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What was the biggest Mac stories of 2006? Tim, Chad, and Guy look at the Mac world in review. Also, David Cohen’s Fenestration, and Nemo interviews author Sharon Aker. Continue reading »
This podcast is sponsored by SmallDog.com, and Inno-Tech.com
Many people will be getting a new, or their first, digital camera this holiday season. With that in mind, I thought it was a good time for a list of digital photography and digital imagery tech terms. Keep in mind, these are not dictionary definitions. These are terms explained in a way that your grandmother (at least my grandmother) can understand.
Megapixel- This is one factor used to indicate the quality of a digital camera. The higher the megapixel the better quality image you will take and the larger you can print your photo. Megapixel also has an effect on how well a cropped image turns out. If you want to enlarge a small section of a photo, a higher megapixel camera will allow you to zoom in and crop that section, and it will remain clear. I am a believer that most people are fine with a 3 or 4 megapixel camera. Keep in mind megapixels are not the only indicator of photo quality. I know someone who bought a 7 megapixel camera for under $100. He thought he was getting a good deal. The camera was a generic brand, and the the pictures were awful.
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15″ MacBook Pro Extended Life Battery
Model: APP-6099
Company: FastMac Performance Upgrades
Price: $99.95
www.fastmac.com
The most obvious appeal of a MacBook/MacBook Pro (aside from warming one’s lap in cold weather) is the ability to run from a battery, untethered from AC power sockets. Even though Apple P.R. touts decent run times for its laptops, you need to toggle the display brightness down as far as possible, you can’t use the hard drive much, and heaven forbid running the optical drive. Compared to PC laptops, Apple laptops have long suffered from relatively short battery life.
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How I wound up as a professional technogeek is a long and semi-interesting tale. It involves multiple computing platforms, multiple job shifts, and a whole lotta dumb luck.
After getting out of the US Air Force in 1982 after a nine year stint as a radio technician, I immediately began working for a huge Midwest-based communications equipment manufacturer, at their paging and commercial two-way radio manufacturing and R&D facility in south Florida. I worked in the manufacturing engineering organization as a bench technician, but had many of the responsibilities of a full-fledged engineer but for a whole lot less money (it was, however, double what I was making in the Air Force). I began playing with HP desktop computers and calculators writing simple programs in HPL (high-performance language) and HP Basic, controlling arrays of test equipment over their GPIB (general purpose interface bus).
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Holiday time is a time for reflection. For thinking about the things you are thankful for. Some recent experiences I’ve had with my own computers have reminded me of how grateful I am to be a Mac user.
I have two computers at home: a PowerBook G4 that I bought almost a year & a half ago and a home made PC that I built a little over 3 years ago. I built it so I’d have a PC to experiment with and so I wouldn’t have to say no to my daughter if she wanted a game that was Windows only. Recently I upgraded the memory in both. The PowerBook was a piece of cake. I opened the trap door on the bottom, took out the 256 MB DIMM that I added when I bought it, and added a 1 GB DIMM – doubling my memory from 768 MB to 1.5 GB.
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MagStay Pro
Thought out
Price: $11.99
http://www.magstay.com
Apple trumpets their MagSafe power plug attachment for the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. MagSafe is the answer to the ongoing problem of laptop users tripping over the power cord, thus yanking their computer off their desk, with it plunging to a landing both hard and expensive.
But, as a MacBook Pro owner, I can testify that the MagSafe magnetized plug can unknowingly be popped free from its socket with less force than you’d imagine, even when your laptop sits securely on your lap or desk. Then, you’re running on battery power, and you don’t even know it.
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For years the standard in word processing and spreadsheet programs has been a program housed on your computer’s hard drive. You run the program off the computer, and save everything on your computer or an external device. Recently, online applications have started popping up and they are starting to become a nice, viable, and free option.
At my school we have started to use Google’s line of applications (the word processor was formerly Writely), and the MyMac.com staff uses the spreadsheet application. The greatest feature is the ability for multiple people to edit the same document or calendar at the same time (or a different time) from anywhere with internet access. The documents are then stored on Google’s servers. Another fantastic feature in Google Docs is the ability to revert back to an older version of the document. If someone totally messes up the document beyond repair, you can choose a version from the past to revert too. This is very similar to what Apple’s Time Machine should be like in Leopard.
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DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: EXPERT TECHNIQUES
BY KEN MILBURN
O’Reilly Media
www.oreilly.com
ISBN-10: 0-596-52690-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52690-0
387 pages
US $44.99, CAN $58.99
With a plethora of digital cameras appearing in the marketplace, purchases of these cameras has exceeded even the most ambitious sales predictions. Everyone and his grandmother now has a digital camera. A lot of these models are of the point and shoot variety. They’re small, lightweight, actually take great pictures, and have many features for the cost. There are lots of publications out there: magazines, how-to books, manuals, videos, and websites which help newbie photographers along the path to good quality photographs. If you’re looking for something like that, may I pass along a suggestion from the Ken Milburn, the author of this title under review? Before reading this book try Deke McClelland’s Adobe Photoshop CS2: One on One (O’Reilly). You will then be “up to speed” and more able to handle the various terms and maneuvers in Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.
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This week, Nemo interviews Photoshop CS2 RAW book author Mikkel Aaland. Also, what to do with an old Mac? The latest from David Cohen in the Fenestration series. And just in time, the Speedy Gift Guild for all you procrastinating holiday shoppers.
This podcast is sponsored by SmallDog.com, and Inno-Tech.com
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Why write a book about buying used Macs?
People buy used Macs for all sorts of reasons. Often the prime motive to passing over the latest model out of Cupertino is the need to save money. After all, a G3 or G4 iMac might not be the fastest thing on the block, but it will certainly prove to be a rock-solid word processing and web-surfing machine. Students in particular are always like to find bargains, and a used iBook or one of the older G4 PowerBooks may only cost a few hundred dollars but will still provide all the horsepower you need to write a dissertation, carry out research on the Internet, and keep up your coursework.
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iMovie is a great application that has a lot of Mac users intimidated, thinking that I can’t do that. Well, Chris Seibold’s “Movie – On the Cheap will walk you through the process of becoming a movie mogul; quickly, painlessly and cheaply. Chris has taken the time to put it all together in an easy to read format that will get you up and running with your video camera equipment and iMovie in no time at all. Questions on lighting, recording, editing and even location shoots will quickly be answered. So for all of you budding movie producers, download Chris Seibold’s iMovie – On the Cheap today!
I was driving up to our Burlington store with the windows open yesterday as temperatures were in the 50s. If it wasn’t for the fact that it gets dark about 4 PM around here, I’d think it was May. I was working in the store when a customer came in with a helmet in hand and knew that I just had to set a new record for the latest I have ridden my motorcycle in Vermont. My previous best was December 5th, so December 14th will smash that old record since I am planning on taking a ride this afternoon since we remain in the 50s with no snow in sight! I love working up at the Burlington store from time to time, to meet the customers and see which products are in demand, but Hammerhead seems to like it even more. Hammerhead is the store’s official greeter. He’ll go up to any customer with his whole rear end wagging since he has such a stubby tail. It is a great way to greet customers because I watch as they scratch his butt (which he LIVES FOR) and smile. Nothing like a smiling happy customer! I told Hapy that Hammerhead needed a raise.
What’s selling this year? iPods are selling for sure and we are trying to keep up with the demand. I’d say that the refurbished iPod values were the first to go, followed closely by the new iPod shuffle and then iPod nanos. What is interesting this year over last year is that there is a more sophisticated customer looking at iPod accessories. That is one reason that we built our sound room at the Burlington store and it is almost always full of customers looking and listening to the speaker selections. The iHome continues to sell well, however the two other hot sellers this year are the AudioEngine speakers and Apple’s iPod HiFi.
When America Online (AOL) became a free-subscription service recently, members no longer need to pay for its features, except tech support. Tens of millions of people worldwide continue to use AOL. Among them are clever Macintoshers who join only for an AOL Instant Message (AIM) identity that is compatible with Apple’s excellent iChat, and that provides a second-rate webmail service that is finally straightforward and stable.
You can learn more at AOL’s cluttered home page by clicking on the “Get Free AOL Mail” link near the top. If you can’t locate it, let me know.
Last month a new AOL Radio service was launched for all members, paying or not. Primary URLink is http://radio.aol.com that will redirect you to http://music.aol.com/radioguide/bb with a prominent link to “AOL Radio for Mac Users” (it works differently on Windows).
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iFrogz Tadpole
Company: iFrogz
Price: $24.99
www.iFrogz.com
Children in the kindergarten through third grade can be rough on toys. If one of these toys for your child in that age group is an iPod, you want to make sure it is protected. The Tadpole iPod case for the 30GB, 60GB, and 80GB iPod with video by iFrogz is a case you might want to consider.
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A friend (John Welch) and I were talking about pen centric computing, and we were in fierce agreement that it is not the revolution that some people pretend. Coincidentally, or because of the renewed interest, I saw an excellent speech on the state of the art in pen computing; what Microsoft and other researchers around the country are doing with the technology and where they expect it to go.
What amazed me most was not the progress we’ve made, but the lack thereof. It was good stuff, showing how we break down pen computing into areas like:
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The iPod & iTunes Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition
by Christopher Breen
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-321-48614-5, 224 pages small format
$9.99 US, $11.99 CN, £6.99 UK
With the most essential information for the least amount of money, The iPod & iTunes Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition is a contender. Breen is the godfather of iPod experts and authors, but is this his best project to date? Font size and inking are small and less than dark, and screen shots are not numerous. Everything essentially iPoddish is covered, if more briefly than others in our evaluation. When text is more important than images, and minimum size/price are criteria, beginners and some intermediates will accept our 3.5 out of 5 score.
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Delicious Library 1.6.4
Company: Delicious Monster
Price: US$ 40
http://www.delicious-monster.com
Do you have a library full of books, a collection of DVDs, CDs and/or games? Do your friends drop by to borrow any of these items and can it be hard to remember who got what item at what time? Or is it even hard to remember what precisely you have?
If you’ve outgrown a standard sized bookshelf this might just be time to think about bringing order to your collection. You could of course start a neat list, possibly even in Excel, but how about creating your own library catalog?
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Do you have files that you want to open in one program, but they always open in another when you double click them? If so, there is an easy fix for this which I will discuss in this Macspiration.
For this article I am going to use a JPEG file, but this procedure will work with any file type.
To start, click the icon of the file in question. Choose “Get Info” from the file menu. An information window will open for that file.
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What? What’s that I see? I turn the page on the calendar from turkey overload to shopping chaos and I see it’s time for my annual (well, it IS my third) ChristHannaKwanzmas Holiday rant. I’m coming up on my anniversary for my third full year with MyMac.com and the writing fever has yet to leave me. I can’t speak for your reading fever naturally, but I hope you all enjoy these riotous wrangling of writing as much as I do making them. If not…well…NO SOUP FOR YOU!
What to rant about this year? Thankfully, things are looking up for us here firmly entrenched in Macland with computer market-share up, iPods still as popular as ice water in hell, and Microsoft is continuously doing its darndest to pull failure from the jaws of victory. I’m calm; I’m relaxed, and have no real complaints. Well, that’s not entirely true.
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MyMac Podcast #385
MyMac Podcast #384