i-deck iPod Music System – Review
Company: Monitor Audio
Price: £249 GBP/ $349 USD
http://www.i-deck.com/
Music, music, music. We all love it, don’t we? Few things can touch you emotionally like a favourite tune, bringing memories and feelings flooding back like they just happened yesterday. Because we can listen to music while doing other things, melodies can get linked to people, places and events like no other entertainment.
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http://www.growl.info
Price: Free
Growl is one of those tools that really should have been an integral part of Mac OS X. Fortunately there are some very clever developers out there, which dedicate their time to create useful add-ons like this.
Growl is a notification systemfor Mac OS X. It’s main purpose is to allow an application to communicate with you, by displaying a small notification (see below) on top of any other window. This is particularly useful if the application that “wants to talk to you” is in the background at the time.
As I write the various Macspiration articles, I am constantly getting ideas for new articles. Some of these ideas are not enough for a complete article, so I add them to a tip list for use in an article like this one. So here are five tips from that list.
1. Instead of emailing a link to a webpage, email the entire webpage using Safari. This tip is not good for all users, especially if you or the recipient are using dial-up. I have been using this lately, because links I email to some friends are broken when they get the email.
To email a webpage, choose “Mail Contents of This Page” from the FILE menu (or + I) in Safari. A new email will be set up with the entire webpage (links included) ready for addressing.
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Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking
by Julieanne Kost
O’Reilly Media
ISBN 0-596-10083-2, 147 pages square large format
$39.99 US, $55.99 CN
When the impossible becomes possible, what’s next? Have you ever attempted to take a halfway decent photo of earth or sky from inside a commercial airliner? No, probably not. Or use Photoshop to turn any such airplane image into world class digital art? Not that either. Or even stranger, alleviate fear of flying by creating an inspirational book of images from the sky, plus some well-considered text, from the results of those Photoshop endeavors? If you’re beginning to reach for the air sickness bag on account of all this high flying prose, gaze inside Window Seat instead, and calm creativity will prevail.
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I make it to Macworld Expo about every other year. There are three reasons I go. First and foremost is to watch the keynote and see all of Apple’s new goodies. Second is to see old friends and meet new people. Last but not least is to get my hands on all of the third party stuff out on the show floor. There are quite a few companies exhibiting that I already know about such as Adobe, Griffin and Canon. I’m glad companies like these exhibit because it’s nice to make a feature request directly to an Adobe product manager or ask a Canon rep a detailed questions about a particular scanner. The response I get from them is always much better than the one I get from the spiky-haired 16 year-old working at Best Buy. That said, it’s pretty easy nowadays to evaluate and purchase equipment from well-known companies through demo software, web articles and retail outlets. It’s really the lesser-known exhibitors that I enjoy seeing at Macworld Expo, the guys tinkering away on innovative pet-projects, guys like Peter McClard of Pixound.
MyMac Podcast 66
Tim and Chad return for another week of Mac talk. Also, announce the winner of the i-Rock Slim light-up keyboard.
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Show Note
the Unofficial Apple Web Log
Photo Desktop 1.5
Screen Capture Plus widget
Rick Stringer’s Variant Frequencies Podcast
iTunes 6 and iPod
by Judith Stern and Robert Lettieri
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-321-32045-X
284 pages
US $19.00 CAN $27.99 £13.99
http://peachpit.com
Apple has updated iTunes three times in the last three months. Each update of this popular jukebox has increased the amount of functions that you can do with it. I remember back in the day when it just cataloged and played MP3 files.
Now it downloads and plays songs, movies, audiobooks, and podcasts; creates smart playlists, prints outs CD album covers and song and album lists; plays radio programs, and feeds your iPod with music, movies, and photographs. It does all this, and it’s basically a free program for Mac as well as PC users.
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If you are like many Mac users, you use Apple’s Safari for surfing the internet. You might even be one of those people who still use the now no longer supported or updated Internet Explorer (IE) for the Mac. Did you know there are many other web browser options out there? I’m going to discuss three free options in this article.
First, before I continue, a word of wisdom. If you are using IE, I highly recommend switching to Safari or one of the browsers mentioned below. IE for the Mac has not been updated in a long time (and won’t be), and many websites use technology not supported in IE. Plus, Safari and these other browsers are much faster and technology like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking are non-existent in IE.
One of the most popular web browsers out there today is Firefox. Continue reading »
MyMac Podcast 65
This week, London Burea Chief David Cohen looks at the news from Macworld Expo. He talks about LightRoom and Monitor Audio’s iDeck. This episode was recorded using Garageband 3 Podcast Studio.
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Back in the mid-90′s, AOL Instant Messenger introduced a feature that allowed you to talk to a “Buddy” with a microphone instead of having to type your conversation. (I could be wrong, but I think this feature has since been removed, at least on the Mac.)
One evening my brother and I decided to try this feature out. He was in Chicago at the time, and I was in Baltimore. So we got on the computer at the same time, and connected to the internet via our 56k modems. We logged into AIM, and before you knew it we were talking to each other. We were dumbfounded at this cool, new method of communication.
Our Instant Messenger conversation was choppy and sounded like we were on a 5 second delay. But it was still the coolest thing, to us.
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MyMac.com Hiring
Are you experienced in advertising? Are you looking for a position that will pay you a percentage of the money you generate by acquiring advertisers? If so, email Tim Robertson, publisher and owner of MyMac.com.
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KR-6810M X-Slim Lighted Keyboard
Company: i-Rocks USA
Price: $65.00
http://www.i-rocksusa.com/products/ir6810m.html
Back when MyMac.com was known as My Mac Magazine, my desk was in the basement. I would work on the issues of My Mac mostly at night, having to work during the day. Not until the kids were in bed would I finally sit down to get some writing or editing done on the upcoming issue, and usually by then it was dark. While there were lights in the basement, they always caused too much glare on my monitor, so I would usually work in the dark. Not being a perfect typist, then or now, I had always wished there was a way that the keys on my keyboard would light up.
Over a decade later, I finally have my wish come true. The X-Slim keyboard does just that and while that was my main interest originally in the X-Slim, it’s not the only feature.
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MyMac Podcast 64
Tim and Chad interview musician Kevin Reeves. If you don’t know who Kevin is, you will want to after listening to this interview and hearing his song. Kevin also was the creator of our theme music. Back by popular demand, we are giving away yet another of the i-Rock Slim light-up keyboards. Listen to the podcast for your chance to win.
Mac News from MacMinute.com
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Send feedback to MyMacPodcast@gmail.com
Fifteen tips for Apple’s screen capture? I bet you think I can’t come up with fifteen things you can do with a simple Mac feature. Well, here it goes.
First off, here’s five tips/reasons for using screen capture:
1. Screen capture is a great way to illustrate what’s on your desktop. If you want to email someone the layout of an iDVD menu or Pages’s document you’re working on, you can simply take a screen shot of it and email the graphic file for feedback.
2. If you’re getting some weird error notice about an application, you might be able to take a screen shot and send it to a techie person for help.
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Spell Catcher X – version 10.2.1
Company: Rainmaker Research Inc.
Price: $39.95 US (Downloadable version)
http://rainmakerinc.com
If you have been looking for a way to check your spelling in your email, your documents and whatever project you are working on, stop what you’re doing and go over to Rainmaker’s website and check out Spell Catcher X.
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Many MyMac.com readers probably got new iPods over the holidays, and my guess is many of you may be experiencing freezing issues, or other problems. You might be ready to return the iPod to the store, say some unprintable words about Apple, or even throw the iPod out the window. Before you do that, there are a few steps you might want to try.
#1. Reset the iPod. Resetting the iPod will solve most of your problems, especially freezing. If you have any iPod model, except the shuffle, resetting the iPod is a matter of holding two buttons. Push and hold the MENU button while pressing the SELECT button (the round button in the middle of the click wheel) until the Apple logo appears on the iPod screen. This usually takes about ten seconds. Once the Apple logo appears, release the buttons, and the iPod will reboot.
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Elgato EyeTV for DTT (für DVB-T / pour TNT)
Company: Elgato
Price Point: €149.00 (€ 149 US$ 180)
www.Elgato.com
Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) is growing in popularity in Europe. While the UK government is planning to switch off analog television transmissions by 2010, the German government is pursuing the matter much quicker. If an area is covered by DTT, analog transmissions will be switched off.
In my living room I use a Grundig DTR 5460 HD. It has a twin DTT receiver and a 80GB hard drive. So what more could I ask for? A lot! Some dimwit at Grundig decided to only include a USB 1.1 port and every so often I record a program that I’d really like to archive. Downloading it via the USB 1.1 port is not practical – still the desire remains…
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MyMac Podcast #385
MyMac Podcast #384