Murphy Mac

A true Apple fan from deep in the backwoods of County Meath - that’s Ireland - dropped two nuggets of info on Murphy today:  Two ways to remote control a computer from your iPhone or iPod touch.

logmein.com

First, there’s logmein.com, which has become a favorite remote control option for Murphy.  It’s secure, it’s free, and it makes maintaining a list of the computers you connect to simple.  When Murphy signs into logmein.com he sees which computers are online - and can connect with a click from a web browser.  From anywhere.

This post by the Technology Evengelist shows how you can make a simple change to your logmein.com preferences so your iPhone or iPod touch can be used as the client.  First you select the computer you want to make the change for, then update the preferences to use an html client when connecting.  Details in the post.

VNC Lite

If you prefer VNC there’s a client in the App Store called Mocha VNC Lite, as reported by Just Another Iphone Blog.  I was connected to my Mac in about 45 seconds including the install.  VNC on a tiny screen requires a little patience, but it’s great to have the access when you don’t have a computer.

More Remote Tips

Murphy has tons of posts - tons - to help you with gaining access to a remote Mac.  We’ve got you covered from getting started with SSH and SCP to emailing yourself a filename - and automatically having the file sent to you in a reply.  Murphy also has posts on auto-emailing a file that’s dropped in a Finder folder.  So you can ssh in, copy a file to a folder, and it’s on its way.

Murphy used to control iTunes using a laptop. With an almost two-year-old little girl on the loose that’s not always so convenient. Laptops are a prime toddler target. If Murphy’s little angel isn’t beating on the MBP she’s slamming the lid shut and saying, “Buh-bye.”

Remote Buddy changes everything. A toddler doesn’t always notice an iPod touch or an iPhone. So now Murphy can select a playlist, skip to the next track, rate a song - all kinds of things. If a toddler approaches you can jam the iPod between the sofa cushions.

Remote Buddy has a nice layout. The buttons are easy to tap and you can browse using a very iPod-like interface. Murphy has been making lots of progress rating songs and cleaning up his library.

Murphy’s music is on a G5 upstairs, but he listens on a stereo in the living room via an Airport Express. When it’s safe to use a laptop the interface is perfect. Murphy set a keyboard shortcut to open Remote Buddy in a custom sized window - using a special kind of bookmark.

The screencast shows some basic functionality. The Remote Buddy interface launches in Safari, so you don’t have to hack your iPhone or iPod touch.

Remote Buddy product site.

Do you have messages on your phone that you save every time you review your voicemail? A call from your daughter announcing your first grandchild? Mary Pat McBride saying she does love you and she will go to the prom with you after all? Your boss calling - fully intoxicated - and promising you the Penske account?

If you’d like to get these messages off your phone and store them somewhere else Murphy has a solution. Run Audio Hijack while calling your mobile phone via Skype. Save the recording on your computer and you can delete it from your phone.

To call a mobile phone from your Skype account you’ll need Skype credit. Maybe you have a free-of-charge way to call your mobile from your computer. Let us know in the comments.

If you’re not familiar with Audio Hijack you can watch the screencast for details on how to capture your voicemail.

It really works.  Here’s a success story based on the experience of Jean MacDonald from Smile On My Mac.  (textexpander and more)

Related Post: You can make Skype always start in invisible mode. Or whatever mode you choose.

I picked up a stack of Sony DVD+R DL disks this morning in preparation for my first attempt at DL burning. The objective: Backing up my Fusion install of Windows XP onto two disks.

The XP vm is about 15 GB. I don’t back it up with Time Machine, but I have a separate volume on the Time Machine drive where a copy of the vm is kept. Now I can delete it if I feel the need. The way I use Windows doesn’t require updating the backup with something like SuperDuper. I’m just saving myself from ever enduring the install process by storing a copy.

Burning more than 8.5 GB ? Use Split.

First I dumped the vm folder into a .sparseimage file created with Disk Utility. Then I used the split command in Terminal to split the sparse image into two files. That was simple enough, apart from the annoying difference between GB and GiB.

The disks have 8.5 GB stamped on their tops. That’s the manufacturer’s way of making the capacity look bigger - using decimal notation instead of binary. OS X reported the blank disk as having 7.96GB free.

The disks burnt well, no coasters. If I ever need to restore the XP vm I can copy the files from my dvd+R dl disks and reconstitute them with the cat command. For two bucks I reclaimed 15 GB on my external drive. Not bad. That’s thirteen cents per GB compared with around twenty-five cents per GB on an external HDD.

Many PC users are familiar with the idea of a firmware password that needs to be entered before the computer will load the OS. For PC power-users the BIOS or CMOS interface is familiar territory - and it’s the place where they set such a password.

Murphy Mac commenter Brian posted information on something similar for your Mac. Here’s the rundown.

Using the Open Firmware Password utility you can set a password on your Mac that will stop someone from resetting a user account password using the method described in this previous post. Essentially, it prevents unauthorized users from using a disk other than the machine’s internal drive to boot. The utility comes on the install disk that ships with your Mac.

Keep in mind this isn’t much additional security. It might slow down a casual attacker, but a determined foe with physical access to your machine can bypass this security. Your best bet for security that lasts is to encrypt your sensitive files using one of the methods described previously.