Canon Pixma iP4500
Company: Canon
Price: € 77,75 (at amazon.de)
http://www.canon.de
Canon labels the Pixma iP4500 as a premium photo and document printer, and when I bought it in early January my main purchasing criteria was high quality photo prints and the ability to print on DVDs and CDs.
RapidWeaver 3.6
Company: RealMac Software
Price: US$ 49.00 / € 35.82
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver
In the beginning of the web, a html page was a hand-coded effort. There isn’t a lot to basic HTML, but it takes a while to get used to this page description language. With the advent of the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors the tedious task of typing HTML was no more difficult then creating a document in Word or Pages. Still you needed a bit of a design talent to make the page look good.
Template based web design tools help you create stunning web-pages in a flash. A good template based design tool will also have features, which will let you incorporate your digital life, such as photos, videos and of course your blogs and/or podcasts. The market is pretty much divided between iWeb and RapidWeaver and our very own Guy Serle has done a marvelous job outlining the abilities of iWeb. I will keep this review of RapidWevaer rather short, so please consider it a brief introduction rather than a full review.
With Mac OS X 10.5 (a.k.a. Leopard) Apple has introduced a very nice new feature called “back to my mac”. For those with a .mac account, you can now setup a secure way of accessing your Mac from on the road. Useful? Oh yes it is.
However as usual there are two problems, firstly you need Mac OS X 10.5, which many of us haven’t purchased yet. Secondly, you need a .mac subscription, which I am being told is very useful, but so far I haven’t had a need for.
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turbo.264
Company: Elgato Systems GmbH
Price: €99.95
http://www.elgato.com
My very first review for MyMac.com was for Elgato EyeTV for DTT and today I have another Elgato product for review. It is a product, which you could call a companion product for the EyeTV, but it serves just as much as a companion for your iPod with Video, AppleTV or PSP.
The biggest problem with converting video for use on your portable (or not so portable) device is the sheer time it takes to complete the task. In EyeTV you can schedule a recording and tell it to convert right away in a format suitable for your purposes. I love that feature, but my Mac Mini (1.42GHz G4, 512MB RAM) isn’t quite up to the task. Converting a movie I have just recorded can easily take all night. The toll on system performance is so high that you most certainly do not wish to be working at the same time.
FRITZ!Fon 7150 -
Company: AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH
Price: €149.00
http://www.avm.de
The FRITZ!Fon 7150 is a DSL modem and wifi router combination. So far not really spectacular enough for a review. The reason I am still sitting down to write one is that this is more than just a wifi router, it is a cordless VoIP phone as well.
AVM is the market leader in DSL hardware in Germany, they have about 50% of the market. They have achieved this dominant position by working closely with ADSL providers to ensure that their hardware is bundled into contracts. So if you go out to eBay there are literally hundreds of their boxes available. I purchased mine from a big online store, after I had grown tired of my “standard” VoIP phone, which neatly sat on my desk and kept me there, while making a call.
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Keyword Manager 1.1.1
Company: Bullstorm
Price: US$ 19 EU: €19 (incl. VAT)
http://www.bullstorm.se/KeywordManager.php
If you’ve read my review of FlickrExport 2 here at mymac.com, you will already know that I have a bit of a thing going for keywords. Looking at this review you will also note that my biggest regrets about that particular tool were, that it wouldn’t write the keywords back to iPhoto.
The reason I didn’t want to tag my images in iPhoto was that the iPhoto native keywords feature is so limited to beg the question of usefulness. Obviously I wasn’t the only one with this feeling, since two Swedes sat down and developed a plugin for iPhoto..
Keyword Manager does what the label suggests and it does it extremely well.
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I had to attend a conference in Prague earlier this week and while on my way back to my hotel I walked past an Apple Authorized Retail Store near Andel Metro Station. I did some window shopping and was happily converting Czech Koruna to Euro, but just wouldn’t believe my calculations. Prices here were considerably higher than at home.
The next day I asked a Czech friend, whether I was missing something and he confirmed that indeed there had been quite a bit of bad press about Apple’s pricing policy in their country. According to his recollection of the press coverage only Brazilians were paying more for their iPod.
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Delicious Library 1.6.4
Company: Delicious Monster
Price: US$ 40
http://www.delicious-monster.com
Do you have a library full of books, a collection of DVDs, CDs and/or games? Do your friends drop by to borrow any of these items and can it be hard to remember who got what item at what time? Or is it even hard to remember what precisely you have?
If you’ve outgrown a standard sized bookshelf this might just be time to think about bringing order to your collection. You could of course start a neat list, possibly even in Excel, but how about creating your own library catalog?
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Canon PowerShot A700
Company: Canon
Price: about €255 (incl. VAT)
http://www.canon.co.uk
When I decided to buy a new digital camera in June it wasn’t an easy decision. While I am not particularly talented, I expect a good deal from a digital camera. The new camera had to beat my old Sony CyberShot DSC-P50, which after five years still took some great pictures.
My main concern for a new digital camera was a better resolution, smaller size and more options. After some intensive reading up on the internet I decided on the Canon PowerShot A700, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it offered 6 Megapixels, 6x optical zoom and lots of features in an affordable package.
Reviewing this camera for MyMac.com has been on my mind for a little while, but how to go about it? Well, I shall just tell you what I really like about the camera and what I don’t like that much and that will be it. If you want a very sophisticated, in-depth review you might want to check out Steve’s Digicams. But please, do read on…
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iBank 2.1.7
Company: IGG Software, LLC
Price: US$ 39.99
http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank
Money makes the world go round, no doubt about it. Knowing how much or how little you have, allows you to make appropriate plans and avoid costly overdrafts from your bank.
Have you ever gotten your credit card bill, looked at the total, and just knew the bank got it wrong? That is, you knew they got it wrong, until you checked the bill carefully and realized it they are right after all. To be honest I can’t really imagine this anymore, but I know it happens all the time to other people.
My answer to the problem is personal financial software. For me it is “can’t do without” software, the type you install the second you get your computer. They type of software you actually spend a good amount of time in every week, but also the type that is worth every penny and every minute you spend.
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CanoScan LiDE 25
Company: Canon
Price: € 50.85 (incl. VAT) = ca. US$65
http://www.canon.co.uk
In the age of digital photography it is hard to imagine that some folk would stick to a standard film-based snapshot camera. I have a friend, who just loves her camera and asks me to scan images for her to put them up on flickr.com. So far this meant a trip to my parent’s house, where I would use a “windows only” scanner attached to an old Windows 98 machine. A pain. Since I also have a fair number of photos, which I wanted to digitize I decided to go off and buy a scanner.
Requirements? Reasonable quality, low price. Thus I went to my favorite Online Retailer for Mac and Mac-related hardware in Germany – Gravis (www.gravis.de) – and had a good look around. What I found was the CanoScan LiDE 25 – I am happy with my Canon Digital Camera, thus I figured I should be happy with their scanner and the price was right as well.
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Product: Adium 0.89.1
Company: Adiumx
Price: Freeware
http://www.adiumx.com/
System Requirement: Continue reading »
Mac OS X 10.2.7 (“Jaguar”) or later; Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”) or Mac OS X 10.3.9 (“Panther”) is recommended
Instant Messaging (IM) Systems were starting to get big, when I started to use the internet – back in 1996. A few folks invented ICQ and they were soon joined by many other IM Systems. Today the market is fragmented, so much so, that many of us have more than one IM client installed at the same time. Each of these clients of course comes with their own set of cool features, but the feature I personally use most, is the basic text based chat. Having many IM clients open, means a drain on system resources.
MediaCentral 2.1
Company: Equinux
Price: €29.95 / $29.95
Web: http://www.equinux.com/us/products/mediacentral/index.html
System Requirement:
Apple Macintosh G4 1GHz or Intel Mac / Mac OS X 10.4 or higher / An active internet connection
Introduction
In March I did a review of MediaCentral 1.2, just as the new Intel MacMinis were released to the public with FrontRow part of the package. MediaCentral had a lot to offer though and scored a strong 4 out of 5.
Recently Equinux released version 2.0 and shortly thereafter version 2.1 – it is no longer a free download, but pay for software. It no longer is a tiny 1.8MB download, but a 33.4MB download. So it raises the question – what’s new?
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Since MyMac.com Podcast 93 we learned a new world – Ubuntu. I thought I quickly let you all in on how you can testdrive Ubuntu Linux without installing a single file on your computer.
First of all let’s talk about Ubuntu. According to the Ubuntu Website the name means “humanity to others”.
It is a free, open source operating system based on Debian Linux and a release coming out every six month. Every release will be supported for 18 months to come, so it adds a bit of reliability to your Linux experience.
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FlickrExport 2
Company: Connected Flow
Price: £12 + VAT
http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/
System Requirements:
FlickrExport requires Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later on PowerPC Macs and 10.4 or later on Intel Macs – with iPhoto 4.x, 5.x or 6.x installed.
Owen recently observed in his blog here at mymac.com that it is time to unplug. He states “Lastly, I am also saddened by the proliferation of cheap digital cameras as more and more people can now NOT see where they actually are without the camera.”
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Some of you might know that I work out of my home in southern Germany for the UK subsidiary of a US publisher. Working from home however also has its challenges. While a VPN client on my company laptop lets me connect to all network services in Oxford, it usually can be painstakingly slow. I am hooked up to a DSL line, asynchronous in nature, makes downloads much faster than uploads. Backing up my 1.5GB in various Outlook mail archives is not an option – not at all.
I never liked iChat much and I don’t think this is going to change any time soon. I am very happy with what Skype does for me both in my personal and professional live.
Skype for Windows supports video calls, the Mac OS X version unfortunately doesn’t and that’s why I ended up playing around with iChat Friday evening and today.
A good friend of mine bought a MacBook with built-in iSight and really wanted to give it all a try. I was just all too happy to help. The biggest hurdle was to get the connection established, because iChat requires a bunch of ports to be open, which my router’s firewall just blocks by default. If you want to know more, I recommend you read Apple Support Article 93208.
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iDefrag 1.2.2
Company: Coriolis Systems
Price: €25 + VAT ($30 US)
http://coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
I have used a Windows powered PC for much longer than a Mac, and the Mac just blown me away. In my private life there is (virtually) no room for a windows machine, though I continue to use a Dell laptop for work. Users of Windows have funny habits, for example, we like to start our working days with updating the virus and spyware definitions and once every quarter or so most of us go and defragment our hard drives. Now with Windows XP and its NTFS file system this isn’t as urgent a problem as it used to be, but it remains a habit.
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iPhoto Books
Company: Apple Computer
http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/features/books.html
A few weeks ago I decided that it was time to try out iPhoto Books. I once tried my luck with a windows application, but found the results at the time to be so simplistic, that I scrapped my work in progress, went out to WH Smith and bought a proper photo album, had the pictures printed and ended up putting it all together myself.
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I had been contemplating the merits of buying a FM Transmitter for my iPod in the US and bringing it over to Germany in the past. I then remembered how much trouble my parents got into, when my Mom bought my brother and me a set of walky-talkies in Spain. Those cheap walky-talkies of course weren’t licensed for use in Germany and my Mom sure didn’t know about these things. Still “ignorance of the law is not an excuse”, thus the trouble, and there were many tears from a then six year old.
Trying to avoid the indignity of seeing a grown man cry, I decided to wait until FM Transmitters would become legal here. And finally they are! Press releases at the beginning and middle of March made it to known that FM Transmitters could now be legally obtained in Europe, though Europe seemed to have shrunk quite a bit.
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MyMac Podcast #385
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