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I take a look at one of the more interesting security tools to hit Apple desktops in quite a while in TrueCrypt 5.0 Brings Plausible Deniability To OS X Users over on The Apple Blog:

If you need/desire cross-platform compatibility, then TrueCrypt is a perfect choice. You can encrypt a virtual disk image onto a USB drive and take it from Windows to Linux to OS X and gain access to your all your secret data, something that is not possible with OS X secure disk images.

Josh did the WordPress magic incantations once again and my notes on the recent update to MarsEdit is available for your critical review.

Be kind, folks...it's been a tough week.

If you're interested in what makes it to my MBPro post-Leopard, you can head over to The Apple Blog and read my latest post.

Quite the rabid followers of iStat Menus amongst the reader over there :-)

NOTE: Josh is much better at these serious article headlines than I am.

If your Desktop or Documents folders have ever been caught up in a sea of PDF files you need to read the review of Papers by fellow TAB blogger Stephanie Guertin. Looks like a pretty decent app. (And, yes, I know iTunes can already store PDF files)

Ars has a short take on the Papers as well.

Not to be counted among the slackers, ActiveState busts out the Christmas presents early with a discount on their pro bundles and a 5.10 Perl release for all the major platforms.

Well done and good news for those that need a supported version of the best scripting language out there (sorry Python, PHP & Lua, Perl still rocks).

Microsoft updated their sold, free guide to developing secure software. They discuss generic topics that apply to all development:

• Integrating security into the SDLC
• Security engineering objectives
• Web app security design guidelines
• Threat modeling (tho i'm not crazy about that term)
• Security architecture & deisgn reviews
• Security code reviews
• Security devlelopment reviews

and also provide some specific guidance, checklists and information on Microsoft technologies.

A must-read for all developers.

HardMac posted news about beta software that enables write-access to NTFS partitions on your Mac. It requires signing up for beta access and requires a form to be filled out, but it doesn't seem to require *valid* entries in the fields. No word on Leopard compatibility, comes with an un-installer and the pkg requires a restart.

I'll try to test it against some NTFS partitions later tonight.

I get asked about recovering deleted photos about once a month and have never made a placeholder for the info here on RDN. These two utilities from CG Security - TestDisk and PhotoRec - will get you out of most disk and file jams (you can even recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again) and recover your over/under-exposed, red-eye-glaring and blurry snaps that your camera/machine accidentally deleted somehow without you touching it or even being powered on.

Both are open source and run on pretty much any machine you have.

Alex Lomas has released a very cool Perl module that gives you programmatic web-service access to your Nike+ running data.

I haven't had time to play with it yet, so you'll have to live with the author's description for the moment:

You can: Authenticate to Nike+ and obtain the login token and cookie Retrieve your last run Retrieve your personal settings (name, perferred units, avatar etc.) Retrieve data on all your runs, ever Get specific pace information on a run (not yet implemented, sorry!) List all your goals and whether you've completed them or not List all your challenges See who's taking part in your challenges, and how they're doing Display direct URL links to home page/runs/goals/challenges that use the token to bypass login (CAUTION!)

Montebello Software has released an update to Ascent. 1.6.0 Improvements and Bug Fixes:

• New Feature: added speed, pace, gradient, and cadence zone support; ranges are settable in a new preference pane
• New Feature: paths in the Detailed Map View can now be color-coded by zone
• New Feature: laps can be highlighted in the Detailed Map View
• New Feature: new zone types can be displayed in the Activity View
• New Feature: zone type can be selected in the Activity View Statistics HUD
• Added preference to set "below zone" color for heart rate coloring
• Fixed problem with "last sync time" set incorrectly when tracks synced in an un-registered version of Ascent
• Added "Are you sure?" dialog to "Clear Map Cache..." menu choice
• Fixed bug that caused wrong max heart rate values to be shown in the browser for laps when units were set to metric
• Fixed bug that was causing errors in "Active Time" displays for laps and tracks in the browser
• Fixed problem where browser would show wrong values for certain fields if activity started at a non-zero distance
• Fixed problem where selected activity after sync was not displayed in browser map or stat mini-views

While if may be a tad oxymoronic to claim that an in-browser editor with blog-posting capabilities has the inherent quality of being distraction free, Writer does not fail to meet that expectation.

It's a pretty neat little web app by John Watson (and it works in Safari, so it's doubly cool) that mimics the features of WriteRoom and DarkRoom (Google for URLs for those). It has a good feel - though a blinky cursor would be nifty...in fact, *any* cursor would be welcome...but I suspect a potential Safari bug - and the post-to-blog functionality is especially slick (and it works with Drupal, so it's doubly slick).

The app/site works with/without registering for an account (rare these Web 2.0+ days), lets you choose spacing, font and colors, supports auto-save and doesn't seem to have any memory leaks during my initial tests.

No spell-check, but Safari's integrated textarea spell-check capabilities more than make up for that missing feature. Definitely worth a click... [via DownloadSquad]

Well, a little bird told me today that Forefront Client Security (FCS) would be out this week, and sure enough it is (Passport/Live registration required)

It's a whopping 153MB ISO and almost a a full MB of documentation in a separate download.

Hopefully there are some enhancements from the public beta release and hopefully the docs are better.

FCS aims to be an enterprise replacement for your favourite anti-virus/malware/spyware vendor's offering. It's very fledgling at this point, but should not be discounted if you're a Microsoft shop that runs the latest versions of their infrastructure components.

I'd wait for full a/v certification and SP1 if you have the choice, tho.

Sony has updated it's CONNECT Reader software to work with Vista - finally! The other surprise is that they've made it available for download by anyone who wants it. No longer do you have to buy a PRS-500 to have the privilege of using such a fine piece of digital craftsmanship.

It seems to be working well on Vista Business under Parallels on my OS X box. First thing the client did was download the latest version of the update software (never a good sign). I then quit the program and let Parallels take control of the "Sony Portable Reader System" USB device. The drivers and reader found each other sans incident, so I fired up the CONNECT software and it saw the reader and the inserted SD card (yay!). Book purchases went smoothly (Worlds of Deep Space Nine, if you must know). Transfers also went smoothly.

The CONNECT Store is as ugly, slow and annoying as ever, but at least everything works with Vista now. Unless they make significant changes, they really should steer clear of an OS X port. Crappy software and the Mac just don't mix well (look at Garmin's first attempt with their Training Center).