My iWeb ('06) site and FTP uploading

I must say it. I really like iLife's iWeb app. I know how to use Adobe Golive and Dreamweaver (in a very novice way) and I managed to make a professional site with both of them, but for what's worth, I like to make my family site with iWeb. It's easy to understand, everything is WYSIWYG.
Ok. Maybe it's not so easy for everyone, but I caught their way pretty fast. And that applies to other apps for Mac.
Anyway, back to the topic. When I write new entries to my site -blog or album catalog- I use "publish to folder" from the File menu. This function republishes all the site with a new date, so most of the time you end up uploading all your site over and over again, using an FTP uploader. I see this as a waste of time, band with and net traffic.
One of my big concerns was the fact that the link for the RSS was wrongly created by iWeb Publish to Folder. Dont' know why, but creates the link with a route to a non-existing folder (same name as the local publish folder but inside domain), where the rss.xml it's supossed to be. First I thought that it was a problem with the rss file. But after some time I realized that thing about the folder.
And what I had to do, was to open all the files with the rss.xml link and erase that phantom folder from the route. In my site I have one blog for my family stuff, and another one to write about everything that comes into my mind. So I have 2 blogs, that means 2 archives and 2 front pages. That makes 4 files with rss.xml with a bad link, 2 or 3 times per file.
So I used Textwrangler to do the job. When I finally got into it, I created a script to make Textwrangler to do the job for me!!!! It's just as simple to start recording the actions of selecting the 4 files, find "phantom folder", erase and save.
After that, I'm ready to FTP publish. Now I' using Cyberduck, opensource/donation ware, and after a few times managed to understand it. Just drag what I want to be uploaded into the FTP favourite of my site. Missing the two-panel view but not a problem at all. So, by now, I know what files and folders of my site changed each time I write. Most of the time is only blog and photos, so I just select these two to be updated. And that saves me the time of uploading the whole site each time.
I was looking forward to the new iWeb'o8 as it was said that they would improve something about FTP but that didn't happen. That leaves out the "one-click publishing" feature because only works with a .mac account. Hope at least the rss.xml problem is solved in this version.

Instead of having a .mac account

Since I started using my mac, I decided to try most of the apps that come pre-installed, and I also decided not to pay for a .mac account. Some may say that I'm losing the capabilities of synchronization or else, but I have a backup in a external hard drive (Ok, I have to make it more frequently, but that's not the point).

I decided not to use .mac just because I already have lots of services for free. I use a lot of Google services just with one account:

• Gmail, with almost 3 Gb storage space. And I set up Mail to download my two gmail accounts. Working just fine.
• Picasa Web Albums, now 1 Gb storage space for photos. And you can use the Picasa App for Mac or the Picasa plug-in for iPhoto. And works with my Blogger account, too. Works great.
• Google Calendar. Not as neat as the iCal but I need just to keep track on birthdays there. For my personal to do's i use iCal, I just need it at home.
• Google Reader for RSS subscriptions and you have a plug-in for Firefox to notify you as you open the browser.
• YouTube for my family videos.

The items above just count for the Google services I use but for example, you can use Google Browser Sync for Firefox to keep your bookmarks, cookies and history synchronized between two computers, and you also have del.icio.us but I haven't tried this one yet. For the newly added .mac feature called Groups, you have Google Groups. If you are interested in turning your gmail account in a storage device maybe you are interested in gDisk, donation ware. For backing up, if you search in Google, you will found a lot of alternatives.
And more, I registered my gmail in Microsoft .Net Passport, so I can still use the same email to sign in in MS Messenger (so bad they don't plan to further develop the mac version, one thing I miss is the voice, video and Remote Assistance from the windows version). Not a lot of my people have macs so iChat is out of the question, but for video and voice I use Skype for Mac.
For my personal website, I use iWeb's Publish to Folder and a free host (with a domain bought from doteasy). I agree that it's not very nice when FTP uploading the newly published site but I've already found a way to avoid not changed files. But I'll write about it in a future post. But using iWeb I can link my picasa albums here, as well as my youtube videos, and with iComment (license: 7 euros) you can use the free Haloscan comment service and the free StatCounter service. I'm only waiting to get my hands on iWeb'08 to revamp the site, insert some code and embed the photos (from my PicasaWeb, Flickr or Skitch) and the videos in the site.
And FYI, i know there is one service that works a lot like the .mac but it's a german site (so all in german). Anyway, if you're interested here it is Macbay. As for a free hosting service you can try the one I tried, Hostistry (UPDATE: This hosting service has died). I tried others but site never appeared on any browser on any computer.

Using Skitch

About a month ago, seeking those little special apps that exist for Mac, I found myself in a site with one call Skitch. They were giving invites in Mundo Mac (because still is in closed Beta) to be able to test it. They said that still they remained 9, so I wrote and after an hour I received my invite. This application, Skitch, was created by the same people of Comic Life. I haven't used Comic Life that much, but is an amusing application if you want to see your life becoming a comic. In that sense, Skitch has also that amusing side, and besides, is super easy to use (it's mostly visual). Here you have the video, directly from the site of the creative plasq.

I'm still thinking to whom I will give the invite I have left, as there is few people that know with a Mac, and of the 2 invites I had, one was for my little bro.

Virtual machines and Emulators in Mac OS X

I talked here about my need to use Windows Xp before, because the Autocad and the Studio Viz applications. So I decided to give a try to some of the emulation and virtualisation apps that are out there.

In order of cost, these is what I’ve found (and they run not only Windows but also Linux and other OS):
- Q (open source) easy installation of any other OS
- Xen (open source)
- Wine (open source)
- iEmulator (commercial with demo) $24
- Crossover for Mac (commercial with demo) $59
- Parallels Desktop for Mac (commercial with demo) $79 you can use your Bootcamp partition if you follow the instructions
- VMware Fusion (commercial with demo) $80 but will work either with your Bootcamp partition, or with a new one.

I went through tutorials and forums, and decided to try the Parallels Desktop for Mac, for the simpliest reason: I didn’t want to go through a new installation of WinXP, and as Parallels Desktop for Mac claimed to use the Bootcamp partition already on the machine, that was my shot.

I must say that there’s a lot of good feedback about Q. Just didn’t try for the same reason. They don’t have the Bootcamp partition support yet.

Back to Parallels Desktop for Mac, installation was simple and I had to do almost nothing, the app recognized my Bootcamp and I started to use it right the way. So, I needed the Autocad (I have a 2007 version) and it worked just fine, for lines and plans, that’s 2D drawing. I tried some 3D basic drawing (like extrude function and 3D views, nice). Then, even as I knew that Studio Viz wouldn’t work, I tried it anyway. Something about network license not found.

Later on, rebooting in Bootcamp, WinXP asked me to re-authorize my OS. I was worried about the Studio Viz installation, but it worked as usual.

In global terms, I must say that it’s very nice not having to reboot just to draw some lines or make revisions in others’ dwg files.

FTP software for Mac OS…

Since I decided to have my own personal site, where I write about my family and the developments of my little girl, I learned some things about publishing on the net, and there are a lot of protocols, but the most used is the FTP (file transfer protocol).

As I use iWeb (Publish to folder) for my personal site, I tried the Easy iWeb Publisher that is donation-ware. Simple, easy and minimal. But you don’t get to see a list of the files, neither local nor remote server.

Specific for iWeb, we also have found these:
• iWeb Uploader (freeware – site in French)
• w2w (freeware) when we use iWeb Publish To Folder, the application re-writes all the files with a new date, and this little app claims that you’re not going to re-write all files in remote server, because it recognizes the changes in files, but I didn’t try.

If you are more into FTP, and need to visualize your local files and your uploaded files, you can try these:
• FTP on Mac OS X (Connect to server)
• Cyberduck (freeware - donation) Nice and easy to use app, but I was having problems as it was re-connecting every 3 minutes or so and when saved location to favourites, the login didn’t work.
• Transmit (commercial $30 with full working demo 15 day) I must say that I’m still in demo version, with doesn’t allow you to save your favourites but keeps running and works fine.
• FileZilla (freeware – platform independent)
• One Button FTP (freeware – donation)
• Yummy FTP (commercial $25 with demo 30 day)
• Fetch (commercial $25 with demo 15 day)
• CrossFTP (freeware, commercial if you want PRO features) This one is platform independent, as I understood, it’s java-based.

And there are these ones too. I think all apps have their demo, just didn’t try them.
• FTP Client (commercial)
• Captain FTP (commercial)
• Crush FTP (commercial)
• Cute FTP for Mac (commercial)
• FTP Portal (commercial)
• Interarchy (commercial)
• Simple FTP (commercial)