Another tip I meant to mention in the last post regarding the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, was about Flickr.  Flickr is a really good way to share photos, create galleries of images and even set up an online portfolio (we have several users who are graphic designers that do this).  Flickr’s integration with iPhoto, Facebook and other sites makes it very easy to use.  For example, when you post a new image to Flickr, you also choose to have it automatically post to your Facebook wall, Twitter feed, etc.

Flickr also generates easy to find links for sets or collections of images (so you can email direct links to the work you want to show).  Flickr is a Yahoo! service, but you don’t have to have a Yahoo account to join or sign in.  You can also access Flickr with your Google or Facebook account credentials.

You can also check out your Flickr photos on your Apple TV.

Best of all, with a Flickr Pro account you get UNLIMITED photo uploads (20MB per photo) and unlimited storage for only $24.95 a year.

One of our users wanted to know what would happen to keychain syncing when MobileMe is phased out next year.  Just to updateeveryone on what is going to be safe in iCloud and what is going to be axed, here is the official Apple list:

iCloud = Mail, Bookmarks, Calendar, Contacts, Find My iPhone, and Back to My Mac.

The items that will be cut are Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items, System Preferences, iWeb publishing, Gallery, iDisk, and Keychains.

So what is one to do without keychain syncing through MobileMe?  As there’s no system wide keychain on iOS, one could either put a text file in Dropbox or go with 1Password.

1Password will allow you to do Over-The-Air syncing via an encrypted file in your Dropbox account, or over WiFi by manually opening the host app on your computer and your iOS device at the same time.

On your iOS device, you can use 1Password to browse the web (embedded Safari) and it will auto-fill your passwords for you.

There’s also an app called MacDropAny that allows you to add any folder on your Mac to the folders that Dropbox syncs. One of our techs uses it to back up his AddressBook, and it should be able to be used for keychains as well — assuming that one’s user account passwords are the same on each computer.

Also, what about iWeb sites that have been published to MobileMe? Apple’s document on how to move an iWeb site from MobileMe to another hosting service can be found here.

What about photos that have been published to the MobileMe Gallery? It’s likely that all of your photos are already in your iPhoto library, but you should make sure that you save your MobileMe Gallery photos and videos before MobileMe expires.

And last, files on users’ MobileMe iDisk?  Make sure you save your files to your Mac (or PC).  Dropbox is an excellent replacement for iDisk.

In the meantime, enjoy MobileMe until it ends on June 30, 2012.

The latest Mac operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion, will be available from the Mac App Store in July for a mere $29.99. Apple maintains that Lion will be available ONLY through the App Store, and has not mentioned any plans of releasing it as a DVD.

Among the awesome features in Lion are:

New Multi-Touch® gestures that enable you to view Mission Control, switch between open apps, a two-finger scroll, tap to zoom, pinch to zoom, and swipe to navigate (which means that if you have an iMac or a Mac Pro, you will probably want to go and get yourself a Magic Trackpad).

System-wide support for full screen apps, which allows you to have multiple full-screen apps open at the same time.

Mission Control, a unification of full-screen apps, Dashboard, Exposé, and Spaces that gives you a view of everything running on your Mac.

Launchpad, which is a new home for all your apps.  No need to go hunting around in your Applications folder anymore.  One click on the Launchpad icon in your Dock and you get a full screen view of all your apps.

A completely new Mail.app, which will have the dual-column layout and conversation views similar to the ones iPhone and iPad owners are familar with.

Auto Save, which eliminates the need for manual saving AND lets you revert to the last saved version if you’re not happy with the changes that you’ve made. Versions allows you to see every new version of a document each time you open it, and you can move between versions in the timeline to compare or revert to an earlier version.  I know so many of our clients will be thrilled to have these two features.

Before downloading this upgrade from the Mac App Store you MUST verify that you meet the following two (2) criteria:

1.  Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion.

2.  You must be running the latest version of Snow Leopard.

Don’t hesitate to contact us to set up an appointment so we can help you upgrade your machines when Lion arrives.

Busy, busy week here at NeedMacHelp! Sorry for the belated post!

We have several clients who use Final Draft so I wanted to write a little post about a new reader application for iPad, FDX Reader, that our tech James told me about.  FDX reader lets users read Final Draft screenplays (it does not read screenplays written in other programs) in their .fdx file format.  This means no more opening a screenplay to ugly raw XML or going through the extra step of converting to PDF before moving to the iPad.

According to the specs on the designer’s site, FDX Reader works a lot like iBooks or the Kindle app.  It keeps track of how many pages a reader has read, keeps scene numbers and lets readers go back and forth between any page.

FDX Reader for iPad is $7.99 at the app store and requires iOS 4.3 or later.

So the white version of Apple’s iPhone 4 went on sale yesterday. Should be the same device but just a different color, right? Well, it seems as though there is a slight difference between the two versions. MacRumors reported yesterday that the white iPhone 4 is slightly thicker than the black iPhone 4 (see photos here). While the report notes that the size difference is noticeable to someone who has the black version of the iPhone 4, it’s really only a 0.2mm difference in thickness so all available iPhone 4 cases look as though they will still work.

Some of our clients began reporting font printing issues after updating to 10.6.7.  Our industrious tech James found the fix earlier this week in Apple’s 10.6.7 Font Update.

As James noted, it’s rare for Apple to release one-bug-specific OS fix, and since the symptoms exactly match the problems and the 10.6.7 update timing matches the start of the problem that our clients were experiencing, he’s pretty darned confident that the problems will be resolved with the fix.

It appears as thought Apple got immediate reports of the problem, were able to replicate it and had an easy fix to push out right away, so they didn’t find a need to document it in their Knowledge Base.

The update includes the following fixes:

• Address an issue in which some OpenType fonts don’t display correctly in certain applications
• Resolve issues printing from Preview
• Address an issue with PDF files not opening in third-party PDF viewing applications
• Resolve invalid font errors when printing to PostScript printers

To download the update, visit the Apple website here.

iTunes 10.2.2 was released yesterday via software update. No major new features but it does provide a few bug fixes:

• Addresses an issue where iTunes may become unresponsive when syncing an iPad.
• Resolves an issue which may cause syncing photos with iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to take longer than necessary.
• Fixes a problem where video previews on the iTunes Store may skip while playing.
• Addresses other issues that improve stability and performance.

According to Apple’s support notes for iTunes 10.2.2, improvements include:

• Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 4.3.
• Improved Home Sharing. Browse and play from your iTunes libraries with Home Sharing on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 4.3.

I think it goes without saying that all companies doing business today recognize the importance of having a website to promote the company’s products and services. However, not all companies understand the extreme importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Like it or not, SEO has become a necessary part of business operations. If Google doesn’t sufficiently love the content of your website, then your site will suffer in Google’s search rankings. If potential clients and customers aren’t finding your website through a Google search for keywords that describe the products and services that you offer, then you are losing countless amounts of business.

Just to make it less abstract, let’s say that you have a company called Midas Touch. The primary product that Midas Touch makes is 14K gold paperclips, and there’s a customer out there who is in dire need of replenishing his or her stock of 14K gold paperclips.  When this potential customer types in the keywords “14K paperclips” in Google, you want to make sure that Midas Touch’s site is the first thing they see.  If the Midas Touch website doesn’t have enough unique, original content, or if the website isn’t updated on a regular basis, however, then Google is going to punish Midas Touch by sending its website to the bottom of the Google search listings. Instead of appearing on page 1 of the search for “14K paperclips,” the Midas Touch website might be found on page 6 or 7.

So instead of Midas Touch getting the order for 1,000,000 14K gold paperclips, your competitor, Goldfingerz, who has a website chockablock full of unique, relevant content, no Adobe Flash, loads of inbound links and a constantly updated blog that keeps the public aware of the changes in the 14K gold office supply market, will end up making the big sale due to a great page rank and top position in Google’s search engine on page 1 for the search term “14K paperclips.”

For me (and I’m sure I’m not alone), tracking web rankings, visitors, keywords, etc. on a regular basis can an incredibly boring, monotonous and abstract activity. It most certainly is if you are tracking page rankings and keywords by searching for your “golden” keywords yourself, and manually logging the results in a spreadsheet. Although Google Analytics is great for tracking visitors, as well as the keywords that visitors have used to get to your site, it doesn’t help you determine where your site is appearing in Google or other search engines for all of your top keywords.

Thankfully, I found an incredibly useful tool called Advanced Web Ranking. Advanced Web Ranking is SEO software that makes compiling data and analyzing search engine rankings for my site (site ranking) an efficient and painless task. It generates comprehensive and clear reports for all my important keywords so I don’t have to create them manually. Advanced Web Ranking also tracks my keywords in search engines beyond Google. Yahoo, MSN and other search engines are also included. Additionally, Advanced Web Ranking has a great keyword research tool.

With its easy-to-use browser-like interface, Advanced Web Ranking makes it easy for me to keep up-to-date with my website’s position in Google and other search engines, which makes the task almost enjoyable!

For more information on Advanced Web Ranking SEO software, visit their site at www.advancedwebranking.com

A lot of users out there are still wondering which is better — MacBook Air or iPad 2?  I tweeted about this a while ago, but thought I’d revisit the question as it has been coming up a lot lately.

Brooke Crothers wrote a spot-on review of the two machines for CNET a few weeks back. His verdict (much the same as ours) is that the MacBook Air is probably a better value for users who need to have great browsing and media capability AS WELL AS the ability to use the software that is part of their every day workflow. And it’s much faster, too!

For the full list of pros and cons, click here.

Sparrow 1.1 was released last week and the release notes state that it is a “major” update with lots of fixes and features, including:

• General IMAP support: Gmail, Mobile Me, Yahoo and any custom IMAP account can be used with Sparrow
• Priority Inbox: Gmail’s priority inbox is integrated
• Per Alias signature (very cool!): you can use a different signature for each of your avatars

Our techs give Sparrow an 8/10. They find the menu bar integration to be nice, but complete separation of mail accounts (you can’t move messages between accounts) is a minus.

More information can be found on the different features and bug fixes in Sparrow 1.1 can be found at the Sparrow website.

Sparrow 1.1 is available at the Mac App Store.