This has been a crazy week of server maintenance, PC crashes (buy Macs people, please) and client technical support problems. I spent a huge amount of time already this week logging in to various remote systems to fix a handful of disasters and problems. And none of it would have been possible without VNC.

VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, is a method of accessing a remote system. It’s basically a simple way to do desktop sharing. I use it to help troubleshoot client problems by logging directly onto their computer, taking control of that machine’s keyboard and mouse and walking through the problem live with my client. It’s an invaluable tool that every freelancer needs to become intimately familiar with.

This whole setup is very easy to install. I use RealVNC on each client machine and then, since I’m a Mac user, I connect to them using a program called Chicken of the VNC. Chicken of the VNC also has one of the best application icons of all time, as you can see on the right.

Anyway, if you have clients and find yourself in need to some hand holding with them you should definitely look into using VNC.

The second annual MacHeist event is coming to a close today in four hours. At the time of this writing, nearly $1,960,000 has been made (over $450,000 of which will be going to charity) through over 40,000 sales of this year’s software bundle. For only $49, everyone who got in on the offer had the chance to buy 14 great Mac applications that had a combined retail value of $499.

A mega-deal like that is just too sick nasty ill for anyone to turn down.

During last year’s MacHeist I managed to stand firm and resist the temptation to financially take advantage of the Mac developers involved. Afterall, I know in my heart what their products are worth and it certainly wasn’t what their split of my small fee would have amounted to. It felt like I had won the battle against economic tyranny.

But this year I lost the war…

I completely caved this year and bought the bundle. It’s not that I’m a cheapskate. If anything I’m the antithesis of a cheapskate. It was just impossible to resist some of the applications MacHeist had this year.

This whole MacHeist thing is practically criminal. I still feel dirty and it’s been over 24 hours since I bought the bundle. Let’s look at the top four applications really quick. Just selling a combination of any two of these applications for $49 would have made MacHeist the steal of the year.

Vector Designer (Retail: $69.95) is a lightweight vector graphics program. It’s kind of like a cost-effective Adobe Illustrator. It also just won a “Best of Show” Award at Macworld.

Snapz Pro X (Retail: $69.00) would have come in handy this summer when we were tossing around the idea of making screencasts for Fore Score.

Pixelmator (Retail: $59.00) is another product that kind of competes with an Adobe program. This time it’s Photoshop. Pixelmator was the one program on the list that I was actually anticipating buying at full price very soon. I’m tired of Photoshop running like hot garbage on my Macbook.

CSSEdit (Retail: $29.95) probably needs no introduction for any web developers out there. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that I didn’t own this already.

That’s just the first four programs on the list. There are ten more Mac applications that you get to go along with those. For instance, TaskPaper is something I can’t wait to try and integrate into my daily work routine. Again, all 14 of these programs only cost me $49.

What’s the big problem?

I have a hunch that the 14 developers aren’t getting an even cut of the nearly $1,500,000 made by this promotion. I know that last year’s developer share was not pretty but maybe this time around things are different. One can only hope.

The problem is that in the long run each of these developers will probably see negative results from their involvement in MacHeist. In the short term they’re gaining new customers, excellent exposure and they’re helping raise money for charity. I understand that. That’s great.

But what happens when these new MacHeist customers come calling for tech support? Each of these applications just received over 40,000 new potential support emails. Could you imagine that? How do you justify thoroughly handling any and all requests from MacHeist customers when, in the back of your head, you know they only each paid a few dollars for your product? Wouldn’t you feel ripped off and abused a bit?

I have a value I put on my time. And I’m sure these developers do as well. I just hope they didn’t miscalculate the price they’ll have to pay for being involved in this promotion.

After a recent OS X update (I can’t remember which one it was exactly, sorry) I would get a prompt like the one below telling me that the SuperDrive 2.1 Update could not find any “updatable” devices. This one was driving me nuts each time I booted up my Macbook.

The solution was simple and obvious in hindsight. To make this message go away enter your “System Preferences” and head to your “Accounts” window. There is a tab there called “Login Items” that will have a list of all of the applications that run immediately when your Mac boots up.

On that list will be an item called “SuperDrive Update 2.1.” Click on it and then hit the small minus button under the list of items. Do not hide the application. You want to disable it completely so hit the minus button instead of checking the “Hide” box.

Follow those steps and the next time you start up your Mac the SuperDrive box won’t be the first thing you’re greeted with.

On Monday, Google announced that some of their applications had been upgraded on the iPhone and iPod Touch. I finally got a chance to check out the new version of Gmail this morning on my iPod Touch and it’s probably one of the best iPhone specific sites I’ve seen yet. The only thing that closely rivals it is Facebook on the iPhone.

Joe Hewitt is the man responsible for Facebook on the iPhone. Fortunately for the rest of us he released the JavaScript and CSS he used in developing the site. The package is called iUI and is available under the New BSD License. You can get a feel for just what iUI can do by checking out some examples on its Google Code site.

Creating a mobile version of a site is probably one of those projects that most of us get all excited about and then immediately place on the backburner. How much longer can we put a mobile version off? The market share of the iPhone is exploding and tools like iUI can make it easier to get a mobile site launched than ever before.

I switched from PCs to Macs a little over two years ago. Aside from a little time spent in Linux, almost all of my web development work is done on my Macbook. I thought I’d take a minute today to show you the four applications I use the most when I’m working. All of these programs are highly recommended by me, but if you have any alternatives or suggestions that I should check out let me know in the comments.

Coda

I’ve written about Panic’s Coda before but I just can’t say enough good things about it. It puts everything I want under one window: file editor, FTP, previewing and terminal shells.

Without having to switch between different programs to edit, upload, etc. I find it much easier to concentrate and focus on the specific task at hand. Coda has done wonders for improving my efficiency when it comes to building sites. I use Coda every single day and that’s probably the best endorsement I can give it.

On The Job

There are a lot of options to choose from when it comes time to track your billable hours. There are even online solutions but I’m personally a bit leery of trusting someone else with my sensitive financial information. After a lot of trial and error I eventually found On The Job from Stunt Software and I’ve been using it ever since.

On The Job has a simple interface and is really easy to use. That’s exactly the kind of program you should be looking for when you have to do a tedious but necessary task like writing invoices. The best feature of On The Job, aside from the basic time tracking, is the PDF invoices it generates based on your time entry. I can have all of my monthly billing done in short order thanks to this program.

MySQL Query Browser

If you’ve read just a few posts on this site you’d know that I’m a PHP/MySQL guy so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I spend a lot of time using the MySQL Query Browser.

A lot of people like to use phpMyAdmin to interact with their databases and I think these people are insane. There are also other desktop programs to let you do MySQL work but none are as cheap (meaning, free) and as well put together as the MySQL Query Browser.

Paparazzi!

Paparazzi! is the type of small utility that I don’t use very often but when I do it’s a very serious timesaver. With Paparazzi! you can take high quality full-screen screenshots and thumbnails of any website.

I use Paparazzi! a lot when I’m sending comps to clients. It’s especially useful when they want to see how progress is coming but I haven’t worked out all of the quirks for a design in Internet Explorer yet. It’s a great utility.

I want to drop a quick note of thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for his nice tutorial on getting PNGs from application icons. It was extremely helpful.