I recently bought a new keyboard + mouse set from logitech. I tendo to get quite bad with the wrists, especially when typing much. Long story short, I have been using a Logitech Wave keyboard for a long time! Now, since I will be spending much time at the office (and not only at home) I thought I could buy a new set for office/home. I just went to the Logitech website and set for a wonderful Logitech Wave Pro. Now, if only I had checked the fact that they say that it’s not compatible with MacOS X!

But well, the set arrived, I plugged it in, and to my horror it wasn’t recognized in the System Preferences Logitech Control Center (latest version, 3.3.0). The message was simply: “No Logitech Device Found”…

My “hacker” spirit of course couldn’t bear with this fact. Especially because the keyboard looked exactly like the Wave (not the Pro, mind it)… The mouse itself is simply an MX1100, which is supported by default… Weird, weird.

I started digging and found out the the (in)famous Logitech Software installs some special files in the usual paths:

/Library/Application Support/Logitech.localized/Logitech Control Center.localized/LCCDaemon.app/Contents/Resources

In particular files named:

Hardware Descriptions 2002.plist
Hardware Descriptions 2006.plist
Hardware Descriptions 2007.plist
Hardware Descriptions 2008.plist
Hardware Descriptions 2009.plist
Hardware Descriptions 2010.plist

Now, if one is to open such files with the standard application (Property List Editor) he will find something along the lines of:

Bingo! Now I only had to find out the actual HEX number/product ID. How? Easy, I switched to a windows installation, installed the Logitech SetPoint software, dumped a text file generated by the bug/hardware/problems reporter and voila, found my numbers:

0.000 Device 0x009018d8 parent=0xffffffff model=0x0300001e bus=2-USB       type=3-RECEIVER  ser=	 vid=046D pid=C517 rev=3810 name=Loreley 2RX
0.000 Device 0x008010b0 parent=0x009018d8 model=0x01000087 bus=2-USB       type=1-MOUSE     ser= vid=0000 pid=003C rev=0000 name=LX8 Cordless Laser Mouse (Gomera Dkt)
0.000 Device 0x00a02100 parent=0xffffffff model=0x0300001e bus=2-USB       type=3-RECEIVER  ser=	 vid=046D pid=C517 rev=3810 name=Loreley 2RX
0.000 Device 0x00700888 parent=0x00a02100 model=0x0200005b bus=2-USB       type=2-KEYBOARD  ser= vid=0000 pid=0060 rev=0000 name=Wave Cordless Keyboard
0.000 Device 0x00d03978 parent=0xffffffff model=0x03000030 bus=2-USB       type=3-RECEIVER  ser=	 vid=046D pid=C529 rev=0700 name=eQuad desktop receiver (Kiwi DT Mercury)
0.000 Device 0x00b02928 parent=0x00d03978 model=0x02000063 bus=2-USB       type=2-KEYBOARD  ser=QADR:38CC4662 vid=0000 pid=2003 rev=0000 name=MKT name TBD (Mercury)
0.000 Device 0x00c03150 parent=0x00d03978 model=0x0100008e bus=2-USB       type=1-MOUSE     ser=QADR:38CC4662 vid=0000 pid=1015 rev=0000 name=MX Pro (Macau RC)

I just copied the MX1100 entry in the 2008.plist file and modified the pID (actually just one number increase!) and the one for the wave keyboard. Restarted the Logitech Demo and everything is fully working (well, almost, some keys on the keyboard are apparently mapped in a different way, but I never use them too much, it _might_ be fixable, if I have some more time…).

Anyway, for those who didn’t understand too much, here’s a .zip with the new file, you can just unzip it and place it in your directory, restart the Logitech Daemon (or reboot the PC) and your Wave Pro Set will now be supported!

1. Download the .zip
2. Uncompress its content
3. in the Finder go to: /Library/Application Support/Logitech.localized/Logitech Control Center.localized/
4. Right-click on the LCCDaemon.app and Show Package Contents
5. go into Contents/Resources/
6. (optional) backup the file called: Hardware Descriptions 2008.plist
7. Copy the uncompressed file
8. Reboot (or restart the Logitech Daemon from the Activity Monitor/Terminal)

As a result, you will get this beauty in your Logitech System Preferences

Hope it helps!

~Claudio

I have finished my master at ETH Zürich with the maximum grade on my master thesis. AND I started my PhD there, with focus on system and network security.

I’m currently at Fosad, a summer school on security design held in Bertinoro, Italy

For all of you that come here for some ImageMagick update, please make sure to check out the latest compiled version on their ftp site (or any mirror, under the iPhone directory!). I always try to keep up with the compilation, but most of the times I will be a little late with their release.

For all of you that come here for some uMonitor update, please wait. I have some updates in mind, and some fixes. But uMonitor is totally not my first priority and probably won’t be ever again. It is open-sourced so that anyone can contribute. I’ve pushed an update on Cydia, lately, to fix some issues. Plus in the future I will have some icons updates for all the iPhone4 users around.

Stay tuned for any updates, as usual!

~C

[if you click on it you actually see something!]

Ok. Last time I checked the iTunes store, in Switzerland (where I currently live, and a friend of mine has a Swiss iTunes Store account) the most expensive songs (the “hits”?) were rated at 2.- chf – In Italy (where I have my iTunes Store account) most expensive songs were rated at 1.29 euro.

Now, the Swiss Store has always been more expensive (1.29 euro ~= 1.70 chf) – but now!? Are you joking!? 2.20 chf, as shown in the pictures, it’s 1.66 euro, or, for the US guys it’s 2.03 usd!!!

I find this price increase outrageous. We (everyone that’s not living in the US) have always been paying more for our songs (0.99 euro [1.21 usd] and 1.50 chf [1.39 usd]). But now it’s even worse.

It just doesn’t make sense, anymore, so what? I just feel robbed. And robbed. Over again. 10% price increase What’s next?

Bye bye.

~C

Mike and me have been looking around for a solution to this and stumbled across Reader Notifier. It’s a small MacOSX application that resides in the Menu bar and notifies you when new items are available.

Since the code was publicly available we decided to have a look at it… Well, after coding for a while for iPhone and Mac applications we could tell immediately that we could have improved the code and possibly the application functionalities. Now Reader Notifier Reloaded is born. We keep the code open, so that everyone can just fork it, modify it, have a look at it, …

Currently Reader Notifier Reloaded lets you:

• Be notified through Growl about new unread items
• Mark all your feeds as read
• Read the feed directly through the menu application
• Star an item
• Automatic updates

And all of this with a much more structured code than the original and without any memory leaks (well, there were many and we managed to remove them all, hopefully).

A stable version is downloadable from github

If you have feature requests, find bugs or just want to get involved with the project, drop us a note either here or on github.

-Mike and Claudio

In Europe as well! :)

Ok, the long awaited beta for Mac should be on its way.
The (infamously inactive) link has become active. It still yields to a “forbidden” page, but that’s soon to be changed. All Mac testers, free your hard-drives, for Starcraft 2 is definitely coming!

Here it shows that the link is clickable:

And here’s the content of the linked page: