Category — Software

This is fairly irrelevant to this site, but I’ve been drooling over the iPhone since it was just a rumor. Therefore, news such as this tends to excite me.

A draft law proposed by Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would require mobile providers to offer subsidy-free wireless equipment which would effectively break the exclusive deal between Apple and AT&T.

Now, I’m not sure how I feel about the ethics of the whole thing. I do support a company’s right to make exclusive deals. I just (selfishly) would like to be able to buy an iPhone here in Montana!

Read the full article here.

As predicted, Apple updated their MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops today, and there are some exciting changes…enough to make my MacBook Pro feel inferior.

Both models now feature the Intel Penryn Pro Core 2 Duo processor with faster processor speeds. As is typical of Apple, the price points for the machines stay about the same while the performance and capacity of the machines goes up.

Read on for the details…

[Read more →]

I recently had a friend complain that my blog posts were too “Mac biased” and, therefore, useless to PC users. While I won’t apologize for being an adamant Mac fan, I’ll try to throw them a bone here with this little gem:

PicLens is a browser plugin that is, in my humble opinion, one of the coolest innovations for viewing images from the web. You really have to see it to fully understand what I’m talking about, but basically it allows the user to view a “feed” of images in a full-screen, interactive environment.

I know that it works with Flickr, Google Images, Picassa, Yahoo, and Facebook at this point, but, if there are not already others, I’m sure there will be soon!

It is available for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. The newest feature, the 3D “Wall” of images, only works in Firefox and IE. I’ll take this opportunity to throw out my Firefox plug. My advice: quit using Internet Explorer. If you are a PC users and don’t have it, download Firefox here.

Head over to piclens.com to download the plugin that’s right for your browser. Once the plugin is installed, anytime you mouse over an image on a site that works with PicLens (Media RSS enabled), a small play button will fade in. Click that button to begin the experience. If you need more help, you can click the Tutorial link on the piclens.com site.

Questions? Leave a comment here, I’ll respond. Enjoy.

For anyone who may find themselves needing or wanting to make an occasional international phone call or two, I would recommend Skype. Calls from one Skype-equipped computer to another (text chat, voice, or full video chat) are always free, no matter where the computers are located. But for me, I pay the $3 per month for unlimited calls from my computer to any phone in the US or Canada (as long as I’m in the US or Canada when originating the call). Those who know me understand that I have a very valid reason to call Canada all the time so this plan saves me quite a bit…especially when you compare it to the $0.60 /minute or so that Alltel would like to charge me to call Canada. Not that it’s any harder for them to get a call up there…anyway…I digress.

The $3 per month “SkypePro” account also gives me free Skype Voicemail, a discount on a “SkypeIn” number (an actual phone number you could give out that would ring to your Skype account) if I wanted one, the ability to transfer any incoming Skype calls that I miss to my cell phone (for free…less any cell phone minutes I might use), and…very cool…”Skype To Go.” Skype To Go allows me to call internationally from any landline that I designate at very low rates. So even when I’m away from my computer, I can call Canada for $0.02 per minute (I added the Skype To Go number to my “My Circle” numbers on Alltel, so…no minutes used there). Not too shabby…talk 30X as long for the same price!

But, again, I digress. The point of this post was simply to tell you that version 2.7 of Skype has been released. At a quick glance, I can see that it has immediately added all of my Address Book contacts as possible numbers to call, and there are a few other minor interface changes. If you already have Skype, choose “Check for Update” from the menu to update, or download it from here.

Yesterday I told you about the Mac OS 10.5.2 update, but that wasn’t the only news that Apple had in store.

Shortly/immediately after releasing the OS update mentioned above, Apple released a video graphics update. To see this update, you have to first install the OS 10.5.2 update (if you’re running Leopard, obviously), restart, and run Software Update again.

This morning, Apple released an iLife ‘08 update (version 8.2) to, among other things, improve compatibility with…wait for it…Aperture 2!!!! That’s right. This morning Apple released a major upgrade to Aperture. Aperture is Apple’s professional image editing software that, quite frankly, had been rather taken for granted by Apple. Or so it seemed…

I’ve been a loyal Aperture user since, quite literally, day one. I pre-ordered Aperture (and payed highly for it) because it was, far and away, the best image management/RAW processing software on the market…plus, I love Apple. Lately I’ve been entertaining a switch to Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom for my main image management/RAW processing software. I’m very experienced with Lightroom and teach others about it daily during the summer months. Now…I don’t know what to do!?!

Well, I’ll certainly think much harder about sticking with Aperture now. Here are some details:

• If you want to try Aperture 2, there is a 30-day free trial available here. If you are a current Aperture 1.5 user be sure and read the sidebar notes on that page before you go playing with the free trial. You may end up permanently altering your library to a state where you’ll be required to purchase version 2 to access it.
• If you already own Aperture, you can upgrade to version 2 for just $99.
• The full retail price of Aperture 2 has been lowered to just $199! This sets Aperture’s price point $100 lower than that of Adobe’s Lightroom ($299). So, even if you aren’t an Aperture user, or if you are [shudder] a PC user, it’s possible that this may help to bring down the price of Lightroom in the future. Stay tuned for more information.
• Click here to see the “100+ New Features” in Aperture 2. I haven’t looked too closely, but there are few things taken from iPhoto ‘08 that were pretty awesome features!
• I didn’t see this advertised anywhere…I just stumbled across it…but if you purchased Aperture 1.5 recently (basically in the year 2008) you are eligible for an upgrade to version 2 for only $9.95. Click here for details.

I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted with my thoughts about Aperture 2. I will say that this did not come a moment too soon. I was ready to make the switch to Lightroom on a wildlife shoot that I have coming up on Monday!

I stumbled across an interesting post today about a new product being researched by Adobe. It’s basically a camera lens comprised of 19 smaller lenses that allow a scene to be photographed from multiple angles simultaneously.

With the proper software, one could control the depth of field of the image (captured on a single frame) after the image has been captured and downloaded to the computer! Pretty cool!

The video below, apparently from Photoshop World, shows a glimpse of the amazing possibilities:

Apple released its much-anticipated 10.5.2 update for OX 10.5 (Leopard) today. Run Software Update on your Mac to receive the new update. I’ll spare you the details, but information can be found from Apple here.

A new application was released yesterday by Pangea Software called Bracketeer. This Mac utility allows photographers to combine different exposures of the same image into a new “enfused” image with a much higher range of tones.

At first glance, this looks pretty cool, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it much. I’ll re-post with more information once I’ve tried it. Pangea also has a panorama software available. There are free demos available, but it’s only $20 for both programs, so if it works, I’ll throw down for that.

To all you Firefox users, be sure and run your updater (located in the Help menu) to download and install the newest release of Mozilla’s Firefox: 2.0.0.12. This latest release includes 10 patches over the previous release, including three for critical vulnerabilities. More information about these specific issues can be found on this blog entry.

If you’re not already using Firefox (why not?) you can download it here. A link is also conveniently located in the right-hand sidebar of all my pages to show my support to the quality product that Mozilla has helped to produce.

I plan on putting up some posts shortly on choosing a web browser, adding extensions to your web browser, and the importance of updating software. Stay tuned.

Adobe Systems has announced today that they plan to discontinue the Adobe Stock Photos service that has shipped as part of Bridge, one of the Creative Suite applications. This royalty-free stock photography service introduced with Adobe Creative Suite 2 Software in May 2005 will be discontinued effective April 1, 2008.

I, personally, have never used this service. It seems like a good idea for Adobe to do away with it and focus on other projects. Many users of Adobe’s programs are photographers anyway and not likely to purchase stock photos. To me, stock photography management seems like a pretty rough market to break into…even for a company like Adobe.

You’ll want to go ahead and remove the Stock Photos Service from your Adobe Creative Suite Applications. The uninstaller program can be found here for Mac and here for Windows.

Click here to view Adobe’s FAQ on Stock Photos.