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This week, David Cohen, Tim Robertson, and Owen Rubin discuss Hulu being taken out of Boxee, and what that says about big media. Then Mark Rudd joins in with a discussion on iChat, what you can do with it, and why it won’t cost you a dime to use. And in the third segment, Guy Serle jumps on with a chat about Cloud Computing.

Total Running Time: 46:13

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Xtands for Apple MacBook Pro, MacBook, iPhone, and iPod Touch
Company: Just Mobile
Price for Just Mobile Xtand Pro: US$90
Price for Just Mobile Xtand: US$40
http://www.xtand.net/

These top quality brushed aluminum bases for computers, iPhones, and iPod Touches receive much praise and a little criticism from us. The Xtand Pro laptop riser comes with two sizes of columns so it can be used in two set positions. There are no intermediate adjustments, or any swivels or tilts. In contrast, the Xtand iPhone/iTouch riser has a fixed height and semi-permanent position. See photos below.

Xtand Pro is solid and stable with a MacBook or MacBook Pro in place, unless you give your computer an unintended push or whack at the top of the raised display, which can topple the computer backwards off the base. In normal use this won’t be an issue. Just Mobile’s manufacturing process created a stand that is a perfect match in color and finish to David’s MacBook Pro. Aesthetically, they look splendid together.

Anti-skid pads on the upper surface of an Xtand Pro keep the laptop computer in place. A thirty degree angle lifts the computer’s front edge roughly 3.5 inches above your table top or desk surface. The angled rear is elevated about 7.0 inches. These heights and angles are fixed, so you’ll need to test drive an Xtand Pro with your body and eyes to determine if its position is compatible with yours for extended usage. David says, "It’s great for me."

You’ll need an external keyboard and mouse while using Xtand Pro in its tall mode. Your laptop is cooled naturally, with full air circulation from the raised positioning.

If you’re only going to use an Xtand Pro in its lower position, the Incline Pro from Industrialized Nation is a better choice. Xtand Pro excels in high mode, when your body’s dimensions are compatible with the stand’s rigid height and angle. This product fills a small, specific niche, and does it with style.

Some assembly is required, and Just Mobile’s all-graphics instructions are a little confusing. Eventually, you’ll understand what they indicate.

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5

Xtand for iPhone/iTouch has a fore-aft knurled knob to facilitate minor height adjustments and a 360 degree spin that won’t be used very much, once a comfortable viewing position is determined. Just Mobile has good grippers to hold your player in place. David bravely held his iPhone upside down within the Xtand for a few seconds, before the phone became loose enough for him to revert to good judgment.

Side to side stability of the Xtand is good, as is its angle for viewing an iPhone/iTouch screen. Top-heavy instability is more of a problem than with the much heavier Xtand Pro. Our three words of advice concerning Xtand are DON’T BUMP IT! There is proportionally a lot of weight on a narrow base. We placed a decorative weight of vintage Arizona petrified wood on Xtand’s bottom foot to improve the stability.

Graphical installation instructions are a bit easier to follow on this product than on the laptop stand. David calls Xtand "good, but nothing special," and John says it is "really nifty." Our overall rating is a 3.5 out of 5 MyMac recommendation.

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Chill Mat for Mac
Company: Targus
Price: $50
http://www.targus.com/us/formac/

David calls this innovative laptop base "a solution in need of a problem," but Nemo has a higher opinion of it. You place your laptop computer (any brand, any size) onto Targus’ Chill Mat, then connect its USB to power cable to any available powered USB port. Press the Chill Mat’s power button at the upper rear of the base, and blast off!

Not exactly. A quiet fan purrs gently, cooling the computer’s hot bottom, in addition to the natural air circulation provided by the Chill Mat’s design and structure. David made a wisecrack, "Why don’t they provide a scented candle," after explaining that MacBooks "don’t need forced air cooling, and certainly don’t need to have a precious USB port tied up."

Four sets of gripping raised dots keep the computer in place, while at minimal pitch and elevation on the Targus base. Chill Mat is not comfortable resting on a person’s lap for typing or screen viewing. This defect could easily be improved.

Even though David insists that laptop users "just need to get their computer’s bottom off the table" for improved natural cooling, John likes the idea and the product well enough to recommend it in certain situations.

Being lead reviewer, David’s 3 out of 5 MyMac score is our official one, with Nemo rating Targus’ Chill Mat at 3.5 out of 5.

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Composite and Component Cables for iPod and iPhone
Company: Griffin Technology
Price $50
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/a-v-cables

If you don’t know the difference between composite and component video cables, you are in good company. Newer televisions have composite video ports, but may also have component video ports. My TV has both. Component video is usually part of a home theatre setup, but not always. If you’re not sure which of these two similar products you should use, the company web site is helpful, as is a web search for either or both terms.

Considering composite/component cable solutions as a single approach, you can connect your iPod/iPhone via the cables to your televisions, then watch and listen to any video from the portable player. iPhones are not officially compatible, but they work identically to iPod Touch players. This is not guaranteed, but it was our experience, after seeing a nasty message warning of iPhone incompatibility.

Griffin’s cable components are well-constructed, but the color coded red/white/yellow plugs need to be fully colored, and not just near the plug tips. Aside from that minor gripe, MyMac rates these products highly.

Step one: study diagram on package, then connect cables to television. Step two: connect 30-pin plug to iPod/iPhone. Step three: navigate your TV’s input signal to VIDEO 2, or whatever ports are being used by the plugs. Step four: play your video from your portable device, and adjust picture and sound settings on the television’s remote control. It works, and it’s all good.

A detachable USB power adapter is plugged in the cable’s USB plug to AC charge and/or power your playback, and is detached for USB iPod charging from a computer.

If you’re looking for free video content already formatted for the iPod/iTouch/iPhone, Apple’s iTunes store has free entertainment and informational videos. David can help you locate them, if you need assistance.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_video

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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Do you want to program the iPhone or iPod touch, the Mac, or maybe even an Android phone from Google, and you have no idea where to start? One option to learning all this is sitting in a class, you could always find a company like Edison Labs (http://www.edisonlabs.net) (shameless plug) and sign up for some training classes in these topics, where experienced teachers will bring you up to speed on the topic of your choice. There are a number of companies who offer such training classes across the US, but many of those assume you have some programming experience already. But what if you want to start from scratch, or just need a head start before taking such a class? What else can you do?

Turn to books. There are a LOT of books released recently, or updated and rereleased on these subjects, and here are a few books of interest to cover these topics.

Learn C on the Mac.
by Dave Mark
Apress
ISBN 978-1-4302-1809-9, 353 pages paperback
Price: $39.99 US

If you have no prior programming experience, then this book is a great place to start. The jury is still out on IF you should learn C before learning Objective-C, but almost every book on new programming languages suggests that you have some experience in programming C first. And if the iPhone is your target for development, starting on the Mac with C is a good place to start, as there are a lot of things you will learn here that will carry over to programming the iPhone later, such as the X-code programming environment.

Mark first wrote Learn C on the Macintosh in 1991, and this new release brings the concept up-to-date for today’s Mac. This is a great book for both learning the C language, and learning how to program on the Mac at the same time. The target for this book is the very beginner with no previous programming experience. The author acknowledges he wants target audiences like 5th graders, soccer moms, and hobbyists; people who have written him on earlier books which went somewhat over their heads. Like other Apress books (see below) the pace is well managed, starting easy and working up to more difficult concepts through the use of clear examples and code samples (which can be downloaded) to get you writing, compiling, and running code quickly.

Given the target audience, if you already have some programming or Mac experience, you may find yourself annoyed at time with his “Notes” (little gray boxes throughout the book) that tell you things like how to save your project, the difference between integers and floating point numbers, or even what “OS” means. However, these are great resources for the uninitiated, things a newbie will need to know. Even so, as a programmer already and not Mark’s intended audience, I still found many things to learn here, the enthusiasm of the author to teach this material flowed from start to finish, and this was not your typical dry programming book.

On the down side, while the book has a few exercises to help the reader grasp the concepts, there are not a lot of coding exercises, something I believe should be in this type of book. While there are many code samples as I said, coding exercises to help the reader grasp the topic well would have been a nice addition here.

This is an excellent place to start.

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5. More coding exercises, Mark.

Programming in Objective-C. A complete introduction to the Objective-C language.
by Stephen G. Kochan
Developer’s Library
ISBN 978-0-672-32596-1, 556 pages paperback
Price: $39.99 US / $49.99 CAN

This is not a new book, but one of the better books in this field. This is a detailed book on Objective-C that is a tutorial and also a very good reference book for the small details when actually trying to program in Objective-C. The book has good sections as an introduction to the language and syntax, and is quite nice at pointing out some of the special “features” and aspects of this language. This book was originally published in 2003, and has been reprinted almost every year since. It is very comprehensive, yet still easy to use and understand as you learn the language, or just need to know how something worked.

Written (in parts) in a tutorial style, this book will guide you in learning, and then be with you as you move into real programming. While this book assume no prior knowledge of X-code, Cocoa, or Objective-C, if you do not have some prior programming experience, you may have some difficulty getting through all of this the first time (or two!). See Learn C on the Mac as a better place to start. Lastly, this is NOT a book for programming Cocoa or learning X-code. While it talks briefly on those subjects as they tie into development, you will need another reference for those topics.

MyMac rating 4.5 out of 5. A must own book for iPhone programming.

Learn Objective-C on the Mac.
by Mark Darymple and Scott Knaster
Apress
ISBN 978-1-4302-1815-9, 337 pages paperback
Price: $39.99 US

Here is another really good introduction to Objective-C, written by some great veterans of Mac programming. I found reading this book more enjoyable as it is a little more light-hearted than your typical technical book, but done so without sacrificing the quality of the information. Typically with technical books, you use them as references, but this was designed in a way to make “reading” it from front to back enjoyable. Like the book above, this is an excellent introduction to the language and can be used as a reference as well, but this book is written in a style and pace that included some humor to keep the reading entertaining and pleasant, something I can’t say about most technical books in general. A few examples of this would be some subtopic headings, like “Take out Those Papers and the Trash”, “Isn’t That Convenient?”, “More Parts is Parts”, and one of my favorites, “Objecting to Properties.” Ok, maybe you have to be technical and know about the language to truly appreciate the humor, but it did break up a rather heavy subject with a smile here and there.

You should know C or some similar programming language to use this book (again, see Learn C on the Ma), and it says so right up front, so don’t start here if you have not programmed before. However, it does start simple with the atypical small application “Hello world”, then eases you up to more complex topics like memory management, object initialization, categories, protocols, and properties. The books covers Objective-C, some new items found in Objective-C 2.0, a modern version of X-code (very basic), and Cocoa (very basic.) I still recommend additional books on X-Code and Cocoa to get more info in those areas if you plan on programming the Mac or an iPhone, as here it is only explained to tie the language together with the tools.

I also appreciated that the authors assume the readers are intelligent and know how to use the internet. URLs are not tossed about this book cluttering up the pages as happens in so many other books these days. I also appreciated the small “sidebars” sprinkled throughout the book (small gray boxes actually) that summarize important points, making it easier to come back and find them later.

All in all, I list this as a MUST HAVE book for Mac or iPhone programming.

MyMac rating 5 out of 5. This is just an EXCELLENT book.

Beginning iPhone Development. Exploring the iPhone SDK.
by Dave Mark & Jeff LaMarche
Apress
ISBN 978-1-4302-1626-1, 508 pages paperback
Price: $39.99 US

Dave Mark, the author of Learn C on the Mac (above) also worked on this book with co-author Jeff LaMarche, and his style is evident here too. This is a great book for learning the basics of iPhone development. This book starts at the very beginning, is written in simple to understand not-so-technical English (read: not dry), and covers what you need to know to get started, right from the basic fundamentals of the iPhone development process. Great, large illustrations accompany the text and make understanding so much easier than just the words alone. Once past the fundamentals, this book continues into the core concepts of ImageBuilder and the Model-View-Controller paradigm (MVC), right into the depths of iPhone development.

Topics include handling basic interaction, autorotation and auto-sizing, multi-view applications, an introduction to table views , navigation controller, data persistence, and drawing with Quartz and OpenGL just to name a few from the first half of the book. This books covers just about everything you need to know to get started, including things you might not find elsewhere. For example, there is a even topic on making UI’s that rotate into landscape mode, something I have yet to find elsewhere. Jeff and Dave are longtime Mac developers, and have brought their skills in writing about programming and application design to one very good book. This is a must have if you want to program on the iPhone.

Another one of those “should own” books on the subject.

MyMac Rating 4 out of 5.

Strategic Mobile Design: Creating Engaging Experiences (Voices that Matter).
by Joseph Cartmen and Richard Ting
New Riders
ISBN 978-0-321-58007-8, 210 pages paperback
Price: $34.99 US / $37.99 CAN

This is not a programming book, in fact, this is probably not a book for technical people at all (although I suspect authors and publisher would disagree), but rather a book for people interested in mobile design overall, both from the production side as well as the client side, but strictly from a design overview. The book presents a complete view of the entire mobile design; technology, marketing, and business models, packed with enough ideas and guidelines to help you get started on such a project, not from a technical side, but from a design/product look. In addition, this book talks not just about the iPhone, but other mobile devices in general, looking at the entire mobile space.

As an engineer reading this, like all marketing books too me, I had a hard time getting through it; always questioning why these guys think they know this better than others actually building this stuff? One thing might be their credentials. Mr. Cartman is a branding specialist, and has worked on branding for companies like Nike, VW, Saturn, and Verizon to name a few. He obviously knows his stuff when it comes to branding, and has applied it here to the topic of mobile design. Mr Ting is an award winning VP and Creative Director for R/GA’s Mobile and Emerging Platforms Group, where he is working on “integrated interactive user experience” across the web, mobile, and the physical space. Obviously a smart guy, and he knows this area well too it seems. But I still had issues with the book, feeling that I was constantly being told the obvious over and over.

Very recently published, does a book like this really need to tell me that mobile is exploding or that there is large growth in mobile applications and technology? Or that the “mobile medium” has arrived? Or about the growth of global mobile Internet or the 3G market? (To name a few of many obvious points.) Seriously?

Perhaps as a technical person in the field already, I am the wrong audience for this? And to be fair, I ended up not reading it all the way through before I felt I was just being told the obvious way too many times. But there are some good case studies inside, and if you are serious about designing a mobile product, and if your are not familiar with this area, this book should be able to give you some insight to what worked and what did not, and how to design more effectively based on past lessons learned.

MyMac rating: 2.5 out of 5 (I was wrong audience)

Hello, Android. Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform
by Ed Burnette
Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN 978-1-934356-17-3, 218 pages paperback
Price: $32.95 US and CAN

I have been waiting for a book on Android programming to hit the shelves, as Edison Labs, LLC wants to teach Android programming as well, and I wanted to know more. However, they have been far and few between. Skipping past the Dummies book this time, I decided to have a look at Hello, Android, written by a 25 year programming veteran, author and speaker. Priced near the same cost as the Apress books above, this book came in a little light at only 218 pages (vs 508 for the Apress book), and because of that, I felt a bit rushed through the many of the topics, and left wanting more detail. And more detail was available of course, but it bothered me that this book was constantly sending me off to website URLs (listed in footnotes on many of the pages) to find that more, instead of just telling me right there. Perhaps, given the level of documentation available from Google and all the other locations I was asked to look at, the “more” is left us as an exercise for the reader?

The author does a good job of getting to the core concepts here, and the book does have a good number of tips, and a lot of information packed in such a small space. Like other books of this type, it tries to start easy with a “Hello Android” program, their equivalent of “Hello world” to get you started. Except their idea of getting started, and what they called “writing” your first program was actually just setting up the development environment and loading an existing program and running it. Not exactly writing anything. It then moves fairly fast into very technical detail, not exactly ramping easily up as I would hope.

I did like that the author realizes that many technical people will not actually read every word of the book, and the use of what he calls “Fast Forward” to get you through the topics quickly for the advanced reader was a nice touch.

All in all, this book will get you through the general topic of the Android phone, get you set up and running a development environment quickly, and off to writing a good first example program, (a Sudoku game), but it constantly asks you to jump around inside the book way too much to find references to topics not yet discussed but mentioned, and way too many references to source material on the web, which is distracting when trying to use the book. To fully get the most out of this book, you will need to be sitting in front of your computer and looking at a lot of on-line documentation.

MyMac rating: 3 out of 5. Good material, but I wanted more IN the book.

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Network Space 500 GB Central Storage Ethernet Disk
Company: LaCie
Price: 500 GB at $149 , 1 TB at $199
http://www.lacie.com

NAS, or Network Attached Storage is all the rage these days. Made very simple, NAS is basically a hard drive attached somewhere in your network that is accessible to computers on your network. Typically, however, NAS drives are anything but simple, requiring complex account, permissions, and volume set-up and administration. And that is both the good news and bad news with La Cie’s “network space”, which they call a “Central Storage Ethernet Disk” rather than a NAS drive.

First, this is a sleek, rather small (4.6 x 7.6 x 1.8 in) shinny black drive with a cool blue drive and power indicator on the front. There are only a few connections on this box. On the back are a power plug and Ethernet jack (and a power switch) and the front has a USB connector. Capacity is 500 GB or 1 TB, and the primary data interface is 10/100/1000 Ethernet, but this does not run at full Ethernet speeds. Typical transfer rates are up to 8 MB/s, depending on file sizes and formats, LAN configuration and your own network factors. You can share content locally up to a maximum of 5 users at a time. The device is an iTunes-compliant server, and you can stream music & video on UPnP media players (however, a UPnP certified digital media adapter is required.)

The good news: This is about as easy to set-up as anything resembling NAS is ever about to become. Take it out of the box, plug it in to the AC, and connect the included Ethernet cable to your router or hub. If you have a DHCP network, which is typical these days, your router will assign it an IP address, and you are done. All computers on your network will now see two new items on the network, and they give immediate access to this drive. I can see it on my all Macs, on my Windows XP machine, and even on an Ubuntu Linux box.

From a PC, when you open My Network Places, browse Microsoft Windows Network, and open Workgroup, you should see an icon labeled “LaCie Network Space.” Simply double click that, and two network folders should appear. One is called “myshare”, and the other is called “openshare”, and I will cover both in just a second.

On a Mac running Leopard, you can find the same icons by typing Command-Shift-K (or menu GO and Network…) in the Finder. The window that opens should show two new icons as well. One is labeled “NetworkSpace AFP”, and the other “NetworkSpace SMB.” The AFP (Apple File sharing Protocol) will show you the “openshare” folder only, while examining the SMB folder (Server Message Block format) will show you both “myshare” and “openshare.” Once discovered, they should show up in Finder windows under Shared.

On the Ubuntu box, the new drive simply showed up in the “Places” area of the File Browser windows as ‘networkspace’ and gave immediate access to both folders on the drive. All in all, this was very simple to get up and running.

So, what are these two folders? Openshare is a folder that is basically open to the world. Anyone who can get access to this drive can see what is inside Openshare. As its name implies, it is open to all. And there is no way to change the permissions of anything you put inside either, so know that if it is in there, it is open to anyone who can connect.

Myshare, on the other hand, requires a password to access. And that takes us to the bad news. First off, there is only one account on this device, and I could found no way to create more. There is a web interface to manage the device, and I will cover that a bit later, but suffice it to say that you can have all the public access you wish, but only one protected user account, and that account is ALWAYS named admin! And of course, if you have the admin password, you can use that same password to alter settings using the web interface. This seems like a very big error to me.

And to make matters worse, on Windows, you cannot access the myshare if you are accessing the openshare. Often, while trying to access from my PC for example, I would get an error that said “Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed.” Basically, if I was on Openshare as “guest”, the way it connects, I had to disconnect that before I could reconnect as admin to get access to the other folder.

This was even more confusing when I was using the openshare space with iTunes to listen to my music that was on the drive. The music is, of course, on the openshare access folder, so myshare is now not available for access. But again, the error message (a Windows problem really) was no help understanding why I could not see my files now. The simple solution was to authenticate access with the admin password first, and then access both sides of the drive as the admin user. But that was not explained anywhere.

On the Mac side, connections were equally strange. I had no trouble accessing the openshare side at all with 10.5, but when trying to connect to the myshare space, I would get errors like, “The operation cannot be completed because the original item for “myshare” cannot be found.” Really, I can see the icon? Well, as it turns out, you have to click the “Connect As” box that appears at the top of the network window before you can connect to myshare, but of course, the error is not helpful, and the interface was not so obvious, and again, no instructions to get past the strange error. I blame Apple for this one, but had they used real network interfaces, this might not have been a problem.

If you know the drives IP address, which you can get from the web interface page (which, of course, requires that you know the drives address!!!) you can always connect on a Mac using the direct interface Command-K (Connect to server…) and type smb://xx.xx.xx.xx. where xx.xx.xx.xx is the IP address of the drive. When you use this method on 10.5, a connect dialog box opens. If you want openshare, simply click on Guest, and then select openshare from the next dialog (selecting myshare from this dialog will fail.) If you want myshare, type the admin name and password, and now you can open either share space.

And while the box says it works with Mac OS 10.3 or higher, when I tried to connect from a MacBook running 10.4, nothing showed up in the Network browser at all. I could still connect using the direct interface mentioned above, but the dialogs are different. First, a dialog opened asking me to choose which share I wanted. But when I connected this way to openshare, the OS insisted on putting up a Connect As dialog box anyway, asking for a username and password with no Guest option. This was confusing, as the drive has neither a name nor password for this folder. If I pressed Cancel, since openshare has no name or password, I did not connect but simply canceled. Turns out, you can put any random username and password you want, or simply clear all the fields in the password dialog box and then press enter to connect. Oh, that was obvious! NOT! Seems to me that the openshare access should put up NO dialog box at all, but was this a Mac OS or LaCie error? I am not sure. If accessing the secure side, you of course put in the admin name and password, and all works fine.

In any case, as a “simple to use” share; it was not so simple to connect. As with folders created in openshare, you cannot change the sharing privileges on any folder in Myshare either. This means a “drop box” is out of the question, as is private user folders in the private space.

Control and Administration

There is a small amount of administration that can be done on this drive, and the drive comes with a CD to install some tools to make life easier. For the PC, there is a small tool agent that sits on the toolbar. Inside this “tool” are a “connect manually” command, a “web access” command, access to a configuration window, agent preferences, and the ability to quit the agent. The most useful of all these tools is the ability to open a web page that allows some drive configuration. You can also get to this same web screen if you know the IP address of the drive. Also on the PC was a backup agent to back up files automatically to the drive. This launched on its own, and starred backing up my Documents folder before any configuration. I found that annoying, and deleted it. But if you want automatic backup, there it is (on the PC.)

On the Mac, there is a small application called “LaCie Ethernet Agent.” The object on the CD that looks like an application is actually a dmg file that lets you mount a disk to install the agent. That was not clear until after you copy it to your HD and launch what you think is the agent. This could have been clearer. I installed the agent (dragged it from dmg disk to my applications folder) and launched it. Nothing happened at first, and then a small new icon appeared on the menu bar. What is with all these new applications lately insisting on putting an icon on the menu bar? Of course, if your menu bar is already full or the application you are using has a lot of menus, you will not see this icon right at first. Clicking on this icon revealed the same menu items as on the Windows machine.

“Connect manually… “ on the Mac simply takes you directly to the login dialog for the drive. This is much easier than trying to find the drive. However, when you mount the drive this way, an icon appears on the desktop, which did NOT happen in previous attempts to mount the drive. Oh good, more confusion. On Windows, this menu opens the Networkspace window, same as when you browsed for it, to the Windows side was more consistent than the Mac side. There’s a switch!

“Web access…” on Windows and Mac launches your favorite browser (if not running) and opens a window to the web admin login page.

“Network Configuration” (Mac) or “Configuration Windows” (PC) both open the same window which allows you to set the IP address to either DHCP or manually. There is also a “Volumes” tab in this dialog, but clicking it displays the message “This Network Space does not support volumes listing” which tells me they use this tool for other network based drives they sell as well with more functionality.

“La Cie Agent Preferences” lets you set IF the agent runs at login or start up, and if you want an indicator when it finds a new network space drive.

As I said before, there is also a web admin page you can access as well by opening your browser to the IP address of the drive. When you open this, there are a few things you can change, and four menu items give you the options:

“Configuration” In this screen you can change the drives name from the default “NetworkSpace.” Helpful if you have more than one! You can change the Windows workgroup name here, as well as set the date and time and assign a network time protocol server for automatic setting too. I tried putting time.apple.com into the NTP server address, the interface locked up for a long time, and when it finally came back, the time was set to Jan 01, 2002 and 2 hours and 13 minutes slow. Guess it does not work. I tried nist1.symmetricom.com, and still had no luck. There are settings for the display language (9 choices), the ability to view the network settings, and a setting to turn the blue indicator on the front of the drive on or off.

You can also change the admin password, as well as supposedly change the “User” name and add a password. Again, this was confusing. When you press the USER configuration button, you are shown a dialog that lets you change the “Username” and the password. However, no matter what I put into Username, it did not change. And adding a password for user did not change the behavior of Openshare in anyway. It also did not allow me to use that username and password to access myshare. So what exactly is this option for? Well, it turns out that this actually sets the ftp access to the shares and in no way changes the user access. So why not labels this FTP instead of User?

Also on the web page are an item labeled “Disk”, which gives a graphical and text display of space used and available. The “Support” tab give you the ability to turn on an off functions like FTP access, as well as rebuild the internal index, which appears to be kept in a small database, and do a scan for media on the drive. The drive also keeps a comprehensive log of activity, and that can be viewed, downloaded, or erased here as well.

As for FTP access, you can access this drive remotely by FTP access (must be enabled) if you know its address and the admin password, and it looks exactly as you would expect any ftp accessed drive to look, so I will not go into detail here.

Oh, and that USB connector on the front. I really wanted this to be there so I could add more HD space via USB to the network storage, but alas the documentation implies this is there for backup to and from the main drive. You can connect another drive here, and in doing so, you have the ability to back it up to the network share. Simply connect the drive, go to the web interface page, and you can copy the contents from the external drive to the share drive. You can also use this port to backup the Network Share to an external drive as well the same way. So again, there is good news and bad. The good news is the backup works great in both directions. Also great is the fact that the external USB drive DOES show up on all the shared spaces. And that, of course, is also the bad news: It shows up on ALL the shared access spaces, so your external drive is basically a new PUBLIC drive as well.

In conclusion, set up for this drive is indeed as easy as it will get. But using it can get confusing very quickly if you try and do more advanced things, and the options for setting it up appear to have been glommed from other LaCie products, and not well thought out for this drive. Strangely, in an attempt to keep it simple, they made some things for the user more complex. On more advanced NAS drives, once accounts and passwords are set up, most NAS drives just look like networks shared spaces, and you log on to them as you would another computer in the network, and they work just fine. That said, if you have a few computers in your home or office, and you need a simple space to share files, save your backup, or just have more disk space for photos, music, video, or other larger files, this is a perfectly simple solution that solves storage space for all your computers with one device.

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5.

Pros: Easy to set up, reasonable cost, no complex administration, works across many systems.
Cons: The simple nature has added complications in using it that might confuse users. No ability to add users or privileges. No ability to protect files for different users. Secure password is also admin password. Software needs an update FOR this device.

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Funtastic Photos
Company: Ohanaware
Price: $34.99
http://www.ohanaware.com/funtasticphotos/

Want an easy to use program for editing and adding special effects to your photos? You might want to check out Funtastic Photos.

Funtastic Photos is the photo editor that is for people who want to play with there photos and add cool effects with a click of the mouse. It is also for those that like having fun (no pun intended) with their photos and like a little more control over the effects.

Let’s take a breath.

Funtastic Photos allows you to add effects to your photos like brightness and contrast, sharpen, and straightening by clicking an icon for a quick effect. You want a little more control? It is as easy as a check box and dragging a slider or choosing some options in a menu. It is just that easy. You don’t have to know any technical photo editing jargon. Once you get the photo just right you can add fun effect like turning your photo into a mosaic or a line drawing. There a ton of built-in effects and you can even create and save your own.

One of the cooler uses of Funtastic Photos is the ability to make a photo mosaic. You know, those photos made up of hundreds of tiny photos. I have tried several freeware and shareware programs that are specifically for this. None of them work. Funtastic Photos is the best implementation of this technique I have tried.

You might be wondering how you get your photos into Funtastic Photos. Well, you can import a file, but it is also integrated with your iPhoto library. You find the photo and click it to begin.

Funtastic Photos is just that fun. For $34.99 it is a steal.

MyMac.com rating 5 out of 5

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Video Transfer
Company: Pinnacle
http://www.pinnacle.com/
Price: $99.99

I have an iPod Touch now, and I am constantly downloading apps from the Apple store. But I have a real problem when it comes to downloading TV shows and movies. Somehow, I just cannot pay again for the same TV or movies I can get on my Dish Network PVR, or DVDs, or old videotapes that are already paid for. But how do I get them from the source onto my iPod?

Typically this is often a complicated process involving a lot of time and money, usually done with some kind of capture card inside of a PC, or maybe an external device that captures and send the files to your computer’s hard disk. But then they are often not the right size or format, so you have to convert to the format you need, and maybe to the size for the device as well, and that all takes time and lots of effort. And there are hundreds of settings and options in every program that even a video engineer might not understand, meaning trial and error over and over to get it to look good.

So this is where the Video Transfer unit from Pinnacle comes in. This compact little device (about 5” x 2.5” x .75”) will let you convert videos from many different video sources and store them directly onto a USB device like a USB stick, an external USB Hard Drive, or an iPod, has only a few settings, and works without a computer.

Set up can be FAIRLY easy IF you have the necessary cables and destination device ready, but you may need a few extra cables that are not included, and be sure to keep and read the included instruction booklet, you will need it once you get started because not all output devices work here. So lets walk through set-up so you can see the issues.

On one side of the Video Transfer box are the audio/video inputs; on the other side are two USB 2.0 ports and a power input plug. First, the easier part of set up is to plug in the power brick to the wall and connect to the power plug on the device. Then, connect video cables from the output of your video source to the inputs on this device. You can connect either via an analog video and audio cable (Yellow, Red, White tipped RCA cable included in the box) or by an S-VHS video cable and RCA audio cable for better video quality. The S-Video cable is not included, but is recommended for better quality recordings, and is what I used for my tests.

Now, you need to connect a USB destination device of some kind as the output device, and here it can get a little tricky, especially for Mac users. Of the two USB connectors on the side, one is the standard “square” USB connector typically found on the back of most USB drives. Forget about it, this does nothing and is reserved for future use. The other USB connector is a standard rectangular USB socket you would see on the side of most computers, and this is where you will connect the destination device. You have several options here on what to connect, and if necessary, you will need your own USB cable for this.

Now here is where it gets confusing: You can connect several devices here, a USB Flash drive, a USB hard drive, a Sony Playstation Portable, but it must be firmware version 2.81 or later, a Sony Playstation Portable Slim, an Apple iPod Video version 1.21 or later, an iPod Classic, or an iPod Nano, 3rd Gen only, and iPods must have firmware version 1.03 or later. You cannot connect directly to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

OK, now it gets even more complicated. To use an Apple iPod with this device, the internal drive must be formatted FAT32, a WINDOWS file format. For most Mac users, this means you cannot just plug in your iPod. An iPod, iPod nano, and mini can be configured to work with either a Macintosh or Microsoft Windows computer. If configured for a Mac, the iPod will be formatted as Mac OS Extended HFS Plus, which will not work here. If configured for Windows, the iPod will be configured as file format FAT32. You can do a restore on an iPod and change the format if you wish, but it will erase everything. Also note that while a FAT32 formatted iPod will still work with Macs, it is a foreign file format, it will not be optimized for use on the Mac, there will be file name length issues, some sharing and permission problems for sure, and there is a 4 GB file size limit! That is the “cost” of directly recording from this device onto an iPod. And because the iPhone and iPod Touch cannot be formatted FAT ever, they cannot be used here. Confused yet?

The easiest way to handle recordings with this device is to use a USB Flash Drive or a USB hard drive formatted FAT16 or FAT32, so I will continue with that assumption for now. Have a look at this video to see how easily that works…

Better version here.

Now, since no computer is used to program this device, all the options are set on the device itself by pressing the MODE and REC buttons on the top. To change recording quality, use the MODE button on top. The higher the setting, the more HD space the recording will occupy, but the better the recording quality should be But that is also determined by what output device you have connected as well. Confused yet?

Well, to help, here are the settings and what they mean depending on mode setting and device connected:

As you can see, the best results are achieved with an external HD (other device) on the BEST setting. If this table confuses you, simply look at the column for what you attach, and then see the three choices you have. With a USB hard drive at Best, it will record 750×480 resolution at 1.5 Mbps data rate for the video, and 192 kbps @ 48 Khz stereo for the audio. Now confused?

So just how much time can you record on your device? Well, again that depends on the size and type of output device and the quality setting desired. Here are some examples of time for quality setting and device type:

After starting a recording, it will stop if the device becomes full (obviously), or if you briefly press the REC button while recording. After stopping the recoding, you need to wait a short time before removing the USB device. The USB LED will turn RED, the quality LEDs will flash, and then stop. You can now remove the drive.

So, now if you recorded to an HD or Flash stick, when done recording, simply attach that drive to your computer, and then use iTunes to move the MPEG-4 files to your device.

SIGH!

Conceptually, this device is a great idea if it worked like you would expect: Connect video, attach an iPod, start the video, and press record. But as you can see, it is not as simple as all that. As I read through the instructions, I kept feeling more and more confused by all the things that COULD happen when I used this.

But in reality, if you forget everything else, simply attach a FAT formatted USB hard drive, and start making recordings, and then move them to your device using iTunes or file transfer, it actually is simple. Once I got it set up (meaning reformatting a USB external drive with FAT32) I made some sample recordings from my Dish DVR. The video quality on BEST was good viewed on a large screen, and BETTER looked good on the iPod Touch or iPhone. Even GOOD should be acceptable on the even smaller iPod Video screen as well. The audio is a different story, being full of video interference noise and ending up completely out of sync with the video. Not good at all.

Overall, I was disappointed with this device; and there are a couple of things I would have liked to see changed or added on this unit. First, for something that should be so simple, I found it to have a lot of complicated little gotcha points when trying to set it up. Secondly, direct video to an iPhone or iPod Touch would have been welcomed, but maybe that is an Apple problem really. Thirdly, support for file systems other than FAT would also have been appreciated. I think Mac users are an after thought with this device, since they rarely have FAT formatted USB drives sitting around. Next, at around $100, they should at least include a USB cable and maybe even an S-Video cable. Even cheap $15 USB drive enclosures include the USB cable! Lastly, you should be able to use the unused USB connector to attach this device directly to a computer, and then transfer the recording files directly onto the hard disk of your computer. This would be especially great for iPhone and iPod Touch users, as now you have to record to a USB device, then transfer the drive to a computer to move them to an iPhone..

But the killer for me was that all was not even close to perfect with the encoded video files, and I tried all three settings, and both S-Video and Analog video inputs to try and make them work. Most of the audio tracks had buzzing and other noise that appeared to be video interference with the audio, but did not occur in the source material. And almost all encodes had completely screwed up the audio and video sync, making it look like I was watching a badly dubbed foreign film. S-Video was always off, and by half a second or more, and on regular video, it started OK and then stuttered and went bad a few seconds in. And sadly, the sync problem got worse on better settings. I recorded to several different USB hard drives as well, just to be sure it was not a drive speed error, and the results were the same on all drives tested. If it were a drive issue, after trying 5, I would say that many people would have issues too.

Here is a sample of a recorded video straight out of the unit. (This file is 2.2 MB in size) recorded at Best setting via S-Video input. You will see the video quality is very good, but note the audio and audio sync issues with even this small recording.



Full version in .mov format here

MyMac rating: 2 out of 5. It kills me to rate this so low, as I really wanted this device to work well. It does record video files, but for a Mac , iPhone or iPod Touch user, it is a pain in the butt given the file type limitation. It was not as simple as it should be with a lot of complication in basic specifications to understand. But the true killer is the badly recorded video files with noise and sync issues. This drops this down a full 2.5 points in my view. It may be great for recording video game play where audio sync may not be so critical, but for TV and movies, this device needs a serious update, if that is even possible.

Update: After my first submission of this article and the problems I had, I was contacted by someone at Pinnacle. Seems there was a firmware update for this unit that I was not aware of. I did not even know you COULD update this unit, but it does say so in the back of the small manual that came with it (but who reads those?) I also did a Google search, but unless you use the word "update" along with "Video Transfer Pinnacle", it could rather difficult to find this update.I guess one should always look for updates and read ALL of the manual. I am so spoiled by programs that update themselves, that I simply did not think to look further for something I never expected to exist. Basically, Pinnacle has the ability to update the firmware on the unit. You copy the new "bin" files to a clean, newly FAT-32 formatted memory stick, connect it to the unit and turn it on. The update took only a few seconds and happens automatically.

Imagine my surprise when recordings made with the update no longer exhibit the audio sync issue OR the noise I originally saw. This is now recoding exceptionally well, sync issues are gone, as it the audio noise. I was told that only a few units had this issue, and lucky for me, I received one of them. (You would think that companies would actually check units sent to reviewers first, but that seldom seems to be the case.) Here is a new sample video with the firmware update:

Update Video in higher-res .mov format

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5. I originally scored this 2 out of 5, and wrote that it kills me to rate this so low, as I really wanted this device to work well. With the firmware update, it really DOES work well, and makes some amazingly good recordings at all settings. However, there are still issues: For a Mac , iPhone or iPod Touch user, it is a pain given the file type limitation, but there are workarounds. It was not as simple as it should be with a lot of complication in basic specifications to understand.

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Artist’s Touch
Company: Artamata Inc.
$4.99
iTunes link

Recently, I reviewed a program called Artwork which turns your photos into paintings. In the past I have reviewed several other paint programs that have this feature. Well, now there is an iPhone/iPod Touch app called Artist’s Touch that does the same thing.

For $4.99 you can take a photo from your Photo library and turn it into a painting. The program does not do it for you, you have to paint it yourself. The method is very cool, and very similar to the method used in a program called ArtRage 2 (look for a review on ArtRage Deluxe coming soon).

Here’s how it works: You choose a photo from your library and the program converts it into a blue line drawing (very cool animation to watch). Once you have the line drawing you use your finger as a brush and paint the photo. This technique requires a lot of patience. The smaller you make your brush, the more detailed the painting is, but also the more time consuming it is. However, if you have the time your patience will be regarded. The final results look like a real painting.

There are a variety of options too. You can use several different materials (pastel, paint, marker, etc.), change the material you paint on (stone, canvas, etc.) and change the background color. You can also change the transparency of the media you are applying. Just like similar desktop programs the materials look like the real thing.

Artist’s Touch is a also a paint program. You can create a painting from scratch instead of painting a photo. However, I have not discovered a way to freehand on top of a photo painting. This would be a nice feature for future revisions.

So what do you do with it when you are finished? You can export the image to your photo library where it can be emailed, set as wallpaper, and used just like any other file there. I wanted to see the quality of the final image, so I emailed it to myself and printed it to 8×10 size. It looked fantastic! Not pixelated like I would have expected.

While I think Artist’s Touch is a fantastic program, and worth your money, I did have a couple of issues you should be aware of. On my first generation iPod Touch it ran a little sluggish at times, and it would also crash when I selected certain photos to paint. There is also no undo feature. This is a must in any program. There is an eraser, but an undo button would be a great addition.

Overall, (as I mentioned) I really like Artist’s Touch. It produces great results for only $4.99. It takes some practice, but with some time you can be creating some beautiful paintings with your fingers.

MyMac.com rating 4 out of 5

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A decade ago, back when the web was still easy to develop webpages on, I was the WebMaster for TheRockCafe.com. (Don’t bother going there now, it’s a parked site for some internet squatter.) It was a website for a local record store here in my home town. (It later became the domain name for a church after the record store and I parted ways, but I had nothing to do with that.) Rather than pay me in cash, which I would have preferred, we had a barter deal. As a music lover, this worked out fine, as their website did not take much time to maintain once it was built, and in exchange I would get one music CD a week.

I did it for three or four years. So my music collection, already fairly large at that point, got exponentially larger very quickly. This all leads, of course, to the point where I stopped listening to CDs and started listening to MP3 formatted music on my iPod. At that point, I used iTunes to convert all my music CDs to MP3, and never looked back.

One tiny problem: while iTunes usually knew which CD it was importing, thus naming all the tracks and albums correctly, cover art was not a part of iTunes back in the day. The iPod could not display album art (greyscale text-only screen) and there was no decent third-party solution to find and attach album artwork to the metadata of the MP3. Even when the original iPod started sporting color and the ability to display album artwork, it was no big deal. It wasn’t until Apple introduced CoverFlow on the iPhone that I decided I wanted all my music to have album artwork. And while Apple now has the ability to find album artwork in iTunes, it does not work very well, if at all.

Enter two different applications: CoverScout from Equinux, and TuneUp from TuneUp Media. They are very different applications, and while TuneUp has more features, I am only going to look at one feature: getting album artwork.

TuneUp (Free, but limited to 500 fixes until you pay. $29.95 lifetime subscription) has the benefit of working with iTunes. When you launch iTunes, TuneUp automatically launches at the same time. This is nice, except I could not find any way to turn it off. Oh, sure, I could quit TuneUp, but there is no way to tell it not to launch the next time iTunes starts up. Maybe I don’t want to find missing artwork for the next few days. TuneUp doesn’t care, it happily launches each and every time. In fact, the only way to actually keep it from launching at iTunes start-up was to move the application to the trash, empty trash, and be happy.

So, does TuneUp work? After a fashion. It does a pretty decent job of renaming your MP3′s for you if they are not already listed correctly. In fact, at times, it was downright uncanny how many songs it fixed in the ID department, correctly filling in both album name, composer, and song title. How does it know? Well, it does, at least for about half the tracks I threw at it.

But this is about album art, and here TuneUp did a pretty decent job. Maybe 70%. Still and all, that is not bad, cleaning up 70% of the album art of the MP3s I gave it to chew on.

CoverScout ($39.99), on the other hand, does one thing and one thing only: finds the missing album art. It does not work within, or with, iTunes. Rather, you point it at your MP3 library, and it will diligently scour the internet looking for your album art.

I have to say, the power of CoverScout is astounding. Not only does it guess correctly 90% of the time, it presents you with multiple options for those tracks and albums if it does not know. You can set up the program to automatically assign the best guess for you, or allow it to let you manually select the correct choice per album. I did the later, until I got bored with the drudgery of the task and just let CoverScout pick what it thought was the best choice. Even then, it got it right way more often than not.

CoverScout will also allow you to custom fit your covers, meaning if the only artwork it finds is a 3D or odd-shaped picture, you can crop out what you don’t want. More, you can actually use your iSight camera (if your Mac has one) to take a picture of your actual CD cover and apply that to your MP3s. If there is a problem with the artwork, you can change the levels of color or even straighten and rotate the art for a better fit.

As a whole, I like both programs. TuneUp offers way more features than simply finding your missing artwork, and I really like the product. CoverScout is the best solution for missing album artwork, but it is a little pricey and only really does the one thing.

I recommend both products, but ask that you give TuneUp a try before spending the money on CoverScout. For the sheer amount of missing artwork in my iTunes library, CoverScout is a bargain. But very few products beat free.

Winner: CoverScout
Loser: Really, neither.

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Introducing CallWave’s Fuze HD Web Collaboration Tool
Company: CallWave
http://www.fuzemeeting.com/fuzemeeting/home

Given all the hype surrounding the term “high-definition,” along with the current proliferation of HD content-HD TV, HD Blu-Ray discs, HD camcorders, even HD radio-one might be forgiven for being more than a little jaded when a new HD service is announced. But it’s not every day that high-definition Web conferencing comes along, so the announcement of an HD-capable Web collaboration tool at MacWorld this past January caused us at MyMac.com to sit up and take notice.

The FUZE high-definition collaboration and conferencing tool, from CallWave, is completely Web-based and requires only a Web browser capable of running Flash 9 or higher. I’ll get to the complete hardware and software requirements later, but for the moment suffice to say you’ll be good to go with OS X 10.3 or higher and a G4 processor, although for HD video you’ll get best results with a more recent Intel Mac.

One of the advantages of Fuze, as compared to other Web conferencing options, is that as long as you have the Flash plug-in, there’s absolutely nothing else to download or install-whether you’re simply participating in or actually hosting the conference. And Fuze participants can actually “fetch” additional attendees by contacting them online with a link that takes them directly into the meeting. But what really makes Fuze stand out is the option to upload not just the usual PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets and PDFs, but high-resolution photos and even HD video.

I was recently given a demonstration of Fuze’s HD capabilities by Greg Saiz, Director of Product Marketing, and the demo did not disappoint. After showing how even the graphics embedded in a simple PowerPoint file could be scaled to a very high magnification via Fuze and still look crisp and clear, Greg uploaded a 20MB hi-res JPEG image of an automobile engine along with a few minutes of HD footage showing a private jet in flight. Both were remarkably sharp, and the image remained so even after filling the screen by isolating only the smallest detail. Both video and images can be marked up by participants, and the annotations can be saved for later review.

Those of us who tend to become concerned over issues of file size vs. available bandwidth can relax-the Fuze folks have you covered. Their service utilizes a “man in the middle” concept when it comes to managing large files, in that the Fuze servers handle the distribution of the content to each participant once it’s uploaded. This keeps the “host” of the meeting from getting bogged down, regardless of the speed of his or her Internet connection. Along these lines, a very thoughtful feature of the Fuze interface is a series of progress bars at the upper left, one representing each participant. When new content is uploaded to the Fuze service, the bars update to reflect how much of the file has been “pushed” to the participant. That way everyone can see at a glance who’s received the complete file and who’s still waiting, which goes a long way towards eliminating those annoying “Wait, wait, I didn’t get the file yet” outbursts that punctuate your everyday average Web conference.

Now, as if all this wasn’t enough, another element of the Fuze product announcement at MacWorld involved smartphone integration, which will allow iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile users to not only participate in the conference, but fetch attendees, manage meetings and also view HD video and images. These capabilities were demoed on the iPhone at the aforementioned MacWorld Expo, and CallWave hopes to have all these features available to mobile users sometime in Q2 2009. There is an iPhone client already available at the App store that already offers some of these options; you can download the application for free once you’ve signed up for a Fuse account.

Pricing has not been firmly established as of this writing, but currently you can create a Fuze account with unlimited meetings for $29/month, or $279 annually. CallWave plans to offer per-minute pricing as well, making Fuze an extremely competitive option when compared with more well-known services like WebEx GoToMeeting, or Acrobat Connect neither of which offer some of the features that Fuze provides.

I noted earlier that the Mac hardware requirements were pretty basic in terms of participating in a Fuze conference. Although the ideal configuration would be a current Intel-based Mac running version 10 of the Flash plug-in and the Web browser of your choice, you could participate even on a G3 or G4-based Mac running OS X 10.3 and Flash 9.0.151.0, which is still downloadable from Adobe’s Web site. Keep in mind, however, that while the basic conferencing features should work fine, attempting to view HD video would most likely be an exercise in frustration on anything older than a G5 desktop.

And while we’re on the subject of Macs, one of the questions I asked Greg was in regard to Fuze’s Mac support, specifically in terms of whether there were any “Windows-only” features, or options that performed much better for Internet Explorer users. As Mac owners, we’re often frustrated when we’re persuaded to subscribe to a particular Web-based service only to discover that certain parts of don’t actually work on a Mac, or that Mac compatibility is either promised for “a later date” or not planned at all. Greg assured me that a Fuse conference will function just as well on an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo running FireFox as it will on a Dell box running Windows XP SP 2 and Internet Explorer. In fact, he pointed out that one of the new features currently in the works is desktop sharing to the iPhone, which will be available to Mac users first before that option is rolled out to those participants on the “dark side.”

Based on the existing feature set of Fuze, in particular its HD capabilities and the improvements planned for the iPhone client software, I highly recommend that Mac-based workgroups who currently use services like WebEx or GoToMeeting, especially those that work with large images and/or hi-definition video, give Fuze a try. The way I see it, showing your clients high-definition graphics and video with Fuze can’t help but improve your image-in more ways that one.

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TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick
Company: Griffin Technologies
Price: $79.99
http://www.griffintechnology.com

The flexible cradle is nothing new to iPod/iPhone ecosystem. Many companies including Griffin have been producing these types of products for quite some time. The TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick is a well constructed product combining a 12 volt adapter with a line-out auxiliary port, rubberized flexible arm, and a configurable 30 pin adapter/cradle.

The TuneFlex is black with a interchangeable cradles system that boasts translucent plastic. The translucent cradle system is a nice touch and improves the overall design aesthetic of the product. Attached to the cradle is a rubberized flexible arm which terminates into the 12 volt adapter. A line-out audio port and gain control knob are located on the 12 volt adapter.

One of the new design elements of the TuneFlex AUX is the SmartClick System. From a design perspective, the SmartClick System includes a smallish oval remote control and Velcro strap for attaching the remote to the steering wheel. The cradle for the remote is magnetic so you can remove the remote and set it on your center console etc.

The fit and finish of the TuneFlex, like all Griffin products, is of the highest quality. Each component fits properly and works as one would expect. Even the packaging was designed to maximize a minimal packaging footprint. I give Griffin high marks for the overall design of the TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick.

 
FEATURES
As an in-car audio solution for the iPod/iPhone family of products, the basic features include:
* Configurable Cradle System (cradles for most iPod/iPhones included)
* Flexible Steel Arm with Swiveling Cradle
* Charging System with Charge Indicator
* Line-out Audio Port with Gain Control
* (New) SmartClick Remote Control System
* (New) Works with iPhone Technology

For additional information on the TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick, jump to the product page <http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/tuneflex-aux-with-smartclick>.

USABILITY
Installation and setup were a breeze. Simply attach the appropriate cradle adapter, insert the TuneFlex into the 12 volt receptacle, connect the cable to your stereo and the auxiliary port on the TuneFlex, and insert your iPod/iPhone into the cradle (see installation video). You are now ready to Rock & Roll (metaphorically speaking of course).

(or download mp4 version here in higher quality)

As an in-car audio solution for the iPod/iPhone, the TuneFlex performed well. For anyone who has used one of the many RF solutions on the market today, the line-level audio quality of the TuneFlex will sound heavenly. I found the audio quality to be more than acceptable. The line-level audio signal transfered from the 30 pin connecter on my iPhone 3G was faithfully reproduced by my car audio system. Only when the iPhone was paused was there any discernible electronic noise, and this was slight.

The integrated charging system of the TuneFlex worked flawlessly. The ability to charge your iPod/iPhone in between appointments is worth its weight in gold. The charging indicator located on the end of the 12 volt plug, provides a great visual status of where the inserted device is within the charging process (red when connected, amber when charging, and green when charging is finished).

The ability to answer your incoming calls while the iPhone is cradled within the TuneFlex, is possible through the included Works with iPhone technology. One of the problems with the first generation of the iPhone was the cellular radio noise which would bleed through most audio systems. The solution was to place the iPhone in Airplane Mode thus turning off the cellular radio and eliminating the noise and your ability to receive any calls.

With the advent of the iPhone 3G, the Works with iPhone technology was developed to allow users to play their audio and receive calls. Thus, any product adorning the Works with iPhone Logo should theoretically allow the user to have the best of both worlds (iPod functionality and cellular service).

When receiving a call while the iPhone is cradled in the TuneFlex, the music is slowly faded as the iphone waits for you to answer the call. Once the call is answered, you must select the speaker icon on the iPhone incoming call screen. This will route the call through the car audio system speakers. However, the location of the mic on the iPhone renders your voice somewhat muffled and hard to hear by the person calling you. A slight redesign of the cradle housing to expose the mic of the iPhone would be helpful. Maybe a Bluetooth headset or an audio cable with an inline mic would help to mitigate this problem. Sans the mic issue, the TuneFlex performed admirably in this new frontier of, "Works with iPhone" audio systems.

MAKING A GOOD THING BETTER
While the TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick performed well in most areas, a little tweaking of the mic interface would help this product to excel in the crowded space of in-car iPod/iPhone audio systems. 

MyMac Rating
The TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick is a quality product that allows one to take his/her iPod/iPhone in the car and enjoy their ever growing music collection. With the addition of the Works with iPhone technology, one can even receive calls without the dreaded cellular bleed through of previous generation audio systems. Rounding out this in-car audio solution is the SmartClick remote which allows the user to keep his/her hands on the wheel while controlling the critical functions of the iPod/iPhone. Considering the quality, feature set, and implementation of this product, we are giving the TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick an almost there 4 out of 5 in our MyMac Rating System.

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Altec Lansing T612
Company: Altec Lansing
Price: $199.95
Altec Lansing

The Altec Lansing T612 in one of the first audio systems to adorn the new, "Works with iPhone" logo. This logo indicates that the T612 is certified to work in harmony with the iPhone in accordance with the specifications and standards established by Apple. We have all experienced the cellular bleed through resulting from using an iPhone with a standard iPod audio system. The "Works with iPhone" program was implemented to restore order between the iPod within the iphone and external audio systems. We have tested the diminutive (in size only) audio system and the results may surprise the average iPod/iPhone user looking for big sound in a small package. 

DESIGN
With design cues reminiscent of many modern Apple products, Altec Lansing has designed an aesthetically pleasing audio system. The minimalist industrial design of the T612 combines harmonious amounts of brushed aluminum and black finished components.

The resulting product has a very small footprint as it rises from the surface to a height of 8.2". The design has a very strong look and feel. The T612 presents an air of internal strength below its understated elegance.

Controls have been placed on top of the unit and are easily actuated and ideally spaced. Power, volume, bass, and treble are controllable from the unit itself. Altec Lansing has included a remote which provides these same controls with the addition of play/pause, and buttons for advancing forward or backward (these last three controls are not present on the unit, only the remote).

The T612 includes a docking station for the iPod/iPhone. The station incorporates the universal docking solution designed by Apple. This solution uses different Universal Dock Adapters to provide an appropriate fit for each product whether iPod or iPhone. While the documentation noted that, "Miscellaneous adapters for iPhone and iPod" were included in the package contents, only one adapter was actually present (more on this later). Make sure you have those adapters in your purchased unit. The proper adapter will insure that the attached device will seat properly within the dock.    

FEATURES
The feature set of the T612 is long and substantial considering its size and price point. For a complete list of features, jump to the product page.

USABILITY
It is important to begin with audio quality. After all, the T612 is first and foremost an audio system. When it comes to its core reason for existence, the T612 does not disappoint. I was particularly impressed with the depth of sound produced by the four specially engineered speakers. The lows were deep without distortion. The tonal quality across the spectrum was unexpected and delightful. The XdB bass-enhancement technology must be credited with bringing above average bass reproduction sans the use of a subwoofer. Color me impressed.

At full volume, there was no discernible crack or distortion. No matter what type of audio content I played through the T612 (Rock, Classical, R&B, Podcasts), it handled it in a workman like fashion. I have listened to many different types of systems in this category, none sounded better than the T612.

As an early entry into the, "Works with iPhone" category of products, the T612 performed creditably. Once I installed an Apple iPhone 3G Universal Dock Adapter (purchased separately from Apple), the iPhone seated firmly and all was well. The T612 worked well with the iPhone. Both the onboard controls and those found on the remote worked mostly as expected (more on this later).

The bane of audio systems which do not comply with the Works with iPhone standard, cellular bleed through, was never heard. When a test call came through while the iPhone was attached to the T612, the music was smoothly paused as the call was routed through to the iPhone incoming call screen. A quick selection of the speaker icon and, voila! The caller was then clearly heard through the T612 speakers. Everything worked seamlessly.

MAKING A GOOD THING BETTER
There are a few areas that could be improved to make the T612 even better. The placement of the power connecter is somewhat awkward and seems to be placing pressure on the cable.

When mounted on a wall, this pressure would most likely be mitigated. This may well be a design choice that was thoroughly tested and found to be viable over the lifetime of the unit. Stay tuned for updates regarding this issue.

I found it a little difficult to insert the connector due to the cable rubbing against the surface upon which the T612 was sitting. A slight relocation of the power connector would be helpful.

Employing the universal docking solution developed by Apple adds complete compatibility with the entire Apple iPod and iPhone product lines. However, with only one adapter included, I was forced to use an Apple Universal Dock Adapter I had purchased for use with other devices.

To be fair to Altec Lansing, the documentation indicates that additional adapters should be included in the package. This will indeed improve the overall aesthetic (see pict) as well as the proper seating of the attached device.

A little further refinement of the remote control hardware is needed to improve the way in which the T612 and the attached device interact. When music is playing and the screen on the iPhone has gone to sleep, there seems to be a little glitch that occurs when the play/pause button is pressed for the purpose of pausing the music. Once the button is pressed, the iPhone screen lights up, the music is briefly paused and then continues to play. In order to actually pause the music, the play/pause button must be pressed again. All in all, a minor issue and one that can be easily corrected. 

MyMac.com RATING
The Altec Lansing T612 is a beautifully designed audio system that produces an excellent tonal quality that rivals many of its more expensive competitors in the category. With the acknowledgment of a few minor issues that could be improved to make this great system even better, we give the T612 a toe tapping 4.5 out of 5 in our MyMac.com Rating System .

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Photographic Multishot Techniques – High Dynamic Range, Super-Resolution, Extended Depth of Field, Stitching
by Juergen Gulbins and Rainer Gulbins
Rocky Nook
ISBN 978-1-933952-38-3, 227 pages softbound
$34.95 US and CN

This is a serious, high-energy book on a subject you’ve never considered: taking several photos of the same subject to end up with with a single image result that is sensational. The authors are precise and emphatic in their workflow instructions, so if you are sloppy or lazy, Photographic Multishot Techniques will exhaust your energy in its initial pages.

Dedicated readers will explore depth of field and "focus stacking" over 40 pages, yielding powerful visual results. Panoramic "stitching" of lateral images receives 35 pages, in one of the best units on this perplexing technique we’ve seen to date.

HDRI (high dynamic range images) is a new buzz term, and it can be accomplished via Photoshop or third party digital tools. (See review below of a full book on this subject.) Sixty colorful, instructive pages on HDRI are included.

Photographic Multishot Techniques concludes with a brief chapter on micro-contrast, followed by a valuable "References and Links" appendix.

Overall, this groundbreaking book will point certain photographers in directions they have imagined, but never knew how to proceed. This brief summary does not do justice to the authors and their tutorials. Buy this title for a friend, then borrow it for yourself when you see it collecting dust on his or her shelf. It’s a winner.

MyMac rating: 4.5 out of 5.

The Art of Black and White Photography – Techniques for Creating Superb Images in a Digital Workflow
by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann
Rocky Nook
ISBN 978-1-933952-27-7, 260 pages hardbound
$44.95 US and CN

Every class I conduct begins with my beginning digiphoto students asking me how they can set up their shiny new pocket digital still point and shoot cameras to take black and white pictures, instead of color. At first they are disappointed when I tell them "You can’t." My next sentence, a long one, gives an overview of how to go from color original digital "negatives" to black and white final photos, either printed or for screen viewing. Perhaps I should skip the wisecracks, and hand each student a copy of this excellent Art of Black and White Photography title.

Once past writing about choosing your camera, learning a little about RAW mode, and an introduction on photo filters, the author immerses readers (and lookers) in exploring and developing your personal expression. This is the cruz of his words of accumulated wisdom. Hoffmann’s included photographic examples are stunning, dramatic, and inspiring. They average over one per page, in highest quality printing.

Shooting topics include: moods, street photography, contemporary landscapes, architectural studies, graphic elements, visual poetry, abstracts, portraits, panoramas, and a few more. Composition and content are covered in detail over several chapters, before "The Digital Darkroom" wraps up The Art of Black and White Photography. Good news: Photoshop (professional) and Elements now have splendid color to black and white conversion features that were not available when this book was written.

Photographic expression, or "vision," can not be taught, but it can be learned. You can make photos that are as exciting and powerful as you’ll see in this book. Slow down, absorb his words and images, and begin your quest for expressive black and white digital photographs. The writing and pictures are direct and accessible to all levels of readers.

Hoffmann’s digital darkroom unit is too brief to be of much use, compared to the hundreds of dedicated Photoshop books with much greater tutorial material. MyMac rates The Art of Black and White Photography a strong 4 out of 5, with raves for the bulk of its pages on genres, concepts, and composition.

Practical HDRI – High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers
by Jack Howard
Rocky Nook
ISBN 978-1-933952-32-1, 170 pages softbound
$32.95 US and CN

If you have a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera that’s loaded with a high capacity storage card, and that can do both auto exposure bracketing and burst mode, your equipment is ready to begin the HDRI process. Use a top quality tripod, and understand how to release the shutter "without ever having to touch the camera."

Plan to become an expert on "relative and absolute exposure values." Be prepared to consume umpteen zillions of JPGs and RAW image files during your learning months. Fine-tune your camera metering and your photo storage management database.

When you’re halfway through Practical HDRI, you’ll come across chapter headings such as "Deghosting with Smart Object Stacks and Each Exposure Value Level before HDR Merging." The author’s writing style is easy to follow, but you’ll be jumping head first into new material quickly, and often, throughout this book.

You’ll possibly be spending more time using professional Photoshop or other image editing software then actually creating high dynamic range pictures. Itemized tutorials are provided, with good captions, to make the digital darkroom a little less intimidating.

Don’t start hyperventilating when you turn the page and are confronted with "Ultrasaturation, Hyper-Vividity, and Gamut Warnings." These and other scary terms are explained clearly, as is Adobe Camera Raw, you new best friend. Practical HDRI was written when Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 was not yet available, but the version 3 references apply to the newer release.

Seriously – this book is a good overview, with some precise guidance. You won’t become an HDRI expert merely by carrying it in the trunk of your car when you’re photographing the Grand Canyon. HDRI utilizes established and new tools and techniques, both traditional and cutting-edge, so when you take the plunge make sure you plan on taking plenty of time.

MyMac rating: 3.5 out of 5

Digital Photography from the Ground Up
by Juergen Gulbins
Rocky Nook
ISBN 978-1-933952-17-8, 354 pages softbound
$34.95 US, $38.95 CN

Choose your equipment. Learn to use it. Be patient. Keep going. Familiarize yourself with camera terminology. Buy top quality accessories. Understand how cameras and computers are interlinked. Invest in appropriate hardware and software.

Study composition and design, both yours and other artists/photographers. Explore the various styles and genres of candid, casual, and formal photography. Try a variety of camera techniques, guided by experts, and by your own whims.

Set up a consistent image editing workflow. Learn thoroughly the tools, options, and menu items on your digiphoto software. Respect color management, and keep your sense of humor when print color is unmanageable. Convert color originals to black and white photos. Try wild and wacky experiments, remembering first to SAVE AS! Be prepared to migrate to RAW file format. Learn the wonders of nondestructive editing.

Don’t fight with your printer. Use it optimally, and know when to have your photos printed elsewhere. Cook up calendars and greeting cards. Have fun making slideshows. Email photos to friends and enemies. Go crazy with your scanner.

Back up your digital data to multiple, redundant, secure offsite locations. Use a file naming and retrieval method that you can live with.

Deepen your photographic involvement. Buy this book. Read it thoroughly, making notes on relevant material. Embrace Digital Photography from the Ground Up.

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5.

Digital Infrared Photography
by Cyrill Harnischmacher
Rocky Nook
ISBN 978-1-933952-35-2, 105 pages hardbound
$24.95 US and CN

Infrared pictures look weird, on purpose. They are usually black and white, but you can go wacko with color infrared if that suits your idiosyncratic visual sensibility.

Chapters on theory, equipment, and technique are interspersed with stunning examples, all printed on thick quality paper stock. Precise methods are critical when making in-camera infrared images, as opposed to using "ordinary" digital images that are subsequently enhanced via Photoshop to simulate true infrared.

If you are afraid or hesitant to alter or dedicate your camera to generate original infrared digital "negatives," stay away from Digital Infrared Photography. But if the author’s fabulous photos inspire and motivate you, then this concise volume will have a prominent place on your bookshelf.

MyMac rating: 3 out of 5

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Is Apple ripping us off? Was the original Mac beloved by all Apple fans back in the day? Want to win a case from David Cohen? GREAT Apple Service! Proving myself to Comcast. All this and a lot more discussed this week by Tim, Guy, David, and Mark. A truly geek-out festival this week on the MyMac podcast!

Please take a moment to review our show on iTunes here.

This episode is sponsored by
Other World Computing
Check out the Newer Technology MAXPower 802.11g/b Wireless USB 2.0 Stick Adapter

Links from the show:
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Filemaker Pro 10
Company:
FileMaker, Inc.
Pricing:
FileMaker Pro 10: $299 ($179 upgrade)
FileMaker Pro 10 Advanced: $499 ($299 upgrade)
FileMaker Server 10: $999 ($599 upgrade)
FileMaker Server 10 Advanced: $2999 ($1799 upgrade)
Volume, Education and Non-Profit licensing available
www.filemaker.com

System Requirements (Tiger): PowerPC, G4 or G5
Intel-based Mac
256MB RAM
CD and hard disk drive

System Requirements (Leopard): PowerPC G4 (867MHz+) G5
Intel-based Mac – 512MB RAM
CD and hard disk drive

History
FileMaker Pro has long been the database of choice for users needing scalable, reliable relational performance. Slowly evolving under the wing of Claris in the pre-OS X days, FileMaker Pro has undergone many overhauls since it was first released (as long ago as 1990). Some of these have been major – that from version 6 to version 7, in particular. Others have seemed to seasoned users hardly to warrant the new release, sometimes with attendant conversion headaches and always with the financial outlay: FileMaker is not cheap

But on balance, FileMaker Pro remains without doubt the most versatile and feature-rich product of its kind for serious database users. The release of version 10 only confirms its position as market leader with many more real advantages than drawbacks. Within days (hours at times) of the announcement and release of a new version, users fill the bulletin boards and blogs with laments about what’s missing and what ‘should have been fixed’. In the end these subside: FileMaker gets the job done, and done very well indeed.

Advanced?
Power users of FileMaker will still want to go for the ‘Advanced’ version of the product: it has a script debugger, supports the creation of single-user standalone databases and has a custom function editor. In some ways this actually makes the data easier to work with. So for ‘Advanced’ read ‘Enhanced’ but without any implication that the non-’Advanced’ FileMaker Pro 10 is in any way to be looked down upon.

This review concentrates on what’s new in FileMaker Pro 10. This means a closer look at four areas, which are by now quite familiar to FileMaker users since they have been the main areas for change and improvement in recent upgrades:

* interface: it’s much improved
* connectivity and interaction with other systems: further deepened and widened
* reporting: streamlined and made more flexible
* for developers: new functionality – scripting and functions in particular

Detractors may well say that the totality of what’s offered in FileMaker Pro 10 either constitutes nothing more than a set of minor tweaks, list all the things the software does not do, or complain that some of the changes are overdue.

Yet when you have a great product in the first place, and one which is so stable as not to need updating and patching every other week, and when you are as responsive to improvements that the actual users of FileMaker want as FileMaker Inc. is, it’s quite legitimate to version the product as the company is doing this time (and in recent releases). This is a release that existing users should certainly buy and is comprehensive enough for those users new to FileMaker not to regret an upwards or sideways move from competitor products.

Let’s look at what’s new and improved.

Interface
The interface has been redesigned completely. That was long overdue. Previous versions looked quite outdated and crude compared with most other Apple applications. This is a vast improvement. The changes are mostly for ergonomic reasons (fewer and more memorable clicks and sequences). At first it may take a little getting used to. But it emerges quite quickly that those buttons in the new, fully customizable, Status toolbar at the top of each window (to cancel a find, to show all, for example) are the ones that are the most needed.

This horizontal Status bar has elegant, understated yet communicative icons representing much of what used to be lined up vertically on the left. Tooltips (descriptive text that appears when users move the pointer over layout objects) help until you get used to these. In the files area there is also a magnifying glass icon to indicate each field that you can use to search on. You can now also add your own tooltips in Browse or Find modes.

Very usefully, you can save your finds: often performed searches such as the number of sales made in the ‘past week’, or the percentage of users’ with last names between A and K who still owe you money after two months can be always to hand ready to re-run. A real boon!

This fresh look, which matches the way many browsers and other productivity suites look, also applies to the 30 Starter Solutions in the new FileMaker Pro 10. There are 10 new themes with pre-defined colors and fonts. Your forms can take on more of a professional look if you have neither the time nor skills to design them yourself. A new ‘Resource Center’ contains multiple well-constructed video tutorials on the new and familiar features. An ‘anomaly’ with tab-setting has also been fixed.

Scripting: the ‘Manage Scripts’ feature (formerly ‘ScriptMaker’) is now used to display a default script that can serve as a template for a script of your own; the area will also provide feedback on whether individual script steps are supported in each area of FileMaker use. There has also been a small but significant fix: the ‘Manage Scripts’ dialog box no longer opens in a maximized state when the FileMaker Pro 10 window is maximized.

In Browse mode, sorted records stay sorted such that a new added record immediately and automatically occupies its rightful place in the sort. Sub-summary reports can also now be viewed in Browse mode.

If you spend more than a few minutes a day in FileMaker, these changes – not revolutionary, but very pleasing, contemporary and plush – are bound to enhance your experience.

Outward-looking
With FileMaker Pro 10 you can now create databases from existing Excel or Bento 2 files. Bento is FileMaker’s ‘consumer-level’ database product more in the spirit of iWork than FileMaker Pro. Many users run either parallel databases, dual sets of data, or need to migrate between them. To have made Bento’s files available to FileMaker from within the latter is a good move that will benefit each user base. Significantly, since Bento can natively and directly read other Mac OS data sets such as that of Address Book, so now FileMaker Pro 10 has direct access to those without third party plug-ins.

Similarly those who use Excel can migrate up to FileMaker with ease. Since version 8, FileMaker has been able to export to a .xls format. Now it can convert the other way. In each case, too, the New Layout/Report assistant speeds up the relevant process.

SMTP: FileMaker Pro 10 now supports inbuilt emailing via SMTP such that you don’t have to leave it for Mail (or another dedicated email client) to send personalized mail. If FileMaker is being used as the back-end for a website, you could script an automated and customized response to incoming orders/inquiries, for example. Most FileMaker Pro 10 dialog boxes with IPv4 addresses also ask for IPv6 addresses.

Additional External SQL Sources (ESS): support has been added for SQL tables in – among others – Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Oracle 11g, and MySQL 5.1 Community Edition. This is another trend in recent releases of FileMaker. However good the software is, it is sometimes necessary to use data from other systems. That heavyweights like the latest version of Oracle are included is all to the good.

Recovery: it’s rare that FileMaker fails. (The product performed impeccably throughout testing for this review.) But if it does, data integrity is suddenly your priority. In FileMaker Pro 10 you cannot only check possibly corrupt files for consistency, but also identify specific components for recovery. Significantly, you can also inspect files’ statuses and a detailed log both during and after the recovery process.

In a mixed environment you can now remotely deploy FileMaker Pro to multiple Windows users’ desktops rather than installing it on each user’s workstation individually.

Reporting
Dynamic: FileMaker Pro 10 has introduced a dynamic reporting capability… in List or Table View any changes that you make to your grouped data appear in real time: as if in a ‘Smart View’, any and all changes made to a record include or exclude it in or from the data set you’re viewing immediately. This is one of those changes that will quickly make you wonder how you managed without it: overdue and very welcome.

Similarly, you can modify Table View on the fly; previously you would have had to switch to Layout View. Now the Modify button (top right) shows a list of fields; deselect those you no longer need in that particular layout. FileMaker has anticipated the scope for accidental or ‘honest’ user errors: this ability to modify is absent from Form View. Again, almost essential for seamlessly presenting data.

Not of huge value but nice is the newly introduced (optional) pie-chart that indicates the proportions of found and not-found records during searching. This will be a useful ‘sanity check’, for example, when you work with a data set regularly and know its size: you can now be sure you haven’t inadvertently searched for something in a subset.

None of this is earth-shattering. But most of these changes will make use day in and out easier. Repeated tasks, checking, using FileMaker at the hub of a net with significantly extended functionality are things that users have asked for. And here they are. They’re also the kind of enhancements to workflow which are quick to assimilate, and become second nature to the regular user.

Developers
Script Triggers: rather like a spreadsheet macro, you can now specify that a FileMaker script run whenever users perform a certain action in Browse or Find Modes; these might include clicking in a field, or swapping modes, for example. There are five object-based and seven layout-based Script Triggers in this release. When planned carefully, this feature now allows developers to have (non specialist) users perform all kinds of calculations, sorts – printing even – without having to initiate them with a button. These can be timed (scheduled) too.

There are also fixes: the latest error is no longer lost in control script stepping; and new scripts and steps: to run a script at the specified interval; to open and/or edit Saved Finds; and one to let you use a calculation to dynamically specify a field name instead of having to specify each possible field name in an if-else construction; and improved script printing.

The following functions are new too: Char(number), Code(text), GetFieldName(field), Get(DocumentsPathListing), Get(DocumentsPath), Get(TriggerKeystroke), Get(TriggerModifierKeys). Again, nothing spectacular. But they represent ways to deepen the capabilities of the product.

Conclusions
Watching the FileMaker Pro 10 installer run through over 10,000 files, it’s tempting to wonder just how much of a difference this upgrade – and a minimum cost of almost $200 – is going to make. On first use of the software, it is equally tempting to think, "Not much".

But then – slowly and pleasingly – the power, sophistication and flexibility of FileMaker Pro 10 becomes both apparent and welcome. Then nigh indispensable.

The new interface; the ability to save search sets; ways in which extremely sophisticated applications can be made swiftly and reliably (scripting) and harnessed to real everyday uses (via an inbuilt SMTP client, for example); the ease with which field names can be manipulated and triggers controlled; the fact that other industry standard formats present even less of a challenge; the added comfort of enhanced (failure) diagnostics; the way updates increasingly happen on the fly; and the ways in which reports appear even more under your control.

All of these combine to make this an outwardly unspectacular update. But that’s misleading. It is a significant one that really builds on some of the advantages of Mac OS, responds to users’ wishes, makes their lives easier and – ultimately – represents a big step forward for end users. Recommended.

MyMac.com Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Pros: many precisely targeted and carefully conceived improvements and enhancements over FMP 9; clean new interface; robust; flexible; easy to use; well supported; huge, energetic developer community; integration with OS X and other OS X applications; improved integration with other industry-standard products

Cons: perhaps a little overpriced

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Recently, I had the opportunity to try out three VERY different games from the iTunes App Store: Board Games, Blurb, and Tatomi. What did I think? Read on.

Astraware Board Games
Company:Astraware
Price: $4.99
www.astraware.com
iTunes

There are several different board game apps available. Some are collections and some are single games. Board Games is a collection, and a good one. It consists of Chess, Backgammon, Ludo (I never heard of this before, but it is a lot of fun), Checkers, Reversi, Nine Men’s Morris, Snakes and Ladders, and Tic Tac Toe. The graphics are great, and the gameplay is smooth. Compared to another board game collection on the market, the point of view in this one is much better making it much easier to play (and more fun, too).  If you want a collection of traditional board games for your iPod or iPhone this is worth your money.

MyMac.com rating 5 out of 5

Pudge
Company: Binary Hammer
Price: $.99
www.binaryhammer.com
iTunes

In Pudge you are a fish traversing a treacherous cavern under the ocean. You touch the iPhone/iPod screen to raise your fish and let go to drop it trying to avoid the dangers that await you (jellyfish, rocks, etc…). The graphics in Pudge are gorgeous, however I can’t say I enjoyed the game as much as the visuals.

Pudge is a game that has potential to very addicting, but isn’t there yet. It is extremely difficult and hard to get the hang of. This is fine, you don’t want a game to be too easy. However, my biggest problem with the game is that once you die you have to start over. There are no lives to continue from the spot that you die in. This is a big flaw in the game and after about five minutes of having to start over every thirty seconds I was ready to stop playing. If the game had extra lives, it would be a lot better.

There is also a two player split screen mode, but I”m not a fan of split screen iPod Touch/iPhone games. Too many hands on a small device

MyMac.com rating 3 out of 5.

Totomi

Totomi
Company: Rovio Mobile LTD.
Price: $4.99
iTunes

Totomi has to be one of the strangest concepts for a game I have seen in a while. When I say strange I mean strange in a good way. It is a hard game to describe, but I’ll try. At first I thought it was like Bejeweled, lining up three of the same thing in a row. In a way it is, but in a way it isn’t. You have to line up similar objects and animals based on being the same or based on what they will eat. It is very hard to explain, and it isn’t a game for everyone. It took me a while to figure it out, even after paying the tutorial. This one is one of those games that need a demo or a free lite version to try out.

At a price of $4.99 it seems a little pricey.

MyMac.com rating 4 out of 5

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Adobe Illustrator CS4 (version 14)
Company: Adobe System, Inc.
Price: $599.00
Upgrade from $199.00
www.adobe.com

Ah, vector graphics. If I am not working with actual photographs, chances are I’m doing artwork in Adobe Illustrator. I enjoy working with the program for most of my art needs. While I’m not a graphic artist, I can create some good production-type work more easily in Illustrator than I can in Photoshop.

There are some major and minor changes in this version of Illustrator, some of which I like, some I don’t, and some which seemed, at first, to break my workflow in such a way that I was pulling my hair out. It took some people at Adobe to show me the work-around, and while I appreciate it, I still find it annoying that it happened in the first place. But more on that later.

Interface Changes
Ah, tabbed windows! I actually thought I would enjoy working with tabbed windows in Illustrator, but I don’t. (I hate it even more in Photoshop) After a few days, I turned the feature off via the preference menu. Problem is, it does not stay off. I have, time after time, been dragging a window around when, snap, it pops into the tabbed interface with another open document. That’s annoying, and something I hope Adobe will address in an update soon. I also know it’s not a problem only I have had, at least according to some Adobe Illustrator boards I frequent.

For those who don’t know what a tabbed interface means, here is an example. In the first picture, you will see one window / document open above another. (non-tabbed.)

In the second, the same two graphics, but tabbed. It very much reminds me of Mac OS 9 days with tabbed windows. I like the feature in an operating system window, but not in Illustrator. (Or Photoshop, where the same tabbed interface carries over.)

For those familiar with Illustrator, you will find many changes: some good, some bad. The ability to convert a shape (square) into crop marks has been moved to the Filters menu, which is where it should have been all along. Also, Pathfinder is now grayed out unless you actually hold down the modifier key, rather than the other way around.

Remember how oddly clipping masks worked is CS3? You could still select invisible artwork from a clipping mask, which is not usually what you would want to do. Now, not only are they hidden, but your selection tool will not be able to select that art. A nice feature. Actually, less a feature than a correcting of a long-standing gripe of mine.

Artboards – The Good and Bad
The major interface change is the new Artboard (multiple pages) workflow in Illustrator. With multiple artboards, each artboard is assigned a number, which basically uses the same type of numbering system as slices in Adobe Photoshop. This was, at least for me, confusing. Because most of my workflow revolves around web graphics, I often use slices in Photoshop, so seeing a very similar numbering / layout in Illustrator kept me guessing. I can be slow at times.

It may be confusing for some people when using Artboards in Illustrator for the first time. It is hard to wrap your head around. While the multi-page metaphor works, Illustrator does not simply lay out pages for you as Apple’s Pages or Adobe’s own In-Design does. Rather, you draw squares, creating different artboards on your workspace. Think of it more as a light-table, and you arrange different pages on the table.

Opening legacy Illustrator files can be a major problem with the new CS4 version. And it is here that I have had the most frustrating time incorporating Illustrator CS4 into my daily workflow. Inconsistencies abound, from simple relinking errors (a major problem when Illustrator went from versions 8 to 9) to broken placed PSD files with transparencies.

The Adobe Illustrator team was kind enough to help me work my way through the problems I encountered, but the fact remains that an average user won’t have that same level of help available to them. Worse yet, large production houses doing packaging work, and opening legacy Illustrator files, will have their entire workflow broken. Much time will be needed to either convert older files to take advantage of the new Artboards feature, or fighting with CS4 to work the same way CS3 (and CS2, CS, 10, 9, 8, etc…) did. There should be a very simple "always open legacy files in CS3 layout" preference. But, alas, there is none. Designers and production artists will find creating new Illustrator files, using the new Artboards layouts, helpful and make them become more productive if for no other reason than to have commonly needed graphics in every file (‘ala a logo). But the daunting and time consuming task of converting older files, correcting production files at every step, will quickly eclipse any real time saving Artboards will provide.

Of particular note, placed transparent PSD files with crop marks work very differently in CS4 than in CS3. For MyMac.com, I have a number of templates that I use to create our front page graphics. (with the black boxes that say "review" or "podcast") Using these are a huge part of my online workflow. While I could do the same thing is Adobe Photoshop, I enjoy working in Illustrator more. But opening these files with the default settings makes them unusable, as Illustrator creates different Artboards for the artwork and the cropped areas. I can see no rhyme or reason for this. And while Adobe did send me the workaround, why is that even necessary?

Illustrator CS3 file, with crop marks showing

Same file as above, opened in CS4.

Separations
One of the best new features, for those using Adobe Illustrator in a production setting, is the new Separations Preview. This will be a huge time-saver in high volume production houses and print shops. It is one of the last big steps in going direct from Illustrator to plate / print.

Blob Brush
This is the other new "hot" feature of Illustrator CS4, and the one I have spend next to no time using up to this point. Eventually I will write a follow-up and talk about the Blob Brush. CreativePro.com goes into great depth on this new feature. I can’t wait to find the opportunity to use it myself.

Plug-ins
I don’t use a huge number of plug-ins, and the ones I do, worked fine. But like every version of any program that uses a plug-in architecture, there will be problems as those third-party applications need to be updated. If you have plug-ins that you must use, check out its compatibility before upgrading.

You may think that I don’t like the new Illustrator CS4, what with all my gripes. I do like the program, and I think the newest version is the most significant update in a decade. Legacy files and some interface tweaks need to be fixed, sure, but nothing actually precludes me from using, and enjoying, the application. Users have been asking for multipage support in Illustrator since version 2, and we now have it. Sort of.

Speed-wise, I actually felt that CS4 runs a little faster than CS3 did on the same machine, so production houses take note.

Of more importance is the fact that Illustrator has no competition on the Mac platform, and next to none on the PC. (Sure, Window users have the less expensive CorelDRAW, but have you ever tried to use it? It’s a kludge.) Usually in these situations, where a piece of software is as essential for some entire industries, and there are no alternatives available, companies can become complacent. Adobe has not done that with Illustrator over the last three versions. A lot of designers were upset when Adobe purchased Macromedia and turned around and ended Freehand (a great application in its own right) but so far, Adobe has done itself proud with its vector-based program.

MyMac.com rating: 4 out of 5

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Book Review: Take Control of Buying a Mac
by Adam C. Engst
Price: $10
98 pages
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

There’s never a perfect time to buy a computer. If you wait a few more months, computers will be faster and cheaper than they are today. But the corollary to that piece of wisdom is that if you wait for the perfect time, you’ll never actually get around to buying a computer at all.

In the real world, all you can do is make the best choices from the options available. Budget is a factor of course, but you also need to appreciate what it is you want from a computer. The needs of graphic designers are not the same as those of journalists, students, or folks working out of a home office. This is where Adam Engst’s book ‘Take Control of Buying a Mac’ comes in; in a bit under a hundred pages he explains how to decide which of the various Mac models will best suit your needs.

Engst will be well known to Mac users as one of the authors of the popular TidBits mailing list. But he’s also an author of electronic books sold under the ‘Take Control’ banner. One of his most recent efforts is a book on buying a new Macintosh. As someone who’d written a similar book a few years back on buying a used Mac, this was a topic that immediately caught my attention.

The process of shopping for a new book is laid out in an impeccably clear manner, starting with the question of when to buy a new Mac, through choosing which model best suits your needs, then covering the best ways to buy a new Mac, and finally the ancillary topics such as accessories and migration of old files onto your new computer.

Starting with the ‘when to buy a Macintosh’ question, Engst makes it clear that this is often more about ‘wanting’ to buy a new Mac rather than about ‘needing’ a new Mac. Now we’re in the middle of an economic downturn, that’s particularly sage advice. Some of the advice Engst offers with regard to buying new computers is that same advice I offer about shopping for used Macs as well. In particular, while upgrades to an older Mac can be good value, you need to balance their cost with the price of a whole new machine. Adding memory for example is usually a very sound investment and frequently helps to remove bottlenecks, but the financial argument for adding a new processor or accelerator is often not that strong.

But where Engst’s experience of the Mac world really comes into play is with regard to timing. Apple have a somewhat predictable approach to releasing new models and updating existing ones. In part, they time product releases to match with annual events (such as major trade shows) where they can get the most free publicity. Other times in the year tend to be rather fallow, with few, if any, major product launches. By looking over the table presented in this chapter, and then reading the relevant notes, the potential Mac purchaser can try to time his or her purchases to best effect.

Engst also explains Apple’s fairly consistent pattern of updates within each model of computers. While not a rock solid pattern in terms of years, there’s usually a set number of incremental updates with each Macintosh line. Buy a Mac early on and you get the benefit of lots of new features and more performance, but you’ll pay a premium. Buy a Mac from the last update to its series and you’ll pick up a bargain, but expect the series to be dropped in a few months, and replaced by something dramatically better in terms of features and performance. Engst gives his arguments for shopping at each stage in the production cycle of a Macintosh, leaving it to the reader to decide what’s best for them.

The section of which Mac to buy is relatively straightforward given that Apple only produce a small handful of machines. It’s essentially a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of portable versus desktop Macs, and then a close examination of what sets the ‘pro’ models apart from the ‘consumer’ models. There’s also a commentary on those oddball models, the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air. Because they don’t fit into the standard Apple pro/consumer product matrix, they’re difficult machines to pigeonhole, and Engst makes clear that while they might be the right machines for some users, they aren’t for everyone.

The chapter on how to buy a Macintosh isn’t particularly exciting. It’s likely to be most useful to those who honestly have no idea about how to buy a computer. Anyone else will likely skim through this chapter. There are a few useful nuggets of information, and in particular I agree with Engst’s warnings about buying online from individuals, such as through eBay.

To some degree the 4-page chapter on accessories could be seen as filler. But it’s harmless filler. The same can be said about the next-but-one chapter on how to dispose of your old Macintosh. By contrast, the chapter on migrating to a new computer is distinctly useful, and will be appreciated by at least a subset of potential readers. The Migration Assistant normally takes a lot of the work out of moving between computers, but some combinations of hardware can’t be connected using the necessary FireWire cable, so alternative strategies will be required. Engst outlines these here, pointing out all the important folders and files you’ll need to copy from the old machine to the new.

The ‘Take Control’ series of electronic books makes much use of hyperlinks, both to connect to web pages as well as to quickly hop between sections within the book itself. On the other hand, there are no pictures (except, oddly, of the author) so while the format is very easy to read, it’s also a bit dry.

Overall, it’s a difficult book to fault for $10. There’s little that can’t be gleaned from web pages and Mac forums elsewhere, but having all the information edited, hyperlinked and put together in neatly presented chapters makes all the difference. Probably not an essential purchase for the serious Mac-head, but a useful book for anyone a rung or two down the enthusiasm ladder, working from home or managing a small, Mac-oriented office.

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© Neale Monks

Etymotic hf5 High-fidelity  Noise-isolating earphones
Etymotic Research, Inc.
Price: $149.00
http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/hf5.aspx

Etymotic Research is a heavy hitter in the iPod earbud field. Their hf5 earbuds are a new addition to their wide selection of high-end earbuds. The Weeks Division of MyMac Labs spent some time with the hf5s. Here’s what we found.

If you judge quality by specifications alone, the hf5s should sound great. They have a frequency response of 20Hz-15KHz, which is quite good for such small drivers. On top of their wide frequency response, the hf5 can pump out 122 decibels, which is guaranteed to turn your eardrums into a quivering mass of bleeding tissue. Rest assured I did not try these at max power! In the interest of audio self-preservation, be careful that you check the iPod volume level before you hit Play.

Sound isolation is part of the name. The spec sheet shows the hf5s reduce sound by 35-42 dB; that’s a lot of noise reduction. More on this later.

The hf5 earbuds come in three colors; black, red, and blue. While the earbud color won’t color the sound output, it does allow you to make an ear fashion statement. Our review copy was red. My wife felt it looked more like a dark coppery-red, but she says I don’t know my colors.

Right off the bat, I liked the four foot long cord. Too many earbuds come with a cord that’s just a bit too short. This one has a clip to fasten the cord to your shirt or jacket, and a small cable slider to take up slack near your head.

For your $149, you get three sets of ear tips; foam, flanged, and rounded plastic. The real prize in the box is small pointy tool for removing ear wax from the ear tips. Wax be gone!

Proper fit is essential to get the most from any earbud, and the hf5 is no exception. If you can’t get a good eartip fit, you’ve wasted your money, and might as well use the stock Apple earbuds. Here’s where the problem started.

The hf5s come with the flanged eartips pre-installed. Try as I might, I could never get a comfy fit with the flanged eartips. Without a good fit, the sound was blah, with weak bass. Also, I kept feeling the buds were about to fall out of my ears.

Not wanting to give up too early, I watched the Etymotic video about proper eartip fitting. I was struck by the fact Etymotic recommends moistening the flanged eartips to get a good fit. The video shows the model dipping his finger into a glass of water. Since I figured the average user is not going to have a glass of water handy each, I did what anyone would do: I licked the eartips.

Doing reviews can be hazardous to your health, but since I don’t share my earbuds, I hoped I was not allergic to myself, and pressed on.

With a moist eartip, and then reaching over the head with one hand to stretch out the ear, while inserting the hf5 with the other, I got a tight seal needed. The difference in sound quality was extraordinary. The hf5s blossomed into full, rich, tight bass, crisp highs, and a wide sense of soundstage.

Unfortunately, my ears felt too full, as though they were overstuffed. I next tried the foam eartips. I’ve been using foam earplugs for hearing protection for 25 years, so I had not trouble with the "roll them between your fingers and quickly slide them into your ear canal" technique. My doctor was pleased that the foam eartips did not require licking them to get a good seal.

With the foam eartips, the sound quality was good, but qualitatively a bit darker. The sound was warmer, with less sense of glittery high frequency response. It was not lower quality, but it was different. The sense of a wide soundstage was still present. Also quite noticeable was the increase in noise reduction with the foam eartips. Noise reduction was good with properly sealed flanged tips, but was outstanding with foam. With foam eartips properly inserted, and a moderate volume level, you’re by yourself on another silent planet.

Just to hit all the bases, I tried the round plastic eartips. I instantly disliked them. They were not pliable enough to fit properly, and I soon went back to the foam eartips.

When you’ve got a good fit, the hf5s produce very high quality sound. If you’ve been using the Apple earbuds, you’ll never know that you’re not getting the most from your iPod/iPhone and music ripped at high bit rates. Good ear gear like the hf5s bring out the music that was hiding inside your music player.

I almost made the mistake of giving up too soon when trying to get a comfy fit. Stick with it until you do. The main drawback to needing a good fit is that you can’t really just drop the hf5s into your ears with one hand while striding down the sidewalk. Even with the right eartip, you need two hands to get the right fit. A one-handed insertion will work, but it won’t get the best sound from the hf5s. If you spend $149, take 30 seconds to get the quality you spent good money for.

I did not like the fact that the cord transmitted noise from friction. Whenever the cord touched my shirt, shirt collar, or jacket, I could hear the friction noise transmitted up the cord. I spent lots of time trying to find the best spot to clip the cord to minimize this annoying noise, but I never found a truly satisfactory answer. Oddly, my wife, who also spent time listening to the hf5s, did not notice this problem.

The hf5 earbuds work just perfectly with the iPhone. But you’re not going to be talking to anyone, as there is no microphone. Now, if Etymotic would just add a microphone, iPhone owners could enjoy the hf5s great sound and noise reduction. But they have! iPhone owners who want the sound of the Etymotic hf4 and have an in-line microphone can buy the hf2

Conclusion. The Etymotic hf5 earbuds are high quality earbuds that produce excellent sound while significantly reducing the ambient noise level. The hf5 comes with three very different eartips; take the time to test each pair. The main drawback is the requirement to use two hands to get a proper insertion. Improperly inserted, the hf5s are not much better than the Apple earbuds. If you just jam the hf5s into your ears, you’re wasting your money. But when they fit right, they’re golden. Between the three types of eartips supplied by Etymotic, most buyers will find a comfortable fit. If not, you can purchase other eartips from Etymotic.

MyMac.com rating 4.5 out of 5 Expensive, but produce great sound. Getting a good fit is critical. Some people find the cable transmits excessive noise from clothing friction.

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