DEVICES OF THE SOUL
by Steve Talbott
O’Reilly Media
Nothing beats a Mac. Nothing. Right? I mean, sitting in front of your computer at work, effortlessly creating new things and being totally productive is a way of life for so many of us. We know our work and our creative abilities so well, partly because our computer has provided us with the means of bringing our dreams to reality. Perhaps as never before in the history of Man, has any generation has such power to change the world as our generation, because of machines and technology such as the Apple Macintosh.
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If you regularly change your desktop images for particular purposes, you probably already know how to control click on your desktop and select Change Desktop Background to get the task done. But why go through that process when you can use an Automator action to change to your favorite or most used desktop backgrounds in one simple click.
For example, because I work with color adjusting photo files a lot I often keep my desktop background to a simple gray solid color. But when using my laptop with clients, I like to change my desktop to something more interesting. So in order to change my desktop images, I now click on one of four Automator actions that I created using Apple’s AppleScript-like program, Automator.
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AirDock
Griffin Technology
Price: $69.99
www.griffintechnology.com
Like iPod cases, there are a lot of iPod docks on the market. There are docks that are only docks and they only charge and sync your iPod, and there are docks that do more. Griffin’s AirDock is one of the docks that does more. It is actually several of their products rolled into one clean, nice looking, package.
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Download the show here, or listen in player above
Tim and Chad talk about the new iPod game, Lost. Also, David returns with Fenestration, talking about Office for Mac Open-XML beta converter. Robert looks at OnOne Software and their Adobe Photoshop plug-ins.
We would love to hear from you. Call 801-938-5559 and leave a message, or send email to mymacpodcast@gmail.com
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Crumpler Bags
The Salary Sacrifice
Price: $135.00
www.crumplerbags.com
Could this be the best backpack of it’s kind EVER made? I really don’t know. I haven’t seen every single backpack on the market, but if there is a better one than this Crumpler “The Salary Sacrifice” laptop-friendly backpack I can’t imagine it.
I’m not a regular backpack guy like many students (my son comes to mind) and grown up geeks. Some of my best friends are backpack people. They seem lucid, so they must know something. In the past backpacks seemed to me to be flimsy canvas or nylon bags that could carry lots of stuff but may not protect the contents very well. The backpack I’ve had for the last twenty years is somewhere, but I’m not tearing my storage space apart to look for it. Maybe if it was this Crumpler laptop backpack, whimsically named “The Salary Sacrifice,” I wouldn’t have stored it at all.
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iSound Time Travel Clock
dreamGEAR LLC
Price: $39.99
http://www.isound.net/
When I travel, I hate using the clock radios in the hotels. You never know if they will go off because you’re never really sure if you programmed the thing correctly. Yeah, you can get a wake up call, but the wake-up “shock” you get when the phone rings is enough to give you a heart attack.
Wish you could use your iPod so you can wake up to your own soft music? Well you can with dreamGEAR’s Time Travel clock.
The Time Travel is an almost square clock that works with every iPod that has a dock connector.
The Time Travel comes with an AC adapter, but it runs on four AA batteries as well. It also comes with an assortment of iPod adapters that fit into two holes behind the slot where you plug in your iPod so each model fits nice and snug. I tried the adapters with my iPod mini, a Nano and a 30 GB Color model and all fit very well.
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Plopp
Company: impara
Price: $19.50
http://www.planet-plopp.com
In my classroom I have 3 emacs. The older kids use iPhoto and Photoshop, but the only program I have for the younger kids is Kid Pix. I am always looking for something new to accompany Kid Pix. My search had been unsuccessful, until I found Plopp.
Plopp is a “different” kind of art program. Instead of just drawing a cool picture, kids (of all ages) will learn something (even if they don’t realize it). Just the name “Plopp” sounds fun.
So what is Plopp? Simply put, Plopp is a scene creator. Kids can make a background, and characters, or objects, to go into that background. There are pre-made characters and backgrounds, or you can make your own. All of the choosing and creating gets down in little slide out windows for each of these sections. When a section is done it becomes part of the picture.
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Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Price: $399.00 USD, $199 upgrade
www.adobe.com
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Yes, you want it, especially if you have an Intel Mac. The new universal Adoble Dreamweaver CS3 that replaces the Macromedia-branded Dreamweaver 8 (PPC only) is faster, more capable, and actually fun to use. This review is aimed more at current users than new ones, and I’ll focus mainly on the changes, covering topics in this order: speed, CSS-related features, Bridge Home, Spry effects, Photoshop integration, Adobe Device Central, and my conclusions. The testbed machine is a 1.83 GHz Core Duo MacBook manufactured in 2006, with OS X 10.4.9 and 2 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and all software components are up to date. I installed the application as part of the Adobe CS3 Design Premium Suite, and any quotations below come from included Adobe press materials. If you’re in a hurry, check out two new Dreamweaver tricks you might enjoy, here and here. (Will open in new windows)
If there is a program out there for sale, most likely there is a free program that is a lot like it. Here’s a few great free programs I have recently discovered.
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Bean
Bean is like TextEdit on steroids. It is a great free word processor that does more than TextEdit, but less than Word and Pages. It even saves in Word 97 format. If you need a word processor, but you don’t need many advanced features you should check this one out.
Download the show here, or listen online in the player above.
Robert looks at Adobe CS3, specifically Bridge and Photoshop. Tim, Chad, and Guy look into the latest news in the Mac world, and ask the question: if you were trapped on a desert island with one Mac, one productivity program, and one game, what would they be?
We would love to hear from you. Call 801-938-5559 and leave a message, or send email to mymacpodcast@gmail.com
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Zozen iPod with Video Case
Company: Zofunk
Price: $24.95
www.zofunk.com
There is a fine line between form and function – a line that as fans of Apple products we know well. We are used to seeing exemplary industrial design in our computers and MP3 players that provide an experience that really works well but also looks good.
This provides a challenge to manufacturers of accessories for Apple gear, especially cases for iPods. Should they cover those designer lines in the interest of functional protection, and potentially compromise Apple’s designs?
Zofunk have adopted a compromise approach with their Zozen case for the iPod with Video. The case is a minimal impact design of very thin silicone rubber, that avoids adding bulk to the lines of the iPod. They are available in a variety of colors, and form an all-in-one covering with only the headphone and dock ports uncovered. You slip the iPod in through the open screen area in the case, and Zofunk provide a clear screen protector for this area once the case is on.
There is no cutout for the click wheel – instead, the Zozen denotes this using a stylized swoosh design – with the colour of the case denoted in German underneath, for some reason. I found that having the click wheel covered was not much of an impediment to its operation.
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Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station
Company: Apple
Price: $179
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/
Quietly introduced at Macworld Expo in January, Apple’s new AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n is a big leap forward but leaves a couple things behind. I was able to borrow one for review courtesy of First Tech Computer in Minneapolis, an Apple Specialist.
The new AirPort Extreme Base Station has several firsts for Apple:
• 802.11n support for up to 5 times the throughput of 802.11g
• use of the 5 GHz band for 802.11n (which also uses 2.4 GHz) and 802.11a
• MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) antennas for range up to twice as far as the previous model
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Art Text
BeLight Software
Price: 29.95
www.Belightsoft.com
Art Text (AT) is an application you can use to create high quality headings, logos, icons, web banners and more. The program allows you to create modified text and vector shapes into fancy graphics you can use on a web site, in brochures, flyers, banners, even business cards.
Art Text looks like a simple application, and it is, I just wish The Belight people had provided some documentation with it.
The main window contains many creative elements:
Mindjet MindManager 6
Company: Mindjet
Price: $229 US, £69 (until 30th May 2007, then £149)
www.mindjet.com
Have you ever watched The Apprentice? After Donald Trump has announced the task of the week (while shamelessly plugging either one of his companies or the show’s sponsor for that week) the candidates go off in their respective teams and figure out how they are going to tackle the task. Regular viewers will know that this is when things normally go wrong – the candidates often don’t effectively capture and organise their ideas for success. Having spent some time using Mindjet MindManager, I feel that if they had the use of this software, the Apprentice candidates might do substantially better!
MindManager is a tool for organising thoughts and ideas. There are many such tools available on the Mac (OmniOutliner being one of the more well known), but MindManager use mind mapping techniques as its basis, rather than pure hierarchical outlining.
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For part two of this Macspiration mini series I am going to cover several programs (freeware and shareware) that will help you go “Beyond the Basics” in customizing the look (and in one case the sound) your computer.
1. Are you sick of looking at the Apple logo when you boot your Mac? If the answer to that question is yes, you can change that picture to whatever you want! Just use the free Imagine BootX. I have tried this on a non-Intel Mac and it worked fine. I have not tried it on an Intel Mac.
2. Speaking of starting up your computer. How about the startup chime? You can control the volume of the chime with the free StartupSound.prefPane.
Download the MP3 here, or listen in player above
We wrap up our Speck Products contest this week with two live telephone calls during the show. Both Eddie from Florida and Gregg from Tyne and Wear (UK.) Tim and Chad cover the latest in Mac and Apple news. David returns after a week’s absence with a Fenestration, while Nemo interviews author Ben Long.
This podcast is sponsored by Audible.com. Give them a try, and get a free ebook, yours to keep!
Be sure to Digg our podcast. (If Digg ever gets the feed working right.)
We would love to hear from you. Please email any comments to mymacpodcast@gmail.com, or better still, call us at 801-938-5559 and leave your feedback there so we can share your thoughts on a future episode.
Links from the show:
Speck Products
Complete Digital Photography
Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 1.5
QuickSnap
Fastforward Software
Price: $14.95
http://fastforwardsw.com/
I take a lot of screenshots for my articles at MyMac.com, so I am always looking for a program to make that task easier. QuickSnap is a new, easy to use, program for doing just that.
In simplest terms, QuickSnap lets you take screenshots of windows, selected areas of your screen, or you entire screen. It will save these images in a number of file formats (jpg., gif, tiff, and others), to the location on your computer of your choosing. You can even set a time delay between the time you click “Capture” to the time the picture is taken. This is a nice feature.
As I said, QuickSnap is easy to use. To take a picture you click one of the three picture options from the interface window.
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Download the MP3 here, or listen above.
The Podcast Contest returns after a long hiatus! This week, listen for your chance to win a Macbook or MacBook Pro SeeThru case from Speck Products. Also up this week, John Nemo interviews author Don Mason.
This podcast is sponsored by Audible.com. Give them a try, and get a free ebook, yours to keep!
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In past Macspirations I’ve covered how to change icons, change desktop pictures, and a lot more to customize the appearance of your Mac. All of those customizations are great, but there are a lot of other ways to customize your Mac that aren’t so simple. At least, they appear that way. This mini-series of Macspiration articles will tell you about some of those customizations, and how to make them.
For example, this article will discuss how to change icons. Yeah, I know that is easy! It is easy for most icons, but there are other icons, or System Icons, that are a lot harder to customize. The simple cut and pasting of icons in an info window won’t cut it. I’m talking about the icon for every CD or DVD you insert into your computer, or the icon for new folders, or the Finder icon. Get the picture? How about the Trash Can?
All of those icons would be untouchable for most people, unless you download a free program I just discovered called LiteIcon. LiteIcon is by Julien Ramseier and available at freemacsoft.net. The site is not in English, so you might want to find it at MacUpdate or your favorite Mac software site.
LiteIcon is great, and so easy to use. When you open the program you are presented with the following window:
Comments. Be heard!
MyMac Podcast #385
MyMac Podcast #384