If you’re a mac user or always wanted to be one then check out OS X Hacker. OS X Hacker is an Apple productivity and Software blog. Learn about new software, tips, tricks and websites that will make your Apple experience (and maybe even your life) a little better.

Regularly Contributing Authors of OS X Hacker (in alphabetical order):

Matthew Good
http://matthewgood.org

Dave Kellam
http://eightface.com

Robert Mannl
http://osxhacker.com/author/rmannl/

Dale Mugford
http://www.bravenewcode.com

Theron Parlin
http://e5media.com

David Woodward
http://www.onethirtyseven.com

Have a tip or piece of software you want to share? You can email the guys at tips@osxhacker.com.

A little over a month ago Shawn and I were rapping with Jay Meattle and Brian Balfour about doing an technology meetup here in Boston. Brian has a nice post about how it all got pulled together. Well fast forward…and TECH Cocktail Boston now has over 300 tech enthusiasts, writers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and investors attending a sold out event at Tequila Rain. Even the overflow list is full…wow!

Back in July Shawn and I attended TECH Cocktail Chicago 5 and had a blast! We were very impressed with the event. Eric Olson and Frank Gruber do an awesome job with Tech Cocktail…it’s great to have them backing the event here in Boston along with sponsors Compete, Geezeo, North Bridge Venture Partners and ZoomInfo.

This is going to be such a great event. 3 hours of open bar, music, pool, games and give aways. Can’t wait!

I get many questions about Apple laptops so I decided to do a little research so I can be better informed. There is some question as to the real difference between just a plain “MacBook” and a “MacBook Pro.”

What is this “Pro” distinction you ask? I wasn’t sure until sometime this afternoon. So please, grab a coffee (or beer) and let me enlighten you, dear Reader while I simulate an educated Englishman (puts pipe in mouth). If this prose bores you, there are cliff-notes at the bottom. You’ll recognize them when you see them.

Upon trivial inspection, one might surmise the only change the addition of the word “Pro” to the fine market-ese that is the word “MacBook” (bless you), is a change of material (MacBook == plastic, MacBook Pro == metal) and a slightly larger screen. However the differences are far greater once a person decides to look under the hood, kick the tires, and other automotive metaphors.

The MacBook Pro has 100% more L2 Cache on faster processors from the base MacBook. Although the clock-speed of these processors may only be a little higher (2.33Ghz over the base MacBook at 1.83Ghz), the addition of that extra L2 Cache magnifies the increase. The MacBook Pros also come with double the amount of RAM standard over the MacBooks, even triple the amount in the 17″ MacBook Pro.

This serves as a nice segue to screen sizes. The MacBooks come with a measly 13″ screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. While this resolution may work fine while editing one Word document at a time for your school book report due on Friday, it provides for a very cramped working environment when one is required to have multiple Browser windows, TextMate (the de-facto text editing program on the Mac for programming), Finder, and Terminal all open at the same time. It is also pretty cramped when working on a spreadsheet of any sort of complexity. Death to scrollbars!

So maybe you are thinking right now, “Well Gee(zeo!), Dave, why not hook up an external monitor?” My response would be, “Great question Reader! Lets talk about external monitors a bit!”

Now I will not presume to know how you use your computer, but allow me to enlighten you on my own personal usage. My current laptop; which some of you may know is an old-and-creaky 3 years and 4 months old; is a PowerBook G4. It has a screen size of 15″ and has 1280 x 960 pixels (which you may note is bigger that the newest MacBook! How astute!) and also supports a handy feature called “screen spanning.” This allows me to hook an external monitor to my laptop and have my Desktop stretch across both monitors! I love it and have done it for years and find that it greatly enhances my productivity. Note that I use *both* the laptop’s screen and the external monitor for double the Ruby power!

So lets examine the largest external monitors we can hook up to this “MacBook” and this “MacBook Pro.” The MacBook only supports an external resolution of 1900 x 1200 pixels. This is good for a 24″ flat panel monitor. However the MacBook Pro supports a maximum external resolution of a whopping 2560 x 1600! That is enough pixels for a 30″ Apple Cinema Display! That means you could work on a monitor that is bigger than the television set in my living room! If you had the 17″ MacBook Pro and hooked up a 30″ Flat Panel, that would be 6,370,000 pixels! I bet that even NASA doesn’t have that kind of pixelicious love!

It is at this point in this wonderful conversation that I would like to point to a study done by Pfeiffer Consulting in 2005 (PDF, 6 pages).

Did you read? That’s OK because I’m going to summarize it for you. “Screen Real Estate” increases productivity for even the most menial of computer tasks. Even moving files around the file system is faster. Can you imaging seeing hundreds of rows of an Excel spreadsheet, and still have room for a browser window to go Google-ing for statistics? The chart on page 5 of that study easily shows that a 30″ display increases the speed of almost every task by 50% over a 17″ monitor. Their ROI calculations for a revenue of $100/hr. is almost $6000 per year! So clearly having a larger monitor will make anybody using the computer more productive.

And the bigger the better! There isn’t any clear evidence of diminishing returns on this decision. So here we are at the end of this short story of pixels, lust, and intrigue. And the conclusion? A MacBook Pro with a 17″ screen all the way. It has the fastest processor, the most amount of RAM standard, and the largest screen which, by itself, will generate a higher ROI than a smaller screen. I would only recommend a MacBook if you are incredibly infatuated with plastic computers, or you absolutely have to, without a doubt in the world, HAVE to own a black Apple laptop.

Thanks for sticking with me fair Reader, and if you’ve made it this far, thank you. Your attention is greatly appreciated and may you have a fine rest-of-the-evening (or morning!).

And now for something completely different…

Two laptops meet in a field. One is small and plastic, and he says, “Hi, I’m a MacBook.” One is big and aluminum and says, “Hi, I’m a MacBook Pro” and proceeds to kick the MacBook’s ass until his perfect plastic case starts to split along the glue-line. There was once a study done on how monitor size affects productivity and ROI. The conclusion was bigger is better, no matter what the task. The MacBook Pros have better processors, bigger screens, larger hard-drives, more RAM and can also drive much larger external monitors. When those forces combine, they form… SUPER MACBOOK PRO HAPPY AWESOME COMPUTER! Now just imagine having more than one of those suckers in the office! You’d be unstoppable!

By the way, here is a link to that study.

-Dave

A couple of weeks ago we attended our first Boston Web Innovators Group (WebInno) meetup. There were well over 250 in attendance and the energy in the room certainly solidified that Internet innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the Boston area. WebInno was founded and is currently led by David Beisel of Masthead Venture Partners.

We had the opportunity to present Geezeo as a “Side Dish” at the event and had a blast sharing our progress and vision of the application with the other attendees. We had about 4-5 deep at our table for about 3 hours. We took some pics if you want to see the team in action.

Click here to learn more about future WebInno events. We’ll be there!

As most of you know, we’ve been busy rebuilding DebtFolio out beyond the alpha version you see today. Debtfolio Alpha was introduced back in October of 06 with the intent to introduce DebtFolio to the world, gauge user interest and solicit feedback to help shape the future of the product. Well after a ton of user feedback and a new vision for the application DebtFolio has become Geezeo, a more comprehensive personal finance manager not limited to debt. DebtFolio.com will still remain live for now as some people have found value in the credit card analyzer, but no additional enhancements will be made to the product you see.

Geezeo is going to revolutionize the way you manage your finances. This easy to use application is going to help you manage your money, set financial goals and create strategies to meet your goals. Geezeo will combine the best in financial analytics with the ease of use of today’s best web 2.0 sites. We are in the process of building version 1 of Geezeo, but in the meantime, we put together a small application we call the Wealth Map located on the Geezeo home page.

After making the the decision to get in shape I knew I was going to need something to track my progress. So I set out for a web application that would allow me to track my weight, exercises activity and my monitor my nutrition. I first hit HappyCodr looking for a slick RoR app to manage my health and weight loss but came up short. Next I did a search on del.icio.us for the terms “health and “web2.0“. I always seem to go to del.icio.us these days when I’m looking for a cool product or a site to meet some need I have. I find that the items tagged by the user community are often on target and deliver relevant results. I guess that was the intention huh? Well my fist hit was traineo.

Traineo is a fantastic web application that allows you to set health goals, track your progress and set up motivators that are suppose to “encourage” you along the way. I have Shawn, Sonny (aka Patches O’Houlihan) and my wife Christine set up as motivators…the verdict is still out on who’s going to be the toughest motivator.

Traineo is designed incredibly well, it’s fun and easy to use and includes just the right mix features to help me personally achieve my goals. They ajaxed the hell out the the site (but not too much) which makes it incredibly easy to add and update data. A full review of traineo and other fitness trackers can be found at CenterNetworks if you’re interested in learning more.
Anyhow, check traineo out, and if you want to add one of us as motivator we’re there for ya…If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

We’re psyched to be showcasing all these fantastic sites on HappyCodr. It’s really amazing to see the work people are doing out there and especially cool to see the consistency in good design, quality and usability.

Some of the cool sites to check out:

Coastr A simple and free service for people who love beer

IIProperty Online Property Management Tools

TrebleNation A music community dedicated to connecting artists and venues

FizboFlorida A For Sale By Owner service in Florida designed to make home marketing painless and cheap

Looking forward to seeing more great applications hit the site!

Be Happy

We expected some traffic from this, but wow, we never expected THAT much traffic. We also never expected to make #2 on del.icio.us/popular, and CERTAINLY didn’t expect to make it onto the del.icio.us home page!!

It’s been just a tad crazy with all the submissions that flooded in at once, but we braved the constipation and coffee breath and rose to the occasion! We’ve also received a ton of feedback, all of it great and so we appreciate your encouragement. We plan on adding more features to HappyCodr in due time to allow browsing by timeline, and plugins (but more on that later).

-Theron