Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
January 9th, 2007 by matt
Wondering what you will do in just over one hour when Steve Jobs takes the stage to finally answer all our questions about phones, Lassos, 16×9’s, iTV’s, Leopards and probably others that we haven’t even asked?
Chris at MyAppleStuff is hosting a SkypeCast during the SteveNote. See his post for details, but here are the dial-in numbers:
If you are a Skype user call +990008275344690 which is a FREE number and you will be connected automatically. That is all you need to do.
If you are calling from the US call 1-712-432-4990 (long distance costs apply).
In Europe, call: Germany 01805 00 7620 UK 0870 119 1313
January 6th, 2007 by matt
Gimp is an opensource (free) image editing application that contains much of the functionality of Photoshop. For many of us aspiring or hobbyist photographers who can’t afford Photoshop, Gimp is a fantastic alternative.
Gimp can do 75% of what Photoshop can do (I just made up 75% - since I don’t have Photoshop I don’t know exactly, but 75% is what I’m guessing based on what I’ve read about and what others have said) and likely most of what you would need for basic and many advanced editing tasks.
Since image editing can really be complex, and therefore the tools to do it are complex, the Photoshop training industry has become quite a popular and lucrative business. If people (most of whom are professionals) are spending $600 for the application, it’s likely they will spend a few hundred dollars for more training.
Not many people are willing to pay for training to learn a free application, however, so writing about Gimp isn’t as lucrative as writing about Photoshop. But, there are several resources available to learn Gimp.
Chris at MyAppleStuff recently reviewed “Gimp 2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software” by (Klaus Goelker). It looks like a great way to learn to use Gimp just like you would use Photoshop. See his review for more details.
Grokking the Gimp, by Carey Bunks, is another book that I have gone through to learn the Gimp. Although this one is a couple of years old, the concepts and principles haven’t changed and most of the tools work just the same way as he describes them. Grokking the Gimp is free to read online, or you can purchase a printed version.
GIMPguru.org also contains a wealth of tutorials and tips for Beginning and Advanced tasks. I love this site and have used it often.
Finally, GIMP.org has a nice tutorials section as well that I refer to from time to time.
You can see more GIMP resources and links by looking at the ma.gnolia.com bookmarks tagged with GIMP.
If you haven’t tried GIMP yet, I suggest you do. It’s available in binaries for UNIX and Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. You can also download the source and compile it yourself.
January 6th, 2007 by matt
As I commented on Chris’s MyAppleStuff blog in December, I put Apple’s Aperture on my 2007 Apple wish list. I haven’t written about it here, but I really have developed an interest in and a passion for photography, and I recently acquired a Nikon D50 digital SLR (which I love!).
I had been using iPhoto but had really outgrown what it could do for me. I started using the public beta of Adobe Lightroom and was ecstatic about all that it could do. For the first time I was able to shoot in RAW with my D50 and Lightroom provided some mind-blowing (to my unexperienced mind anyway) tools to process RAW photos. I really liked Lightroom and used it for the entire month of November.
I had heard of Aperture but never really looked into it much. After using Lightroom and becoming comfortable with all its features, I decided I would give Aperture a try and take advantage of the 30 day free trial Apple is offering.
Before I started the trial, however, I watched all the tutorial videos on the Aperture site and read several reviews about it. I then downloaded the trial and started using it. It took a few hours (spread out over several days - I have a day job 
) to figure out a workflow and how Aperture really works, but then I was completely hooked.
Why do I like Aperture better than Lightroom? Perhaps I’ll write a more detailed review in the future, but in short, Aperture’s workflow model is more intuitive and powerful, there are more powerful tools for automation and the user interface is more advanced and “usable”.
I determined that the cost of Aperture was an investment in my photography and not just a luxury, so I just purchased a full license. More to come…
December 17th, 2006 by matt
A person that I’ve met on Tabblo - a great photo presentation / sharing / publishing site that I’ve been using for a while - made a comment on one of my recent Tabblos. This person happens to be French and therefore writes in French.
My French isn’t very good, though I can get the general message usually. Sometimes I go to BabelFish to get a more precise translation to make sure I don’t miss anything.
The latest comment that I translated proves why a word-for-word translation doesn’t always quite do the job:
December 17th, 2006 by matt
Two days ago Adobe announced it’s first-ever public beta of a Photoshop release, CS3. It’s only almost public because Adobe is granting beta licenses only to currently registered license-holders of Photoshop CS2. While this makes some good sense for Adobe to limit the beta of perhaps the most popular - and possibly the most pirated - third party application on the market, it is disappointing for us mortals who cannot afford the hefty price tag of the Creative Suite products and who respect licenses and want to abide by the law.
Perhaps the most anticipated feature of Photoshop CS3 is its native compatibility with Intel Macs. Right now Intel Mac users of Photoshop have to slog through the slowness of real-time translation with the Rosetta utility. I’ve heard that it’s actually faster to run the Windows version of Photoshop CS2 in a Parallels virtual machine on an Intel Mac than running it as a Mac app with Rosetta.
For me, though, it doesn’t really matter because I still can’t afford it.
I am impressed, though, with the work that Adobe has been doing on photography applications. I have been working with the (true) public beta of Lightroom for about a month and really like what they have done. Lightroom - and Apple’s Aperture, for that matter - offer so many tools to work with RAW images as well as some additional basic yet essential modification tools that you don’t need an app like Photoshop as much as perhaps you used to. Now that I have a Digital SLR and can shoot in RAW, I find that I can use something like Lightroom or Aperture for almost all the image processing that I need to do. For more specific or detailed changes, I use Gimp, the free open-source image editor that’s a pretty decent alternative to Photoshop.
Lightroom is available as a public beta - yes, for anyone to use - on both Windows and Mac platforms. The beta of Photoshop CS3 is also available for Windows and Mac platforms. Both can be downloaded from the cool Adobe Labs page.
November 13th, 2006 by matt
It’s been a while. After writing about my second bout of random shutdowns on my MacBook and then getting it back fixed again, what should happen about a week later but more random shutdowns.
It turns out that the previous two fixes weren’t really fixes at all, just band-aids at best. Apple apparently hadn’t conclusively figured out the root cause of the shutdowns until just a few weeks ago. Now it seems that they have figured it out, and the problem is related to the heat sink, but requires a new logic board as well.
So, I dutifully and regretfully took my MacBook in to Apple once again and suffered alone with my PC for a few days. This time they replaced the heat sink and the logic board with a newly redesigned logic board that apparently prevents the damage that an overly active heat sink can inflict.
So after catching up on other aspects of life again, I’m back happily using my Mac.
October 16th, 2006 by matt
My saga of a working MacBook continues today with the return of the unit after the Apple Store elves installed a new heat sink. Again I am surprised and impressed by the quick turnaround time:
I dropped off my MacBook Saturday afternoon at the Apple Store, and they said it could take 3 business days. Just after lunch today I received a call that it was ready, and a short while later I had it back in my hands. That’s 48 hours turnaround starting on a Saturday afternoon - I think that’s impressive by any standard.
Having to take my new MacBook in 3 different times for the same problem is frustrating and disappointing, though. My experience has been that Apple - on the front lines at least - maintains a high focus on responding quickly to the customer.
I’m not sure, however, of the whole process Apple went through to figure out the root cause of the MacBook random shutdown issue itself. It seems like 3-4 months is a long time to work on the issue before figuring it out. They’ve had no shortage of machines to evaluate, judging by the Apple discussion board and other incidental experiences. I’m willing, for now, to chalk it up to working out the kinks of a new hardware and processor platform.
Hopefully the heat sink really does fix the issue.
October 14th, 2006 by matt
As I was afraid of, the 2 random shutdowns on my MacBook have turned into a flurry of random shutdowns over the past few days. It was doing all the same things as last time, so I knew the problem was back. Sometimes it would go for a few hours before just powering off, sometimes it would only last 15 minutes.
The problem was only getting worse, so I knew I had to go see my friends at the Apple Store again. This afternoon I took the MacBook in. The guy at the Genius Bar who helped me confirmed that Apple now knows what is causing the random shutdowns - the heat sink. He also said that they can change them out in the store now and do not have to send them back to the repair depot.
When I brought it in for my first round of random shutdowns in August, they did send it off to the repair depot and replaced the top case, trackpad and keyboard. Obviously that did help the situation, but didn’t address the root cause of the problem since they didn’t change out the heat sink.
Now I have an estimated 3 business days (so Wednesday or Thursday) before I have my MacBook back. At least I’ll be relatively sure that this won’t happen again, but it’s incredibly inconvenient and dissatisfying to have this new machine fail yet again.
Hopefully I’ll have some good news in a few days.
October 13th, 2006 by matt
It’s time to vote again in the software development contest where you get to choose which great idea becomes an actual Mac software application. Round 3 in MyDreamApp has begun.
The field of 9 remaining contestants will be whittled down to 6 soon. Who do you want to stay? Who doesn’t make the cut?
it’s up to you (and the thousands of others who will cast their votes). I still like Blossom and Portal as my favorites, but I also think Cookbook, Hijack and Atmosphere have some potential.
Your vote will earn you a free license to VoiceCandy, a nifty voice recorder and voice effects-maker for your Mac from PotionFactory. It’s called the PhotoBooth of voice, in fact.
Head on over and vote.
October 13th, 2006 by matt
Secret Agent Phone by Inweeknessbe
As the buzz about the possible iPhone from Apple swirls about, one interesting point that’s come out is how unsatisfied most people are with their cellphones or PDA’s. Given the exquisite user experience that the Mac and iPod offer, coupled with the end-to-end control of hardware, OS and content that Apple now has, it’s only natural to look at cellphones and hope that Apple could do some magic with them.
I, for one, am interested in what Apple may offer in a cellphone / PDA / music player. However, I don’t really want or need a super all-in-one device right now. Here’s what I really want in a cellphone.
Continue reading ‘What I Want in a CellPhone’
October 11th, 2006 by matt
Today I discovered the Yahoo Time Capsule. Yahoo is collecting expressions that capture our current world in various media forms through November 8. They have organized the collection around the following themes:
- love
- anger
- fun
- sorrow
- faith
- beauty
- past
- now
- hope
- you
Anyone can submit “words”, “picture”, “video”, “sound” or “drawing” media to the collection, and you can optionally add tags, a description, demographic info about yourself and your geography.
Continue reading ‘Yahoo’s Digital Time Capsule’
October 10th, 2006 by matt
After having gone through the Macbook Random Shutdown Syndrome once already, and having my MacBook apparently repaired, I thought I was past the hardware issues. My MacBook even ran cooler once I got it back from repair, and there was a nice new trackpad and nice new - stain free - top case.
All has been going well with the fixed MacBook, or mostly. The top case, which is the housing that goes around the keyboard and includes the platform on which your wrists rest when typing, has begun to develop new wear marks, or stains, from my hands. It’s noticeably discolored where my wrists go, and that’s in just about 6 weeks of use since I got it back.
Then, 5 days ago, right in the middle of me doing something especially amazing and cool (hey, it’s a Mac, remember), the system suddenly shut down. Just like the random shutdowns of long ago (August), it happened again. Then yesterday, while doing more amazing and cool stuff it happened again.
Continue reading ‘More MacBook Shutdowns…’
October 9th, 2006 by matt
Google announced today that the recent rumors were true and that they acquired the most popular video hosting and sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.
The deal makes sense from the aspect of the information Giant absorbing more raw sources of information, namely user-generated video. Google is all about getting their hands on information and making it available and accessible to anyone. Of course one of their ultimate goals is to sell advertising by organizing ads by very specific content. With over 100 million video views a day, YouTube has a huge chunk of content that people want to access.
On the other hand, having the giant financial foundation of Google underneath the site that hosts thousands of copyright violations of music and video now would seem to give more motivation to the copyright holders to seek to recover some money. Look for several lawsuits against Google to appear now that there is actually some money behind the service - and therefore money for copyright violation lawsuits or settlements.
Continue reading ‘Facial Recognition in Videos? Google’s Possible Plans for YouTube’
October 8th, 2006 by matt
Before I describe how I have come to use and depend on RapidoWrite, I want to detail a little background for other recent converts to Mac from a PC.
I’ve written about Roboform being one of the critical apps I used on my PC to securely store and manage my passwords and website login info. Another critical app was ActiveWords, the many-things-to-many-people app of the PC.
ActiveWords allows you to use keyboard shortcuts to execute scripts, auto-type text, initiate programs or open webpages. It’s both simple and incredibly useful and really became the heart of how I controlled things on my PC. There is a lot more to say about ActiveWords that I won’t say here, I’ll leave it at this: if you are using a PC, then I am confident that you will use it more efficiently with ActiveWords and I highly recommend you check it out.
Continue reading ‘RapidoWrite Fills In Your Blanks’
October 8th, 2006 by matt
As I’ve spent more time on my growing passion / hobby of photography over the past year, the way I process and store my photos has changed.
When I started with digital photography, I just had my digital camera and my PC. Then, I found out about Picasa and began to use it to process my photos. I then learned about Paint.net and started to use it from time to time for the more detailed adjustments that required layers. Then I found out about Photoshop, but couldn’t (and still can’t) afford it. Fortunately, there’s Gimp, which is open source (free) and does many, if not most, of the functions Photoshop can do.
After switching to a Mac 4 months ago (135 days to be exact) I began to use iPhoto as a central processing and organizing function. I can do many basic color and exposure adjustments in iPhoto, and then I use Gimp for the more creative and advanced work.
Along the way I discovered Flickr as well and began to use it as the way to share and display my photos.
However, now I’m starting to use a few other services - Tabblo, Zooomr and Riya to store and share my photos, and I need to decide which pics go where. Each of these photo sharing services has a different way to upload, and only Flickr and Tabblo can export directly from iPhoto.
I also need to figure out a more consistent approach to how I rename and store edited photos outside of iPhoto (i.e. in Gimp). In other words, I need to define how & where within my folder structure I’m going to store my edited photos and what I’m going to name them.
I don’t have much money to put into photography right now, so buying Photoshop or Aperture isn’t an option for me. I have a decent camera, but it’s not a DSLR, which is what I’m saving my pennies for, and it therefore limits some of what I can do. So, I’m not a pro or even a high level amateur, but I’d like to be one someday.
If you have any recommendations on a digital photography workflow or thoughts on how I could better define mine, I’d love to hear from you. I’ll write more as I figure out what works best.
