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Today, Apple released 4 colored iPods to go with the silver once they have been selling since WWDC 2006. The new colors are similar to the ones in the nano line, except black is replaced by orange.
As cool as it is to have new colors to choose from, I would still prefer the silver/gray shuffle.
Also made publicly available by Apple today was the 802.11n enabler for Macs with Intel Core 2 Duo processors.
From Apple.com:
If you have a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (except the 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac) or a Mac Pro with AirPort Extreme, you can enable it to access an 802.11n wireless network using the AirPort Extreme 802.11n Enabler software.
Most of the Core 2 Duo mac's had 802.11n hardware built in, and if you have one of those Mac, you can buy the enabler from the Apple Store online for $1.99.
As much as I would love to be, I won't be at Macworld for the Stevenote today, but there is plenty of coverage online that I'll be following.
Some of the sites that will be live blogging that I'll be checking constantly are: TUAW, Engadget, and SchwarzTech.
For a full list of sites offering live coverage, go check out Glenn Wolsey's blog
The keynote starts in about two minutes, and Apple has already taken down their online store and put up the "We'll Be Back Soon" sticky.
So expect some new products to be up at Apple's store in a few hours and refresh those browsers.
If you have Mac OS X, then you've probably gone through the applications folder and found something called Automator. If you haven't used automator, then then this screencast is for you.
Automator is one of the extras in OS X that is a real gem. It has saved me lots of time and has also increased my productivity especially with the workflow of several projects I am working on. Automator can be as basic or advanced as you want it, but this screencast starts out with two basic automator workflows or actions that can be put together quickly.
The first action I put together was a birthday greeting that gathers all of the upcoming months birthdays from my address book and then sends the email addresses to mail with a greeting that can be personalized with a message and image. It works like a charm and I'll probably be using it from now on, and I'll most likely add on an action to add those birthdays into my iCal and set up alarms to remind me of the upcoming birthdays.
The second action is an image resizer. If you're a blogger or have gone through the task of uploading digital photos, you probably know it's a good idea to resize the images you upload to the web. Even my 3.2 megapixel digital camera outputs giant-sized photos in terms of pixels and I used to open each photo I was going to upload to my webserver/flickr/blog in Photoshop and resize them to about half the size. This process also made the uploading faster because the file size is reduced quite a bit.
I'm happy to say that I no longer go through that process thanks to the action I show you in this screencast. One thing I may add on to this action is an option to upload to image shack or my webserver through FTP. I'll most likely cover extending the current actions in future screencasts as well as get into some advanced actions. If you have automator, watch the screencast and then go play with it and see what you can do with the different applications you have.
Note: The audio was recorded a little low so you may want to turn up your volume.
Download a 640x480 high quality version of this screencast
Prior to the recent purchase of my Intel MacBook, I had heard of a new beta out of Adobe called Soundbooth. For mac audio guru's, it seemed like Adobe was finally porting over Adobe Audition, a favorite multitrack audio editor on the PC side. I was unable to test it out due to the fact Adobe decided to leave power pc users out in the cold and only released an intel version of the Soundbooth beta.
I had a chance to test Soundbooth out for both recording and editing off and on for the last two weeks and I'll be the first to tell you Soundbooth is no Audition and it falls short of any expectations I had
[ Click here to read more ]
I've finally gotten the last bits of my Christmas shopping done, including my gift for myself. Last week my new MacBook 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo with 1gb of ram came in and I've had a full week with it so expect a review complete with a link to my unboxing pics on Flickr.
Since I've had the MacBook, I've been trying out a bunch of new software for software reviews and free files posts. Some of the titles I have been testing include Adobe Soundbooth Beta, the free Aperture trial, iShowU, Transmission, Cabos, JournalX and Vienna. So expect reviews on those software titles starting next week
[ Click here to read more ]
My favorite FTP apps for Mac OS X are Transmit and Yummy FTP. They are actually pretty similar as far as features go and both have live editing, which is really cool and a feature that should be built into all FTP applications.
The main difference is price, where you'll have to pay an extra $4 bucks for Transmit, but today you can get Yummy FTP completely free.from MacAppADay
[ Click here to read more ]
If you have any experience with video and photo editing and use software like Final Cut, Premiere and/or Photoshop, you know there are some simple jobs you would rather not have to open your power app to complete. Who wants to fuss with Final Cut to convert a .mov to an .mpeg or Photoshop to resize or crop an image for posting online, emailing or tons of other uses.
I've kept my eye on a few web 2.0 sites and have used a few extensively to do these exact types of jobs for some time now. After putting together and editing a video recently, I wanted to post it in several different formats for mac and pc users to view without having to download additional software, so I used both Zamzar and Media Convert to get the job done and post copies of the video in .wmv, .mov, .xvid and .mp4 formats
[ Click here to read more ]
I wrote about Phill Ryu's app idea and development contest My Dream App some time ago, but he's back at it again with Mac Heist. Just like Ryu gave out Mac software for voting on My Dream App, he is making it part of your loot for week long heists as well as a "cash" coupon for dollars of the final heist item.
The first heist is to get infro from an Apple PR representative about the rumored iPhone and to submit details and photos you get a long the way to <a href="http://www.macrumors.com">MacRumors</a>
[ Click here to read more ]
I've been able to stay away from posting on several of the latest rumors surrounding Apple. After neither an iPhone or wide screen iPod were shown at the recent Showtime event, the buzz has been about when Apple would finally release those products or whether they would at all.
Since then, rumors have been floating around two of Apple's most anticipated products with several patents being registered for a touch-screen iPod and a possible partnership between Apple and Cingular
[ Click here to read more ]
Note: I am sorry for the lack of new posts around here lately, but I've spent a lot of time the last two weeks getting over some illness and writing, designing and editing for the Season Preview package at my website ProjectSpurs.com. I should be back to posting on a pretty regular basis starting today and with an audioblog coming tomorrow.
Phill Ryu's My Dream App is in the final round of voting with 6 finalists and their submissions/ideas for a Mac app. If you haven't heard of My Dream App, here's a snippet from their about page
[ Click here to read more ]
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Comment by mdeleon
on Optimus Keyboard