Mac Toys
12 Cool Projects for Home, Office, and Entertainment
John Rizzo and Scott Knaster
Wiley Publishing
ISBN: 0-7645-4351-2
US $29.99
Mac Toys 12 Cool Projects for Home, Office, and Entertainment is just what it purports to be: 12 projects that will teach you to use your Mac in new and creative ways. Some of the projects are excellent, some aren’t.
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Photoshop Elements 2 Bible
Laurie Ulrich
Wiley Publishing
US $29.95 CAN $42.99
SBN: 0-7645-4391-1
Photoshop books arrive in bookstores by the truckload. Without standing in the aisles for hours, it can be hard to distinguish the good from the bad (and the ugly).
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Macworld Boston – Why You Should Be there!
Macworld Conference & Expo – just what does that name mean to you? Does it bring to mind fond memories of meeting new people and watching live product demonstrations in anticipation of winning some coveted new piece of software? Do you think fondly of meeting some person face-to-face whose articles, blogs or forum comments you’ve been reading for years?
If you’ve said no to these questions then you’ve missed attending the only one true Macintosh paradise. Think about it, where else in the real world have you ever been surrounded by the creative genius of thousands of people with the same interests as you? When you think of Macworld Conference & Expo your mind should focus on that magical Macintosh world of sound, sight, color and smells of thousands of people milling about a hall with one common passion.
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As part of his WWDC keynote speech, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs introduced Mac OS X 10.4, code-named Tiger. Among many of the key new features, including the new iChat AV, Spotlight, RSS in Safari, Dashboard, better .Mac sync, and more, the big news is really that Mac OS 10.4 will be a 64-bit operating system.
The bad news is that this will most likely mean that no pre-G5 Macintosh computer will be supported. Or will it? Without having seen Steve Jobs’ keynote speech (yet) I don’t know if this was addressed or not. If true, it would mean a lot of angry PowerMac G4 owners, so my initial impression would be that Mac OS 10.4 will actually be compatible with G4’s. Perhaps dual-10.4 OS installs, then, one for the 64-bit processor machines (G5) and the 32-but machines. (G3). If anyone has details, please let me know!
But why is 64-bit computing so important? Other than the latest version of Adobe Photoshop, no Mac OS program takes advantage of the newer G5 processors. So let’s look (briefly) at what 64-bit processing means to the Mac market, and why you want it.
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iBrotha.com, Writings from The Fevered Brain of Rodney O. Lain, Back Online!
Minneapolis, MN – June 23, 2004 – Patrick Rhone today announced that iBrotha.com, the website of the late Macintosh Columnist Rodney O. Lain is now back on line after nearly two years. Rodney O. Lain, writer, public speaker, race traitor, Christian iconoclast and unabashed Mac advocate, was known by many in the Mac community as “The iBrotha”. He wrote for various print and online publications including MacAddict, The Mac Observer, AppleLinks, Low End Mac, and more.
Rodney passed away in June of 2002, committing suicide after a long and often hidden struggle with depression. Since that time, iBrotha.com, his website, has been offline and there has been no central archive of his work. Patrick, together with many of Rodney’s friends, found most of the pieces of the iBrotha website and worked with DomainSpa, the current owners of the address, to get the site back online.
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Apple Training Series — Garage Band: Create and Record Music on a Mac
Mary Plummer
Publisher: Peachpit Press
ISBN: 0-321-2678-8
415 pages plus lesson CD
Price: $34.99 US, $49.99 CN, £26.99 UK
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Garage Band software is new, the book series is new, and this author is new to Book Bytes. Expect to see more titles in Peachpit’s “Apple Certified” catalog of “Apple Training Series” volumes. If future entries are as good as GB:CARMOAM, we are all the beneficiaries. At content-per-dollar, the valuable information and included CD files are worth much more than the modest price of this book.
WiebeTech “ComboGB Pocket Drive” Portable Disk Drive with FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2/1.1 Ports
Company: WiebeTech
Price: $290.00 (US)
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ComboGB.html
Model tested is: CGB50/5400, priced at $290 at WiebeTech’s online store.
There are two essential things you need to know as soon as you remove this exciting new WiebeTech external portable pocket combo drive from its package:
1) This is one W-A-R-M portable, when connected and running for an extended time! Its entire brushed aluminum case serves as a heat dissipator for the 5400RPM, 2.5 inch drive inside, so get into the habit of holding an active or recently-removed case by its rubberized edges. I don’t know about summertime in Wichita, Kansas, where WiebeTech is located, but here in scorching hot Tucson, Arizona, we’re used to heated surfaces, and this product certainly qualifies.
Other World Computing 40GB OWC Mercury On-The-Go Oxford911 FireWire+USB 2.0/1.1 Combo 2.5″ External Hard Drive
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $200 US
www.macsales.com
Specific URL for this product:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=5436&Item=OWCMOFWU40GB54T
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Model number: OWCMOFWU40GB54T
Our friends at Other World Computing (OWC) were caught off guard when Rocstor’s Rocport 4 Portable FireWire/USB 2.0 Hard Drive received our highest rating a couple of months ago. The OWC rep had never heard of Rocstor, and wanted to see how OWC’s Mercury On-The-Go (MOTG) portable drives compare. The news is good, and they can be proud of their versatile, peculiar little wonder.
Note from reviewer and publisher to our readers:
This is a corrected review, because the original review, posted two days ago, had incorrect product name, price, and URL. We apologize for the error. The text of the review is essentially unchanged, except for a few clarifications to emphasize that this mini mouse is indeed a wireless model.
Explanation: on the IOGEAR “Peripherals” page, two visually identical mice are presented at the top, and our reviewer clicked on the wrong mouse to grab its URL and price. John “Nemo” promises to be more careful in future reviews. Thanks for reading MyMac.com.
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USB 32MB Memory Mini Mouse
Company: IOGEAR
Price $50
What if you take two essential computing requirements, mousing and storage, and combine them into one (almost) seamless product? IOGEAR has it, and it’s called “Memory Mini Mouse 800 with 32MB Flash Memory”.
Very funny looking combo, with the mouse essentially identical to the single-purpose IOGEAR two-button, scroll-wheel mini mouse reviewed previously, and the 32MB storage flash memory module inside a spring-loaded blob that houses a retracting cable connecting computer to mouse.
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If you already own a digital camera, you are well aware of how easy it is to share your pictures with friends and family either via email or your own website. With the popularity of home DVD creation software, it is also very easy to archive your digital photos to DVD, allowing you to view all your photos on your television. Much easier on the eyes than a photo album, and a great idea for large family gatherings.
But what about your older photos? With the popularity of easy to use scanners, be it an All-In-One printer-scanner combo, or a stand-alone scanner, isn’t it time to put that technology to use? Imagine having a permanent archive of every photo you own, or perhaps archiving your mothers photo albums!
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Nemo Memo: Digital Art? Where Art Thou?
This article by John Nemerovski appears in the Summer, 2004 issue (Volume 4: 3) of PaperWorks Journal,a quarterly publication of PaperWorks, the Sonoran Collective for Paper & Book Artists,in Tucson, Arizona. The editor agrees to have it published here in MyMac.com.
The emphasis in digital photography instruction is that every photographic image will benefit from a small, moderate, or substantial amount of fixing and tweaking. Should we be shocked and surprised when our teachers insist pictures that look perfect on a computer monitor require enhancement?
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Other World Computing Laptop Screen Protector for 17” and 15” PowerBook
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $18 US
www.MacSales.com
with help from John “Nemo” Nemerovski
I am a long-time user of Other World Computing’s LSP-15 PowerBook screen protector with my 15″ Power books. It’s designed to protect laptop screens from picking up grease and oil from the keyboard while the ‘Book is closed. Recently, I had a chance to try their LSP-17 model on an aluminum 17″ PowerBook.
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Other World Computing Mercury FireWire/USB 2 D107 DVD+/-RW
Company: MacSales
Price: $189.99 external case bundle
http://www.macsales.com
Want to be able to burn DVD’s, but your Mac doesn’t have an Apple-supplied SuperDrive? Perhaps you want an external burner to supplement an older, slower internal SuperDrive?
In the Mac world, the Pioneer DVR-107 is considered by many to be the best multi-format DVD burner that’s affordable to the average buyer. It’s an 8×8 dual format writer; it can write at 8x speed on DVD-R discs whose standard is being ratified in the DVD Forum and +R discs that are designed for this recording speed. The -107 also records high-speed DVD-RW and +RW discs at up to 4x speed, and CD-R and CD-RW discs at up to 24x speed. It handles both DVD-R and DVD-RW disc formats as well as the +R and +RW formats. This little box will handle most any format you want to burn.
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Running Mac OS X Panther: Inside Mac OS X’s Core
James Duncan Davidson
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
ISBN: 0-596-00500-8
328 pages
Price: $39.95 US $57.95 CA
I’ll come right to the point: Davidson’s Running Mac OS X Panther is an excellent book.
We get so many books here at the Weeks extension of the MyMac Library that I’m thinking of getting a degree in Library Science, just so I can keep all the review copies properly organized. Many of the books we get to review are user manual rehashes, or 500 screenshots that have been printed and bound. Some books are so basic that you wonder who’d need to know how to plug in a USB cable. Some of the expert-level books pretend to be targeted at a general audience, but are really 1000 page college textbooks that happen to be for sale at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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