OS X-like fan. Once you've added a Stacks Applet, right-click on it and select Preferences to define the folder it should relate to. You can add as many Stacks Applets to the dock as you like.

The third section, Launchers, provides tools for adding any application from the system to the dock. As we're retaining the main Applications menu on the top bar, the dock will be home to our most frequently used applications.

To add an application, click on Add, provide the requested details, then click on the icon button. If you don't know these details, do System > Preferences > Main Menu, find the application in question, right-click on it and select Properties to see the required values.

Need software? Then read 25 killer Linux apps and 20 Linux apps you can't live without

In Depth: How to master iPhoto's export options

Kevin J Wolfe — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

When you want to get your images out of iPhoto to save to a flash drive, or upload to your Facebook gallery, it's easy. You just drag them onto your Desktop. Tutorial over? Not quite. While simply dropping them on your Desktop works, you can get much more control over the type of file that results by using iPhoto's built-in export options.

Why might you need to do this? Well, what if you need to change the file format? You might like to change that nice fat TIFF into a skinny little JPEG to put up on the web, or maybe your image is a JPEG that you'd like to preserve the quality of and want to save as a lossless PNG or TIFF file. Or you may need to export an image in a not-so-common format like a GIF, a Photoshop file, or even a Microsoft BMP file. You can do all these and more with iPhoto's export options combined with the Preview application, which is already built into your Mac.

iPhoto can export images in JPEG, PNG or TIFF file formats, while Preview gives you options not yet mentioned, including: JPEG-2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PICT, SGI and TGA. We'll show you how to combine
the two applications together in this tutorial.

Don't forget, iPhoto also allows for custom resizing when you export, should you want to make your
image smaller than the original. Follow the step-by-step guide below to become a master of iPhoto's export options.

1. Open iPhoto and find your image or images. If you're exporting a single image, click on it to highlight it. If you're exporting a series, click on the first image and S-click on the last image to highlight them. If you want to export an album, open it and press C+[A] to highlight all. Then click on the File menu and choose Export.

2. Click on the File Export tab and choose the image format you want to export in from the Kind list. Even if exporting to the same format, choose the image format type from the list instead of Original or Current. The Original and Current choices won't give you some of the exporting options that may be available.

3. If exporting to JPEG you can choose the quality or compression ratio. PNG and TIFF, which are lossless formats, don't allow you to change quality. If exporting for printing, you'll want Maximum quality; if you're posting them to the web, you'll want Medium or Small to save space. JPEG also allows you to add a title and keywords.

4. Choose the resolution from the Size list. All choices except Full Size will shrink the number of pixels. This reduces both the physical size and the quality of your image. The Custom Size allows you to reduce to whatever pixel dimensions you'd like. Enter the maximum number of pixels you'd like for height, width or dimensions.

5. For File Name you can choose the current filename, the title that you've given the image in iPhoto, a named sequential order, or an album name. The Sequential and Use Album choices are mostly useful when batch processing images. Photos will give them the album name or title of our choice followed by a number in sequence.

6. Choose a location where you'd like to export the image or images. When batch exporting, it's best to create a new folder for the images to easily keep them together or move them around. Click on the New Folder button and name it something similar or the same as the images. Click on the OK button to export.

7. Open up your Preview application; it will either be in your Dock or in your Applications folder. Drag the photo directly from iPhoto to the Preview icon that's open in your Dock. If you drag an unedited RAW file from iPhoto it will be converted into a JPEG.

8. It's easier to process images in Preview one at a time. Click on the File menu and choose Save As. JPEG will allow you 10 levels of compression; JPEG-2000 allows for a lossless save; PDF gives you the options of quartz filters and encryption; TIFF allows for some lossless compression options. Choose your location and click Save.

First published in MacFormat issue 202

Now read 12 essential apps for tweaking your Mac

Nokia to start own mobile network in Japan

J Mark Lytle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:43:00 +0000

Reports from Japan this weekend suggest that Nokia is about to take a leap into the unknown by starting its own mobile phone service there, offering both handsets and the monthly plans behind them.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the Finnish company will commence a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service using infrastructure leased from market-leader NTT DoCoMo in February next year.

High rollers only

However, the MVNO will not compete directly with Japan's existing operators, as it will leverage Nokia's Vertu brand and aim at the extreme high end of the market.

The Vertu handsets will likely sell for up to ¥5 million (£35,000) each, meaning the venture will most probably be irrelevant to ordinary Japanese phone users.

Nevertheless, Nokia hopes the move will increase its brand awareness in Japan, where it is an insignificant phone manufacturer. By contrast, it sold 437 million phones in the rest of the world last year.

Asus unleashes Eee Top touchscreen PC

J Mark Lytle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:27:00 +0000

We've known about it for months and, at last, it's finally available to buy – the Eee Top touchscreen PC is on sale in Taiwan now and we'll be getting ours before long too.

It's no surprise that Asus has gone for its domestic customers first, but it is unusual that the UK will be the next market to have a stab at the newest Eee model.

Atom inside

We don't have precise details yet, but the first Top is selling for NT$18,900 (New Taiwan dollars), which is the equivalent of about £380.

The 15.6-inch model is the first to arrive and is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU. As expected, that comes along with Windows XP, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and a 1.3-megapixel webcam.

Standard specs

Although those are distinctly entry-level specs, the main draw to the Top will be its touch-sensitive screen, making it something of a cross between a Tablet PC and an information terminal similar to those found in airports and other public places.

Asus clearly hopes the simple approach to the touch interface will prove popular, as it plans to sell five million Tops over the next two years. Larger 20- and 22-inch models are expected in the first half of next year.

Palm workers sacked as hard times bite

J Mark Lytle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:08:00 +0000

As expected, one-time smartphone leader Palm Inc has bowed to the inevitable and announced it will be shedding jobs as demand for its products slows.

The maker of the Treo and Centro devices said it would be losing an undisclosed number of jobs from its 1,050-strong workforce starting next week.

Business plans

Although it has a not-quite-secret new OS and phone due for release next year, Palm has suffered in the marketplace as both the BlackBerry range and the iPhone have grown in popularity.

While more than three quarters of businesses plan to equip their staff with RIM Blackberries and almost one quarter plan on using Apple's iPhone, Palm's equivalent number is around five per cent at the time of writing.

In Depth: How to slim down OS X and reclaim lost space

Hollin Jones — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

OS X is a great operating system but there are parts of it that can be deleted or trimmed without causing any problems.

This is because, by default, a standard OS X install contains some items that you personally will never need.

They're there because someone will use them, but you probably won't. The two main examples of this are the additional languages and printer files. Before you rush off to start deleting items from library folders, we must point out that you do so at your own risk.

If you're not sure what something is, it's best not to delete it. At the very least you ought to have a Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner-created backup of your system before you start deleting things, unless you are sure you know what you're doing.

Start from scratch

If you're installing or reinstalling a system from an OS X DVD, choose Custom Install and then deselect the additional printers and languages, and also the X11 and Developer Tools options. For the leanest system, deselect everything but the Base system.

If your Mac came preinstalled, have a look in Macintosh HD > Library > Printers and sort the list of folders by size to see if one is huge, filled with PPD files. The idea in including them is that OS X will be able to recognise many printers.

In truth, you only need the one driver for the printer you are running. You can delete these and reinstall the driver from manufacturer's website.

Getting rid of the languages on your system is a little trickier, as they don't just live in one place. There is a free program called Monolingual that is able to let you strip out all unwanted languages from your system. How often is an English speaker likely to need Arabic, Armenian or Afrikaans on their Mac? It is also able to remove unwanted architectures from your system.

In Universal applications, there is code to run the app on different CPUs. On an Intel Mac, for example, you won't need PowerPC G3 code. Getting rid of it can save space, but be warned, this is a dangerous thing to play around with.

If you accidentally erase architectures that you do need, at best you will break Rosetta, and at worst you will totally break your whole system. Similarly with the languages, if you accidentally remove English, you're in a lot of trouble.

Uninstalling applications

In terms of applications you can safely delete more or less anything, since the apps themselves don't contribute to the running of the system, with a few minor exceptions like System Preferences.

You should leave the Utilities folder alone as well, since it contains assistants and the AirPort Utility to help you. Some programs come with uninstallers, which usually work by you running the installer and, rather than installing, choosing uninstall.

Unlike on Windows these tend to be pretty comprehensive and remove all components of an app, even the system and library files it may have buried on installation. For other programs, there's AppZapper. Billed as "The uninstaller Apple forgot", it lets you drag an app onto its window to delete all associated support files, caches and preferences as well as the app itself.

If you're a fan of installing programs to try them out, it's a great way to ensure that you safely remove them and their associated files when you have finished with them. There are similar programs around – AppDelete and AppCleaner being two of the best. AppCleaner is donationware so need not cost you anything. It also has a "protect" function to make specific apps immune from deletion.

As noted before, you can safely delete the GarageBand Apple Loops folder and iDVD themes from a standard OS X install if you don't need them. Deleting duplicate or unwanted tracks from iTunes is also a great space saver and clearing out obsolete photos from iPhoto will help with the clutter.

The Find function in OS X can be helpful here, as it lets you search using multiple criteria. So, for example, you could search for all items over 50MB in size that were last opened over one year ago, or something similar.

This would give you a list of items matching those criteria, which may well reveal large files or folders that you had forgotten about or lost. At that point you could decide to back them up or delete them altogether.

Slim the startup items

Startup items are another area where you can trim some fat. Some programs on installation place a startup item into your account so that a program or a helper starts up on login.

The worst culprits are printers and scanners, which tend to put clumsy and slow assistant programs in to load automatically, which slow down your login and without which the peripheral will almost always work perfectly. Go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and delete any errant ones. You're unlikely to break anything by doing this.

Similarly, some installers add preference panes to System Preferences, generally to be found in the Other section. If these are no longer needed, right-click or [Ctrl]-click on them and choose Remove…, and they will be sent to the Trash. Similarly when you install widgets it can be easy to let them build up and forget the ones you never use.

To clear them out, open Widget Manager and you'll see a red symbol next to each one that can be deleted. Clicking this will send it to the Trash.

How to remove unwanted languages with Monolingual

1. Download and open Monolingual from the disc. Be very careful: if you're not confident with the process of stripping languages out of the system, stop now. If you are confident, then make sure the languages ticked are the ones you'll probably never use. Make sure that you don't click your native language.

2. Click Remove and the program will warn you that the step you're about to take cannot be undone without reinstalling the whole of OS X. Take this warning seriously. If you choose to continue, it will search the many localised files present on the system and inside applications and delete the ones you have specified.

3. The second tab is Input Menu, and here you can remove alternatives like Chinese and Korean; this won't reclaim a huge amount of space. Architectures can strip code from applications based on the code's CPU framework. This is best avoided; if you make a wrong move you could damage your system, necessitating a total reinstall.

First published in MacFormat, Issue 202

Now read the essential guide to deep-cleaning your Mac

Phone users get online shrink sessions

J Mark Lytle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:06:00 +0000

Economic hard times mean more than just job losses and belt-tightening – they also bring with them a rise in the number of unhappy people; something a Japanese university hopes to cure with the help of a mobile phone.

Keio University's Professor Yutaka Ohno has just launched a new website for phones that he says is the world's first online mobile psychotherapy service.

Consult a doctor too

His project asks users questions based on the cognitive therapy approach to counselling and attempts to evaluate the degree and kind of depression they might be suffering from.

Ohno explains: "I think this can be helpful for people in times of need or when they feel a little blue, as a form of daily prevention against depression. It may act as a supplement [to conventional treatment]."

So far, the service is available only in Japanese and only on that country's phones, but it's a safe bet that success could see it replicated around the world as more and more people seek help from their invaluable pocket companions

Avoid speeding tickets with iPhone app

J Mark Lytle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:03:00 +0000

Next time you get caught doing 35 in a 30 zone you might be wishing you had the help of one of the most innovative iPhone applications we've yet seen.

Trapster is a free application that can be downloaded from the App Store to turn your handset into a speed trap detector that's far more efficient than any dashboard radar.

GPS awareness

The software uses the phone's GPS chip to pinpoint its location and compares that against a map of roads that is dotted with the locations of speed traps.

When it determines that the phone – and, presumably, the vehicle it's in – is heading for danger it sounds an audible alarm warning that it's time to slow down.

Community driven

The key to Trapster's success is in the fact that the worldwide database of speed traps is user generated. Anyone can contribute the location of a trap through the website or directly through the application.

To avoid false positives, the community gets to vote on the quality of the information, meaning bad reports are quickly eliminated.

Other phones too

Although the program is available for Blackberries and Symbian phones, over half the users are on the iPhone.

So far, the company behind the software says it has almost 200,000 people in on the act of getting drivers to slow down – remember, it's about safety, not avoiding fines, we're told.

AVG sees 'uphill battle' for Microsoft Morro

Mark Harris — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:16:00 +0000

AVG, makers of the AVG Free anti-virus software, today warned Microsoft of the problems it faces with its free anti-malware software - codenamed Morro - due for launch next year.

AVG predicted Microsoft would incur "enormous overhead costs" for customer service and support issues, as well as for ongoing product management and upgrades.

The company's CEO J.R. Smith said: ""Microsoft is clearly following our lead, which will certainly help combat basic and less sophisticated threats. But the real threat in this scenario is to Microsoft's own profitability and channel partner relations."

Morro never dies?

Morro will replace the Windows Live OneCare package currently sold on a subscription basis, and will be available as a standalone, free download next summer.

AVG envisages a backlash from partners used to selling lucrative Microsoft products, and questions the Redmond company's ability to respond to fast-moving malware attacks.

AVG noted that Microsoft often relies on its monthly 'patch Tuesday' updates to refresh its current anti-virus product, which it says "leaves computer users vulnerable to botnets and other malicious attacks."

All good points, but you have to wonder about how threatened AVG itself - with 85 million users of its AVG Free antivirus software - feels by the prospect of free anti-malware from the world's dominant software provider.