If you use a Mac with multiple monitors, you’ll no doubt have noticed the distinct absence of the menubar on anything other than the main monitor.

Of course under the System Preferences you can designate on which monitor your menubar sits, but you are not able to duplicate the menu bar over multi monitors (without using a mirrored display).

However now there is a solution in the form of a promising new app called SecondBar which addresses the issue.

It’s early days for the app at the moment, but it is already stable enough for regular use, and well worth a look if you’ve been grappling around for a second menu.

One of the things that has been niggling me with MonoDevelop – and to be fair it’s more an issue with the Finder – is that by default it’s difficult to run multiple instances of it. It’s always useful to have more than one solution open when you want to compare or copy and paste code from one project to another.

A quick search on Stack Overflow found a nice simple solution, which involves kicking off the app from the terminal using -n to tell the Finder to run a new instance. But being lazy, I can’t be bothered typing stuff unnecessarily, so a quick solution is to wrap it in an AppleScript app wrapper.

Fire up Applications > Utilities > AppleScript Editor, type in:

do shell script “open -n /Applications/MonoDevelop.app”

Then select File > Save As, on the save dialog change the File Format to Application and save it somewhere safe (not in the applications folder), using the name MonoDevelop.

Then for a nice finishing touch, go back to the Applications folder and click on the MonoDevelop icon, press CMD + I to bring up the Get Info screen, click on the application icon in the top left of the screen and CMD + C to copy it.

Go back and find where you saved the AppleScript file, bring up the Get Info window with CMD + I, click on the application icon and paste in the MonoDevelop one with a CMD + V.

Then all you need to do is to drag the new AppleScript app to the Dock and you have a quick and easy way of firing up multiple instances of MonoDevelop.

Well, it’s been a year to the day when I decided to crack on with some iPhone development, and what a year it’s been. Busy is certainly one word that would sum it up. Having plenty of work, especially at a time when many are suffering the effects of a tough financial climate, is something always to be grateful of, but sometimes it can hamper other goals.

So how far did I get with Objective-C and iPhone development? Well, I did get some done, and I am certainly a mile up on where I was a year ago, but I haven’t got anything quite completed. It’s been a learning curve for sure, but a good one.

I’ve got my Apple Developer account setup, under my new business name of side lane studios, and have plenty of app ideas lined up and ready to take shape, the first of which I was planning on completing in January. It’s about 50% complete at the moment, so I was going to give myself a window to knuckle down with it and submit it to Apple for inclusion in the App Store. Then I came across MonoTouch and everything changed.

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These days there seem to be a never-ending number of cloud-based services for stashing your data. Depending on what you need from a service, whether it’s purely backup, file syncing, or even collaborative working, chances are there’s a service to suit you.

Working as I do from more than one location, using more than one computer, it’s important for me to be able to easily access my files where ever I am that particular day, whether I’m in the office or on the road.

Over the last couple of years I’ve tried a whole range of different options. Usually they’ve been based around using SFTP or Amazon S3 space mounted as a local drive, for which I’ve tried ExpanDrive, MacFusion, JungleDisk, and ZumoDrive.

Overall they all worked pretty well, but generally suffered the same problem, and that is one of speed. This is the one big problem with cloud storage – that accessing it (in a useful way) requires a pretty fast network connection. Upload speeds are meagre in comparison to download speeds, so copying stuff onto the “drive” often meant a long standing Finder window. Clever caching helps, but you just can’t get away from the problem.

Then there’s the problem of when your connection goes down, or you just plain don’t have one. Put simply – no network, no files.

That’s where Dropbox plays its trump card. Because whilst on the face of it Dropbox is just another cloud storage service, actually it’s not. It’s a file synchronisation service that uses the cloud to keep your files in sync, provides a remote backup of them, as well as offering web and iPhone access to them at the same time.

Sure, the backup and web access are commonplace, but it’s the syncing that is the magic. What happens to your files if you’re not online? Well, nothing. They’re still on your computer and you can still work with them. When you get back online they sync up without bothering you with the details.

But there is the rub. The files are actually always on your computer. With a hosted virtual disk, once you shut down those files aren’t there as the disk is unmounted (aside maybe from being in the cache), and from a security perspective that’s a good thing, but with Dropbox that’s not an option, as all you’re doing is using the cloud to keep your files up to date.

So is there anything we can do about that? As it happens, yes there is. Enter Espionage.

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So you’re a long serving Windows user who has been seduced by the sexy lines and simplicity of the iPhone and now all of a sudden you find yourself standing in the Apple store with your credit card in your hand and a MacBook under your arm. All good so far.

You’re in unfamiliar territory already and feeling slightly uneasy, but with a copy of Microsoft Office in the bag you’re feeling comfortable. You know Office. You know how to use 10% of Word, and at least 5% of Excel, and Outlook keeps you in contact via the Exchange server with the office. Hmm, wait a minute, there seems to be some mistake where’s Outlook? Ent what? What the hell is this Entourage rubbish?

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