Mac OS X Utilities

Mac OS X Genealogy Utilities

Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial – Good for Genealogists

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Snapheal 2.0 The Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial, a “Name Your Own Price” bundle, is one of the better deals for Mac-using genealogists, even if it doesn’t have any Mac OS X genealogy software in the bundle.

It ends on May 7th, and it comes with several applications, including software that would let you run Windows apps on your Mac (without needing to install Windows or run Boot Camp), an application that can remove unwanted objects from photos, as well as fix damaged photos (tears, scratches, etc.), data recovery software, and PDF/OCR software.

The apps I listed above are all very handy to a lot of genealogists, and can be had for under $10 (or more deepening on how much you feel it’s worth to you). If you paid full price for all of the apps, it would be over $800, and even the apps I singled out would cost $280.

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Encrypt External Drives with Mac OS X Lion’s FileVault 2

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Somebody asked me about whether I encrypt any of my external drives. The answer is yes – Mac OS X 10.7 Lion added the ability with FileVault 2 to encrypt an entire hard drive with XTS-AES 128 encryption (which is about as good as you can get while still making it easy). It’s handy when traveling, especially with the smaller USB/FireWire drives which can sprout legs and disappear. I’m talking about the smaller drives that use the 2.5-inch laptop hard drives. I’ve put together a couple of small FireWire 800 drives using Macally FireWire 800/USB 2.0 Enclosure (PHR-S250UAB) (Amazon is cheaper than dedicated Mac shops for this particular enclosure) and I also have a Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive (Amazon) that I picked up on sale.

Why FireWire 800?
Although this article is about encrypting external drives, I know somebody might be wondering about my choice of drives. FireWire 800 drives or buying FireWire 800 enclosures is a little pricier than the USB route, but my MacBook Pro supports it as does my iMac, it’s faster than USB, and you can daisy-chain devices, which frees up USB ports. There are also times where I handle a large amount of large files, such as when I’m scanning photos or dealing with home video or interviews, and it’s worth the speed increase. I do not have Thunderbolt interfaces on either of my Macs. Hopefully by the time I feel the need to upgrade, Thunderbolt-based external drives will be cheap and easy to obtain.

So why encrypt your external drives?
Imagine losing an external hard drive or flash drive. If you’re like me, you may be using it as a backup to your Mac(s), at least temporarily, or as supplemental storage. I do make use of Time Machine, however I leave my Time Machine backups in a secure location and don’t carry them with the computer. I use external drives when I’m traveling for manually backing up on the go and storing extra data and information. Those who are on MacBook Air’s with the smaller Solid State Drives (SSDs) are probably using external drives a lot, and although they are using USB or Thunderbolt devices instead of FireWire 800 like me, the information below still applies.

I have financial information, scanned receipts, emails and email attachments, and the other assorted digital things that we all come into contact with in our daily lives. It’s the nature of the “digital world”. In addition to being a Mac user, I’m obviously a genealogist. I end up with a lot of information such as copies of birth certificates, family photos, and other documents that I would not be comfortable having other people access without my permission. Imagine losing a hard drive with some personal information about a family member, and having to tell them that you didn’t take any precautions with that information even though it’s easy to do so? Awkward, very awkward.

The bottom line is that if somebody steals one of your external drives or flash drives, they aren’t going to be able to get the information off the drive if you have FileVault 2 enabled on the drive.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Once you’ve encrypted an external hard drive with File Vault 2, if you lose or forget the password, that data is gone!

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Non-Genealogy Software Updates – Feb 23, 2012 Edition

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Following in the footsteps of last week non-genealogy software updates (Feb 16, 2012 Edition), the following is a list of recent software updates that may be of interest to Mac-using genealogists.

VueScan Version 9.0.81 has been released.
VueScan is scanning software that supports a large number of scanners (and it’s what I use). Version 9.0.81 has fixes for Plustek, PIE, and Reflecta scanners, and addresses an issue with option changes and the scroll wheel.
More information: Hamrick.com (VueScan website).

ExactScan version 2.19.3
ExactScan is also scanning software, however it is focused on document scanning, including as an example, support for document scanners that handle 60 and 120 pages per minute. It supports over 200 document scanners (Avision, Kodak, Oki, Visioneer, Xerox, Canon, Fujitsu, and others, including many that do not have support for Mac OS X from the manufacturer.

There are two versions, both available through the App Store
– ExactScan – ExactCODE
– ExactScan Pro – ExactCODE

ExactScan Pro offers the ability to do Optical Character Recognition (OCR) directly to PDF (in a searchable format), “Imprinter” to print text into the scanned image, barcode recognition to file stacks by barcodes, and batch processing of existing image files.

WordPerfect Spotlight and Quick Look Plug-ins Version 3.6 (February 18, 2012)
This is a set of two plugins that do what they describe – they enabled Spotlight search and Quick Look thumbnails/previews for documents and graphics files created by any version of WordPerfect running on any operating system from WordPerfect 1.0 up through WordPerfect 11. They will even pass information such as the document format/WordPerfect version and whether a file is encrypted (password protected).

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Related Software Updates – Feb 16, 2012 Edition

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This marks the start of a weekly series, not always on the same day, where I’m going to cover software updates that maybe of interest to Mac-using genealogists.

VueScan 9.0.80 was released today. It’s scanning software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and has been my preferred scanning software for several years. It handles a large amount of scanners and provides more features than most factory-default software that comes with your scanner. There is also an iOS version of VueScan (VueScan Mobile – Hamrick Software) that takes advantage of WiFi-enabled scanners to scan straight to your iOS device.
More information: Hamrick.com (VueScan website).

iPhoto Library Manager 3.7.3 was released yesterday, mainly covering bug fixes. iPhoto Library Manager is aptly named – it allows you to have multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having everything contained within one iPhoto library. It also supports copying photos from one iPhoto library to another. I use it to keep track of photos from different branches of my family (and my wife’s family) as well as separate personal/family photos (vacation, holiday, etc.) from older genealogy-related photos. It supports Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, and iPhoto 4.0.3 or higher. Handy for those using older Macs and older versions of iPhoto.
More information: Fat Cat Software

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Skype 5 Beta for OS X

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Skype, which is a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) application has released beta 5.0 of the Mac OS X client.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. While the previous versions of Skype for Mac were 2.8 and below, the new 5.0 number reflects a couple of major updates and is now at the same version number as the Windows client.

The first major update is that Skype for Mac now supports group video calling, a feature that is present in Apple’s iChat client, but has’t been available to Mac Skype users. In order to use this feature, everybody on the video chat needs to be using version 5.0 or newer. I’m not sure about this feature when using an iPhone.

There is another major update, but it’s overshadowed (in my opinion) by the group video calling. The user interfaace has been overhauled and is now a single, unified window. You’ll no longer have your chats, video calls, etc., in different windows. I’ve got mixed feelings about this, but there is a “call control bar” that can sit on top of other windows you have open. With the unified interface though, it makes for a larger overall window. I understand the reasoning behind it though, and I’m going to use it – I’ve been really looking forward to the group video calls. A lot of us use Skype to keep in touch with family and friends.

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iPhoto 11 Update with Calendars

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Apple has released iPhoto 9.1, which is actually iPhoto 11 9.1. iPhoto 8.0 is the version number of iPhoto ’09, so iPhoto 9.1 is iPhoto ’11 . Anyways, it’s an update for Apple’s iLife ’11 that resolves a few issues, and adds some additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes. The … Read more