Today we launched a new Highrise feature that makes it a lot faster and easier to file a note or email under a case or deal. This new feature will save you clicks and time — especially when filing a lot of notes/emails one after another.

One thing that I note related to this new feature is that it appears that you must be in Excerpt view in order for the new feature to work. I was trying to do this from the List view and it doesn’t seem to work from within that view. I have queried the guys at 37signals about this and I’ll update any information that they provide.

A quick thanks to our friends at MacDailyNews for sharing this with us. Wikidot has published a fairly exhaustive list of Mac applications and more importantly are sharing information about their compatibility with Snow Leopard. I suggest that you take a moment and go visit to see what the status of your applications are. Also, they are encouraging early Snow Leopard adopters to share their experiences here.

Whether you plan to upgrade as soon as you receive your install DVD on Friday or are planning to wait a few weeks or months, this post will detail the minimal steps you should take in preparation for upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard.

Step 1 – Check for application updates/Snow Leopard compliance

Start with your most regularly used, mission critical applications, and make sure that they are up to date. More importantly make sure they are ready and compliant for running in Snow Leopard. If you are running applications that are not Snow Leopard compliant, you might want to wait on the upgrade until the developers release a Snow Leopard compliant version.

Step 2 – Purge

If you are like me, I NEVER take time to purge my Mac. Ever since Leopard was installed and all downloads went to the downloads folder instead of the desktop I haven’t purged a single thing. I’m certain that at least for me, 90% of the contents in my downloads folder can be trashed. While your at it, go through your applications folder and do the same thing. I probably have at least 100 trial versions of applications that I need to trash. Chances are that you do too. Don’t forget to empty trash after you finish purging.

Step 3 – Verify/Repair Disk and Verify/Repair Disk Permissions

When you are installing or upgrading an operating system, it’s always a good practice to make sure that the Disk onto which you’ll be installing or upgrading is in tip top shape. Apple has an application called Disk Utility that you can use to make a quick diagnosis of your hard drive’s condition. This application can be found in the Applications > Utilities folder. When you launch Disk Utility you’ll want to select your internal hard drive on which your current operating system is installed from the left hand sidebar and then click on the Verify Disk button which can be found toward the bottom right hand side of the application interface. Upon completion of the Verify Disk process you’ll receive a short synopsis of what the process found when it ran. If all is well, the final message will be listed in Green text. If there is a problem with your Disk, the final message will be listed in Red. If you get a Red message, your first course of action should be to manually initiate a Time Machine backup. Your second course of action should be to return to the Disk Utility application and click on the Repair Disk button located just beneath the Verify Disk button. Apple’s Disk Utility application is capable of making minor Disk repairs. If after running the Repair Disk process you still receive a Red final message, you should call AppleCare or make a trip to the Genius Bar and let them take a look.

After running the Verify Disk and/or Repair Disk processes, you’ll then want to run the Verify Disk Permissions process by clicking the Verify Disk Permissions button. If you’ve owned your Mac for any length of time, it’s quite possible that there may be some permissions that need to be repaired. If after running Verify Permissions the Disk Utility application lists permissions that need to be repaired, simply click the Repair Disk Permissions button just below the Verify Disk Permissions button. The repair process should take a few minutes and then you should get a message indicating which Permissions were repaired.

Step 4 – BACKUP!!!!

At a minimum you should manually run a Time Machine backup before inserting your Snow Leopard install DVD. I also recommend that you download Carbon Copy Cloner and create a bootable clone of your existing Macintosh Hard Drive. You’ll of course need a spare Hard Drive of some sort on which you’ll create the clone. After you’ve created the clone you’ll want to boot from the cloned copy to verify that it works. Once you’ve booted and verified that the clone works, you should be about ready to move ahead with the Snow Leopard upgrade.

Step 5 – Enjoy Snow Leopard and leave us some comments about your experience

As always, we’d like to hear about how your upgrade experience went. Did you have any problems? Are there any big exciting features that are surprises? Did any big exciting features not make the final release? Leave us some comments.

I’ve heard from a lot of people who plan to upgrade to Snow Leopard as soon as they have it in their hands on Friday. For many this will be no problem. Others may find regret in their haste. Here are three reasons to consider postponing your Snow Leopard upgrade.

1. Apple projected a Snow Leopard release date of September. Most developers took Apple at their word because of their past track record on delivery. As a result, we’ve heard directly from several developers such as Marketcircle, Agile Web Solutions, and yes everyone’s favorite, Adobe, with news stating that their current versions are not compatible with Snow Leopard. Further these manufacturers don’t expect to have Snow Leopard compliant versions available for at least several weeks after release.
2. While early reviews from beta testers indicate many positive things in Snow Leopard including stability and Exchange compatibility, no one, not even the beta testers know what will officially be released to the public. You may recall that when Leopard was released, there was much hype about a lot of great new features that didn’t make it into the initial release; i.e., Air Disk functionality for Time Machine. While a few missing features may not be deal breakers, the features that you are planning to use after upgrade may not end up in the initial release. Believe me, wait a day or two and you’ll know for sure what did and didn’t make the final cut.
3. This reason specifically applies to business. If you use your Mac as your primary or even secondary business computer, exercise prudence and wait. Production equipment, desktops or servers, should be upgraded with much deliberation. You can always argue a worst case and say that if for some reason Snow Leopard isn’t all it’s cracked up to be or is problematic that you could do a reinstall of Leopard and restore from a Time Machine backup, but remember, that will cost you the better part of a day for most users. Lost productivity = lost revenue.

If you can’t stand it and you must upgrade on Friday, swing back by here tomorrow and read about how you should prepare your Mac for the Snow Leopard upgrade.

There has been a lot of talk about stability improvements and many minor, “under the hood”, enhancements that are coming in Snow Leopard. We’re certainly excited about getting our hands on it and learning about what has changed and what is new and different. While Kevin and I are sure that Snow Leopard is going to be an awesome upgrade, we are recommending that our clients wait until we give the upgrade nod before diving in. We’ll be sharing our Upgrade experiences and our initial thoughts here. As well, we’ll be posting regular updates about what we are finding relative to enhancements as well as any problems or bugs that might arise.

At $29, Snow Leopard is no doubt going to be a great value. Feel free to click here to pre-order your copy of Snow Leopard from the DDS Amazon Store. If you “must” have your copy of Snow Leopard delivered on August 28, 2009, click on the graphic above to purchase your advance copy directly from Apple, Inc.

If you have any questions, please leave us some comments.

So, you’ve heard by now that we’re moving…to the cloud. Throughout this series of blog posts we’ll be explaining and sharing our entire experience with you. This post should really frame everything and give you an overall perspective on why we’ve decided to make this move.

A little background

Our move to the cloud really began in late 2008. During our end of year review and planning one of our biggest topics of discussion was our website and blog. At that time, we were using a very capable WYSIWYG, (What You See is What You Get), Website design software package called Rapid Weaver. We chose Rapid Weaver as our Website design software shortly after we began business. Our primary reasoning for making this choice was the WYSIWYG feature because at that time, we knew just enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous. Rapid Weaver had the ability to create a blog page and we initially used that feature until we quickly realized how inconvenient it was to use. Essentially, every time we wanted to add a new blog post, we had to open up the software, draft the blog, and then re-publish the changes to the website. While this is not a huge deal if you only have one person blogging, it is quite inconvenient when there are multiple authors.

In an attempt to make it easier for both me and Kevin to blog at will, we opened a Typepad account, largely because it was web based and either of us could access it from a web browser (and because Kevin really liked the iPhone interface). Our dilemma with that however was that we had a fairly static website at one web address and our blog located at a completely different web address. So, if we got traffic to our website, people didn’t have access to our blog content, and if we got traffic to our blog, people didn’t get a lot of the important information they were looking for about our company. Plus, we were paying a monthly fee for Typepad as well as paying a monthly hosting fee for our website.

So, to bring this back around to the subject at hand, we discovered and began investigating the WordPress platform late last year. Both Kevin and I had heard about WordPress in the past, but had never really given it much consideration because we thought that it was quite similar to Typepad. What we learned was that WordPress is quite possibly the most innovative Content Management System platform in the world. As we began to investigate and learn more about WordPress, we realized that it was exactly what we had been looking for when we started our business three years ago. We realized that WordPress had become much more than a blogging engine, and could function as our Hub on the web and be a central place where our clients and prospects can connect with us.

In the next post, I’ll be giving you some examples of how we are utilizing WordPress as our Hub.

In case you didn’t hear, you can win one (1) of four (4) Web Presence Development Packages that we are giving away by simply following us on Twitter. If you haven’t done so, go there now and follow us. The drawing for the Web Presence Development Packages takes place on August 1, 2009.

We’re moving…to the cloud. You’ve probably heard of the cloud, but just in case you haven’t here’s how Wikipedia explains it:

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

Another term that is often used interchangeably with the cloud is Software as a Service, or SaaS. Essentially, the software lives in the cloud, on someone else’s technology infrastructure, and it is accessed over the internet with a web browser. Simply put, by moving to the cloud, DDS won’t have to continue to invest our hard earned capital in Server ownership and maintenance. Instead, we’ll be paying a monthly subscription fee for the Software as a Service (SaaS) that we utilize.

Since we began business, a little more than 3 years ago, we’ve utilized some very good desktop applications that have helped us run every aspect of our business. Many of these desktop applications connect back to a Server side application running on our Macintosh OS X Server. These applications have included Daylite, Billings, and MYOB Account Edge, to name a few. They are top notch and they have served us very well.

As great as these applications have been, we’ve concluded that moving to the cloud is what will help DDS continue to to bring our Clients the best service and value in the long term. There have been many factors that have impacted our decision and we’ll be sharing those and chronicling our move to the cloud experience here on our blog. It is our hope that by documenting our experience here that we can help you and your company make a determination about whether such a move is right for you and, if so, hopefully you can learn some best practices. You might even learn a few things that you shouldn’t do.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for us along the way, please leave us some comments. We’d really like to engage as many of our readers as possible during this process.

• New MacBook Pro 15″ – improved display, improved battery life, processor speed increases, SD Card reader now included, entry level price dropped to $1,699.
• Enhancements to MacBook Pro 17″ – entry level product now has 2.8 GHz processor and 500GB Hard drive, entry level price dropped to $2,499.
• MacBook 13″ Aluminum is now MacBook Pro 13″ – tops out at 8GB RAM and 500GB Hard drive just like 15″ big brother, entry level price drops to $1,199.
• MacBook Air – entry level price drops to $1,499, processor clock speeds bumped up to 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2.13 GHz.
• Safari 4 is out of beta. (It is super fast BTW).
• Snow Leopard to ship in September – $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users, $49 family pack available too.
• iPhone 3G S – launches on June 19, 2009 in North America and parts of Europe, the S stands for Speed, will ship with iPhone OS 3.0 (which is available on June 17, 2009), includes Video Recording/Edtiting, Voice Control, 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Available in 16GB or 32 GB option at $199 and $299 respectively. iPhone 3G 8GB option continues to be available and price is reduced to $99.
• iPhone OS 3.0 – available on June 17, 2009, free to iPhone owners, $9.99 for iPod touch owners, over 100 new features including cut, copy, paste, and spotlight search.

I didn’t think so.

Please note, this does not change my impression or perspective on Adobe even a little bit. Adobe SUCKS as far as I’m concerned. Always has…always will. Until of course Apple buys them. LOL.

As of June 2, the One to One membership will only be offered to customers who purchase Macs through Apple’s direct channels – our retail stores and the Apple online store. The price for the program will remain $99. Existing customers will be able to renew for one additional year for the same price as well.

What is it that’s driving Apple to tighten these guidelines? Is the program becoming too popular? Is this part of Apple’s strategy to drive more sales through their direct channels?

I’ve heard from various sources within the Apple retail channel that the program’s popularity has begun to grow exponentially. In fact, Apple had to re-word their verbiage about six months ago to reflect and communicate that one-to-one was subject to availability of time slots, according to one source.

What do you think?

Part of what our business is about is helping clients maximize the use of the Apple/Macintosh platform. We work with a number of different types of businesses including some Graphic Design firms and Graphic Design departments. So, back on October 3, 2008, we helped a Graphic Design client get a new iMac setup for a new employee. As part of this new setup, the client purchased a copy of Adobe CS3 Design Standard. The client was fully aware that CS4 would be shipping in the very near future but we needed to get the new employee productive as quickly as possible. Once CS4 was released Adobe made an announcement regarding eligibility rules for receiving a free CS4 upgrade. Before you ask, yes, we followed their eligibility rules and request guidelines to the letter of the “law according to Adobe”.

On November 8, 2008, we received a letter confirming eligibility and indicating that we needed to call their customer service telephone number to confirm all the details of delivering the CS4 Upgrade. We placed the call, they took all the pertinent information such as the shipping address and told us to look for the upgrade within the next 7 to 10 business days.

Fast forward 6 months. Today was call number 4 to Adobe’s “lack of” customer service department. I must be honest folks, I said some bad words. I probably made the lady on the other end of the line feel about an inch tall. Here is their excuse for not shipping the upgrade after the previous 3 calls:

I’m sorry sir, but apparently the order was rejected because we do not have a shipping address on file.

No joke! Not only did they ask for it and confirm it during the last 3 telephone conversations, I double checked it online with our customer profile. Could they not at least auto-generate an email indicating that further information was needed to ship the Upgrade? Anyway, once again, I have yet another “order number” and am assured that they will use expedited shipping to get this delivered to our client.

Look for an update on this post sometime Monday because she said that we should receive a confirmation with the shipping information by then.

First, a little background. I was an avid Windows user until the Fall of ‘05; truth be told, I really hated Macs before then. I always thought OS X was slow, unstable and just not as powerful as my rock solid copy of Windows XP. However, Apple addressed all of my concerns with OS X Tiger; the operating system had matured with enough powerful features to lure me away from the Windows world I had been attached to for so long.

via 10 Things to Love About OS X « MEDIA SALT.

Eric Murell gives his list of 10 things to love about OS X. Very thoughtful and thorough. Check it out.

Some of you may think I’m crazy, but I can honestly say that I slept “light” last night because I knew that today was the official release of Tweetie for Mac. The user interface is very attractive and pleasing to the eye. As well, it’s quite intuitive. At present, it seems to me the primary missing element would be an audible notification for new Tweets. As well, I don’t see a way to enter my bit.ly credentials. Even without these features present, this app is amazing.

Tweetie for Mac is available as a free, (aka, ad supported), download and you can use it for free as long as you like. To eliminate the ads you can register Tweetie for Mac for a miniscule fee of $14.95. 

Follow @atebits and @tweetie on Twitter. Happy Twittering to you all.

With the Daylite touch application you can manage your business on the go without the bulk of carrying a notebook computer. Some of the features of Daylite touch include:

• Multi-user Calendar management
• Contact management
• Opportunity management
• Project management
• Task management and delegation

We hope you’ll come out and join us as we demonstrate how Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch compliment one another.

We encourage everyone to point your favorite RSS reader directly to Church Crunch and make sure you follow them on Twitter. We are looking forward to learning from the insights of the other folks involved in this as well as any comments that you guys contribute. Happy reading/listening.