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New remember video speed feature

A brand new video playback speed feature is coming to FV Player. Check this feature announcement if you want to find more information.

New Chromecast feature

Chromecast is a handy casting solution developed by Google. Now also supported by both Free and Paid version of the FV Player!

New multiple audio tracks support

We are happy to introduce you a support for multiple audio tracks for the FV Player! Single video, multiple audio tracks, fast and easy.

The Definitive Guide to Deploying Apple OS X 10.13.5 High Sierra on Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1 Silver Towers

The Mac Silver Tower 4,1 and 5,1 remain one of the most powerful Macs ever made, depending on your processor. Even the eight core 2.26 GHz version is incredibly powerful and fast, outrunning any MacBook Pro and most iMacs, as will a hexacore 3.33 GHz or 3.46 GHz. Certainly they are more expandable, repairable and upgradeable than any other Mac built since, with SATA SSD and PCI cards and graphic card upgrades readily available and easily installed. For video editors, the Mac Pro Silver Tower is one of the best computers ever built.

In terms of cost for performance, no current Mac whether iMac or iMac Pro can touch the 4,1 and 5,1 Silver Towers. What's especially wonderful is that both of them will still run the latest Apple OS and software perfectly, with just a bit of preparation. I'll take you through the steps of a successful deployment of a 4,1 Silver Tower with High Sierra.

Start by Testing Your Hardware: Apple Hardware Test

The first thing you should do is test your hardware. This is easier said than done on older hardware. Apple has some lovely software called Apple Hardware Test a.k.a. as AHT. There's no joy in suffering through crashes which are hardware related, trying to debug your OS (software).

Normally you find AHT at this path /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics

Unfortunately, recent versions of the OS have not included AHT or at least not for older computers. Happily some enterprising Apple fans have collected all the versions of AHT out there for all kinds of Apple computers including Powermac, Powerbook, iBook, iMac, MacMini, MacPro, MacBook and MacBooks Pro.

Keep reading The Definitive Guide to Deploying Apple OS X 10.13.5 High Sierra on Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1 Silver Towers

A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

The situation is more serious than I initially thought when I wrote this article. IBM has repeatedly savaged governments around the world for sums up and over $1 billion dollars for systems which don't work and have to simply be discarded.

Winning megaprojects with low initial bids and then turning a $20 million project into a billion dollar con of the client appears to be an artform at IBM. Governments all over the world have suffered, tax payers have paid for senior IBM bonuses. Ordinary citizens have gone six months or more without their paycheques.

This behaviour appears to be IBM policy and not an accident. This very grave situation cries out for a deep investigative long form feature. Together the governments of Canada and Australia and Pennsylvania (just the ones I've found so far) likely have a case of deliberately malicious business practices.

Apparently IBM has made USD $780 million building a payroll system for the Canadian Government which does not work.

Potential Savings on Payroll

The idea was to save money by eliminating jobs. Canada has about 260,000 public servants. Over 1200 people were working on payroll (accountants, bookkeepers and managers mainly with some IT guys thrown in to make it work). This is about half of one percent on payroll. Payroll is about one third the cost of accounting in our company. I'm unable to bring our accounting costs much below 3% of turnover on a sub-million dollar turnover despite strong efforts and automated software like Freshbooks.

Keep reading A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

How to Setup LastPass On Subdomains

What is LastPass and why you should use it

As they say, the only secure password is the one you can't remember. This is the idea that keeps password managers like LastPass going. With LastPass, you only need a one super-strong master password (there goes the name—"the last pass you'll ever need"), which can be a line from your favourite song translated to a different language you speak, a quote from a movie, or any other phrase that is not too easy to hack.

Once you've entered the master password, LastPass will let you access your credentials for every other account saved in LastPass (Facebook and Twitter logins, e-mail, etc.) or do the autologin (If you activated it. Don't do it.). This way, you can use strong generated passwords for your accounts, without having to remember them or writing them down.

The great thing about LastPass is that it stores your data encrypted online and the data is only decrypted locally in your browser with your key, which even LastPass itself does not have. This way, LastPass users are protected from hacker attacks like the ones that happened to Adobe or Apple users.

Keep reading How to Setup LastPass On Subdomains

How to write an ideal service notification

Editor's note: Service interruption notifications are the unloved sibling of newsletters and welcome emails. They just don't get enough love—and for the most part are fairly terrible, anonymous, vague and menacing messages, often from a no-reply address. There is a better way.

While software is our main business now, we have some hosting clients for special services. Every once in a while of course there is either expected or unexpected downtime. We strive to let our clients know about these issues in advance (planned) and in real time (unplanned). We don't try the tricky move that many hosts do of just trying to hide downtime.

Keep reading How to write an ideal service notification

How to set up a Mac securely on OS X 10.11 Sierra (El Capitan)

We've recently upgraded our computer stock with a bunch of new (old) Mac Pros. These are the last computers which Apple built which can be upgraded (storage, memory, GPU, CPU in order of complexity). So I've updated our guide on deploying new Macs. I've often been asked about our special sauce for securing Macs and deploying them quickly so I've publishing this as a starting point for others.

Despite the title stating that this covers how to set up a Mac securely on OS X, it hasn't really been possible to secure a Mac since the App Store came into being (OS X 10.6.6 I believe). OS X 10.5.8 may be the last really secure full version of OS X ever created. Coincidentally Apple joined Prism in 2012.

Still one can make a good effort to make one's computer far less chatty. If you really want to be secure, don't use the app store at all and download your OS X updates. If you want to be a little bit secure, you have to avoid iCloud completely. Just ask the beautiful Jennifer Lawrence how iCloud turned out for her (I had no idea she was so sexy until those pics showed up). 

Keep reading How to set up a Mac securely on OS X 10.11 Sierra (El Capitan)

How Observer Status in Teamwork.com project management allows Foliovision to handle more projects

Many of you may know that Foliovision began as a client service agency and not a software company. Our first big service was migration from Typepad to WordPress. We were literally doing dozens of migrations a month at one point. Project management in bulk was essential to the premium client experience we wishes to offer.

We started with Basecamp but eventually outgrew it (there's a long post about our Basecamp to Teamwork migration) and moved to Teamwork (back then TeamworkPM). Teamwork Projects at the time had a much worse design than Basecamp (latest version looks pretty good and even allows CSS customisation) but lots more tools (recurring tasks was a big one for us) at the time. As happy as the upgrade in features made us at the time, there was still one key feature missing. Later we called this feature Observer Status.

Keep reading How Observer Status in Teamwork.com project management allows Foliovision to handle more projects

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