Saturday, December 22, 2007

Photo Scanning Date Tip

If you've ever tried scanning old photographs and then managing them with modern software like Aperture or iPhoto, you know that date and time stamps can be a hassle. By default, a freshly scanned image will import into Aperture with the file's creation date (i.e. today's date), not the date the photo was taken. To remedy this situation, the free command line exiftool can be used with a command like the following:

exiftool "-dateTimeOriginal=1985:12:01 12:00:00-05:00" img036.jpg

The above example sets the date EXIF tag for img036.jpg to December 1st, 1985 (the time stamp is irrelevant). Even if you don't know the exact date the photo was taken, it's helpful to at least have the correct year in the EXIF tags. After setting the date, import into Aperture or iPhoto, and the photograph will be sorted correctly by date rather than appearing at the top with all your latest photos.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

iPhone Web Sites

For all of you iPhoners out there, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite iPhone formatted web sites to enhance your holiday browsing and bring joy into your hearts. 

To begin with, although NetNewsWire is a great RSS feed reader for your Mac and has an online equivalent for your phone, the mobile version doesn't even compare to the new mobile Google Reader.   Google Reader has a stunningly well designed (and beautiful) iPhone interface which automatically keeps your reading list in sync wherever you read.  Read some news on your home computer, some more on your phone, and then even more at work (gasp) and Google Reader will seamlessly keep track of what you've read and what you haven't.   To view Reader on your iPhone, just go to the Google home page and click the reader button at the top; going to the normal reader link on your phone won't give you the mobile interface, so make sure to navigate there from www.google.com on your phone.

Another favorite when out and about is Amazon's iPhone interface.  Fairly well designed and handy for price or rating checking when browsing books at your local bookstore.  Great for making sure those bargain books are really worth it!  Just go to the normal Amazon site on your iPhone and it should auto-redirect you to the iPhone optimized page.

For mobile weather, Apple's built in weather widgets are great, but I often find myself wanting to see a real forecast with details rather than just a little sun or rain cloud with a temperature, don't you?  One of  my favorite weather sites, the Weather Underground, has finally made my dreams come true with their iPhone optimized weather site.  If you forget the URL, they have a little tiny link on the top of their normal website.  It's cool.  Seriously.  

Well, there you have it - three of my favorite little iPhone sites for getting your internet fix on the go.  Enjoy.

iPhone Number 2 Smartphone Already?

According to this article, the iPhone already holds 27% of the smart phone market share in North America and is second only to Blackberry!  Fairly impressive for a phone which is only six months old; just wait until developers get their hands on the iPhone SDK in February and all sorts of craziness will break loose.
The study looked at third quarter sales of smartphones and found that in its first full quarter, the iPhone has already outsold all of the Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm phones and now holds a 27 percent market share in North America.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Holiday Season

It's the holiday season, and time to search for gifts for your hard to please friends and relatives. If you're considering purchasing a gift certificate from Amazon.com this year, and you buy it through this link , Chimoosoft will earn a small referral commission! What a great way to help out your favorite Mac software developer during the holidays!!

Amazon gift cards are a great idea simply because Amazon sells such a massive variety of products.  Books, music, movies, computer software and hardware, TV and stereo equipment, camera gear, etc.!  Free shipping on orders over $25, yada yada...

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Hosting Issues

Finally got around to switching web hosting providers for Chimoosoft.com away from Yahoo.  Although Yahoo has been very reliable and hassle free over the years, there were several big drawbacks to it: FTP access only (no SFTP), an older version of PHP, no web statistics for PHP pages (even though they were supposed to be available), no SVN hosting, no Ruby on Rails support, no terminal access, etc..  

Our new hosting provider is Webfaction which has much more customizability and should help Chimoosoft.com evolve into a more fully featured site.  During the transition process, the domain temporarily pointed at nothing Sunday morning for a few hours; if you were directed to a temporary Go Daddy parking page, now you know why.  Email may also have bounced back to you, so please try sending it again.  Sorry for the trouble - note that this is Chimoosoft's first hosting provider change in about five years, so this doesn't happen too often!

If you're curious about Webfaction - so far, so good.  I'll post more information about the provider as time passes.  Go Daddy seems to have worked fine, but the site was incredibly confusing and poorly laid out (IMHO) - pretty much the opposite of Apple's clean design principles!

PS: If you get tempted by webfaction, signing up through this link will give Chimoosoft a bonus!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Cocoa Foot Dipping

In my ramblings about the internet today I came across Andy Matuschak's gentle introduction to Cocoa entitled "Getting Started with Cocoa: A Friendlier Approach."  I have to say I was fairly impressed with his friendlier approach and wished it was available all those years ago when I was first learning Cocoa.  To any of you out there considering diving in, why not get your feet wet with Andy's introduction?  What a perfect way to spend your holiday vacation time!
A quote from the article:
Now, don’t let this scare you, but I’m going to just come out and say it: Cocoa is huge. It consists of a great number of frameworks that can accomplish just about anything you need in application development. 
So any attempt to “learn Cocoa” is going to result in disappointment. We’ve just got to get you on your feet and show you how to find answers. We’ve got to give you a Cocoa intuition. I have no idea how to use Bonjour, for instance, but I’m sure I could use it in an app today if I wanted to. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Cocoa Delegates

I came across a couple of interesting articles about using delegates in Cocoa which may be of interest to those of you with some software design background.
The way delegation is used in Cocoa is one of my favorite aspects of programming in this environment; subclass only when really necessary.
Addendum: This article from Apple is also of interest regarding delegates.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Apple Style Guidelines

It's encouraging to see that Apple has standard style guidelines which developers are supposed to apply to their software.  I came across this while reading through the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
The Apple Publications Style Guide covers style and usage issues, and is the key reference for how Apple uses language. This document is available in the User Experience Reference Library; consult it whenever you have a question about the preferred style of particular terms. For issues that aren’t covered in the Apple Publications Style Guide, Apple recommends three other works: The American Heritage Dictionary,The Chicago Manual of Style, and Words Into Type. When these books give conflicting rules, The Chicago Manual of Style takes precedence for questions of usage andThe American Heritage Dictionary for questions of spelling.

Flickr

The new Chimoosoft Flickr page is now active!  Head on over to view photos from the Apple 2007 World Wide Developer's Conference in San Francisco.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Apple Developer Humor

While coding today, I was playing around with NSAlert and created an alert with an empty message.  I was fairly amused to see the following logged to my console when running the alert.
-[NSAlert alertWithError:] called with nil NSError.  A generic error message will be displayed, but the user deserves better.
;-)

New Blog for Chimoosoft

I finally decided to create a Chimoosoft blog since it's much easier to post quick notes using blogging tools than editing HTML by hand and uploading it.  Old news articles from the main Chimoosoft site will be migrated to this blog, so entries appearing prior to this one are migrated entries.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Backup 3.1.2 Review

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Many options for backing up your data exist on Mac OS X, and with the introduction of Leopard's Time Machine, many users will never need to venture out into the wild west of backup software again. However, for users with more specific needs, software such as Apple's Backup (included with a .Mac subscription) fills an important niche.

Backup allows you to create multiple backup plans making it easy to preserve only the data you are currently worried about. When creating a plan, simple presets such as "Home Folder" and "Personal Data & Settings" can be chosen, or customize your own plan to include or exclude specific files and folders. There are also many preset data types which can be chosen including "Keychain", "iTunes Purchases", and "Pages Documents". Backup can even perform a Spotlight search at backup time to gather all files with certain characteristics; i.e., all documents containing a certain word or phrase. After choosing the files, add as many schedules and destinations for the plan as desired. For example, you can have the plan backup to your iDisk once a week and to a CD or DVD once a month. When manually performing a backup, it's easy to pick which device the backup should go to, and if you choose something too big to fit on a single CD or DVD, Backup will prompt you to insert more media as necessary.

The only immediately obvious drawback of Backup is the fact that only one backup plan can be executing at a time; it's not possible to start several simultaneous backups. Some people have also complained about the way Backup stores your files in a package, but you can always delve into the package by right-clicking on it and choosing "Show Package Contents". For the author, Backup is almost a good enough solution to justify the cost of .Mac on its own.

A free demo of Backup is available when you sign up for a .Mac trial, but it limits you to only 100 MB of backup data at a time.

****_

Sunday, October 28, 2007

AP Grapher Now Purring on Leopard

A new version of AP Grapher which adds support for Leopard amongst other good things has been released.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Time Tracker 1.2.1 Review

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Time Tracker is a freeware (and open source) program for tracking the amount of time spent on various projects. This software is especially useful when you're working on several projects, switching off between them frequently. Add a list of projects on the left hand side, and for each project, add one or more tasks (if desired) below it. Start the clock ticking and get to work!

A handy menu extra in your menu bar allows you to see whether or not Time Tracker is running at a glance and makes it easy to start and stop the timer without bothering to switch back to the program. The software is even smart enough to notice when you've been idle (not using your computer for a while) and asks if you want the idle time to count or not. All in all, not bad for freeware!

*****

Monday, September 10, 2007

Data Rescue II Review

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Data Rescue II is an example of the type of software you hope to never use since using it implies that you've lost something important and desperately want it back. When and if you delete your favorite photos and empty the trash, this software will be waiting to help.

There are several competing products for Mac OS X which offer similar features - primarily, the recovery of deleted files. After evaluating several of them and examining the pricing, Data Rescue II came out on top (a competing product suffered from a horrible user interface and crashed when trying to recover data). Recovery is simple: choose one of several scanning methods, click a button, and wait. After the scan is complete, a list of recoverable files sorted by file type will be displayed. Select any files you'd like to recover and let the software do its thing.

In addition to actually working (and completely recovering the author's photos), Data Rescue II featured a clear and easy to use user interface with built in help. For instant gratification, the software can be immediately downloaded after purchasing.

****_

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Data Loss!

Due to a hard drive crash (oops!) email sent to Chimoosoft between August 7th and August 29th has been lost. If you sent an email during that time period which has gone unanswered, please try again.
Addendum: In the process of recovering lost data, Data Rescue II quite literally came to the rescue; read the Chimoosoft review.  Another program to help prevent problems in the future is Apple's own Backup software, free with a .Mac subscription; read the review.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Stellarium 0.9 Review

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Stellarium is a free (and open source) planetarium program for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows which uses OpenGL to render the sky. Unlike competing commercial software, Stellarium is extremely simple and easy to use - no manual required. Set your location using the map, then drag the sky around using your mouse. A toolbar along the bottom lets you toggle displays such as ground, constellations (with or without artwork), atmosphere, nebulae, and more. Simple to use time controls enable play, fast forward, rewind, and return to current time. Some nice touches including random meteors and twinkling stars are also included.

Even if you have access to commercial software such as Starry Night, you may well find yourself preferring Stellarium; it's quick, simple, and easy to use. This software does not suffer from feature bloat. Next time you're planning to go stargazing, check out Stellarium first; or even bring it along on your laptop.

Note that version 0.9 has a few quirks including a problem starting in full screen mode. These issues will likely be addressed soon, so keep an eye on their web site for updates.

****_

Monday, July 30, 2007

iPhone Web App

Our first little baby web app for the iPhone is now available! It's called SunMoon and shows you the sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset time for any zip code and date in the United States.

iPhlickr Review

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Today marks our first review of a program designed especially for the new Apple iPhone instead of the Mac. Although the iPhone is still a closed platform preventing all but the most serious hackers from altering the installed software, Apple has encouraged people to write web applications specially tailored for the touch interface and small screen.

One of the first apps to appear was iPhlickr; a fun way to browse photos from the popular online photo site, Flickr. Using the app, you can quickly browse the most recently added photos, photos by specific users or tags, your own photos, or the author's favorite feature: interesting photos today. Use your finger to scroll through the thumbnails and click on any of interest for a larger view. If you haven't already done so, try adding a bookmarks folder to the iPhone's Safari browser for storing iPhone tailored web apps like iPhlickr - ours is called "iPhone Formatted." This acts as a sort of "applications folder" for the iPhone.

Due to the nature of web apps, iPhlickr is likely to change without warning. This review refers to iPhlickr as of 7/30/2007 (no version given).

****_

Friday, July 6, 2007

One Quarter of One Million!

All Chimoosoft products taken together have now received well over one quarter of one million downloads (250,000)! Thanks everyone!

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Adium 1.0.4 Review

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Apple's built in iChat is a great way to stay in touch with your friends or colleagues, but sometimes feels as if it's missing something. The freeware (and open source) Adium client gives users another excellent option which adds oft requested features including tabbed chats, encryption, and much more customizable chat appearances. Although iChat allows encrypted chats between .Mac users, Adium allows point to point encryption between any two Adium users regardless of network. This is a great benefit since most chatting protocols send every message in plaintext across the network making them easy to intercept (especially on public wireless access points).

One of the few features Adium is missing is easy to use voice and video chatting, although the latest versions do include SIP support which should enable this (unclear how to setup). But aside from this, Adium works well and is a good option to try out. Adium supports AIM, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, .Mac, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, LiveJournal, Lotus Sametime, Novell GroupWise, QQ, SIP, and Zephyr. Also, with such a cute little duck icon, who can resist giving it a try?

*****

Monday, June 18, 2007

WWDC 2007

The Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) was an amazing week spent learning more about Apple technologies for Leopard.

I'd highly recommended this event to all Mac OS X developers - though expensive, it's worth the cost.  More photos from WWDC 2007 are available on the Chimoosoft Flickr page.

Monday, June 11, 2007

WWDC 2007

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Sorry, no review this week or next due to preparation for and attendance at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) which takes place next week. Check back the week of June 18th.

Update: the conference was amazing - and amazingly tiring! Next review will be posted around the 25th.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Grapher Review

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When Apple first introduced the PowerPC based Power Macintosh computers in 1994, they included an innovative product called Graphing Calculator which was made by Pacific Tech. In addition to being a great way to show off the speed of the new PPC chip, this program turned out to be a useful educational tool and helped teach basic math skills to many grade school and college students. Unfortunately, with the switch to Mac OS X in 2001, Graphing Calculator was abandoned by Apple and users were left with a hole.

Apple responded to the need for a replacement beginning with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and bundled a program they dubbed "Grapher" (originally Curvus Pro by Arizona Software). Although Grapher doesn't feel as fast as the older Graphing Calculator, it offers much of the same functionality including 2D and 3D graphing, integration and differentiation support, and built in examples. In some areas such as customizing the graph display, Grapher is even more flexible than Graphing Calculator.

Grapher is freely bundled with every copy of Tiger and can be found neatly hidden in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Why Apple would hide this useful piece of software (which is clearly not a Utility) in the Utilities folder is anyone's guess, and as a result of this hiding many Mac users aren't even aware that it exists. Since Grapher does indeed reside on your system, it's worth checking out.

Note: Pacific Tech finally started supporting OS X independent of Apple, and you can still buy Graphing Calculator on their website today.

***__

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

OmniGraffle 4.1.2 Review

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OmniGraffle is the premier vector based diagramming and layout tool for Mac OS X. This excellently designed program lets you produce beautiful org charts, UML diagrams, ER Diagrams, and more. A default set of "stencils" covers most basic shapes and many more are available for download from the web. Connect objects together with the line tool and drag them around or use the auto layout tool to create a balanced graph.

In addition to producing diagrams, the program is versatile enough for creating icons, web badges, or even "art." Bezier curves, shadows, gradients, grouping, and layers give you plenty of options. Many of the graphics on the Chimoosoft website were created using OmniGraffle including the RSS feed badge, most of the icons in the top right hand corners, and even the icon for Chimoo Timer. For the professionals out there, the pro version allows import and export of Visio documents.

This is one of those rare programs which is truly a joy to use; in addition to functionality, you get to have fun!

*****

Monday, May 14, 2007

OmniOutliner Professional 3.6.2 Review

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OmniOutliner Pro is a versatile but lightweight program which is useful for much more than simply making an outline. It particularly shines as a list maker, but can also be used for taking notes, writing documentation, or replacing your spreadsheet for simple tasks. The multi column and summary features make it easy to add up all expenses in a column, or time spent working on certain projects. Features such as intelligent date parsing allow you to type things like "next tuesday" and have Outliner figure out exactly what you mean. Checkboxes come in handy for some types of lists, but fortunately, can be turned off for others.

OmniOutliner is designed to be used quickly and easily from your keyboard - a simple press of the return key gets a new bullet, and simple key commands (or mouse drags) change indentation. This efficiency makes it a great tool for tasks such as taking meeting notes or minutes. The styles overlay view is one of the more impressive features; it lets you easily set all imaginable style attributes (color, background, font, size, shadow, and more) for each level of indentation in the document. As new items are added, the appropriate style is automatically applied. Templates of your favorite styles can be saved, set as default, and restored later when creating new documents.

Exporting to other formats such as PDF, text, HTML, and dynamic-HTML is easily accomplished. The release notes for all Chimoosoft software were created with Outliner's dynamic-HTML export.

A cheaper non-professional version is also available (and commonly bundled with new Apple computers), but it lacks nice features such as folded editing, templates, and more. If you're tempted by the cheaper version, at least download the demo of the pro version first to see what you're missing.

*****

Monday, May 7, 2007

Perian 0.5 Review

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QuickTime ships with all copies of Mac OS X and provides photo, audio, and movie playback services to many programs and the operating system itself. There are however many movie codecs in use on the web which aren't natively supported by QuickTime. Movies encoded with these refuse to play unless a specialized QuickTime component is installed.

In the past, users had to download and install numerous codecs to gain access to the full range of available movies; Perian simplifies the process. In one fell swoop, freeware Perian adds support for video codecs including AVI, FLV, 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid AVI. It also supports audio codecs such as AAC, AC3 Audio using A52Codec, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3! Nearly every common format is supported with the exception of WMV (windows media) which can be added with the free Flip4Mac.

Installation is simple - drag the Perian.component file to your /Library/QuickTime folder and optionally remove any older components which Perian replaces. Congratulations - your computer will now be able to play almost any video or audio file you throw at it!

*****

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

TubeTV and WWDC

TubeTV has been out for a few weeks now and is doing well already having amassed over 10,000 downloads. Thanks to everyone who downloaded it and tried it out! To help encourage more applications like this in the future, consider donating to help pay for the author's attendance at the Apple WWDC (World Wide Developer's Conference) 2007.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Exposé Review

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Apple introduced Exposé with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" in April of 2005, however, many Mac users either don't realize that it exists, or don't know how to utilize it to the full extent. Exposé helps you deal with the constant clutter of overlapping windows and the need to drag and drop items from one window to another by quickly getting things out of your way.

Before getting started, make sure you have set up the keyboard shortcuts to your liking - open System Preferences and choose "Dashboard & Exposé." On a laptop Mac where many of the function keys are already mapped to things like screen or keyboard brightness, it helps to double up Exposé on the two remaining keys, F11 and F12 (screenshot). On our setup, pressing F11 shows all windows, while ⌥ (option) F11 shows only windows in the current application. F12 reveals the desktop, and ⌥F12 shows Dashboard (Hint: to set the keyboard shortcut to use ⌥, hold it down while clicking on the shortcut menu.) It's also possible to set screen corner shortcuts, but many people find these confusing since they are often bumped by accident.

Aside from simply revealing your myriad windows and letting you quickly bring the desired one to the front, Exposé really shines when combined with drag and drop. Drag and drop has been a hallmark of the Macintosh experience since the beginning, but it can be difficult to use since the source and target windows are often buried under multiple layers. Exposé can help. Assuming your keyboard shortcuts are set up as indicated above, press F12 to reveal the desktop, grab a file, and start dragging it. While still dragging, press F11 to reveal windows in all non-hidden applications. Drag the file over the desired window and either press F11 again to immediately bring the window to the front, or pause for a few seconds and Exposé will bring it to the front automatically. Drop the file. You have now completed a drag and drop without moving any windows!

Variations of this can also be used to drag things between programs without involving the desktop. The key to the whole experience is to not let go of your dragged item until you've tried out various Exposé shortcuts.

*****

Monday, April 23, 2007

TextWrangler 2.2.1 Review

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TextWrangler is a robust, fast, and free text editor for Mac OS X from BareBones software which replaces their older but widely used "BBEdit Lite" (first released in 1993). This editor is a good choice for those needing a powerful editor with syntax highlighting and regular expression support but not wanting to pay for a commercial editor. As with other text editors, this product is aimed at software and web developers; TextWrangler is not a word processor.

Common needs such as changing a file's line break characters between Unix, Mac, and Windows or changing the file encoding between variations of Unicode and Western (Mac OS Roman) are a single click away. Operations such as removing line breaks, processing (and searching) a file with regular expressions, or hard wrapping text are also trivial. The bundled command line tools let you easily open files from the terminal directly with TextWrangler removing the need to use older programs such as vi. TextWrangler also has better AppleScript support than almost any Mac OS X program you're likely to encounter and includes full script recording support. Simply open Apple's ScriptEditor, press the Record button, and begin working in TextWrangler; press Stop when finished and then replay your script. Unlike many other editors, TextWrangler is extremely fast and lean - this is the cheetah of text editors.

The latest versions of TextWrangler have gone a long way towards modernizing the program; a new toolbar, OS X native spell checking, and document drawer are some of the features which set this software apart from the original BBEdit Lite. Although TextWrangler covers all the basics extremely well, it doesn't do as much for you as newer editors such as TextMate which has many helpful macros and project level file management. Even if you don't use it as your main editor, TextWrangler certainly makes an excellent backup when the paid editors drop the ball on something you need to get done quickly. BareBones also offers a more fully featured commercial version called BBEdit.

*****

Monday, April 16, 2007

Free Ruler 1.7b5 Review

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Free Ruler is exactly what it sounds like: a freeware ruler for your computer screen. Position one end of the ruler on the start point, drag the other end as long or tall as necessary, and move your mouse pointer around. The ruler shows the pointer's position with a dotted line making it easy to measure precise distances. Try using it in conjunction with control scroll zoom for even better results.

Why would you want a ruler? Anyone working with graphics or layout on a computer needs the ability to measure pixel distances on the screen. This program is a real help when debugging that troublesome CSS code or laying out a user interface. This may seem like a simple program, but it comes in handy more often than you might think!

Note: this may have issues when Leopard comes out due to Leopard's new resolution independence, so look for a new version from the developer at that time.

***__

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Terrabrowser Universal Binary and TubeTV

Terrabrowser is now a universal binary internally (not yet released) - after reworking the GPX file handling to make it more compatible with a wider range of GPX files, a new beta will be released. Also, a new program called TubeTV is almost finished which will allow exporting YouTube and Google Video videos to formats for Apple TV and iPod. Stay tuned.

Monday, April 9, 2007

Flip4Mac 2.1 Review

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Like it or not, Windows Media Video files (.wmv) are common on the web and Mac users need a good way to play them. In the past, Microsoft provided a free version of their Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, but discontinued it about a year ago. This isn't a huge loss since Windows Media Player for Mac OS X was never very well done (let's just say it wasn't a pleasure to use) and the new alternative is actually easier to deal with.

Flip4Mac allows you to play Windows Media files with the standard Apple QuickTime Player and also plays movies embedded in web page. After installing the software, dealing with wmv files is no more trouble than dealing with normal QuickTime files. The full version of the software has many more options and allows conversion from wmv files into other formats suitable for devices such as your iPod and Apple TV. The free trial allows export using QuickTime Pro (review), but places a watermark across the video.

****_

Monday, April 2, 2007

Aperture 1.5.2 Review

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Aperture is one of Apple's newest and most hyped "Pro" Apps which is targeted primarily at professional photographers and advanced amateurs. If you use a digital SLR or high end prosumer camera and consider photography to be one of your main hobbies or profession, Aperture may be for you. Otherwise, you probably won't want to spend more for this software than you did for your camera! While mainly an image organization tool with meta-data support, Aperture also provides tools for the most common photo editing needs such as crop, free rotate, red eye reduction, white balance, sharpening, levels, exposure, blemish removal, and RAW adjustments. Like iPhoto, Aperture also includes the ability to produce photo books, order prints, and make web albums but all with more freedom and control. Basically, this is iPhoto on steroids.

Possibly the largest freedom which Aperture provides is the ability to edit your photos endlessly without worry. No longer will you have to think about saving copies, wasting disk space, or protecting the originals. Your master images (digital negatives) are always preserved and any and all changes you make to them can be undone or altered at any point in the future without sacrificing image quality. Instead of actually changing your photos and re-saving them (as you may have done with other tools), Aperture saves only the digital "recipe" used to make the changes. In addition to being able to easily undo your changes, this also means that extra disk space is not wasted when you make additional copies or edited versions of images. In the past, you may have restricted yourself to editing only those images in dire need of help, but it's so trivial to do with Aperture that you'll find yourself making small corrections across the board. The ease with which photos can be edited and organized in this program is phenomenal!

Other innovative features such as the ability to stack similar images on top of one another hiding all but the best (called "stacks"), and the integrated "vault" one-click backup system are a joy to use. If you really need Photoshop, Aperture even lets you send files to it for editing with one click, and as soon as you save, they come right back into Aperture with the changes! This software does so much and has so many innovative features that it would take pages and pages to even mention them all - instead, why not dive in and watch the online tutorials to get a feel?

At the time of this writing, a free thirty day trial version of Aperture is available for download from Apple's website. A discounted (half price) educational version is also available. Aside from the high cost, the only real drawback of this software is the required CPU and graphics horsepower. Warning: if you have anything older than a 1.5 GHz G4 with at least 1 GB of RAM, Aperture may cause excessive hair loss and fidgeting.

Adobe makes a competing cross-platform application called Lightroom, but if you're using a Mac, Aperture is probably the one for you. The author of this review has used both of them and far prefers the feature set and OS X integration of Aperture.

*****

Monday, March 26, 2007

QuickTime Pro 7.1.5 Review

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Although the basic QuickTime Player is included with every Mac and free to download for Windows, it is somewhat crippled unless you purchase the "Pro" version. By going Pro, you gain several handy features related to saving and editing movies as well as full screen playback. Note that the Pro version usually has to be re-purchased for each "major" version of QuickTime - for example, 6, 7, and 8 when it comes out.

Many websites use QuickTime to play their movies; Pro gives you the ability to save any of these to your local computer by simply clicking on the bottom right corner popup menu and choosing "Save as QuickTime Movie..." It also becomes possible to edit movie clips in the player. You can now copy, cut, and paste sections of movies together to remove unwanted portions from existing movies or make brand new ones from scratch. For the photography buffs out there, you now have the ability to create a new QuickTime movie from a batch of time lapse photographs using the "Open Image Sequence..." command. In addition, recording movies and sound directly in QuickTime Player, and saving in formats optimized for iPod or Apple TV (H.264) is also enabled.

Possibly the feature you'll use the most in QuickTime Pro is the fullscreen movie watching - just press ⌘ (command) F to enter full screen mode complete with movie controls which appear when you move the mouse. For a full list of features, visit the QuickTime Pro web site.

***__

Monday, March 19, 2007

GraphicConverter 5.9.5 Review

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GraphicConverter is many things: a poor man's Photoshop replacement, a versatile photo organizer with IPTC and EXIF tagging support, an excellent way to present a slide show, a robust photo editor, a batch processor, and an image format converter. The software has been around for many years and pre-dates OS X although it is frequently updated and now a universal binary. GraphicConverter can open files in nearly 200 formats and export in nearly 100. It is also available in twelve languages!

Since Photoshop is a bit of a beast and takes its time launching, you may find yourself using GraphicConverter for typical Photoshop tasks such as cropping, resizing, alpha layers, and basic photo corrections. GraphicConverter launches in a snap and is ready to do your bidding. The batch change feature is quite powerful (although the interface is antiquated) and makes short work of entire folders of images. It's easy to use for tasks such as creating thumbnails with different titles or file formats and is used extensively for the images which end up on this web page.

GraphicConverter may be used indefinitely with a short startup delay, however, it's well worth paying the small fee to support this fine software. The developer is also unusually responsive; if you find problems or have reasonable feature requests, he will often fix or implement them within weeks or months - quite different from the experience you'd get contacting Adobe.

The only real drawback of GraphicConverter is the sometimes obtuse user interface, portions of which (batch processing, etc.) haven't changed much since the early nineties. GraphicConverter also suffers a bit from "featureitis" and it can sometimes be difficult to find a desired feature or figure out how to set the preferences to achieve the desired goal. Still, the program is affordable, robust, fast, and hard to do without. It's a venerable workhorse and is sure to find a place in your workflow!

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0-b5 Review

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Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup utility which has recently received a massive face lift and is now much more accessible to the average Mac user. Prior versions performed their task well - cloning a disk volume to a disk image or other volume, but the user interface was somewhat confusing for beginners. Version 3.0 still performs the same basic functions but is now easier to pick up and begin using without a manual.

The Mac software marketplace is currently rife with programs claiming to provide easy backup solutions, but most of them are either difficult to use, unreliable, or not fully featured enough. Carbon Copy Cloner appears to stand up well to the task, and it's donation-ware so you can pay what you think is fair! Although the upcoming Time Machine (arriving in Leopard) may alleviate the need for these types of programs for the casual user, Carbon Copy Cloner will still have a valuable place in the enterprise world for backing up servers before upgrades or providing a bootable backup of your own computer. In addition, as the author mentions on his web site, this software could be invaluable for backing up your computer before sending it in for repairs.

Using the software is fairly straight forward - choose a source volume on the left and a target volume, remote server, or disk image on the right. Press the clone button to begin the backup. Folders and files can be unchecked in the source to exclude them from the clone and disk images can be created for you at run time and even automatically encrypted. A nice paragraph form summary entitled "what is going to happen" appears at the bottom for review before proceeding with the clone operation. Other thoughtful features include the ability to restore from a clone, schedule clones to occur at regular intervals (useful for servers or desktop machines), and run shell scripts before and after a clone.

Note that the version tested is still in beta, so some features are a little rough around the edges.

****_

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Terrabrowser Universal Binary and TubeTV

Development work has resumed on Terrabrowser after a long hiatus. Look for a new beta with minor changes in the not too distant future.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Capture Me and Chimoo Timer Released

Final releases of the new Capture Me and Chimoo Timer are now available.

FileMerge 2.2.1 Review

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FileMerge is a visual diff tool freely included with the Apple developer tools. If you have installed the developer tools on your computer (they come bundled for free on the install disks which came with your Mac), you can find FileMerge nicely hidden in the /Developer/Applications/Utilities/ folder. Amazingly, many people developing software on the Mac haven't yet discovered FileMerge - if you're one of them, now is the time to do so. Apple provides lots of little goodies in the /Developer folder which are worth learning about.

Although it can be used to compare and merge any two text files you desire, FileMerge will mainly be of interest to software developers. If you've ever used the Unix diff tool, using FileMerge is like seeing the light; differences are actually visible side by side and easily understood at a glance - no more deciphering strange diff codes on the command line. As you jump to a difference in one file with the arrow keys, the second file scrolls to the same position and highlights the changes. You can also jump directly to methods/functions and choose which version of a change you want merged into the final output file. True, performing the same diff in the terminal is more condensed and geeky, but the FileMerge equivalent is much easier to grasp and work with. Many tools such as Xcode and svnX also have direct links within them which launch FileMerge for you.

****_

Monday, February 26, 2007

TextMate 1.5.4 Review

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TextMate is an advanced text editor designed with software and web developers in mind (chimoosoft.com is maintained with it). Notable features include tabs, project level management of files, multi-file (project) search with regular expression support, text-completion, syntax highlighting for scores of languages, a command line launcher, and countless editable macros defined for each language to reduce typing and improve efficiency. Standard OS X spell checking is also included, but with a nice twist - it's smart enough to avoid flagging items such as HTML tags. A built in web preview is available and many scripting languages have the ability to run and display their output within TextMate.

In addition to your standard and expected text editor features, TextMate can do some truly amazing things. For example, when writing HTML, select a word, press a key shortcut, and TextMate will look up the best matching link for the word on Google and insert it as a link in your HTML code! If you can't remember the appropriate key combo, a floating searchable browser is available where you can quickly find the shortcut you desire. Find the large number of features overwhelming? Check out the free online "screencasts" (iTunes link) which demonstrate how to use TextMate's powerful features or browse the extensive online help.

*****

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Chimoo Timer Pre-Release

An unsupported pre-release of the new Chimoo Timer version 1.5 is now available.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Google Importer 1.0.1 Review

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Google Importer is a convenient Spotlight plugin which queries Google whenever you perform a Spotlight search and includes the top Google hits in the results list. This provides a quick alternative for missing local search results; when information you thought was located on your local computer isn't actually there, you can seamlessly use the top Google hits instead.

Unfortunately, results can sometimes take quite a while to show up, but this may be a fault of Spotlight and not the importer. Perform a general query which returns many thousands of results, and a long delay will ensue before the Google hits appear, however, a more specialized query produces results relatively quickly.

Note: the software was tested on a 1.5 GHz G4, so the speed should be improved on newer Intel based Macs. Since results are filed under the "Bookmarks" heading, make sure to enable this category in the Spotlight system preference pane.

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