Today through Sunday only, MacZOT offers a free version of Inventive’s iClip 3, apparently to build up an audience for the upcoming introduction of iClip 4. I’ve been playing with it for a little while this morning.

iClip extends your clipboard into an entire scrapbook of clippings, which I’m sure can be very useful for the right kind of application. As for me, I’m not sure I’m going to keep on using it after today. For items, particularly text items, that I use a lot, I prefer to create macros with QuicKeys.

As for pictures? I didn’t find a huge advantage to sticking them into the clipboard over keeping a folder open and dragging them out as needed. What’s more, I can move a folder around my screen–and I can’t drag around the clippings.

I was hoping to be a lot more impressed with the software than I actually was. However, given that it’s free, if you’re looking for a clipboard extender of this type, it may be worth giving it a spin. And, if it suits you, consider upgrading when iClip 4 appears.

Beyond the Break Season 1: Episode 1 “Charging It”
Lacey buys a one-way ticket to a new life, as Kai copes with her old one. Birdie finds love, and Dawn finds… something else. The four Wavesync girls roll with the tide of friendships and romances as they try to prove that they’ve got what it takes to survive both on- and offshore.

Blade: The Series, Season1, Episode 1
Immortal warrior Blade continues his fight against a shadowy underworld of vampires who are threatening total domination of mankind. Blade meets Krista, a recently dispatched US military combat medic who is investigating her brother’s suspicious murder. As Krista is pulled into the underworld, she teams up with Blade and his partner, Shen, to infiltrate the vampires from the inside and out. However, Blade has to keep strict tabs on Krista, who could easily succumb to the dark forces of the underworld she now inhabits.

Superman Returns: Exclusive Premiere Scene
In the press room of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent receives a distress message from Lois Lane. With no phone booth in sight, Clark quickly ducks into an elevator to make the change to Superman.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 1, “Underage Drinking” Episode
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a half-hour comedy that focuses on four friends who own and operate a bar in South Philadelphia and try to maintain the balance of power between their business and friendship. In the show’s first season, the gang tries to prove Charlie is not a racist; a girl from Charlie’s past reveals that he is a father; they relive their high school years; the gang learns Charlie might have cancer; the guys buy a gun; Mac and Dennis get close to a dead man’s granddaughter; and their gym teacher has been accused of molestation.

Making of the Sunny Pilot
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, behind the scenes.

Best of Sunny Funnies
The funniest moments from Season 1 and 2.

Bono in Africa, with Brian Williams
An inside look at U2’s Bono and his mission of hope in Africa

I just found a free workaround to something that’s annoyed me about my otherwise dependable printer forever—the huge margin it leaves at the bottom of the page. Whereas the top, left, and right margins could be as small as a quarter inch (0.64cm), the bottom demanded almost three times that.

The cool thing was that I discovered the solution while fixing another problem: unreliable printing over my AirPort Express. Although my Windows laptops print fine over the Express’s Wi-Fi connection, half the time the Mac would print a few lines and then give up.

Following a tip in the comments of an ancient Mac DevCenter blog, I set the printer to use a GIMP driver instead. I simply…

1. Clicked the link https://127.0.0.1:631/admin;
2. Entered my Mac user name and password;
3. Clicked the Printers button in the page that came up;
4. Clicked the Modify button for the Wi-Fi printer;
5. Clicked through a few screens, and then entered the IP address of the AirPort Express (I found it in the AirPort Admin Utility);
6. Clicked through a few more screens and selected the model of my printer.

Step 4: Pick your printer.

Boom! Not only did the printer start printing over Wi-Fi, its margins were reduced to an eighth of an inch on the sides and zero inches on the top and bottom. Near-borderless printing for free!

I thought I would use this blog entry to address the many excellent comments to my previous blog entry on Apple moving away from computing and turning into Sony with a design sensibility. A quick note of policy, I welcome all comments and I try to have a thick skin. I write what I want to write, not what I think will create controversy or provoke anger. Now to the comments.

Everyone has their favorite applications, but these are 15 of my personal favorites that I’ve collected here because they save me time or solve a particularly unique problem. I hope you find something on this list useful.

*In the interst in saving time, I’ve collected all the links for these applications and you can find them on my personal blog here.

Sidenote
What Stickies should have been! An unobtrusive notepad that hides just off to the side of the screen…awaiting your mouse to release it. It slides out, allows you to drag and drop…cut and paste…just about anything. Quick…and easy.

Cost: Free

——

Snapz Pro
What can I say about Snapz Pro except this is the Mercedes of screen grab applications. From grabbing small areas to taking movies of the screen…I’ve found no other screen grab app that does as much as Snapz Pro, or works as well.

Cost: $69

——

Chax
Chax adds all the features to iChat that are missing. From tabbed chat windows, to searchable logs. Works with Growl.

Cost: Donationware

——

Chicken of the VNC
A lot of people don’t realize it, but in System Preferences>Apple Remote Desktop is a checkbox for enabling VNC.

This allows you to login to your machine remotely and control the screen. I have a recycled Titanium in my house running as a server. I sometimes need to access it, but since I keep it in the basement rafters, it isn’t easily accessible. Chicken of the VNC is a great free VNC client that allows me to control the Titanium remotely in a Window.

Cost: Free

——

DoubleTake
I take a lot of Panorama shots with my digital camera. DoubleTake is a brilliant little app that lets me drag and drop the images and stitch them together with almost zero effort.

Click Here for Samples

Cost: $16

——

Free Ruler/SmallScreenX
Free Ruler works as a movable screen ruler so you can easily measure any item on the screen. I use it when building web pages, programming applications, and doing graphics.

But perhaps you want to get an idea of what an 800×600 window looks like and if the work you are doing will fit inside it? SmallScreenX does just that by creating a movable box that you can place around anything on the screen to get a better idea of what another screen resolution might be looking at.

Cost: Free

——

HandBrake/MactheRipper
While the MPAA wants the government to believe that ripping movies is a violation of fair-use, shifting legally purchased content from one location to another for your own personal use…is a necessity.

I don’t like having a hundred of my DVDs lying about the house, so I used Mac The Ripper to quickly rip my DVDs to a hard drive, and then HandBrake to later convert them to a smaller video file. This way I can take a 7GB file and get it under a 1GB. I stream these movies to my TV/Laptop using a NAS drive. No clutter…and my movies on demand, 24/7.

Cost: Free

——

DynDNS Updater
I run my own server at home for personal and business use. I also use an internet provider that likes to block web ports and I don’t feel like paying through the nose for a Static IP. Using Dynamic DNS in combination with the DynDNS Updater application and a little router port forwarding magic…I’m able to keep my own server running and accessible to my clients.

Cost: Free

——

Netflix Freak
This app was definitely worth what I paid for it. Instead of spending time using a web browser to work with my two queues, I just use Netflix Freak to manage my movies. I like the simplicity of dragging and dropping and reordering my queue on the fly.

Cost: $15

——

PDFpen
Sometimes you just gotta edit a PDF file…and that’s what PDFpen does. It gives you the power to make changes to pdfs, like adding additional pages and content, or just rearranging the pages.

Cost: $49.95

——

VLC
Every so often, my girlfriend and I like to sit in bed and watch movies. We don’t keep a TV in the bedroom, so I simply fire up VLC on my 17″ and stream them from the NAS drive.

Cost: Free

——

InVisibles
InVisibles is a handy little Applescript that does one thing and one thing only…it turns all the invisible files on your computer visible. If you don’t know why you’d want to do this…you probably don’t need this. But a handy tool nonetheless.

Cost: Free/Donationware

——

IP Scanner
Every once in awhile I need to take a peek at all the IP addresses and machine names on a network. This program scans the current subnet and returns a list within a minute. When you run a dynamic DHCP network, you often run into the need to see what’s going on, and possibly don’t have access to a router to view it’s admin logs.

Cost: Free/$25

Speed up Parallels [MacOSXHints]
MacOSXHints offers some Parallels tuning advice, specifically how to update Parallel’s caching strategy to improve performance. PD Tweaker is an Application Enhancer plugin that makes Parallels use better caching.

Google’s Ad Supported Videos [Google]
New to Google Videos you can watch ad-supported “free” videos including episodes of Mr. Magoo and Rocky & Bullwinkle. This week is supported by Burger King. Values range from 30 cents (for Music News) to $4.95 (for Wrestling Titans).

Jajah Offers Free Calls World-Wide [Jajah]
Jajah announced a free global calling plan for all registered Jajah users in the United States; Canada; China; Hong Kong; Singapore and Taiwan (mobile and land line) and Australia; UK; Germany; France; Italy and most other European nations (land line only). Both caller and recipient need to be registered Jajah members. With Jajah, you place calls over the net but you use your normal landline or cellphone handsets to talk. (Jajah rings the handset and then places the call.) Users must adhere to their “Fair Use” policy which basically says users won’t abuse the privilege: “The Jajah “Fair Use ” policy asks our users to “play fair” and behave in a manner that best serves our greater calling community. We ask that you limit your free hours to about an hour a day, five hours a week,or about 1.000 minutes per month. If you use it more than that, we ask that you also use some paid JAJAH services such as text messaging (or scheduled calling?) We can only offer the free service if enough people also use some paid services.”

Are You A Bad Customer? [MSN Money]
Liz Pulliam Weston discusses how some companies are using customer databases to target corporate resources towards “good customers” and leave “bad customers” on hold and in the cold.

VisualHub: The Universal Video Converter for Mac [TechSpansion]
I haven’t had a chance to play extensively with this yet, but I was already very impressed by their iSquint product. VisualHub advertises itself as the Universal Mac Video Converter–any format to any other format. Well worth a look.

Free Video Streaming [Strieamick]
Another wacky free video service. I found it an interesting concept but pretty much unwatchable on my DSL connection.

$1.99 at the iTMS–should it be ad-free? [ArsTechnica]
Looks like Apple’s been adding adverts to some of those $1.99 ad-free videos. Kevin Khandjian requested his money back–and got it. Ars Technica has the whole story.

G6 iPods Delayed [CNN Money]
CNN reports that the next generation of iPods may not hit the shelves until Q4 2006 or even Q1 2007.

iWork “Numbers” Spreadsheet? [MacsimumNews]
MacsimumNews reports that papers filed with the US Patent and Trademark office may indicate that the Apple “Numbers” software will appear in future versions of iWork.

The iTMS got updated a little late yesterday. So without further ado:

US: Suzie by Boy Kill Boy
Feisty Londoners Boy Kill Boy make it through the pop music filter by knowing precisely how to stretch their wandering romantic spirit over nervous, spiky backdrops. Jumpy, immediate, and a bit like the offspring of the Smiths and Franz Ferdinand, our Single of the Week, “Suzie,” is probably your new favorite song.

US: Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings, and Continuo in D minor, BWV 1043: I. Vivace by Akiko Suwanai, Chamber Orchestra Of Europe & Volkhard Steude
Violinist Akiko Suwanai has earned a tremendous amount of praise and respect for her technique and interpretations as both a soloist and recitalist. (She’s performed with the Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles Philharmonics.) A list of her numerous awards can’t compare to listening to her, as our free Discovery Download, the “Vivace” from Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins, attests.

Australia: Spotlight In the Sun by The Sunpilots
Born into the Australian rock scene but schooled in the Caranatic music of Sri Lanka, Raj Siva-Rajah was a child caught between two cultures. Over time, Raj mastered the 72 basic scales of the classical music of Sri Lanka . . . while also falling in love with the gritty angst that was the grunge era. The move to Sydney in early 2005 saw the music evolve into something more; and the soaring sound of the Sunpilots was born. Our Single Of The Week, their stunning debut “Spotlight in the Sun” is an anthem for anyone who has ever felt like a deer caught in the headlights.

Canada: Skinny Boy by Amy Millan
On her solo release, Honey from the Tombs, Amy Millan — she of indie poppers Stars and Broken Social Scene — emerges as the lush, romantic-tinged vocalist she was always on the verge of becoming. “Skinny Boy” is one of the album’s dreamier numbers, and when Millan lets loose the line “you’ve got lips I could spend a day with,” you can be sure a thousand boys somewhere do an Internet search on “Atkins diet.”

UK: All I Want by The Freelance Hellraiser
The mash-up maestro known as the Freelance Hailraiser is also the man who originally saw the genius behind mixing up the Strokes and Christina Aguilera. Now he’s dealing less with legal documents and more with his own emotionally-rapt electronic rhythms and melodic tunes. “All I Want” is definitely one of the latter, with a stirring guest vocal from Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. The track is our free Single of the Week.

France: Mayra Andrade - Mana
Avec Navega, Mayra Andrade offre un régal d’album qui n’a rien d’une production pharaonique, misant au contraire sur la simplicité, le tout acoustique, et où elle affirme farouchement sa liberté. Elle puise certes à 93 % dans la langue patrimoniale de son archipel natal, mais c’est le disque d’une Capverdienne urbaine, et qui plus est, parisienne. Notre Single de la semaine, « Mana », est extrait de ce premier disque.

Apple released OS X 10.4.7 yesterday, 66MB of update goodies for your Mac. Tim Gaden has already checked out what’s new for Mail. There are also fixes and updates for iChat, iSync (including .Mac sync), Finder, iCal, TextEdit, and other apps.

This update for Automator might be useful for some folks: “Automator supports more websites that require cookies and sessions, specifically those where the authentication is passed along with the URLs, in the Get Image URLs for Webpage, and Get Link URLs from Webpages actions.”

Elsewhere, Microsoft has purchased iView Multimedia. If you’ve never tried iView, you’ve missed out. Before iPhoto came along, there was no better way to organise large libraries of images and other media; indeed, a lot of pro users stick with iView MediaPro because of its superior feature set and superb support for many file formats and associated metadata.

Now, of course, with iPhoto, Adobe Bridge, Aperture and others, there media management category is booming and people have a lot more choice. It’s good to see that iView won’t abandon its many Mac customers and will offer upgrade pricing to them on any future products that “may be available” (see the FAQ).

In other news…

VoodooPad 3 Final candidate 1 is released for the taking. Get it while it’s hot.

Did you know that Apple’s extensive list of mailing lists is also available as a pile o’ RSS feeds? Well, you do now.

BuildFactory 1.0 was released last week. It automatically builds projects, has Subversion built-in, and talks to a variety of editors.

From Apple: How to use iWeb to publish to a .Mac account from more than one computer.

Check out Desmond’s demo of a new scrolling tabs idea for Camino.

I’ve been using FotoMagico since the very early days it was called “unnamed app.” This robust application enables you to build slideshows easily with professional transitions. The ease of use is important because you’re able to spend your time thinking about your project, not about the software itself.

I’ve been running the latest Universal Binary version on a MacBook Pro, which can handle this sort of work without even breaking a sweat (even though my legs tend to get a bit toasty during the process.) A lot of people have asked me why I prefer FotoMagico to iPhoto 6 for slideshows. Quite honestly, FotoMagico makes better transitions. And since my iPhoto library shows up in the FotoMagico media pane, it’s quite seamless.

Earlier this year, I had conversions with Boinx Software who make FotoMagico, and they became sponsors of my The Digital Story site. They wanted me to run a slideshow showcase featuring tips and techniques for producing interesting movies. I thought this was a great idea too, and I’ve just posted the finalists to the FotoMagico Slideshow Showcase. One of the movies featured is my own 30 Miles East of LA, which documents an early 80’s garage band that I co-founded — complete with original music restored from 20 year-old tapes that were beginning to fade. I tell the story of how I made the movie in this week’s TDS podcast The Making of 30 Miles East of LA.

Obviously I’ve been using FotoMagico a lot, and I truly like this software. But for the kind of movies I like to make — with both a music track and voiceover — I have to use additional software. I’ve found that exporting a 720×480 QuickTime file out of FotoMagico and importing it into iMovie HD was the perfect merging of tools. Once in iMovie, I could create and tweak my audio tracks to sync perfectly with the video. I don’t think iMovie is quite as strong for creating the video slideshow track as FotoMagico, but it’s a nice place to pull everything together.

All of this is interesting to me because I think many of us don’t get the mileage out of our digital photos that we could. Making the occasional print or posting a web page only scratches the surface of what’s possible these days. My experiences with QuickTime Pro, FotoMagico, iMovie HD, iPhoto 6, and Audio Hijack Pro have left me very thankful that I have such great, affordable tools for creativity.

As reported all over creation, Google Earth recently launched a new beta version, which I had the opportunity to download and try out. Overall, an okay experience, mostly subtle improvements over the latest stable release.

They’re in the middle of UI changes, though, and removed at least one keyboard shortcut (to the paths/ruler palette) that I depend on constantly whilst plotting bicycling training routes. Unfortunately, due to the type of app Google Earth is, it isn’t as easy as editing nib files, and none of my poking and prodding of various files under the app bundle’s resources produced a way to re-add it.

I’ve submitted a feature request asking they put the shortcuts back in, or better yet, give us the ability to customize our own.

And yes, this is an example of one reason why open source is often better. ;) To their credit, however, Google has seemed to be responsive to requests in the past. “Do no evil” apparently also covers “Paying attention.”

Any readers have unique or cool uses for Google Earth?

A while ago, I posted about the excitement I felt when Google Calendar was announced, although I also expressed some privacy concerns at that time. Well, I’ve been able to try out Google’s approach to organizing my life, and it’s been pretty sweet so far.

The interface is remarkably like iCal, very responsive, and generally not any more cumbersome than I found iCal to be. I was able to import all of my iCal calendars directly into Google Calendar without any hiccups, and if I ever decide to bail, I can export them right back out and load them into iCal. (This might be handy if I know in advance that I’ll be offline for some extended period of time, which does occur from time to time.) And to my surprise, Google renders you a nice PDF of the day, weekly, and monthly views so you can have a more traditional style print out if you find those handy.

O’Reilly has just published a new PDF edocument, Your Life in Web Apps, written by yours truly.

In it, I outline how we reached the point we’re at now - with some web apps so good that people have enough confidence in them to ditch equivalent desktop software completely - and what the risks and pitfalls of using webapps are.

There’s also several pages exploring the current state of the web apps landscape, looking at what’s available in various categories.

I also detail what happened when I took the plunge and tried to spend an entire day working solely in my browser. A lot of things worked - but some things didn’t.

This edocument (I’m reluctant to call it an ebook - it’s only 22 pages) is not for people who already have Google Calendar set up to remind them to check del.icio.us/tag/webapps every morning; it’s for people who’ve heard all the buzz but not had the time or inclination to go exploring for themselves. It’s for people who like the idea of using some web apps, but don’t want to risk their time or their data without being sure that the investment is worthwhile.

So if you, your boss, your spouse or your neighbour have ever pondered on the benefits (and drawbacks) of switching to Gmail or getting hold of a Backpack account, you might find it useful reading.

Your Life in Web Apps is available from O’Reilly PDFs and costs $5.99 or £3.99. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I’d be delighted to hear your feedback.

Thousands of AirTran customers spent hours in line at Atlanta’s airport and flights went out nearly empty due to a balky new computer system. Guess what OS it runs?

Bono in Africa, with Brian Williams
An inside look at U2’s Bono and his mission of hope in Africa

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 1, “Underage Drinking” Episode
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a half-hour comedy that focuses on four friends who own and operate a bar in South Philadelphia and try to maintain the balance of power between their business and friendship. In the show’s first season, the gang tries to prove Charlie is not a racist; a girl from Charlie’s past reveals that he is a father; they relive their high school years; the gang learns Charlie might have cancer; the guys buy a gun; Mac and Dennis get close to a dead man’s granddaughter; and their gym teacher has been accused of molestation.

Making of the Sunny Pilot
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, behind the scenes.

Best of Sunny Funnies
The funniest moments from Season 1 and 2.

Superman Returns: Exclusive Premiere Scene
In the press room of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent receives a distress message from Lois Lane. With no phone booth in sight, Clark quickly ducks into an elevator to make the change to Superman.

US: Rollin’ With Bob Saget
MTV’s Blowin’ Up follows actor Jamie Kennedy and his sidekick Stu Stone. Their debut music video, “Rollin’ With Saget” features none other than comedian Bob Saget on the mike.

US: Invader Zip (Episode 1) on Nickelodeon
The Irken armada is poised to conquer the universe, but it would be a lot easier without Invader Zim! Thickheaded, brash, and overzealous, Zim has been banished into food service for wrecking the Irken home planet. He begs the Almighty Tallest for a second chance to reclaim his honor. Zim is sent on a “secret” mission to a planet far away on the edge of the universe – Earth. Now Earth’s only hope rests with a young UFO-hunting paranormal enthusiast named Dib. Seeing through Zim’s human disguise, Dib makes it his sole mission to defend our planet from this fiendish alien menace.

Kyle XY (Pilot)
Discover this summer’s biggest mystery, Kyle XY. Download the new ABC Family Original Series, and experience the incredible story of a boy with no family, no past and no belly button. Found wandering naked and disoriented, Kyle is taken in by the Trager Family. To their surprise, he develops amazing abilities and astonishing intelligence. But more shocking are the secrets of his origins that even Kyle doesn’t understand. Who is Kyle XY? Find out now.

Apple is moving in the wrong direction. Closing access to the OS X kernel on Intel processing architecture is not a good idea, it will only cost Apple more time and money to get a good kernel for their processor. Why did they move to FreeBSD in the first place if they are going to make the kernel source on Intel proprietary? What a waste of potential, what a waste of time, what a missed opportunity. Without the ability to modify kernel source serious developers will not touch the Apple platform, maybe that is why the OS X server is not making significant inroads into the server community. Apple has probably shipped tens of thousands of X Server machines, but surely not one hundred thousand. They will never see the growth numbers that linux sees in the server market.

In the end this may be fine, Apple is really a consumer electronics company, but the next killer app lurks out there and while it will surely be platform-independent, what with all the virtualization these days, I bet it will be developed on linux, depriving Apple of an opportunity to profit and innovate.

Perhaps the question is ‘will Apple have enough innovation to maintain a pipeline of consumer products to remain vital?’ On the computing side, they only have a limited number of tricks left to pull out of their sleeve, switching to AMD is likely not one of them.

Reader “Hal” asks: “Is it possible to save an iDVD theme as a QT file, such that it can then be imported into iMovie and used as ‘bumper’?”

Unfortunately, unlike iMovie’s new Quartz themes, most of iDVD’s themes seem to remain in the old Oxygene format (pox folders, containing Oxygene patches and the media that support them). You can hack out a few of the pieces, but it ain’t pretty and it ain’t trivial. Probably your best bets are: 1. use the new iMovie 6 themes instead, 2. wait for iDVD 7 which will probably be ported to Quartz or 3. build ‘em yourself in Quartz Composer.

Other more hacky approaches include using Snapz Pro to capture the video as it plays in iDVD or to grab the MPEG-encoded video from a DVD disk image produced by iDVD. Be aware that you’ll probably need to pay Apple for an MPEG-2 license to be able to edit and use MPEG-2 source in iMovie.

Hidden away among a bunch of Automator Action Packs released by Automated Workflows there are some very special gems.

But while most of the Action Packs cost some money (prices vary), the one I like best is free for the taking.

The System Action Pack includes just two actions, but they’re things I’ve been wanting to see in Automator since the day it first appeared alongside Tiger: “Get Clipboard Contents” and “Type Keystroke”.

Finally, easy access to the clipboard within workflows!

For most of Allan Odgaard’s screencast demonstrating the new blogging bundle in TextMate, what you see is more of the same clever innovation and smart thinking we’ve all come to expect from Macromates.

But round about the seven minute mark comes the bit that made me break out in a delighted grin, because that’s the moment where Allan drags an image into a TextMate blog file and boom - the image is uploaded to the right place on the right server, and a reference to it automatically created in the document. In Markdown. Amazing.

The blogging bundle, maintained by Brad Choate, works with Movable Type, Wordpress, Drupal and Typo weblogs.

US: Sailed On by Landon Pigg
Like any self-respecting songwriter-on-the-rise should know, if you can’t cut a plaintive piano ballad that stirs up the heart and mind, you might as well back out of the game right now. Luckily, newcomer Landon Pigg hits it immediately with “Sailed On,” a pebble of a tune that quickly gathers moss and rolls into Rufus Wainwright or Coldplay territory by the end.

US: Do Right By You by Elan
Elan has a strong roots-reggae style that comes through loud and clear on “Do Right By You,” so it’s no surprise that Aston “Family Man” Barrett chose him to be the new frontman for the Wailers. Our free Single of the Week comes from Elan’s first solo release, Together As One, an album that showcases the emerging vocalist’s ability to mix up roots reggae and dancehall.

US: Rollin’ With Bob Saget
MTV’s Blowin’ Up follows actor Jamie Kennedy and his sidekick Stu Stone. Their debut music video, “Rollin’ With Saget” features none other than comedian Bob Saget on the mike.

US: Invader Zip (Episode 1) on Nickelodeon
The Irken armada is poised to conquer the universe, but it would be a lot easier without Invader Zim! Thickheaded, brash, and overzealous, Zim has been banished into food service for wrecking the Irken home planet. He begs the Almighty Tallest for a second chance to reclaim his honor. Zim is sent on a “secret” mission to a planet far away on the edge of the universe – Earth. Now Earth’s only hope rests with a young UFO-hunting paranormal enthusiast named Dib. Seeing through Zim’s human disguise, Dib makes it his sole mission to defend our planet from this fiendish alien menace.

Australia: Diamond Bike by Offcutts
Offcutts are Australia’s freshest proponents of progressive blues rock, funk-a-fied in a way that only they know how. Returning from some marathon studio sessions and working with talented US-based producer David Bianco (Teenage Fanclub and the Posies), Offcutts are now set to deliver their highly-anticipated debut album, What Happened Don’t Lie, featuring the single “Diamond Bike”. We’ve chosen this great track to be our free Single of the Week.

Canada: Put Your Records On (Acoustic) by Corinne Bailey Rae
The reflective summertime soul of “Put Your Records On” gets even more personal when Corrine Bailey Rae sits down with an acoustic guitar for our free Single of the Week. Back in the UK, Rae’s self-titled debut entered the charts at number one. The British sensation’s success makes sense: her organic take on pop and soul feels like it flows effortlessly from her.

UK: Waves by Adem
Once upon a time, Adem played bass in the band Fridge, whose elliptical instrumentals were among the brief moments of brilliance to come from the post-rock sound of the late ’90s. Fridge’s fragmented vision extends to the solo work of member Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet); Adem has also ventured out beyond the band, but this time he’s armed with an acoustic guitar. The cosmic folk of “Waves” is our free Single of the Week.

France: Take It From Me (The Weepies)
Les Weepies, le duo californien de folk-pop nous offrent avec « Take It from Me » un mélange de richesse et d’accessibilité mélodique. Le morceau présente une qualité limpide estivale avec une tristesse sous-jacente qui offre une pause pour réfléchir. Imaginez l’équivalent musical d’un nounours qui plonge sa tête dans un four. Téléchargez gratuitement « Take It from Me », notre Single de la semaine.

Is your Windows clock getting confused by rebooting? Over at the Apple Discussions board, they’ve found a solution for messed-up Macteltosh clocks during the Windows boot process.

The problem with the Windows clock being off is because the hardware clock (the one on your actual motherboard) is being set to “Universal” time, or GMT, when you shut down your MacOS bootup. When you boot Windows, Windows assumes your clock is set to your local timezone because that’s what Windows does by default. This explains why the people who set their MacOS clock to GMT got the right time in Windows… If the hardware clock is being set to “GMT,” when it’s actually the local time, Windows will pick this setting up as local time as it did before.

To fix the problem you’ll need to edit your registry, so proceed very carefully. Full instructions here

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Photo stitching app Doubletake has been updated to version 2.0, and boasts some nice new features introduced since the last time I mentioned it here.

Most obvious is better performance. Everything the app does is now noticeably faster, which makes it all the more fun to use.

But there’s also some new edit functions; iPhoto-style head-up panels for adjusting images, and better still adjusting their geometric placement within the stitched final result. With the geometry controls, you can rescale, tilt and rotate images in situ; this is a huge help when it comes to fine-tuning the stitching of one image to another.

What’s a little confusing is that there’s plain old version 2.0, but also a newly-released version 2.0b17 - I’ve managed to get both of them side-by-side in my Applications folder without intending to. The beta has some separate release notes which detail even more new stuff; the Free Perspective mode looks particularly fun, and there’s also Exposure matching and QTVR export too. Lots of stuff to play with.

Doubletake 2.0 is a free upgrade to existing license holders; a fresh license is only $16. The new version requires OS X 10.4.

I had a rush video job this weekend and used iMovie and iDVD to get the project out the door. The upshot? I completed the entire job in less than 6 hours.

I’ve been an iMovie fan since its early days. And yes, I’ve endured its quirks along the way. Even with the latest version (that’s part of iLife ‘06), there are a few gremlins that leave me scratching my head. But when I need to finish a simple video project *right now*, iMovie is the racehorse I want to ride.

My client wanted a 4-minute video demonstrating a craft project using their materials. I shot the movie with a Canon Optura 40, SV hot lights, and an Audio Technica shotgun mic. We finished the filming in just a couple hours. They were very well prepared and familiar with this craft project.

I opted to use iMovie on my MacBook Pro 17″ because I knew that there wasn’t going to be much editing. The video recording was clean, so I didn’t have to apply any corrections. The audio was good too, just a little bit of ambient noise. The Audio FX panel in iMovie has some excellent controls, including a very nice noise reducer filter (click on the Editing tab, then click on Audio FX and choose Noise Reducer). I selected my audio tracks, applied the filter, and like magic, no more ambient noise.

We reviewed the rushes right there on the MacBook Pro. I made a few adjustments based on client feedback, then sent the job to iDVD. Twenty minutes later I had a final product to hand over.

We watched the DVD on 3 different TV monitors, and it looked great on all of them. The disc went out via FedEx Monday morning. The client liked the finished product so much she’s already ordered duplicate discs.

iMovie and its brethren in the iLife ‘06 suite take the notion of “easy to use” and transcend it to “work real fast and make good stuff.” It sure saved my bacon this time.

Swinging and Missing at an AM iPod Add-On [Playlist Mag]
Playlist asks why the iPod can support FM reception but not AM reception. Me? I went out to Target and bought a $5 AM/FM transistor radio. Sure it’s another gadget, but at least I can listen to the AM stations.

Microsoft To Take On iTunes [Smarthouse]
Is Microsoft ready to wage war against the iPod? Sources suggest that the Evil Empire is already demonstrating its super secret digital music player to third party vendors.

Cyberhome DVD Recorders Seized [Twice.com]
Cyberhome didn’t pay their licensing fees to Philips. Apparently they owe a “multimillion amount of dollars”. No wonder they’ve been able to keep prices so low.

iTunes Movies by the End of the Year? [Apple Insder]
Apple Insider reports that the iTMS may soon debut its feature film service. A $9.99 flat price per movie already seems to have been ruled out.

The “Mac Look” for PCs [SF Gate]
It’s the rage. Mac-imposter PCs. The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look at four wannabe not-Macs.

Matt Ronge and co-conspirators are working on an open-source email client called Kiwi. Progress is being made but even early release versions are still some way off.

I contacted Matt recently to ask how things are going, (heh, so did Tim Gaden), and his reply was encouraging.

What he’s most keen to get, though, is feedback from potential users regarding what features they’d like to see:

“I’d love to get feedback on what people want to see in an e-mail client. The first release is going to be very basic, but we have to start somewhere, and I’d love to find out what features users eventually want to see.”

Aha, something close to my heart. I’d like to see lightning-fast searching of IMAP mailboxes, excellent threading, simple single-key shortcuts (’a’ to archive, ‘r’ to reply, and so on), proper quoting, plain text for composing and decent display of HTML messages (cos people are going to keep sending them, whether I like them or not); and finally, maybe, sync-to-Gmail would be nice too.

TextMate developer Allan Odgaard has been devising his own email wishlist too. How about you? What would you like to see from Kiwi?

I got a chuckle this morning from the SciFi Channel Battlestar webpage.

Hacking Yojimbo bookmarklets so that new items are added with flags. A nice tip from Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings.

There’s some juicy newness from NeoOffice for the downloading.

Mori, formerly Hog Bay Notebook, has been updated to version 1.2. New stuff includes new prefs, new keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to create a new child note by dragging text or a file on to an existing note.

Cocoa Booklet turns PDFs into booklet foldables.

Kip looks very interesting. Think of it as iPhoto for your PDFs - it helps you store, tag, search and view PDFs. Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot of PDF-related apps for OS X, no doubt largely due to PDF creation and viewing being built into the OS. iPapers is another PDF manager, but one aimed at academics keeping track of research papers. It also has an iPhoto-ish design; note the Source list on the left, and the browse panel at the top.

Spammers don’t need to use clever (or unclever) web-scraping techniques when they can just harvest e-mail addresses by brute force. There’s just no other way to explain the correlation between the fury of suspicious, blank messages I’ve gotten lately along with the dramatic increase in offers for great sex-pills, “insider” stock info, and deals on vacations that are just too good to be true.

Parallels released the production version of their virtualization software for Intel-based Macs. I downloaded it this evening and took it for a test drive using a Windows XP SP2 Guest OS I installed under the earlier Release Candidate 2 version. It worked fine as expected. For those of you who have not seen Parallels Desktop for Mac shift between a window on top of Mac OS X to full-screen mode, I created a short video to show you what it looks like.

It is no secret that I spend most of my time doing what I enjoy most: public relations and communication. In many ways, working in this field is a blessing: things change quickly so you never get to bore yourself and, provided your chose your clients and partners with care, you are given an opportunity to introduce genuinely interesting products and services to the public. Yet, some of the tactics of a handful of companies scare me. I had a prime example today.

Bootcamp vs Parallels [NotebookReview]
Parallels announced today that their Desktop for Mac virtualization software has emerged from beta. Pick up a copy for 50 bucks. So? Apple’s Boot Camp or Parallel’s Virtual Machine? As far as I’m concerned, it’s Boot Camp for speed and true Windows performance and virtual machines (any implementation, not just this one) for data sharing and interaction. The Notebook Review article is a nice summary.

Free iPods for Factory Workers [Ars Technica]
Communicate with your workers via podcasts? National Semiconductor is buying $2.2 million of iPod communication goodness. No word on whether rivals will try to induce a KennyG worm to bring National Semiconductor to its knees.

RIAA versus YouTube lip synchers/dancers [TechDirt]
You know all those wacky videos of people lip synching or dancing to their fave songs? RIAA says cease and desist. If you haven’t licensed the tune, you can’t dance to it. At least not publicly.

Nielsen to track iPod Videos? [CNet]
Who’s watching you watch your iPod? Nielsen may start doing so. Advertising dollars may start to trickle down to the iPod, which is a great thing for both the consumer and the producers of video content, in my opinion. A 400-strong iPod viewing panel is likely by the end of 2006.

The Free iPod Nano deal hits Canada [Apple]
Finally. The student buy-a-mac-get-a-nano deal now extends North of the border.

Nike/iPod Sports Kit [Apple]
Now available for pre-order. I’m a New Balance girl myself, so I guess I’m missing out.

About a month ago I asked for opinions for a Cause for iPod nano spontaneous reset?. I seemed to run into this problem every couple of months on my iPod nano. I didn’t have any good theories, but fortunately, other people did. And, even more fortunately, Billy Oregon performed some detective work and found two MP3 files that can consistently cause a soft reset after selecting the Menu item. You can find his blog and sample video below. Anyone at Apple reading this? Fix it please!

For some time, I’ve been looking for a beats-per-minute analyzer for my iTunes library. So I was delighted to stumble across TagTraum’s beaTunes. By analyzing songs beats per minute, you can organize them for your workouts or for any other coordinated playback (like DJ’ing at a party). Unfortunately, beaTunes doesn’t deliver on the promise. It’s very, very, very slow. It took approximately 90 seconds to analyze a 22-second track. I put it out of my misery long before it had analyzed more than a few tracks. Also, it will not analyze FairPlay tracks which includes most purchases from the iTunes Music Store. Can anyone else recommend a good (quick and reliable) OS X BPM utility?

Why emulate when you can run native? The Alky project has been developing a binary translator for OS X that converts Windows executables into OS X binaries. The goal is to create a translator that combines a Windows app with a custom library specific to the OS X platform creating a program that runs natively on OS X. It’s still early days and the organizers are looking for C, Mac and Linux folk willing to help out with the open source project.

I just downloaded Adobe Lightroom Public Beta 3 and have been playing with some of its new features. This is a substantial upgrade from Beta 2, including a new module: Web.

That’s where I started experimenting. The Web templates are quite attractive. You have 3 presets — HTML gallery, Exif metadata, and Flash gallery. You have two options for exporting: Save to your hard drive or upload to your web server. You can enter your FTP settings directly in Lightroom saving you a couple steps.

The code Lightroom generates is XHTML compliant and looks fairly clean. It uses CSS and JavaScript to perform much of its appearance and navigation magic. I really liked how my generated site performed in both Safari and Firefox.

The Develop module also received some attention. You now have a set of tools above the filmstrip for Loupe View, Before View, Before/After, Crop Overlay, Hand Tool, and White Balance selector. In Beta 2, we just had the last three of those tools down there. You now get RGB value readouts too.

Overall, there are many UI refinements, and the performance was smooth… for the most part. I did crash the application once while working in the Web module. I’ll continue to explore Beta 3 in future posts. For now, I recommend you download it and give this latest version of Lightroom a spin.

Oh, and still no word on the Windows version yet. For now, the beta is only Mac.

• US: Mama's Room by Under the Influence of Giants
  This California group lives in an alternate reality where Hall and Oates, the Bee Gees, and Electric Light Orchestra are masters of the universe and punk rock and disco are constantly piped in over the loudspeakers of the world. Beguiling and completely compelling, “Mama’s Room” is our free Single of the Week.
• US: Dog Bites Man
  Get inside the van and travel with the hapless news team of KHBX-Spokane. Meet the world-weary reporter, the overzealous producer, the socially inept director, and the insanely annoying production assistant in this brand new Comedy Central series.
• US: The Adventures of Chico and Guapo - Episode 1
  This show follows two young record industry employees striving to make it big in the music business at Angelo Productions - in Chico’s case through hard work; in Guapo’s case through lame-brain scheming and lies. Watch the boys’ repeated attempts to push their fledgling band, Genius, into hip-hop stardom; Cezar’s miraculous transformations of Hank Holiday’s stale beats; Concepcion’s unbridled passion, and Mr. Angelo’s never-ending battle with his comb-over. Get into the studio with pop stars, hip-hop pioneers, blues legends and even America’s Most Talented Fetus in Season 1 of The Adventures of Chico and Guapo.
• US: This is Sports Center Promos
  Ever wonder what it’s like to work on the flagship show at the Worldwide Leader in Sports? With the “This Is SportsCenter.” advertising campaign you get a glimpse into what its like behind the scenes at ESPN…in the newsroom, at the water cooler, and even on the set. You’ll spend time with ESPN anchors and reporters, plus the occasional athlete or mascot that happens to stop by. “This Is SportsCenter.” your firsthand experience at ESPN…on iTunes.
• Australia: I Meant Something To You Once by Mia Dyson
  The wonderful Mia Dyson exceeds expectations again: “I Meant Something to You Once” drips with the singer’s soulful magic coupled with her unexpected control and mastery of blues guitar. This emotionally introspective work somehow manages to turn anguish into quietude. It’s also our free Single of the Week.
• Canada: State of the Union by David Ford
  David Ford has had the good fortune to land some impressive opening slot gigs with artists like KT Tunstall, Richard Ashcroft, Gomez, and Starsailor. These shows gave the British songwriter just the audience he needed - people who could appreciate both his gut-wrenching honesty and his soul-infused melodic twists. “State of the Union” is our free Single of the Week.
• UK: The Nomad by Niraj Chag
  Niraj Chag is a London-based producer and composer who fuses together the worlds of contemporary electronic and dance music with Indian classical music and traditional vocalists. Our free Single of the Week, “The Nomad”, is taken from Chag’s first album as a solo artist, Along the Dusty Road. The track’s thickly layered blend of percussion, vocals, reeds, and behind-the-scenes programming suggests new possibilities for Asian music.
• France: Femme lascive (Bless)
  Sur son premier album, Bless raconte ses histoires d’amour — ses histoires à elle, avec pudeur ou humour, en murmurant sa fragilité sans jouer les gamines ou, comme sur notre Single de la semaine, en s’alanguissant sans passer jamais pour une fille facile. Découvrez-la en téléchargeant « Femme Lascive » gratuitement sur iTunes.

It’s here at last, the free version of Google Sketchup that we’ve been waiting for ever since Google bought the company and made available a free Windows version.

Some interesting things to note, though. It’ll run on Panther, for one, and the minimum hardware spec is 400MHz, 128MB, and a 100% OpenGL-compliant video card.

If spend money on the pro version, you’ll be able to export at higher-than-screen resolution, export in all the most important 3D formats, export .mov and .avi walkthroughs, and get two years of email tech support.

But the core functionality - the stuff that lets you draw anything you can think of - is there for everyone, for free.

As someone who downloaded the trial version many years ago, loved it, but as a hobbyist couldn’t possibly justify spending hundreds of dollars on a license, this free version is very nearly a dream come true. I wrote to the Sketchup guys at the time, suggesting they consider a “Lite” version for people who wanted to “doodle” in 3D. Thanks to Google, that’s exactly what I’ve got.

I invested in a MacBook Pro 17″ to better handle Aperture, Lightroom, and other demanding apps. In the process, I’ve become hooked in Universal Binary software. So much so, that’s all I want on my MB Pro. But can man live by UB alone?

Why do I even care? Quite frankly, I like the way the software runs on the MacBook Pro. It launches quickly and performs with the speed I expected from this computer. Yes, I could run non-UB apps under Rosetta (MS Word, Photoshop, etc.), but why do it if I don’t have to?

For imaging software, the situation isn’t bad. iPhoto 6, Aperture, and Lightroom are my core apps, and they are UB. Photoshop CS and Elements are not. So I’ve rounded out my toolbox with LiveQuartz, EasyCrop, iPhoto Library Manager, and Boinx’s FotoMagico… all Universal Binary. And, I haven’t forgotten about the versatility of Apple’s Preview for lots of imaging tasks.

For word processing, I’ve stuck with Nisus Writer Express and Apple’s Pages to handle my Word docs. TextEdit can read them too. And every computer should have a copy of TextWrangler on it. MarsEdit is my blogging software of choice right now. FireFox and Safari are just fine as my web browsers.

I was happy to discover that Epson had released UB drivers for the R2400 printer, and Canon posted a UB version of its driver for my little i80 inkjet printer. Those are now installed and running beautifully.

SnapNDrag is a terrific screen capture tool (and it’s free), and I couldn’t imagine life without Audio Hijack Pro.

My MacBook Pro isn’t my everyday lug-around laptop yet, but I’m feeling like it could be. Often, when I’m doing intensive production work on it, I’ll take breaks to check mail, browse the web, and work on O’Reilly projects. So far, a Universal Binary existence is working just fine for me.

Allan Odgaard has written a number of applications and utilities in his time as a programmer. He’s written demos for the C64 and calendar apps for the Amiga. He even wrote a nifty MP3 player called MusicMate. But that’s not the “mate” he’s best known for. Allan is the lead- and sole-developer of TextMate, a very highly rated text editor for OS X.

Motivation

TextMate has, over the past year, undergone an explosion not just in popularity, but also in stability and usability. This sort of critical-mass exponential growth is something we’re used to seeing from, say, open source software. And TextMate does make great use of OSS scripting languages like ruby, perl, and python. But the application itself is closed-source and Allan is its only developer. How has he managed to stay so productive over the past year?

A good friend and author has passed, far too soon.

I just got word this morning from a friend at Apple that my friend and author, Michael Bartosh, died tragically on Saturday night/Sunday morning while in Japan.

It’s hard to know exactly what to say right now, other than I’m shocked and deeply saddened. Business issues aside, I’ve lost a friend, and the entire Mac community has lost a strong advocate for the platform.

Before he approached me a few years ago with a proposal to write a Mac OS X Server book for O’Reilly, I had been lurking on the macos-x-server list, watching and monitoring posts to find the right author for our book. Michael’s posts and replies always seemed helpful, and I was about to approach him to see if he was interested in writing a Server book for us when he beat me to the punch. In the same week that I received a proposal from Joel Rennich of AFP548, Bartosh’s proposal crossed my desk and I was left with a tough decision to make. Both proposals were great, but ultimately I chose Michael because I liked the depth and tack he planned to take with the book. (No offense, Joel.)

Some people think that the author/editor relationship is just a business relationship, but for me, it’s much different. I know my authors are pouring their heart and soul into their books, and I know they’re making sacrifices to write. When you work on a project with someone for more than a few weeks, you end up becoming friends. And with Michael, it was hard not to like the guy and want to be in his circle of friends. When you’re an editor, you get to know the author as more than just another writer, but as a person, and they get to know you, and that’s the sort of relationship I like to have with my authors. I’ve always thought, “Life is too short, so let’s have fun with this project and make it the best.”

I’ll be honest here, Michael wasn’t the best author I had in the sense of meeting deadlines, but I have to admit in the 9+ years I’ve been editing books for O’Reilly, he was the best damned technical writer I’ve worked with. Hands-down. Michael didn’t pull any punches, and that’s one of the things I liked most about him. He was a perfectionist, and he took the time to test things over and over to make sure what he was writing reflected what was the current state of the technology. When we first started working on “Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration,” Michael asked if I thought he was being too critical of something (I honestly can’t remember what it was now), and my response to him was “Hell no!”, because not only was he being critical, he was being critical with an authoritative voice, and he offered solutions and work-arounds to the problem. I told him not to fear being critical, because that’s what our readers wanted — an authority, and someone who’s got your back. Michael knew his shit, and he could make sense out of complex topics like Open Directory and Directory Services, and do it in such a way that he made you feel smart, too.

Great guy. Excellent writer. Huge loss for us all, especially his family and friends closer than I.

Fair winds and following seas, Michael.

That John Dvorak trolls Mac users is not news. That he is happy to admit doing so is slightly more interesting - it’s more than most newspaper editors will ever do.

I say that because Dvorak’s method of generating readers for his employer’s site is age-old in publishing. For a long time now, newspapers have paid op-ed writers and columnists to be controversial. Annoying readers is one of the best ways to get them to respond - traditionally with a letter, and these days with an email or a posted comment.

It’s also a good way of getting readers to talk to their friends about the publication: “Have you seen what Dvorak’s said this time? I can’t believe he came out with that!” The word spreads. In Dvorak’s own words, it’s good for the numbers.

He writes the way he does because that’s the job of a pundit. To be opinionated, especially if that opinion is going to get people all steamed up.

So I’m almost in admiration of Mr Dvorak for standing up and being so honest about his role. And the best thing of all is that next time he starts baiting the Mac-owning community, we can just sit back and smile and nod our heads and say: “Yeah John, we suck. We know.”

The Nintendo DS Lite became officially available in the US today (June 11 - though some stores jumped the gun and had them on shelves last week). Being a doting dad, I went out and bought one for my child (Hey, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it :-) and to compare it to the first generation DS Phat.

Anti-DRM protestors plan to flashmob Apple stores across the US, and possibly in other countries too, just before lunchtime today.

Protest plans are circulating on various mailing lists and forums, with links to Defective by Design, the group organizing the event.

Are you planning to attend? If you do and you take any pictures, it would be great to see them on Flickr tagged with “defectivebydesign” so the rest of us can get an idea of what happens.

The protests are set to take place between 10am and 12 noon local time - which means that the London one should be well under way as I type this, if it’s happening at all.

• The Adventures of Chico and Guapo - Episode 1 [New]
  This show follows two young record industry employees striving to make it big in the music business at Angelo Productions - in Chico’s case through hard work; in Guapo’s case through lame-brain scheming and lies. Watch the boys’ repeated attempts to push their fledgling band, Genius, into hip-hop stardom; Cezar’s miraculous transformations of Hank Holiday’s stale beats; Concepcion’s unbridled passion, and Mr. Angelo’s never-ending battle with his comb-over. Get into the studio with pop stars, hip-hop pioneers, blues legends and even America’s Most Talented Fetus in Season 1 of The Adventures of Chico and Guapo.
• Dog Bites Man: Assignment Bodybuilders [New]
  Get inside the van and travel with the hapless news team of KHBX-Spokane. Meet the world-weary reporter, the overzealous producer, the socially inept director, and the insanely annoying production assistant in this brand new Comedy Central series.
• Making Fiends from Nickelodeon
  With her screaming vegetables, overgrown hamsters, rabid pencils and other fiendish creations, Vendetta ruled the schoolyard and terrorized her classmates…until Charlotte showed up.
• Comedy Central MotherLoad Web Shows
  Check out the latest from a massive comedy video fvault with original shows like “Golden Age”, a sordid look at the lives of classic cartoon charactes. Serf your way through plagues and crusades or take a tastelessly twisted camping trip with “Shadow Rock”.
• Cars Video Podcast from Disney/Pixar
  Hit the road with a fast-paced comedy adventure set inside the world of cars. Take a ride behind the scenes and learn about the magic that went into the production of the movie.
• Sci Fi Inside - Battlestar Galactica
  The last remnants of humanity are on the run, fighting an enemy they created — and they can’t detect. Now, as it prepares for a new season, take a behind-the-scenes look at life on board the Battlestar Galactica. Watch exclusive interviews with the people at the heart of one of television’s most acclaimed shows, from executive producer Ron Moore to cast members Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Tricia Helfer, and Katee Sackhoff. Get up to speed with the crew’s adventures so far in this free episode, and get a sneak peek at some of the upcoming action in the new season, premiering January 6, 2006.
  Battlestar Galactica is an intriguing take on the classic adventure of a ragtag fleet of humans — the sole survivors of a devastating nuclear attack by the robot Cylons. Faced with an un-winnable battle against a deadly enemy, they are forced to flee under the protection of their one remaining warship, the outdated Battlestar Galactica. Commander Adama (Olmos) and President Roslin (McDonnell) lead these last remnants of humanity in search of a new home — a planet called Earth.
• Lost: Bad Twin (Free First Chapter)
  Paul Artisan, P.I. is a new version of an old breed: a righter of wrongs, someone driven to get to the bottom of things. Too bad his usual cases are of the boring malpractice and fraud variety. Until now.
  Troup's long-awaited Bad Twin is a suspenseful novel that touches on many powerful themes, including the consequence of vengeance, the power of redemption, and where to turn when all seems lost.
  
  Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary Troup. Bad Twin was delivered to the publisher just days before Troup boarded Oceanic Flight 815, which was lost in flight from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles in September 2004. In addition to his many novels of mystery and crime, Gary Troup authored several non-fiction books including The Valenzetti Equations. His disappearance is mourned by all who knew him and enjoyed his work.

The Register reports that Norway’s consumer ombudsman has ruled against Apple and iTunes. Apple has two weeks to make iTunes more consumer friendly. Apple must take responsibility for any damages created by the use of iTunes and must update its EULA to be governed by Norwegian law (currently it’s regulated under the UK). Apple has two weeks to comply.

I’ve put together a digital photography workshop with my friend Ben Long, and we’re taking it on the high seas to the Western Caribbean. This Geek Cruise (Oct. 28 - Nov. 4, 2006) features stops in Key West, Florida; Belize City, Belize; Sano Tomoas De Castillo, Guatemala; and Cozumel, Mexico. The sailing begins and ends in Tampa, Florida. The photo classes will be integrated with the various stops along the way. Here’s a quick overview of the topics we’ll cover.

• Location Shooting Techniques
• Introduction to Shooting RAW in the Field
• Introduction to Adobe Bridge and Photoshop Workflow
• Introduction to the iPhoto 6 and Photoshop Elements 4 Workflow
• Introduction to the Aperture Workflow
• Photography Clinic
• Exposure Techniques for Minimum Post Production
• Photoshop for Photographers
• Mastering the 80 percent: Image Editing in iPhoto 6, Aperture, and Elements 4

We have three instructors for this week-long workshop: writer, photographer Ben Long, Macworld Magazine editor Kelly Turner, and myself, Derrick Story.

While at sea, we’ll get together in classrooms and learn techniques in preparation for our excursions in the Western Caribbean. Then, when we return to the ship, we’ll compare our experiences, fine tune our techniques, and prepare for the next adventure. We’ll even have open camera clinics where you can ask any question and have us help you with your equipment.

I should also mention that this is a full-blown Mac Mania cruise. So we’ll have the likes of Dan Frakes, Rob Griffiths, and Macworld Mag Editorial Director Jason Snell speaking. TV/podcast personality Leo Laporte (of “This Week in Tech” and “Tech TV” fame) and author-columnist-personality Andy Ihnatko will be available most evenings (7pm to 8pm) at the “MacMania Ingenious Bar” to help cruisers with their Mac problems. And one of my personal favorites, Sal Soghoian will be onboard teaching AppleScript and Automator hacks.

If you’re interested in a late-season photo vacation this year, take a look at the Geek Cruise home page for complete information about the trip, the photo workshop, and the other sessions offered on this cruise. As a tempting teaser, you might want to take a look at some of my photos from the Mexico cruise. You’ll see a mix of location shots combined with the images from ship life while at sea. It’s a powerful experience.

Technorati Tags: digital photography

So here’s the deal with me and partition naming (no, there’s no useful point to this blog; it’s entirely personal)…

I’ve been playing around with Google’s new spreadsheet webapp. My default browser continues to be Camino, which coped with the empty Google Spreadsheets interface, but crashed once I tried to use a medium-size table o’ figures.

But Firefox worked OK - indeed, the whole thing looked much better, much smarter and clearer, in Firefox.

So what did I make of the service? Most of the basic spreadsheet functions are there, but to me it feels not quite as exciting as some of Google’s other webapp products.

Why? Because Gmail and Writely feel like software built for the web, while Google Spreadsheets (they need a shorter name for it, don’t they?) feels like a desktop app that’s been squeezed into a browser window. It’s not the same.

The controls are jumbled around the top of your browser window. The File menu goes right at the top. Format stuff gets a tab of controls of its own. Cut, Copy and Paste are pulled out from everything else and stuck over on the right side. Sure, it’s all perfectly usable, but it lacks the polish, the degree of forethought that’s been put into Gmail, Writely and other products.

It was also slow, at least on my machine. Another great aspect of Gmail is that in many circumstances, it’s just as fast, if not faster, than using a desktop mail client. In my (albeit brief) experience so far, Google Spreadsheets can’t make the same claim.

Still, you have to admire Google for so much. This is another product of its Labs, another piece in the much-rumored Google Office jigsaw, another means for people to do useful cool stuff in their web browser without having to spend a lot of money on software. As it improves, it will doubtless become an invaluable tool for a lot of people.

Google Spreadsheets supports IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and Camino but provides no Safari support. (It worked fine on the Mac under Firefox.) Which begs the question: Do you trust a third-party web-based application with your data? Particularly Google which has had a few rather embarassing data loss incidents? On the upside, gSpreadsheets offers .xls and .csv file downloads. Downside? The formatting is pretty primitive even though the basics are all on-offer: bolding, highlighting, underlining, merging cells and more. I was even able to drag between cells to create a range for my in-progress formula.

I just signed in to the new Google Spreadsheet and am impressed with it so far. Since Apple’s own iWork ‘06 lacks a full spreadsheet, the Google Spreadsheet might be a good complement to iWorks when connected to the net.

On the offchance that you’re

• a keen U2 fan who doesn’t already own an iPod, or
• really into black and red, or
• obsessive about being more different than all the other different people,

you might well want to buy one of these:

It costs a little more than a standard iPod - $329 versus $299 for a plain white 30GB - and the only difference, as confirmed by the comparison chart is the black and red shell. Oh, and there’s coupon for 30 minutes of U2 video from the iTMS (which isn’t available in all countries, watch out for that).

Apple has contributed to the free software ecosystem in a number of ways
besides just releasing software. By basing its operating
system on NeXT, parts of the BSD operating system, and GNU software, Apple has demonstrated that a commercial operating system based on Free Software is a viable business model.

Free Software is adaptable to a variety of business models, you can even
sell Apache or the GIMP if you want to. Download it, burn it to CD, and
sell the CDs. You may not make a lot of money because everyone else can
do this too, but there is nothing stopping you legally.

The new PC-BSD distribution is similar in many ways to Apple’s OS X.
While Apple uses proprietary bits from NeXT along with Free Software,
PC-BSD uses FreeBSD 6. Apple has shown there is room for a variety of
UNIX-like platforms that serve a variety of users, PC-BSD is filling a
niche and further demonstrating the thriving nature of the free software
ecosystem. Perhaps there is a direct connection between PC-BSD and
Apple, perhaps certain Apple hackers have hacked a bit on the PC-BSD
code or fixed bugs in the common code base they share. But most of all,
Apple’s daring business model that recognized the superiority of UNIX
and Free Software showed that there is room for more than just Microsoft
in the computing world.

Terminal’s command line makes it simple to set permissions for any of your OS X files. Permissions specify access control–who may read, write or execute your files. The chmod command takes two or more arguments, the first is a multi-digit number that specifies your control choices, the rest is a list of files affected by this change.

The multi-digit number is created by summing up the permissions you’d like to apply. Quoting from the OS X manual pages, these numbers are as follows:

4000: (the set-user-ID-on-execution bit) Executable files with this bit set will run with effective uid set to the uid of the file owner. Directories with the set-user-id bit set will force all files and sub-directories created in them to be owned by the directory owner and not by the uid of the creating process, if the underlying file system supports this feature: see chmod(2) and mount(8).
2000: (the set-group-ID-on-execution bit) Executable files with this bit set will run with effective gid set to the gid of the file owner.
1000: (the sticky bit) See chmod(2) and sticky(8).
0400: Allow read by owner.
0200: Allow write by owner.
0100: For files, allow execution by owner. For directories, allow the owner to search in the directory.
0040: Allow read by group members.
0020: Allow write by group members.
0010: For files, allow execution by group members. For directories, allow group members to search in the directory.
0004: Allow read by others.
0002: Allow write by others.
0001: For files, allow execution by others. For directories allow others to search in the directory.

So, to set a file’s permissions to universal read, universal write you must sum up the read attributes and the write attributes for owner, group members and others: 0400 + 0200 + 0040 + 0020 + 0004 + 0002, which equals 0666 or more simply 666:

% touch bar
% chmod 666 bar
% ls -l bar
-rw-rw-rw-   1 ericasad  ericasad  0 Jun  6 08:03 bar

• US: Wound Up by Office
  Chicago’s Office (no “the”) take guitar pop back to the board room. With their black tie/white shirt aesthetic and linear power pop, the group make references to the day-to-day doldrums of cube life in appearance and presentation, but music-wise, they turn into weekend warriors. “Wound Up” is our free Single of the Week.
• US: It's Your Wedding Day by Stephen Lynch
  The Wedding Singer is most certainly the first Broadway show to ever be based around an Adam Sandler film (although it’s tempting to think of what Andrew Lloyd Weber could do for Billy Madison). The show’s major emotional turning point, the ’80s power-rock show-stopper “It’s Your Wedding Day” is our free Discovery Download.
• Australia: Captured (Live Version) by Bic Runga
  Bic Runga is the most successful artist in New Zealand history with over half a million albums sold worldwide. This version of “Captured”, taken from her latest album Birds was recorded at the Civic Theatre, Auckland in November 2005 and is a perfect example of her singing prowess. It’s free here on iTunes as our featured Single of the Week.
• Canada: Love Train by Wolfmother
  Is there more to Wolfmother outside of the lead singer’s fabulous Afro and his rare ability to wear a very small vest and actually look cool? Normally, this would be enough, but in the case of this Australian power trio, it’s just the beginning of their effortless chic. “Love Train” is a ritualistic heavy metal dance party - without any of that irritating devil worship.
• UK: Gravity In Crisis by The Longcut
  Early on in their career, Manchester’s Longcut set out to be an all-instrumental group; with their inspiration coming from acts like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Fugazi, that ambition wasn’t too far off from reality. But then they opted to utilize drummer Stuart Ogilvie. Alternating between bringing up the taut rhythm section and leading with his sing/shout vocals, Ogilvie helped bring a new urgency to the band’s sound. The fluid “Gravity in Crisis” is our free Single of the Week.
• France: La petite Léonine by K
  Au pied de sa lettre, l’auteur-compositeur-interprète K — Nicolas Michel pour l’état-civil suisse — donne libre cours à son irrévérencieuse et débordante énergie. Ses chansons à texte, tour à tour secouées de tempos rockeurs, bercées d’airs de reggae, d’un brin de salsa, d’une pointe de country moqueuse ou d’ambiance franchement musette, révèlent les mille et une facettes d’un chanteur prometteur qui ne se débine pas lorsqu’il s’agit de s’ouvrir, de s’offrir.

A super-quick tour of what OmniDazzle can do, for people who don’t have the time or the graphics card or the inclination to try it out for themselves.

When I was editing Ubuntu Hacks, Sanders Kleinfeld (the book’s Production Editor) suggested using a more active screenshot of GAIM than the one we were using (the screenshot we used showed the login screen).

I wanted to make the screenshot quickly, so I didn’t want to hassle with asking someone permission to show their screen name. So, I figured a conversation with a chatterbot would be a good idea. First I tried infocombot, but it was down.

So, I gave the Encarta bot a whirl, and I asked it something that would give a few readers a chuckle. I was very surprised by its response!

Most serious Mac users these days have heard of Quicksilver, the launcher/file manager/all-purpose-do-everything app that attracts almost cult-like devotion from some users.

But not all Quicksilver users will have heard of Constellation mode; certainly most non-Quicksilver users are likely to be unfamiliar with it.

While Quicksilver as a whole is about using the keyboard as your primary interface with the computer, its Constellation mode brings back a degree of mouse-oriented control. So in one fell swoop it almost turns the whole idea of Quicksilver on its head, but it also opens up Quicksilver to a wider audience. Some folks genuinely prefer to click with a mouse than have to remember key combinations, and in Constellation mode, Quicksilver may appeal to them much more than it used to.

An old friend called in a panic the other day. The modem on her G3 lime iMac had crapped out, and she needed to get online that evening. We verified that she could still get a dial tone on the line. Had her reboot. No dice. “Still no broadband?,” I asked. “Maybe someday. Haven’t gotten around to it.”

Started troubleshooting. “Click the blue apple icon in the top left of your screen,” I said. “I only have a rainbow apple.” Uh-oh. OS9 user on dial-up. How do people live? Time had caught up with her. Fortunately she had a bit of cash. Told her to order DSL, and meanwhile, I’d pick up a new iMac to get her online by evening. A new Mac is a very expensive modem — even as a stopgap — but the time was ripe.

An hour later, showed up at her place to set up the unit and started plugging in cables. You know what happens next — no RJ-11 on the back of the Mac. And then I remembered reading the news five months ago. “Uhhh… Ummm… I may have to make another trip to the Apple store to, um, pick up a modem.” Watching her excitement about the new Mac turn to puzzlement and then anger was not pretty.

But what looked like a brewing embarrassment soon turned golden, as we booted up and the registration app looked for a connection. She hadn’t asked for Wi-Fi, but she got it — no less than five Wi-Fi networks in the immediate vicinity, one of them belonging to a friendly neighbor, who happily shared its password.

So not only did she not need a modem after all, she didn’t need DSL either. Wi-Fi is flowing through our neighborhoods like water from drinking fountains, like the air we breathe (password-protected air, but air nonetheless). Question is, was she (or was I) incredibly lucky, or is this sort of situation typical? And the bigger question: Why in the world did the Apple store rep not offer to sell me a modem? They certainly do a good job of pitching other accessories.

I’m sure plenty of people went through similar scenarios when Apple disappeared the floppy drive a few centuries ago.

Last week (and the week before) we heard some compelling arguments for the support of legacy platforms. We also learned of the customer service advantages this kind of support can lend a company. But what if there is no company? What if, instead of a team of coders on a project, you find yourself the sole developer? And what if that project, instead of being a simple arcade game from the ’90s, is nothing short of an award-winning replacement for the Finder itself?

This is the situation Steve Gehrman, sole developer of the acclaimed utility Path Finder, found himself in when contemplating the fourth major release of his über file manager. In moving forward, he decided to eschew legacy platforms and, with the help of tech support and web design whiz Neil Lee, make PF4 a Tiger-only app. How has this strategy worked out for these two gentlemen of Cocoatech? “It was the right decision,” says Steve.

While I’ve only just yesterday downloaded and installed the ProVoc Vocabulary Trainer, I am enamored already. At first glance it might be mistaken for a simple flash card app, but there is actually quite a bit more to this sophisticated program’s features. Progress reports, testing parameters, synonyms, import/export, flash-card printing, and much more. And even if there aren’t many vocabulary files available to download yet, the import is a simple tab-delimited or csv text file away.

Oh yes, there’s also iPod support (quizzes on the go), iSight support (add sound or video to your vocabulary), Spotlight support, and a Dashboard Widget.

Did I mention it’s free?

Looks like it’s about time for me to practice my Español again. Mi profesor, Señor Gonzales, would be very happy. :)

I just read a pretty good article on Swapping Hard Drives on the 13-Inch MacBook, and it got me thinking again about the decisions I wrestled with when I bought my 17″ Pro.

I’m amazed at how small hard drives are these days for these powerful computers. The stock drives I had to choose from for the 17″ MacBook Pro were only 120 GB (5400 rpm) and 100 GB (7200 rpm) — MacBook owners can get something as small as 60 GBs… ack!. I reluctantly chose the 100 GB because I’m a heavy Aperture user and needed the fast disk speed. But what I really want is a 250 GB internal hard drive that spins at 7200 rpm. Or maybe a bank of 100 GB drives spinning at 7200. I’d be willing to give up the optical drive to make room.

Tempting… very tempting.

When I wrote last, my MacBook Pro was going into the shop for Battery Issues, and a “Heat Perception Issue.” It appears, though, that I was nowhere near the only one whose battery was crapping out. Sean Bonner and Jonas Luster are all over this, and reports are flowing into their comments suggestions that it’s not just Sean’s friends who are having battery troubles, it’s a lot deeper than that.

Battery recalls are no fun, as anyone who once upon a time had a PowerBook 5300 that burst into flame can tell you, so it’s no surprise that Apple is only quietly doing replacements. There’s a point where you just have to fix the issue whether or not the PR hit will be worth it. Of course, my MacBook Pro has come back with a new mobo, a new battery, heat sensor and express card cage, but the heat issue remains.

Has your battery suddenly died? Tell us your story.

Yesterday, just about everybody in the industry received a press release from the very nice people of Bare Bones Software regarding a new AppleScript of theirs. Yes, an AppleScript, you read well. What does this script do? Attempt to solve one of the largest pains for web developers related to embedding rich content to a page.

I installed Parallels Desktop RC2 on my 2GHz MacBook with 1GB RAM this evening. After going through the simple setup procedure, I installed Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and then a couple of apps (including some beta release software). Everything looks good so far.