As I wade through the powerful suite of applications that make up Adobe’s CS3 packages, I’m finding that a background application in CS2 has made some giant strides here in CS3 and now stands out as a great program on it’s own. It’s Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge CS3 is a powerful, easy-to-use media manager, allowing [...]
Continue reading about Bridge: The Glue That Holds Together CS3
If you have a video iPod, iPhone or AppleTV, you’re probably trying to find a way to make video clips that will work with iTunes and be formatted properly for those devices. I found ViddyUp !from splasm.com – it’s $10 shareware and they promise to be the tool to solve this problem. We’ve talked about other applications that do this, but for $10 this one sure seemed worth giving a whirl, even if I do feel silly pronouncing the name. they even have on their website the line “Say ‘howdy pardner’ to ViddyUp!, the iPod & Apple TV video wrangler.” Have you noticed that while it’s all the rage to drop the “e” in the name of your site, it’s also all the rage to put an exclamation point at the end of your name? SuperDuper! InstantShot! ViddyUp! whew – I’m so excited about all this software!
I’ve struggled with how to describe how these kinds of tools draw the little boxes to represent file size, according to the derlien website they are called treemaps. And get this, Disk Inventory X as a project came to the developer when he was looking at WinDirStat. It all comes together!
Disk Inventory X pops open with a listing of current disk usage and free space. At the bottom there’s a button that says Select Folder. I decided to check my Podfeet folder, because big old audio files keep sneaking into that folder somehow! In just a few seconds I had a two pane window with a slideout drawer AND an information window. The left pane is a list of folders within the Podfeet folder, the right pane is the treemap – pretty little blue, green and red rectangles of different sizes. The pullout drawer gives you the key to the colors – it shows the largest collection of file types down to the smallest with the corresponding colors.
For example, most of my rectangles are blue, so it turns out blue means GarageBand projects. that’s a pretty specific connection – not just that it’s an audio file, Disk Inventory X is smart enough to understand what kind of files you’d have on the Mac. Let’s take a quick break to notice that my GarageBand files are taking up 9.2GB, which is absurd! I only need those files for about a week after the show to be sure no one writes me to point out that I pronounced Vista backwards or whatever goofy error I did that week! This is good news because it will let us see how well this tool helps me figure out what files I can delete.
Welcome to episode 118 of the MacReviewCast, I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more.
Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast:
Vote for MacReviewCast on Podcast Awards (Best Podcast in Mobile Phone Format): http://www.podcastawards.com
Highlight Show and Tell: http://krugazor.free.fr/software/highlight
MacTracker: http://www.mactracker.ca
Privateer Gemini Gold: http://priv.solsector.net
EZMoney Home: http://adoracom.com/ezmoney/eng/index.html
xPad: http://www.getxpad.com
Page Packer: http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=23
Bleezer: http://larryborsato.com/bleezer
MPEG – Streamclip: http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
CeltX- http://www.celtx.com/index.html
Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast joins us for a look at:
Disk InventoryX: http://derlien.com/
Then David Sparks from MacSparky joins us for his review of:
OmniDazzle: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidazzle
Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us from Spain and discusses
Adobe Encore: http://www.adobe.com
LEvertigo Prune: http://www.chrismarshall.ws/?p=843
Jeff Powell cannot join us today.
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By Chris Marshall: Encore CS3 ($799 as part of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, Upgrade from $299) is packed with a rich set of creative tools for DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring and SWF export to the web. “Between Blu-ray Disc output and the ability to publish SWF content to the web with just one click, [...]
Continue reading about Adobe Encore CS3: A Production Suite Hidden Gem
Let’s start with a problem statement – you just bought an iPhone and it does 28 different things for you, and you just want MORE! You can use your iPod as a storage device, to transfer files, but why oh why can’t the iPhone do it too? enter iPhoneDrive from ecamm.com (that’s ecamm with 2 m’s). According to their website, “iPhoneDrive’s familiar Mac OS X interface makes it simple to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone. Just drag and drop files between the iPhoneDrive window and your desktop, or use the iPhoneDrive toolbar. Storing files on your iPhone enables you to use your iPhone to backup data or transfer between Macs. “
Continue reading about iPhoneDrive: Using Your iPhone’s Drive for Storage
By Wayne LeFevre I thought I would share with you a review that I did on a pair of speakers in the latest issue of macCompanion, July of 2007. I was so impressed with these speakers, I thought that you and your listeners would like to hear about a rather upscale addition to their Macs [...]
This little gadget allows you to charge an iPod and just about any other kind of cell phone from a single AC plug. The myCharger device is compact charger with a USB female plug on the bottom. You can plug an iPod cord in the bottom and charge your iPod or iPhone directly. It also has a separate cord with a usb plug on one end and an adapter on the other end. It also comes with a series of plugs for the adapter that allows you to charge several different brands of cell phones including Blackbery, LG Mobile, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. I took it into the office and managed to charge everyone’s phone.
Tekkeon also sales add-ons to allow you to charge other 5 volt devices and international plugs for serious travelers.
There are many charging products on the market. I think the Tekkeon myCharger is really best for travelers or others who find themselves carrying several chargers. Using this product, you can cut down on the clutter in your bag.
You can find the myCharger online for about $19.
As always I like to start with a problem to be solved. I’m going to Italy in a couple of weeks, (ok, that’s not the problem) and I don’t speak a word of Italian. In fact, I don’t even know Spanish which evidently is a big help at least in understanding Italian. My son has a couple years of Spanish under his belt, but probably not enough to get us through. My friend Diane turned me onto what might be a good solution that doesn’t require me to learn anything, AND doesn’t require me to carry a heavy and inconvenient phrase book around. It’s called iSpeak Italian by Alex Chapin. This is an MP3 CD that you put on your computer inside iTunes, and it syncs in with your iPod.
Welcome to episode 117 of the MacReviewCast, I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more.
Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast:
DejaMenu: http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html
Mouse Locator: http://www.2point5fish.com
JiveTalk Mobile Messenger: http://www.beejive.com/iphone
Cog: http://cogx.org
Rapido Apps: http://www.app4mac.com
Metadata Hootenanny: http://www.applesolutions.com/bantha/MH.html
Posterazor: http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=about&lang=english
Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast joins us for a look at:
iPhoneDrive: http://www.ecamm.com
Then David Sparks from MacSparky joins us for his review of:
MyCharger by Tekkeon: http://www.tekkeon.com
Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us from Spain and discusses
Adobe After Effects: http://www.adobe.com
McNucle Server Software: http://www.inuron.com
The Videator: http://www.stone.com/Videator
I really love all the creative things I can do with my Mac. Before going to college I used to play the saxophone and piano professionally. Somehow I’d lost touch with music over the past 20 years but since the Mac makes it so easy, I’ve found myself really enjoying a resurgance of music in my life. I’ve even posted a few of my songs up on MacSparky.com.
Anyway, one problem I ran into when recording music was decent playback. Specifically, when I’ve to several instruments playing at once it is hard to get a feel for the right levels through my MacBook’s speakers. Sure I can plug in headphones but I wanted more. I wanted to rattle the house with my subwoofer . I have an airport express that allows me to play iTunes through the stereo so why not Logic and GarageBand? I kept looking for a way to hack around my airport express but never quite got it to work. I was explaining this problem to one of my favorite Apple Store geniuses when he just smiled and said … “Oh .. you need Airfoil”
This new, fast, and intuitive animation tool lets you squash and stretch images or text to bring it to life as an animated character. Use Motion Sketch to record the position and speed of your puppet movements, the Starch tool to stiffen areas of the character, and the Overlap tool to control the depth of elements of your puppet.
Continue reading about What’s New in Adobe After Effects in CS3
It’s been several days of working with my new dual monitor setup and I’ve run into a few problems. First, as you can see from the picture, I’ve got dual Apple Cinema Displays, 20 inch, connected to my Mac Pro. I have one set up directly across from me and the second one off to [...]
I’ve wracked my brains to think of an appropriate analogy for this my latest review project. It sounds a bit cliche, but this sums it up perfectly:
“I does exactly what it says on the tin!”
Klix is designed to recover pictures and movies due to card corruption, reformatting or accidental deletion. It works with any USB or FireWire camera and all media card formats and adapters.
There’s no doubt that the days of film based cameras are dwindling but at least you couldn’t reformat or corrupt a negative. But it’s a fact of life with digital memory cards they can wrong or even worse get deleted accidentally!
Continue reading about Klix: Digital Picture Recovery Software
Welcome to episode 116 of the MacReviewCast, I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more.
Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast:
OWC: http://www.macsales.com
FIT Child Safety Flyer and Links: http://www.friendsintech.com/index.php/archives/152
Alpha baby: http://www.kldickey.addr.com/alphababy
MacUpdate promo: http://mupromo.com
Most Useful Freeware Mac Applications: http://rangit.com/operating-systems/top-40-most-useful-free-mac-os-x-softwares
Apple Boot Camp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
Applejack: http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
Burn: http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/
Butler: http://www.manytricks.com/butler/
Chicken of the VNC: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc
Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
ClamXAV: http://www.clamxav.com
CyberDuck FT: http://cyberduck.ch/
Desktop manager: http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3463
FinderPOP: http://www.finderpop.com
Imagewell: http://xtralean.com/IWOverview.html
iWebMore: http://iwebmore.ctrl-j.eu/iWebMore.html
iWillQuit: http://homepage.mac.com/djodjodesign/rightEN.html#iWillQuit
LinoType Font Explorer: http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX
Max: http://sbooth.org/Max
MenuMeters: http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/
Namely: http://amarsagoo.info/namely
OnyX: http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_tiger.html
Robert Hazelrigg joins us with a special review of Adobe Illustrator CS3!
Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast joins us for a look at:
iSpeak italian: Amazon Store
Then David Sparks from MacSparky joins us for his review of:
Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us from Spain and discusses
Skitch: http://plasq.com/skitch
Jeff Powell joins us today. He looks at:
GhostReader
Vienna 2.2
Fly Gesture to be free
iConiCal v1.2
Wayne LeFevre from the macCompanion online magazinejoins us today. Here’s what he looks at:
Ferguson Hill Speakers: http://www.fergusonhill.co.uk
