Scriptplayground Network

Agile Software has recently released version 3 of their popular password manager, 1Password. Its no surprise I am a huge fan of this application, but with all that packed into this new version I love it more.

The feature list for 1Password 3 is about 50+ but some of them really stand out. Especially the custom keychain, mobile syncing, software licensing management and even the new design.

64 Bit, check!
Starting at the core the new version runs natively on Snow Leopard in 64bit mode. This of course means more responsive and faster performance overall.

Mobile Syncing
With the 1Password iPhone app you can travel with your passwords and even use the app to login to MobileSafari web pages without ever having to enter a password.

Faster search
1Password 3 now features much better and robust searching. You can quickly drill down on your passwords and find the correct one with ease.

Accounts
This is a lesser known feature but extremely useful. It gives you the ability to store account passwords, such as those for Airport, FTP, IM and the iTunes store, for example.

Attach files
You can now attach files (licenses, order receipts, keys) to any item in 1Password. This is especially useful for digital purchases, which normally have a simple email key that you often times misplace over the years.

Closing thoughts
I would like to see Chrome supported in a dot release soon, but I suspect that feature is held on the limitation of plug-ins with Chrome on the Mac.

In the end, the peace of mind with having all of my passwords stored safely really is priceless but the low price of $39.95 or $24.95 for the upgrade is a drop in the bucket. Stop remembering all those passwords and use 1Password.

Pick up a copy today, over at the Agile Online Store.

I’m sure you have read them all today and probably have more to go, but here is mine. A look back on 2009 which for the most part was a great year.

It started off with a bang, lots of amazing projects, travel planned and overall couldn’t ask for more. For the first part of the year I stayed home and worked but come April I was off to Flash in the Can in Toronto for probably the most exciting conference I had ever attended.

Fast forward a few more months and I was in Orlando meeting up with my family and friends, even met a friend all the way from Singapore which was a great time. Sadly 2 days later I was locked away in bed with the flu that I caught on the flight down so this vacation was cut short quickly. However soon after I was back home it was on the road again (literally a road trip) to Owosso Michigan for the 2009 Train Festival. The bonus of this trip was being able to ride on the Morning Daylight, the most elegant steam engine that is still operating (for show) to this day.

Then we come to September or what I call the most extended vacation of my life. I first flew over to Colorado to stay with some good friends and transform into a hiking, exotic-food-eating, shooting redneck and it was a blast. Then it was off to Las Vegas for Photoshopworld were I got to meet up with much of the PhotoshopCafe family. These are guys I have worked alongside for years but only now got to meet. To say it was a great time is an extreme understatement.

The last trip of the year was back to Florida for a pre-Christmas celebration with Disney, friends and family. I got to see the Christmas party at Magic Kingdom and visit pretty much every Disney park in that week. Once I got back home I continued the Disney fun and went to Disney on Ice.

Even the last day of 2009 was amazing. I trekked into Boston to see Dane Cook perform at the TD Garden and it was awesome. The travel an volume of people in the city for First Night couldn’t put a damper on the show and i’m glad I got to go.

Okay so that is pretty much a travel recap of 2009, but I did actually work too. This year had its ups/downs with that. I got to work on a few learning applications for schools, some forensic e-learning applications and even a drivers ed application that is used by huge companies to train their employees. I also launched websites for a bar in New York, a social networking site, a few forum rebuilds and even some work for an industry leading wedding book company. A special thanks to my freelance friends, Philip (PNeal) and Ryan (Spooky) for their amazing work during some of these projects.

So there you have it, 2009 in a few paragraphs. I am anxiously awaiting 2010 and all it has to offer. Feel free to comment or ask questions about these projects and travels and i’ll answer anything I am able to.

See you next year (tomorrow).

After much searching online for linux type installations, dangerous hacks and other really involved installation proceses I figured there had to be an easier way. Turns out I was right. I simply installed the drivers for the 2430 printer and attached those to the setup process and was up and running in a matter of minutes.

Here’s how:

1. Start off by visiting Konica Minoltas site and downloading and installing the OS X drivers, found here:
http://printer.konicaminolta.com/support/current_printers/mc2430dl_sup.htm

2. Open “Print & Fax” located in System Preferences and click the + to add a new printer. You should see your 2300DL located under the Default tab, select it and choose “Select Printer Software…” from the Print Using option. Follow the onscreen options and you are all set. Its really that simple.

I hope this helps save someone time as I spent a good 2 hours trying to find the perfect solution.

Disclaimer: The driver installed is for the newer 2430 printer so there could be issues, use at your own risk.

The topic of more “man hours” will come up at least once in your professional career. A man hour is defined as the average amount of work performed by one man in an hour. Now when talking about a single designer/developer, such as yourself, this is how long you can work in a given day. However, what happens when you need more time to work on a project but you alone simply can’t do it?

You could go back to the client and request more time, explaining that you aren’t a magician and the schedule is way too aggressive. Of course this won’t always be a success and in rare cases the client could begin to worry and cancel the project altogether.

Another option is to hire more professionals which results in more man hours because for every hour working on the project you multiply that by the number of professionals on the project. This can be done by hiring a bunch of professional friends, an agency or the more controversial option is outsourcing globally.

While it is a good idea to help out your local friends/family in the same professional group as you its sometimes not feasible based on the budget of the project. This is when you can hire an outsourcing group that generally charges less than your average professional, meaning you can complete the project and stay under budget.

The problem here is picking the correct outsourcing group. You can quickly scan the internet and in a matter of minutes you will read about horror stories with outsourcing groups that have stolen projects, stole money or simply did a horrible job causing you to clean it all up. This of course means an upset client, blown budget and likely a really bad referrals.

Okay so now you have heard about the horror stories of outsourcing, I am sure you are asking yourself, is it really worth it? It is indeed worth it provided you do your research. I am NOT going to recommend a group because I don’t have too much experience with them, but I have talked with other professionals and learned they are easy to spot.

Look at the outsourcing groups client list, verify these projects, look over their services and most importantly get them on the phone and ensure they can clearly communicate with you. If you have a bad feeling in the intro meetings you will likely end up in a bad place at the worst time. Think of the screening process like a job interview and trust your instincts.

You should now have a pretty good idea of what outsourcing does to help and how it can hurt, the last important point to add is the planning of doing the project on your own resources in case the group doesn’t work out. What I like to do in this case is give the outsourcing group a tighter deadline giving me the ability to finish the project if they drop the ball.

If you have outsourced projects in the past or simply heard good things please post a comment. Also feel free to add your opinion because I am not 100% sold on this idea for every project.

This is a quick snippet in the list of things I don’t want to remember but need a place to quickly find the answer. Only difference is I figured others could benefit from this.

So, need to clear the DNS cache in Leopard? Open Terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal) and type the following command then hit ENTER.


dscacheutil -flushcache


Note: You may need to restart your browser for the changes to occur.