Want to learn something new? Stanford’s world-renowned School of Engineering is offering a free “Introduction to Databases” online course, available to anyone worldwide. The class will cover relational databases, XML data, relational algebra, SQL, and database design with UML, here’s the full course description:

This course covers database design and the use of database management systems for applications. It includes extensive coverage of the relational model, relational algebra, and SQL. It also covers XML data including DTDs and XML Schema for validation, and the query and transformation languages XPath, XQuery, and XSLT. The course includes database design in UML, and relational design principles based on dependencies and normal forms. Many additional key database topics from the design and application-building perspective are also covered: indexes, views, transactions, authorization, integrity constraints, triggers, on-line analytical processing (OLAP), and emerging “NoSQL” systems.

Sign up for Stanford Universities free “Introduction to Databases” class here

The course assumes no prior knowledge in SQL or database structures, but obviously a fair amount of computer aptitude is recommended. The program runs from October 10 to December 12, and students have full access to lecture videos and are given assignments and exams. This isn’t a hands off course though, you’ll actually receive regular feedback on your progress, and there’s also a discussion forum for students to engage in. You won’t be getting any Stanford or college credit, but if you pass the class you will get a ‘statement of accomplishment’ from the Stanford instructor.

If databases aren’t your thing, don’t forget that Stanford also offers a variety of excellent free iOS development classes online too.

Web designers and developers are well aware that creating CSS gradients is somewhat of a painful process. Sure there are a variety of web-based generator tools that make it easier, but you’ll often be left to scout around for different versions to get different CSS & CSS3 code pieces which then require manual tweaks in order to achieve a uniform gradient across WebKit, IE, and Mozilla based browsers.

The Gradient app aims to solve that headache with easy color selector tools and all the possible gradient options, but more importantly, instant and precise CSS rendering.
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Get ready to drool. This multi-displayed Mac setup has an impressive five 23″ screens rotated into portrait mode, and a MacBook Pro 17″ sits atop them all.

What are they powered by? That wasn’t specified, but it’s possible that the MacBook Pro is driving all of the monitors with an ambitious USB display hub. Whatever is powering them, this is one awesome Mac setup, thanks for the sending this in Julien!

My MacBook Air 11″ has been creaking a lot lately when I pick it up, the noise has gradually increased and I finally discovered the reason why: loose screws. I’m not sure what caused the screws to become loose, but I do bring my MacBook Air almost everywhere with me so this could be a gradual loosening from constant use and movement.

The solution is obviously to tighten them up again, but Apple now uses a more unique screw type, the pentalobe, which prevents your average household screw driver from working. Luckily you can buy a Pentalobe screwdriver on Amazon for $5 to a buck and considering they work on the iPhone 4 and MacBook Air, it’s not a bad purchase. The expense is further justified by the fact that it’s very hard to replace a single screw, so if you lose one you’d have to have to spring $50 for a full set from a company like iFixIt, who also sells the Pentalobe screwdriver for about $13 (image up top is from them too).

Moral of the story here: if you hear creaky sounds and squeaks coming out of a MacBook Air when it’s picked up, check the screws.

Direct references to an iPhone 4S in name with corresponding images have been revealed in the newest iTunes beta, all but guaranteeing the next iPhones name. This also strongly suggests that a redesigned iPhone 5 will not launch at the October 4th Apple event.

The discovery was made today by 9to5Mac, who is “confident that the iPhone 4S will pack the CDMA iPhone design”. Shown in the screenshot are two separate references to “iPhone 4S”, each attached to an iPhone 4 CDMA model image, in black and white colors respectively.

This is yet another piece of evidence that mounts against a new looking iPhone being released anytime soon, despite a continuous supply of conflicting reports and imaginative rumors. Last week, an alleged iPhone 4S packaging label was discovered, and a week prior an ‘iPhone 4S’ labeled case was also found. With the exception of third party “iPhone 5” cases from China, there has been no evidence that a redesigned phone exists. Furthermore, the well-connected John Gruber of DaringFireball published a lengthy piece titled “Teardrop Skepticism” that dismantles many of the rumors of a so-called ‘teardrop’ iPhone 5 design.

The iPhone 4S is expected to have an A5 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8MP camera, include iOS 5, and has a likely release date of October 14th.

If you want a simplified explanation of the ongoing Apple vs Samsung lawsuit, the giant image below sums it up fairly well. Basically, Apple feels that Samsung is infringing on a variety of iPhone and iPad patents, and Apple is fairly blunt in their accusations:

“Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple’s valuable intellectual property rights.”

Several examples of these alleged violations can be seen in the image below, judge for yourself:

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Remote Login is a feature in Mac OS X’s Sharing preferences that allow remote users to connect to a Mac in a secure fashion by using the OpenSSH protocols. Essentially, Remote Login starts an SSH server on a Mac, which includes the ability to accept incoming SSH connections, and is the secure replacement for telnet. Additionally, this feature includes and enables the SFTP server, which is the secure replacement for FTP, and finally it also enables SCP, for secure remote copying of files. If this sounds complicated or confusing, it’s really not, and we’ll walk through exactly how to quickly enable and set up the SSH server on a Mac so that it can accept inbound secured ssh, sftp, and scp connections.

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Distraction-free writing apps are becoming increasingly popular and the appeal is easy to see, if you just want to write, why do you need to be surrounded by a gazillion buttons and toolbars? These apps are fairly simple and there’s a slew of choices, many charge unreasonably high prices on the app store, but that’s why FocusWriter is so great – it’s a quality distraction-free writing app and it’s completely free (and open source).

The appearance is highly customizable so you can set whatever font and background works best for you, do this by dropping from the “Settings” menu and selecting “Themes”. Outside of the eyecandy, there are also a variety of genuinely useful writing features, and it’ll keep track of word count, page count, paragraph count, character count, as well as the ability to set writing goals either by time or by words written. You see all these details by hovering over the bottom of the FocusWriter screen (see screenshot below), so they’re not always visible or in your way. Really the worst thing about FocusWriter is it’s ugly icon, but if that’s your only complaint about an app then you’ve got it pretty good.

Download FocusWriter for free

The app is cross-platform compatible, so you can run it in Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.

Sidenote: For those that are interested, the top screenshot is using a slightly modified version of the wood floors wallpaper (JPG) that I also use as my custom Dashboard background image. The bottom two images are default themes.

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Want to hide some files in plain sight on a Mac? This walkthrough will detail how you can make an invisible folder on the Mac that features some unique properties; the invisible folder will be invisible to the eye when browsing in Finder, but the folder will not be invisible to the click. Instead, you’ll use a secret click in a specific location to access the invisible folder.

Sounds neat, right? It is, this is a really great trick that I first learned many years ago to obfuscate files in plain view, and it still works great in modern Mac OS releases too. It’s a multi-step process, here’s how it works:

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The iWork suite under Mac OS X 10.7 includes a rather peculiar default option that backs up every files prior version that you are working on, as a separate file in the same folder. Instead of the backups only being accessible from Versions, this spills out into the Finder, where a file called “Document.pages” will also have a “Backup of Document.pages” file stored in the same directory. This quickly turns into a giant cluttered mess for students or anyone else who works with a lot of Pages files, since essentially a duplicate of each one is stored in the same folder.

Here’s how to turn off these backups and stop them showing up in the Finder, this is the same for Pages and anything else in the iWork Suite:

• From Pages, pull down the Pages menu and select “Preferences”
• Choose the General tab and look next to “Saving” for “Back up previous version when saving” – uncheck this box

This will stop storing the backup files in the Finder, but unfortunately this also seems to disable the Versions feature for the app too, so keep that in mind before you turn this off and get used to hitting Command+S often again. Automatic backups and versioning are undoubtedly a useful feature, but this is rather bizarre and fairly un-Applelike to clutter folders with excess files, so maybe it’s just an oversight or a bug.

If you’ve visited the Sharing Preference panel in the newer versions of Mac OS X you may have noticed there is no longer the direct option to enable an FTP server to share files and folders. Well, at least there isn’t an obvious option, but the FTP and SFTP server function does still exist, the two have just been split into different functionalities, with the new versions of OS X preferring SFTP rather than FTP. Regardless of what you want to use, setting up a server for either of them is extremely simple, and we’ll walk through how to start either an FTP or SFTP server in OS X.

Each of these FTP/SFTP server tricks work in all new versions of OS X, be it OS X Yosemite 10.10.x, Mavericks 10.9, Mountain Lion 10.8, or 10.7 Lion.
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An alleged iPhone 4S packaging label adds adds further confusion to the iPhone 5‘s existence and possible launch next week, and could indicate that Apple will only be releasing an incremental hardware update to the existing iPhone 4, rather than an all new redesign.

The label, shown above, was discovered by 9to5mac after being posted to an unspecified Chinese forum. Though initially discounted, one of their most reliable sources said the model number on the label made sense:

The model number from the label is MD239 (a 16GB unit), while the model number for the “better” (likely 32GB unit) is MD234. According to Mr. X, this sequence is sensible, but could just be a coincidence. If legitimate, the next-generation iPhone will be marketed as the iPhone 4S

9to5Mac goes further and says the next generation iPhone is in Apple’s inventory systems now, although they point out that the ‘iPhone 4S’ name shouldn’t be considered confirmed.

This is the second piece of recent evidence to suggest the iPhone 4S exists, at least in name, the first showing up last week in the form of a ‘4S’ labeled Otterbox case.

Outside of case designs, analyst reports, and a variety of imaginative 3rd party mockups, there has been no evidence that a redesigned iPhone 5 exists, although Apple is notoriously secretive with unreleased products.

VIM is a powerful command line text editor that is wildly popular with developers and system administrators that is accessible by typing ‘vim’ in the terminal. For those that haven’t used it before, it has a relatively steep learning curve, and the interface can be confusing until you figure out how it works and start memorizing some of the commands. That’s what this interactive VIM tutorial aims to do, help you learn the basics of VIM so you can start using the text editor with some confidence.

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Time Machine in Mac OS X Lion initiates a sometimes useful, sometimes not feature: local backups. Called snapshots, this seems to be kicked off when your primary Mac is a laptop and the Time Machine backup is an external drive, so OS X Lion compensates for the potentially unavailable external disk by keeping an additional backup locally on the Macs primary hard drive. This has its obvious advantages, since you can restore to past Time Machine backups right away from anywhere, but if you’re trying to conserve disk space this can be a real pain.

Note: Time Machine local backups are only stored if you have Time Machine enabled in general.

Disable Time Machine Local Backup Storage

Here’s how to turn off local backups:

• Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities
• Enter the following command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

• Enter the admin password when requested to disable local backups

Re-Enable Local Time Machine Backups

Of course this tip would only be half useful if we didn’t show you how to turn this back on. The steps are the same as above, except with the following command entered into the Terminal instead:
sudo tmutil enablelocal

Remember, if you disable this feature you will not have local backups anymore, so if something goes wrong you will be out of luck. It’s important to have regular backups of your data, and so if you’re going to disable this be sure to still use Time Machine, perhaps even initiating a manual backup before you disconnect the drive, in order to preserve a recent copy of your data.

If you’re anxious to compare the new Kindle Fire tablet to the iPad 2, or even the Nook Color, than this handy chart from The Verge makes it nice and easy.

What obviously stands out here is that the iPad 2 dominates every conceivable spec in the chart, minus the higher price point of course. For that reason (and others), I’m not sure if this is a fair comparison but people will be wanting to compare the devices anyway. The iPad 2 clearly has many more features, a larger screen, significantly more powerful CPU & GPU, but is also priced at at least 2.5x the Kindle tablet, and if anything this comparison does a great job of illustrating that the iPad is really in it’s own league.

Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire, the companies first true entry into the tablet market, and what is seen by many as the first real iPad competitor. Backed by Amazon’s massive content library of movies, TV, songs, magazines, books, and apps, the Kindle fire is priced at $199 and is set to be released to US markets on November 15, 2011. Orders are said to be shipping out on a first-come first-serve basis, and you can pre-order the device now through Amazon.com.

Now lets get to the interesting stuff:

Kindle Fire Tech Specs

Most of the anticipated specs are true and some of the technical details are even better than the original rumors, like a dual-core CPU, not to mention the lower price point:

• 7″ multi-touch color IPS display
• 1024×600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi
• Dual-Core CPU
• 512MB RAM
• Wi-Fi – 802.11b/g/n
• 8GB internal storage
• Unlimited cloud storage of Amazon content
• 8 hour battery life
• USB 2.0 micro port
• Top mounted speakers and audio jack
• Runs highly modified Android 2.3 OS
• Tied to Amazon account for immediate setup, no tethering to PC / Mac required
• Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated web browser
• Free month of Amazon prime with purchase
• 1 year warranty
• 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″
• 14.6 ounces (weighs slightly less than a pound at 0.9lbs or 414 grams)

Noticeably absent from the tech specs are: no camera, no microphone, no 3G access, no GPS, but for the very low price of $199 the lack of certain features isn’t too surprising.

You can read more about the Kindle Fire on Amazon.com

Alongside the Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon also released a variety of new Kindle readers, including the new Kindle Touch, which has a 6″ e-Ink multi-touch display and is also offered in a 3G version. Amazon’s e-readers are not really viewed as competitors to the iPad, whereas the Kindle Fire tablet clearly is, and it will be interesting to see if the device puts any dents in Apple’s longstanding tablet market domination.

Amazon Kindle Fire’s first TV commercial is below, quoting Voltaire:
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Want to check the download speed of something you’re getting from iTunes or the iOS App Store? No sweat, you can check not only the progress of the download, but also see the transfer speed of what is being downloaded from iTunes.

• From the sidebar of iTunes, click on Store, then go to “Downloads”
• This shows a list of whatever items are currently downloading, now all you need to do is click on the progress bar to show the transfer rate

Super simple, right? This offers an easy way to determine how fast any iOS good or media file is downloading to your Mac from within iTunes. Keep in mind that this may not be reflective of your overall bandwidth or internet connection speed, because latency with Apple servers also impacts the speed of transfers.

This works similar for the Mac App Store as well if you want to check how your OS X app downloads are going too.

Firefox 7 is now available to download for all supported platforms, the new release has an emphasis on improved memory management and speed, and it does provide a noticeable difference in snappiness when loading pages or browsing the web.

The benefits are best seen if you keep Firefox open for a long time (who ever closes their web browser anyway?), use a lot of tabs, and view pages with a lot of images or text, and in my usage I can confirm it feels more responsive and has a lower memory footprint in OS X. The Mozilla dev team suggests that version 7 will use as much as 50% less memory, but I haven’t seen that dramatic of a difference. If you use Firefox for any browsing purposes or rely on it for plugins like Firebug, it’s well worth downloading.

You can grab Firefox 7 directly from Mozilla.org here

As usual, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux are available concurrently. If you have plugins installed, expect a few to nag about compatibility, but they all worked for me anyway.