This is follow up to the previous post about iPhones internet power and SMS text messaging (the power). With the launch of the app store AOL has led the way with its AIM iPhone application. Twitter and Pounce also followed with their own apps. But AIM has had the capability to send SMS text messages and so does the iPhone AIM application as this lifehacker.com article and others have already described. Of course, the really cool feature is it doesn’t cost you any extra to send SMS text messages through AIM. Then again, you could just use AIM to chat, or twitter, or pounce, or Google Talk, email, or even call them. While SMS is the only one of these at the moment that can interrupt your workflow, not being interrupted may even be a better side-effect of not using SMS.

According to demographics, I am too old to “get” SMS txting. That’s OK. I actually don’t want to get it. In fact, not having an SMS option is a compelling reason for me to want an iPhone. Why? There are few reasons.

First, text messaging is a lot like email. Actually, text messaging essentially is email with restrictions and extra cost. If I’m already paying for the bandwidth, I shouldn’t have to pay more for small text challenged emails to my BFF. In fact,  you can easily go to most cellular websites and send your BFF a txt:

• T-mobile
• Sprint
• Verizon
• att/cingular - Send an email to number@txt.att.net

Secondly, one of the taglines for the iPhone is that you have “the power of the internet in your pocket.” Having the power of the internet in your pocket automatically makes SMS Text messages obsolete. I mean, you can watch youtube videos with no additional bandwidth cost, but txting costs extra? At least the data plan is unlimited. But with the new iPhone 3G plans, I’m not sure if AT&T gets it because they continue to charge extra for SMS text messages (like it’s worth extra). Yet maybe they do get it because SMS is optional. Either way, I am still perplexed with an article from AppleInsider recommending you play it safe and get the 200 sms text messages for $5 more per month. Let’s consider some alternatives:

• You can use Safari on the iPhone to go to each of the above sites and send an SMS text to whomever you want. Additional cost to you: $0.
• Send an email. It’s not all that different.
• You can use instant messaging instead. There’s the new Gtalk web-app which is nicely suited for the iPhone, or you can use meebo.com and get all your instant messaging clients included in a one stop web-app.

• You can use twitter and tweet from your iPhone instead of txt.

Consider for a moment that these web-apps (and sites) are available right now (no new iPhone required). Come July 11th, when the app-store is also goes live, all of these applications (or similar ones) might be found on the app-store as native iPhone applications. The added bonus is with an iPhone 2.0 app, information can now be pushed to the phone. This means you can be interrupted with any number of application messages, just like text messages except without the additional monthly costs. Of course, iPod Touch owners are not left out with these web-apps either. All you need is some Wi-fi.

As the iPhone makes good on its promise to bring the power of the internet in your pocket and as competitors follow, text messages will become increasingly irrelevant. Kind of like that thing you did when you were young because it was cool and everyone else was doing it and then one day you were like “this is so immature”. It’s all part of growing up.

Now that you’ve spent all your money on a nice new Mac, iPhone, Apple TV etc., your budget is starting to get very tight. But you still want to run Windows without Bootcamp, or check out that ubuntu thing that your geek friends talk about without spending any more cash. Well, fortunately you’re still in luck with VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a free virtual machine from sun microsystems. While it may not have all the bells and whistles that Parallels or VMWare Fusion offer, its price tag makes VirtualBox an attractive alternative. In fact, VirtualBox can install certain operating systems that Parallels currently does not support (such as the latest version of Ubuntu Linux). If you want to check out VirtualBox keep in mind the following:

• Memory - You’re going to need at least 512MB of ram for the guest OS. That means you will need at least 1GB of ram for your Mac, preferably more, in order to run comfortably. Otherwise, running a virtual machine will be an exercise in slowwwww.
• Intel Mac - You’re gonna need one to run VirtualBox
• Drive Space - If you have a MacBook Air with a 60Gb or 80Gb drive, keep in mind that a guest OS will take up Gigabytes of space. Running out can be painful.
• Patience - VirtualBox runs on many platforms but it is still in Beta for the Mac. Things may not work out the first or second time. Most virtual machines will add additional modules to the Operating System (called kernel modules). Kernel modules can bring the whole system down. But with a little patience you can still have an enjoyable experience.

So if you want try a virtual machine on the cheap, VirtualBox is for you.

A couple of weeks ago I was testing out some software updates on my shiny new Mac Pro. After I was finished testing things out I noticed that the Mac was slow, very slow. I fired up the Activity Monitor to see what was going on. Turns out a background process called syslogd was running up the CPUs. Syslogd is the Apple System Log Server. It gathers logging statements from all the various running applications and saves them in case you need to look at them later. If you open the Console Applications from the /Applications/Utilities folder, you can read the logs created by syslogd.

What I couldn’t figure out was why syslogd was using an enormous amount of the Mac Pro’s resources. A little Googling revealed that syslogd stores the most recent log statements in a database file so they can be searched quickly. This database file has the property of fast access for reading, but it is slow to update with new entries. In fact, if an application logs too much information in a certain amount of time syslogd can no longer update the database file in a reasonable amount of time and it begins taking up more and more resources. Most people noticed this problem when using time machine as time machine does log changes to your file system (which can add up). The software I was testing was sending more log statements than syslogd could handle.

Now that I’ve found what was going on, I still had to do something about it. Syslogd can accept additional start up information that controls what kind of log messages it will accept, how often the database file will be purged of old log messages, and other options. These settings are located in a file in the System Folder of your Mac. If you’re feeling lucky (or geeky), you can edit this file directly. However, I recommend Lingon, a free app that does all the heavy lifting for you.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Lingon, you can start it up and it looks something like this:

On the left hand nav menu, there is an item that says System Daemons, go ahead and expand that item and then scroll down the listings until you find com.apple.syslogd. Once you click on the com.apple.syslogd item you will be presented with a warning that looks like this:

Go ahead and click OK. You are then presented with the syslogd startup information, such as it’s name, the path to the application (i.e. /usr/sbin/syslogd) and other startup information. You can add startup parameters to the application as command line arguments. I changed /usr/sbin/syslogd to /usr/sbin/syslogd -c 3 -a and then saved the file. You will need administrator rights in order to save the changes. Once you are done, it should look something like this in the “What” field:

The -c 3 tells syslog to ignore less important messages. There are 8 log levels with 0 being the highest (or most important) and 8 being the lowest. With -c 3, syslogd will only log messages with a log level of 3 or less. The -a parameter tells syslog to archive the database, clearing out entries over 24 hours old.

I haven’t had any syslogd problems since I’ve added these new options. However, with Lingon I can go back and adjust if I need to. So if your Mac slows down, it’s probably not spyware or anything like that, just a little logging application with a hungry appetite for CPU cycles. Lingon lets you tell syslog, “you on a diet.”

Apple has just released an update to the Airport Utility and a firmware update to the Airport Extreme base station. This update to the AEBS will enable Time Machine to use disks attached to your base station. In order for this to work you must have the latest version of OS X (10.5.2 as of this writing). Once you update the Airport Utility on your mac, you’ll need to start up the Airport Utility. Depending on how you’ve configured your AEBS, it will notify you that there is new firmware to download and install or you may have to select “check for updates” from the Airport Utility menu.

Once the firmware is installed, you can then plug in your external USB drive to the base station, find your base station in the shared sidebar of finder, then open Time Machine Preferences and Select the drive and you’re done!

In fact, I’m backing up this mac to my AEBS right now. Sometimes it pays to be an early adopter.

PS Remember that you have to have a disk that is formatted (or partitioned) with Apple’s File System (HFS+).

Update

Nine and a half hour later, the first backup from Time Machine completed. My Macbook Pro is a first generation with 802.11g wireless. Your mileage my vary.