MacProductivehttp://macproductive.com/index.htmlMac Productive news, tips, and how-tosendenny@macproductive.comCopyright 2006 denny2008-02-21T09:01:16-06:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:13:49 -0600An Aperture 2.0 mini review and my confirmed switch to Lightroomdenny@macproductive.comPhotography2008-02-21T09:01:16-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2008-2-21-Lightroom.html#unique-entry-id-89http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2008-2-21-Lightroom.html#unique-entry-id-89switch from Aperture to Lightroom. The following Tuesday Apple released Aperture 2. I downloaded the trial and after my initial 24 hours with AP 2 I decided I would probably stay with Lightroom. In the days since I’ve gone back several times to edit a few images in AP 2 and experiment more with browsing and searching. I think that because I spent nearly a year with AP I really wanted to stay with it, wanted to give it a real chance. After nearly a week I’ve confirmed my decision to switch to LR and have gone ahead and started moving the rest of my Aperture images over. Here's why.

Workflow and Speed
There’s no doubt AP 2.0 is an improvement in speed in both browsing and editing but I’m still seeing delays and the spinning beachball… less often of course but the fact that I’m still seeing it when I do not ever see it in LR says something about the basics. I can’t help but think that the drag I’m still seeing with AP, mostly during editing, is tied to Apple’s reliance on the graphics card for much of the workload. I’ve got a MB Pro with 2 gigs of ram, Core 2 Duo and it still just feels sticky to me. Using the Loupe or viewing at 100% feels even worse. I can and often do view my images at 100% in LR and it feels very smooth aside from the initial render of the image when I switch to the magnified view.

When it comes to browsing and searching, again there is no doubt that AP 2 is faster and smoother than its previous version. On the downside, I've also noticed that while I can very quickly scroll through thumbnails in my Aperture Library those thumbs are empty outlines and drawn in with the photo after a very slight delay whereas LR scrolls about as smoothly and images are already 95% rendered rather than empty outlines. As soon as I stop scrolling the 95% rendered images snap to focus. I prefer the method used by LR because I know as I'm scrolling where I'm at, there is zero wait for the thumbs to draw in and I can keep scrolling to where I want to be. While LR lacks Aperture's excellent smart groups I don't miss them much because searching is instant and because of the built in keyword and metadata browser which I'll get into momentarily.

I was a bit disappointed with Aperture 2 in regards to adding keywords and captioning which is another area that I still prefer the LR method. It is much easier to select a large group of images and enter the same caption by just typing it into the caption field and hitting enter with no need to go to the menu bar and choose batch change or even to use the short cut for batch change. I just select them and click into the caption field. While keywording large groups of images is fairly easy in Aperture it is even easier in LR to click a button in an already present sidebar or even typing into the keyword field rather than Aperture's drag and dropping of keywords. Not only that but Lightroom's browsing by keywords feature is fantastic way to actually use the keywords you've added. Just below the keywords section of the sidebar is metadata browsing which provides an easy to use list of criteria such as file type, lens, camera model, ISO, shutterspeed, and more for quick filtering of images.

One last thought regarding workflow, after editing I often like to DO something with images. Most often I like to upload to Flickr and upload to my own image galleries at Enchanted Planet. Aperture accomplishes this with Connected Flow's excellent Flickr plugin and via integration with iWeb and that is great. While LR also has an excellent Flickr plugin it is not integrated with iWeb or any other Apple application such is the iWork apps so I first have to export images to a folder then drop them into iWeb. However, and this has only become an issue since I started using LR, I can publish to a web gallery using one of the included galleries or downloadable templates. I've been fairly happy with letting iWeb step in for Aperture's very basic web export and was really hoping Aperture 2 would bring some greatly needed improvements in this area. Nope. Unfortunately there is nothing at all besides integration with .Mac galleries and the templates appear to be unchanged with there are no new additions. This won't do. With LR the default galleries are much better than Apple's defaults and, even better, I can download user created templates. In the first week of using LR I found and have been happily using such a template that has PayPal integration for selling images. As an example you can check out my gallery of song birds. I could have never done that with Aperture.

Image Editing and RAW Conversion Quality
Image editing and the quality of RAW conversion were both issues with Aperture, especially when compared to LR. With Aperture 2 Apple has done a fantastic job with RAW 2. The editing results are nearly identical with LR in terms of quality. The noise reduction is much better for images shot at ISO 400 or higher though I don't think it's quite as easy as LR to get the best results. With LR noise reduction and sharpening are all neatly available by default in the Details section of the Develop sidebar. With a couple of tweaks I am usually done in seconds. With Aperture 2 i can get those results but it requires adjustments in the RAW Fine Tuning then additional steps of adding noise reduction and edge sharpening sliders (not available by default) before I can even adjust those things. The results are improved over AP 1.5 and equal to LR, but the work required to get those results requires more steps.

In regards to image editing with AP 2 I have to mention the new Retouch Tool which can usually be used to replace the dreaded Spot and Patch tool. The Retouch Tool is fantastic with excellent results and very smooth performance... it is almost too easy to use!! In fact, the first time I used it I actually giggled aloud at how easy it was. There is no doubt that this tool is a huge leap beyond what LR has in the way of spot removal and healing. There are other new adjustments that I'm not going to go into other than to say that they are all well implemented and bring image editing up to par with LR.

In the end I've decided to stay with LR for two reasons: speed and much better web export. I'm certainly glad to see Aperture improving because it provides another option and will, no doubt, keep Adobe on its toes in regards to LR. Moving thousands of adjusted images around is far too much work to keep jumping from program to program. Now that I've seen AP 2 I am comfortable with my choice to switch to LR.


Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ]]>Switching from Aperture to Lightroom?denny@macproductive.comPhotography2008-02-07T11:09:17-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2008-2-7-Lightroom.html#unique-entry-id-88http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2008-2-7-Lightroom.html#unique-entry-id-88Picture 2I've been using Aperture since March 2007. I wrote positively of my switch from iPhoto to Aperture and have greatly enjoyed the Aperture workflow as well as it's integration with iWeb and other aspects of the Mac OS. However, in recent months I become increasingly frustrated with it, primarily the slowness in searching and editing.

I'm using it on a MacBook Pro 2.16 core 2 duo with 2 gigs of ram. I have a relatively small library of 16 gigs which is organized so that each month is a project which is usually less than 600 pictures. The slowness begins with opening the program which takes far too long, usually 20 seconds, sometimes close to a minute. From what I've read my library is relatively small and I can't imagine how slow this would be with a library as large as some have.

In usage, editing is way too slow. Trying to use the Spot and Patch tool is an exercise in patience and doing it at a zoom of 100% in like watching a melting glacier retreat up a mountain. In fact doing anything while zoomed in is terribly slow. Sure, I can use the loupe but that tends to require more work with the trackpad. When it comes time to search or use a smart folder I often get a long pause, sometimes the spinning beach ball. Just switching between projects can cause delays.

When it comes to exporting, often the last step in the process for any image that is shared or used, anyone using Aperture with Leopard will encounter what is apparently a bug. Exporting images with Aperture (as well as iPhoto) results in much softer images, apparently due to the core OS technology used by these apps. Softness is not good unless it is intentional. I shoot lots of bird images and I want the details of the feathers to be as sharp as possible. Softness introduced by my editing software is not acceptable on any level.

Like many Aperture users I've been hoping for a serious update but have seen little evidence that one is coming. It might be tomorrow, it might be 6 months. About two weeks ago, I decided to try Lightroom which I had been avoiding because I really like the Aperture workflow and integration with iWeb and other aspects of the OS. I've also avoided the possibility of switching because in the 9 months I've been using Aperture I've put a good bit of time into editing, keywording, and captioning my images. If I switch to Lightroom I loose that work. 



After two weeks with Lightroom I'm fairly certain that I am going to make the the switch. With each day that I use it I import more images and organizing them into the same system I have created with Aperture. I'm still importing images so I can't comment on the speed of browsing and searching a full 15 gig library but with 5 gigs imported it is FAR faster to search and browse than Aperture. Even more important, editing is FAR smoother... in fact, I find it hard to believe how much faster it is. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I'm finding that the editing results are much better both before and especially after export. I've already mentioned that Leopard introduced a softness to all exports, but I think the differences I'm seeing even go beyond this.

Two of my favorite features thus far. First would be noise reduction which is fantastic and far superior to that in Aperture. As someone that shoots without a flash often in the deep shade of the woods I welcome this. If at all possible I avoid using ISO 400 or above due to the noise but with Lightroom I'm finding that I can eliminate most of this noise which means I can now shoot in conditions I would have previously avoided. Second, In just two weeks I'm discovering that the large community of Lightroom users includes a few that develop add-ons such as plugins and templates. There is a flickr plugin similar to the one for Aperture but that's not the end of it. There are folks actively developing fantastic templates for Lightroom's default Web publishing module. While the default web publishing is already much better than Aperture's being able to easily drop in a template is fantastic. I've already begun the process of building new PayPal linked galleries to tie into my existing galleries generated by iWeb. As an example, you can view my wildflower gallery.



There is more to say about this and I'll likely write about it soon. My suggestion is that if you are a frustrated Aperture user that you try Lightroom if you have not already. I was put off by the workflow at first but I'm finding that it fits much better than I thought it would. If you do give it a try I'll leave you with one final thought, a tip really. Much has been made of the module-based workflow of Lightroom which can seem a bit difficult at first. Here's the tip: you can hit the d key and jump right to the full screen develop module which is similar to Aperture's full screen editing which is a click of the f key. Different but not that different. Want to jump back to the grid of your Library? Hit the g key.


Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ]]>.Mac and iWebdenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-12-23T11:57:57-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-12-23-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-87http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-12-23-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-87written before about .Mac and iWeb. Back in the days of the free service known as iTools I was a happy user and when it went to a paid service I subscribed for a year. After that year first year I unsubscribed because I felt I was not using the features it offered... it did not fit my needs. As a free service it didn't matter that I didn't use the features but once I started paying I wanted a better match and better performance. Since then I have made it a habit of evaluating it once a year just to be up-to-date on the current features and performance. In the few years since my paid subscription I've never seen anything that would prompt me to subscribe again or recommend it to family or friends. Until now.

This past February I started taking more pictures when I purchased a new DSLR and I started thinking of finding an alternative to flickr. I love flickr but as a dial-up user I don't always have the time to comment on photos and really that seems to be a central focus of the site... it is a community for sharing photos and commenting. The other problem is that free accounts are limited to 200 photos. Thinking I would cancel my account there I cobbled together a system using iWeb and Galerie to host a couple of personal pages and a place for images here on my MacProductive server. It worked but it was never really convenient and as a result I've continued to post images to flickr and failed to keep my own pages updated. After a few weeks evaluating the new version of iWeb in combination with the recent upgrades to .Mac I've decided it is time to move back. Initially I'll just be moving my images and personal blog there but I may also end up hosting MacProductive there if I can work a way for the two sites to co-exist with domain forwarding and/or the new .Mac personal domain feature.

Using iWeb 2 with the new .Mac has been a pleasure. What has impressed me is that even on dial-up it has been very stable for me. While changing pages and adding images is not super speedy I have yet to have any errors. iWeb just steadily chugs through the process. By comparison when posting to this blog with RapidWeaver I often have to make several attempts due to errors. I'm still not totally happy with the way iWeb compresses images though the larger files are worth dealing with because of the convenience. Making new image albums in iWeb or adding to existing ones from my Aperture library is simple drag and drop. I'm hoping that the next version of Aperture will gain the same integration that iPhoto has with the new .Mac image galleries which look fantastic and are even better than those in iWeb. Until then though I am very happy with what iWeb offers.

If you are looking for an easy way to build a site and/or host images take a look at iLife 08 and .Mac if you have not already. I ordered my .Mac via Amazon because it is a bit cheaper that way, around $70 rather than Apple's $100.

So, come over for a visit and poke around for a bit. There are lots of images and my little blog: A hermit speaks. Feel free to leave comments on any image or blog entry.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ]]>Bentodenny@macproductive.comSoftware2007-11-15T13:22:51-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-11-15-Bento.html#unique-entry-id-86http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-11-15-Bento.html#unique-entry-id-86BentoWhat a nice surprise FileMaker delivered on Tuesday! Of course Bento is only a preview release but after a couple days of use I'm very happy with it. Over the course of the past couple years I've developed a workflow based on Spotlight as a project manager that brings together related iCal tasks, email, contacts, and files. With Leopard this has only gotten better. The only hiccup has been my need to use FileMaker Pro for my invoices. I've created my own fancy invoice template/system with FileMaker Pro and it works very well. But it is a system outside of my workflow. I have to add clients, project jobs, and line items separately. The great thing about Bento is that it may allow me to bring everything under one unified workflow.

First, let me say that Bento is a Leopard only product because it simply would not be possible without the new features of Leopard. With Bento FileMaker has adopted the very slick interface that has become common with many of today's Apple and third party Mac applications: iTunes, iCal, Delicious Library, NetNewsWire, and many others. This is definitely not FileMaker Pro! This is what I would expect from the iWork team, a database to sit alongside of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. It is a perfect compliment to iWork and given the quality of this preview release I would not hesitate to recommend it.

In my couple of days with Bento I've tweaked the "Project" library (in Bento a database or table is referred to as a Library) and the Time Billing Library so that I can use them in conjunction with iCal tasks to track projects and billing. Because the system is using data from iCal and Address Book there's no duplication. Not only that, but I can modify iCal and Address Book data from within Bento. Even better, I can enhance the usefulness of this data by adding new fields in Bento.

As an example, iCal tasks do not include a field for job hours but when I track a task for a paid project I need to track the hours. I normally add this into the task notes field in iCal. When it comes time to create an invoice I gather up my iCal tasks and the lists of hours within the notes fields and transfer them to line items in my FMP invoice database. It works but it is not ideal. With Bento iCal task and event data, as long as the preference is set, is easily viewable within the provided form layout. I've added a field for job hours and this data resides in Bento but is associated with that particular iCal task data. By doing this I can now display and modify my iCal tasks, along with the duration of the task in my Project and Time Billing Libraries.

To put it simply Bento uses the Apple apps and data as a foundation and allows me to build new functionality around them. This is a preview release and there is plenty of room for improvement. As it is now I cannot add any graphic objects such as my logo to the invoice I have set up. Text formatting is a bit limited and the layout is a bit clunky requiring spacer boxes and only allowing one line of text per text box. I'd much prefer a layout engine like the iWork apps that are much more free form. Still, this is an excellent start.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>Leopard: Quick Look and Finder's Cover Flowdenny@macproductive.comOS X2007-11-05T10:05:51-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-11-05-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-85http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-11-05-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-85Picture 1Seriously. How cool is this? When viewing fonts in Leopard we can Quick Look them to get a preview! In fact, Quick Look works on most everything I've tried and has turned out to be my favorite Leopard feature. I can quickly view iCal events, emails, previous iChats, and client web pages all from one finder window. It is instant and I cannot imagine using a computer without it. Not only does it work well on my MacBook Pro but even on older G4 systems it opens quickly and fluidly.

Picture 3



Also very handy is the Finder Cover Flow feature which is not too much of a surprise for me... I fully expected I'd find it very useful. Like Quick Look, Finder's Cover Flow seems to handle practically anything I throw at it though sometimes in unexpected ways: fonts display a two letter preview, html documents display as fully rendered webpages while address book entries display simply as a contact photo.

With Leopard I'm finding that there are new reasons to create Smart Folders for the Finder Sidebar. For example, I've created a Smart Folder of my contacts and can scroll through their images and then use Quick Look to get their details. In fact, when I Quick Look a contact all the normal Address Book data is active with live links so I can send email, initiate an iChat, or jump to a Google map!

Images in Cover Flow are, of course, fantastic and I've created a Smart Folder so that I can view all of the images in Aperture's library right in the Finder... very cool! This would work for iPhoto as well and is very handy for quick access to images without opening the application.

One last note. Screenshots and window grabs in Leopard automatically generate drop shadows! How nifty is that?

Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>Leopard Installation Notes and First Impressionsdenny@macproductive.comOS X2007-10-27T10:51:44-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-10-27-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-84http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-10-27-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-84leopard_box_125This is not a full review... not even a mini review. I just wanted to post a note to say that I've now updated three Macs to 10.5 Leopard and all without a hiccup. Two of them were Archive and Installs and one was a wipe and install. I'm not at all surprised as I've installed everything from OS X Public Beta through 10.5 on my own Macs and many different versions on Macs owned by friends, family, and clients. Never a problem.

Now, as for first impressions. Let me just say that I am impressed! Time Machine set-up and first back-up went perfectly. I backed-up my MacBook Pro to a firewire drive attached to my Mac Mini so it took all night over the network but all seems well. Each update after that should be simple incremental updates and should not take long at all. Safari, Mail, iCal, iChat are all performing perfectly. Screen sharing and file sharing are excellent. Front Row is a fantastic improvement especially on the Mac Mini which is my iTunes music/movie server and is connected to a television. Front Row 2.0 is much faster and smoother than the first iteration!

That's it for now. I've got more exploring to do!

Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>Ready for Leopard?denny@macproductive.comOS X2007-10-23T12:02:29-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-9-23-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-83http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-9-23-Leopard.html#unique-entry-id-83promo_leopard_20071016bSo the time has come for a new version of Mac OS X. I installed Tiger on my Macs on the release date of April 29, 2005 just as I installed Panther on its release date. If all goes as planned I'll be installing Leopard on at least 3 Macs on Friday. I've been very happy with Tiger just as I was happy with Panther and Jaguar. Apple has done a tremendous job with the OS X series. Each new cat comes with stability, increased speed, and a variety of new features and refinements. I have little doubt that Leopard will be the same.

At home I'll be installing on three Macs. I'll be doing an "archive and install" on my G4 Mac Mini and my trusty old 12" PowerBook which now serves as a backup to my primary work machine, a MacBook Pro. I almost always use the archive and install option when installing a new version of OS X as it installs a completely fresh OS and moves the old system to a folder rather than an upgrade which goes through the current install and updates the current files in place. I'd rather start with a completely new install. The great thing about archive and install is that it keeps your third party applications intact as well as all of your user settings and files.

Another install option is the clean install which completely wipes the drive, erasing all data and then installing the new system. I rarely use this option but my MacBook Pro will get the special treatment this time around. Why? Over the past year I've used it to back up over 200 dvds and convert them to h264 encoded QuickTime files. I've also built up a 15 GB Aperture library and 15 GB music library. That's alot of disk usage, far more than most of my Macs have seen in the past and I think its worth the time to go ahead and wipe the drive. I use SuperDuper to back-up my home directory so bringing my new install up to date with my personal data and preferences will be a breeze. I'll use the opportunity to thin out the applications that I no longer use.

I generally do not worry too much about disk fragmentation as OS X does its own file defragmentation via processes such as "hot file adaptive clustering" which works primarily with smaller files when they are opened and saved. However, if you consistently work with larger files such as video files fragmentation may become an issue. You can learn more via this Apple doc.

Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>Aperture, iWeb 08 and iPhoto 08denny@macproductive.comiLife2007-08-13T00:25:11-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-13-Aperture_iWeb08_iPhoto08.html#unique-entry-id-82http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-13-Aperture_iWeb08_iPhoto08.html#unique-entry-id-82
In regards to sharing images via the web, I'm happy to report that Aperture, with the recent update to 1.5.4 works just fine with the updated iWeb 08. I'm an avid user of Flickr and have been from the early days but I do not pay for the Pro account which means that only my most recent 200 images are accessible. I'm okay with that because I can still tag my photos and add them to group pools which is the point of Flickr, to share and comment on photos. Flickr is as much about social interaction as it is about images. Back in February I decided that for the purposes of sharing older photos, I would set up my own image archive here at MacProductive. My intention was to use iPhoto and iWeb. The main drawback was the size of the image output of iWeb: the files were gigantic, often twice the size of a properly optimized image. My work around involved the time consuming process of optimizing with Photoshop. Not the end of the world but the point of iWeb is to make the process quick and easy.

When I switched to Aperture I tried using the built in gallery creation of Aperture and was disappointed with the layout of the galleries as well as the web optimization. I'm not sure why this seems to be a problem for Apple. Rather than continue with iWeb for my photo pages I went in search of a third party solution. I settled on Myriad's Galerie photo gallery software and have been pretty happy with it. The images are optimized as they should be and updating changed galleries on my server is much easier than iWeb. I can also customize the gallery design as much as I would like and Myriad hosts a free commenting system too.

With the new release of iWeb 08 I was curious to see if Apple had addressed any of the items on my iWeb wishlist. They did improve image optimization in some instances and the new photo album features are mostly an improvement. The ability to preview the images in the albums by hovering over each one is fantastic though I think the slideshow is a bit heavy on the reflections. The final verdict is that my updated image galleries are larger because of new files and effects. I might be able to deal with that but Apple continues to make updating to non .Mac servers a pain. Still no way to upload directly to a server and publishing to a folder marks all files as updated so a selective upload of only changed files based on date is not possible. For now I think I'll stick with Myriad's Galerie. Would have been great to just be able to rely on Aperture and iWeb... oh well, maybe next time?

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ]]>From iPhoto to Aperture: Getting Starteddenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-08-05T23:45:21-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-6-iPhoto-to-Aperture.html#unique-entry-id-81http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-6-iPhoto-to-Aperture.html#unique-entry-id-81ApertureTo continue with the process of my switch from iPhoto to Aperture I thought I'd briefly discuss a few issues I faced that may be of interest to other potential switchers. First up, can your Mac even run Aperture. iPhoto will run pretty well on any G4 or better, not so with Aperture. You'll want to check Apple's page for Aperture's hardware requirements. It requires a good bit of juice. Even if your machine meets the requirements you may want to close certain, resource hungry apps when running Aperture. When I'm not using Aperture I often run Safari, Mail, Vienna for RSS, iCal, iTunes, iChat, a text editor and an ftp cilent. When I start up Aperture I usually close every other app but Safari. I'm running on a MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of ram I notice a major slow down with those other apps open.

Next, importing images into Aperture and setting up the library can be a bit tricky. It's possible to import your iPhoto Library right from Aperture but the keyword import can be a mess. It is also possible to manually import the folders of images in the iPhoto Library. There is no "right" way to do it. My suggestion would be to experiment. I decided to take my time with a manual import of the folders into projects that were based on the folder names. I then condensed everything into projects based on each month's imports. I also reevaluated all my keywords and changed certain aspects of my keyword process. Because I was a bit uncertain that I was switching over for good I experimented with a partial import first and spent a week learning about the workings of Aperture.

In my experience, taking my time during the import process as well as learning during the process proved very helpful. I knew that all my images were still safe in my iPhoto Library and any mistakes I made could be discarded by simply throwing away my new Aperture Library. After one week I felt comfortable enough using Aperture and completed the transition. I spent the second week of the process importing the rest of my iPhoto library and tagging with my newly refined set of keywords.

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>From iPhoto to Aperture: Saving Spacedenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-08-04T23:43:00-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-5-iPhoto-to-Aperture.html#unique-entry-id-80http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-5-iPhoto-to-Aperture.html#unique-entry-id-80ApertureIn my previous post I mention that I had switched from iPhoto to Aperture. I've been using iPhoto since the very first version and have always enjoyed it. Over the years, as Apple has improved it that enjoyment has grown. It's never been perfect but worked weåll enough for the number of images I worked with. However, soon after I purchased my DSLR it became very obvious very quickly that I would have to do something about storage of images. Not only were my images 2-3mb each, up from 500kb, but I was also taking far more. In fact, I'm taking 500 images a month rather than 500 a year! I expect that during the winter months I'll take fewer but regardless, my shutter is clicking far more often so saving hard drive space was my first and primary motivation in the switch.

As much as I enjoy iPhoto it does require far more hard drive space when editing photos. While most of my editing is very subtle I do edit almost every photograph. With iPhoto that means a copy is made of the original. Imagine, my monthly total of 500 images, averaging 2.5 mb that's 1.2 gigs a month. With iPhoto that would be nearly doubled!! I hope to begin to pair each months photos down to 300 images or less but that is still around 750mb a month. By comparison, Aperture's method of non-destructive editing results in a small text file of a few kb for each edit version. If I want to use my Aperture images in other applications such as iMovie, Keynote, or Pages I have to make previews of those images, which results in an additional file of 125 - 250 kb. I don't make previews for all of my images, just my highest rated so my previews are still under a total of 100 mb.

The actual process of switching was relatively painless but certainly required a bit of effort. I'll discuss that as well as some of the other differences between iPhoto and Aperture in a future post.

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>Summertimedenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-08-02T16:12:16-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-2-Summertime.html#unique-entry-id-79http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-8-2-Summertime.html#unique-entry-id-79Dennyville or via my Flickr stream. Perhaps my next post will address the switch from iPhoto to Aperture? I've also been trying out Myriad's Galerie photo gallery software as a substitute for iWeb's image galleries. Much better!! Perhaps that also will be an upcoming post!

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>iWeb Tips and tricksdenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-02-03T17:10:20-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-2-3-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-78http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-2-3-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-78photo set of sunsets loads much more quickly and without errors. If you prefer one of the other themes just set up your photo page then select all the photos and open the graphic tab of the inspector. Set the stroke to none and you're finished.

Tip number two concerns the slide-show produced when publishing a photo page to a server other than .Mac. The .Mac slide show is a beautifully rendered show based on Ajax. If you're publishing to your own server it's this terrible brushed metal window from the 2001 era. However, it is possible to download an alternative slideshow which is based on javascript and is free. Just download the file and decompress which will produce a folder called "SlideShow_assets". After you publish your iWeb site drop this into the main folder and replace the iWeb produced folder of the same name. Done. Of course each time you make a change to your iWeb site and republish, your alternative slideshow folder will be replaced again by the original iWeb slideshow folder so keep a copy of the alternative slideshow around in case you accidentally re-upload the iWeb version.

Last tip: visit Rowan Cottage. Just a nice little family iWeb site that happens to be loaded with articles about using and customizing iWeb. A fantastic iWeb resource and perfect compliment to Apple's iWeb discussion forum.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>Revisiting iWebdenny@macproductive.comiLife2007-02-02T09:35:50-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-2-2-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-77http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-2-2-iWeb.html#unique-entry-id-77iWebEarly last year I posted a mini-review of the iWeb and .Mac combo. My conclusion was that iWeb was a good start but that the code, graphics, images and resulting site were bloated. I also commented on the incredible slowness of .Mac. Since that time I've been happily using RapidWeaver and will continue to do so for this site as well as the occasional client site. However, with the recent announcement by Flickr that it's early users would have to transition to a Yahoo-based id I decided it might be a good time to revisit iWeb. I don't have a pro/paid account at Flickr which means I'm limited to 200 photos and I've thought before that I might switch over to hosting my photos on my own domain so that I could post as many images as I want (within my allotted space). I've also been thinking that it might be a good idea to just have a few personal pages to compliment the professional tone of the MacProductive site. Seems like the perfect opportunity to spend a bit more time with iWeb.

My two goals: 1. Produce a personal sub-site with a variety of photo sets. 2. Become proficient in the use of iWeb. I easily accomplished both in one day: Dennyville.

I really like iWeb. It is a fun and very easy to use application. They've done a great job in making layout feel like Pages and Keynote, both of which are a real joy to use. If you're thinking of using iWeb you may want to consider a few things. Since the images/graphics and code are a bit bloated the pages will tend to load slowly, if it is at all possible, avoid themes that use the artsy, non-standard fonts because those are converted to images which will add even more bloat! If you are publishing to a folder for upload to a server via ftp you may want to consider using Captain FTP for it's file-size based synchronization because it will work best for uploading only your changed files.

What I'm really hoping to see with iWeb 2.0

These are the big four which I would consider serious bugs. I really, really hope they fix these four:

Better graphics/image optimization. There is no doubt that iWeb sites load slowly. On dial-up they are painful and even with a broadband connection they are noticeably slow.

Direct ftp publishing to any host. In regards to the publishing process, as it is currently it is awkward and inefficient to the point of being useless without broadband. While it allows for publishing to a folder which can be FTP'd to any host, each update produces an entirely new set of files. Pages and photos that were not edited are republished with a new creation date which means the date-based synchronization of most FTP programs is useless. Captain FTP is the exception and it offers the option to ignore file dates and bases synchronization on file sizes. This makes uploading the updated files of an iWeb site much easier. If Apple's not going to offer direct ftp publishing then I hope they'll change the updating process so that only files which are changed are actually re-published. Doing so would open up proper synchronization to practically any ftp application.

Semantic code. As I understand the situation, iWeb code is technically standards compliant and will validate. This is good. But it is incredibly bloated code and it disregards any notion of the semantic web. Don't get me wrong... these pages look fantastic and the vast majority of iWeb's intended audience have probably never heard of "the semantic web". For these folks what matters is that they can very easily create a website that looks great. But it does matter if for no other reason that all the bloated code adds to the bloated graphics for an even slower experience. Apple, please give us some p tags!

Changing Themes. As it is now, once a page is set up the theme cannot be changed. The only option is to set up a new page and copy paste content from the old page to the new and even that's not clean because it will carry over various elements of the previous theme such as page image borders. If I have an entire site, say 10 pages that I want to change I have to do it page by page.

There are plenty of things I'd like to see added in as new features or improvements in current features, particularly for folks not using .Mac. A better slideshow or slideshow options for photo sets for sites which are not hosted on .Mac. Currently there is just one option and it appears to date back to the early days of .Mac/HomePage. Yuck. Keyword tagging for photos would also be nice especially if iPhoto keywords could be carried over. Searching... I'd love to be able to use the search mechanism that is available for .Mac. I'm not sure what they're using for that or if it's possible to carry it over to non-apple servers but would be nice. Same goes for comments. Adding the ability to edit themes would begin to cut against the grain of iWeb's intent so more themes would be great. The included themes are very nice but still, if users are limited to only what Apple provides, more is better.

iWeb, like all the iApps Apple hase created, is off to a good start. Certainly it is a bit rough around the edges but that's to be expected in a first version. I'm really looking forward to iWeb 2.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ]]>Steve's MacWorld Keynotedenny@macproductive.comApple2007-01-11T15:19:21-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-11-MacWorld07.html#unique-entry-id-76http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-11-MacWorld07.html#unique-entry-id-76Apple. The 10 years since Jobs' return have been astounding: iMacs and iBooks, the shift to OS X, iLife, the iPod, the shift to Intel, and finally, the iPhone. Yes, it really is astounding. Given the content of the Jobs keyonte it seems likely that Apple's future is not only secure, but that it will continue to break away as a leader of design in many areas.

The iPhone and the Future of Apple Mobile
A mobile device that runs a version of OS X and incorporates an entirely new system of touch-based control is nothing short of groundbreaking. I wish they'd called it Apple Mobile which would better reflect the range of the device. Regardless, it seems obvious that there will be a series of iPhones, like the iPod, that will offer a range of prices, sizes, and feature sets. It also seems likely that the technologies in the first iPhone will make there way into upcoming iPods and perhaps a new class of mobile/tablet that does not include a phone. The iPhone is the first of a new Apple platform and as great as the iPhone will be, it is running on just the first version of mobile X. Get ready, this roller coaster is just pulling out. The first round of iPods, all of them till now, were just the process of standing in line and getting buckled in.

AppleTV and the new Airport Extreme
Back to the living room, not only did Apple release the expected AppleTV but also a new Airport Extreme. The news here is not the 802.11n which was the next logical step, but the inclusion of Airport Disk. According to Apple almost any USB 2.0 hard drive can be plugged into the Airport Extreme's USB port and then be easily shared via the network. Not only that, plug in a USB hub and share multiple drives and printers. Let's hope that Airport Disk will work with Leopard's new back-up system, Time Machine.

Leopard, iLife, and iWork
To everyone's surprise Jobs did not mention Leopard, iLife, or iWork. Not a peep. Many folks have expressed disappointment which is understandable. We've all come to expect new versions of these suites with each new year's MacWorld. Some have speculated that iLife and iWork apps will require Leopard technologies and so may be tied into it's release. It goes without saying that the Mac community is eager to get more details on Leopard and the iApps... hopefully we'll here something soon. I wouldn't be surprised to see a special Apple event soon.


Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ]]>Why not call the iPhone the Apple Mobile?denny@macproductive.comApple2007-01-11T14:45:36-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-11-iPhone-1.html#unique-entry-id-75http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-11-iPhone-1.html#unique-entry-id-75iPhone, why not just call it the "Apple Mobile"? Personally, I think the iProduct naming convention has gotten a bit old. Given the groundbreaking design of the iPhone as well as the fact that it is so much more than a phone, seems like it would make sense to break the naming convention as well.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ]]>Getting started with your first Mac: Part 2 denny@macproductive.comHow-to2007-01-05T23:15:50-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-5-Getting-Started-Pt2.html#unique-entry-id-74http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-5-Getting-Started-Pt2.html#unique-entry-id-74Part 1 focused on the Menu Bar and the Dock. Most of the information presented in each is intended to be a detailed explanation of just a few basic elements that may be helpful during those first few days. Welcome to the Mac.

The Apple Menu and the Start Menu
While the Apple Menu and the Start Menu are similar they have a few differences worth noting. The Windows Start Menu offers a shortcut to applications, Search, and the system control panel as well as buttons to shutdown or logout.

The Apple Menu offers About this Mac which provides an informative window that offers a quick overview of your current operating system version, the processor and amount of ram installed as well as a button to open up the System Profiler that provides you with all the details of your system. The Apple Menu also offers a shortcut to Software Update, Apple's OS X downloads page, System Preferences, Dock and Location preferences, Recent Items (Applications, Documents, and Servers), Force Quit (for frozen applications), Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, and Logout for the current user.

System Preferences
Assessable via the Apple Menu, open it up and get to know your system. There are lots of options to explore. By default there are four categories: Personal, Hardware, Internet & Network, and System. My suggestion is that you go through one by one within the first few hours of use. Here's a tip and an example of the importance of knowing what's in System Prefs. One complaint many Windows to Mac switchers have is that they have to relearn the shortcuts, specifically shortcuts that involve the Control key such as Copy, Cut, and Paste. On Macs the default modifier key for those shortcuts is Command key (has the Apple and ⌘, next to the spacebar). Well, rather than relearn that shortcut just open the Keyboard and Mouse prefs. On the Keyboard tab, click the Modifier Keys button. Set the Control Key to Command, and Command Key to Control, then hit OK.
Now your shortcuts will work exactly as they did on your PC.

One last thing I'll mention regarding System Prefs is the nice touch of the integrated Spotlight searching which includes keywords that include Windows terms. For example, type "Wallpaper" and the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane will highlight.

osXinterface
The Finder
Need to open a document or application? Unless you've placed a shortcut in the Dock you will use the Finder to navigate your hard drive or Spotlight to search (covered in more detail below). Similar to Windows Explorer, the Finder is both a file browser as well as a searching tool. You can open a Finder window by clicking the blue happy face in the far left side of the dock. By default you'll see a nifty side pane in every Finder window that includes various shortcuts. In the top half you'll see Network and Macintosh HD as well as any mounted external drives or mounted optical media such as cds or dvds. In the bottom half of this pane you'll see shortcuts to your Desktop, Home directory, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, and Pictures. Similar to the Dock at the bottom of your screen, you can add a shortcut to any folder or file to this pane in the Finder by simply dragging and dropping it. You can also remove any shortcut by dragging it from the pane and releasing it.

To learn more of the details check out Apple's Tour of Mac OS X. Part 1 of that tour is dedicated to the Finder.

Searching with Spotlight
Spotlight is your best friend. While the Finder makes managing files fairly easy, Spotlight makes finding files and nearly anything else on your Mac an effortless process with nearly instant results. Searching from the Spotlight menu in the top right of the screen is perhaps the quickest and most powerful technique. From the Spotlight menu you can find documents, images, contacts, tasks, events, email, system preferences and more. To give you just a hint of how great Spotlight searching is, it will find not just contacts by name, but will also search the text you have put into a contact's notes. The same goes for the notes in all iCal tasks and events. Spotlight looks into the content of pdf files and most text files as well. You'll also discover that Spotlight is integrated into every Finder window and most Apple apps such as the already mentioned System Preferences as well as Address Book, Mail, iCal, and Preview. Many of these applications allow you to create Smart Groups that are saved searches, updated real-time, based on Spotlight. While the search field in each specific application will only find content within that app they are all tied together by the same technology.

It's easy to get started with Spotlight but if you'll spend some time with it you'll find that there is a great deal of power buried within it. For more details on using this technology to the fullest, check out my post on project management with Spotlight.

Next up, Part 3: Keyboard Shortcuts, Installing Apps, The Help System

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>Welcome to 2007...denny@macproductive.comApple2007-01-02T22:01:18-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-2-Apple.html#unique-entry-id-73http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2007-1-2-Apple.html#unique-entry-id-73welcome2007_20070101
You gotta love Apple's style.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

]]>Getting started with your first Mac: Part 1denny@macproductive.comHow-to2006-12-27T22:45:41-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-12-27-Getting-Started-Pt1.html#unique-entry-id-72http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-12-27-Getting-Started-Pt1.html#unique-entry-id-72
The Menu Bar
Getting to know what's on screen. Let's start with the Menu Bar (top of the screen) and the Dock bottom of the screen). If you are used to windows you are used to seeing a menu at the top of each application window with menu items such as File, Edit, View, etc. On a Mac there is only one menu bar and it is at the top of the screen. When you first start your Mac the open application is the Finder so you will see, at the top left an Apple and then the word Finder with it's associated menu items: File, Edit, View, Go, Window, and Help. You'll also notice the Dock at the bottom will show various application icons which are shortcuts to the actual applications that reside in your Applications folder. Any open application will have a black triangle underneath as an indicator that it is running. When you first start only the Finder is open because it's always open as long as your Mac is running. To access a Finder browser window click its icon, a smily blue face at the far left of the dock. To open any application that has a shortcut in the dock just click once and you'll see the icon begin to bounce as it opens up. As you open applications you'll notice that they will initially take control of the menu at the top and their name will appear next to the Apple.

The Dock
Adding application shortcuts to the dock is easy. Click the Finder icon in the dock and in the new window you'll see that the left side contains a series of shortcuts to your Applications, Home, Desktop, Documents, etc... just click the Applications shortcut and you'll be taken to your Applications folder. Do add an application to the dock simply click its icon, hold, and drag it to the Dock, anyplace left of the little divider line. The right side of the divider line is for shortcuts to files and folders which are also easily added by dragging them and dropping them into any place to the right of the divider. To remove any shortcut from the Dock simply click, hold, and drag it from dock and release. You'll see it poof away though the actual file is still safely tucked away on your drive.

The Dock serves other functions besides opening applications. You can also use it to switch between applications that are already open by clicking on it's icon. When you do this you'll notice that the application's windows come to the front and the application name appears at the top left next to the Apple Menu. You can accomplish the same task of application switching by holding the Command (Apple) key and then click but release the tab key. You'll see a semi-transparent bar of enlarged icons of currently running applications appear in the middle of the screen. With each click of the tab key you'll see a highlight progress to the right across each icon. To perform the switch release the Command key when the highlight is over the application you want. Once you practice this trick you'll find it very useful for quickly switching between apps.

A few more dock tidbits. Click and hold almost any icon in the dock and you'll see a menu consisting of Open, Show in Finder, Open at Login, Remove from Dock. If you click and hold on a running application you'll also see other items such as Quit and Hide. Many applications have other functions built into their Dock menu. For example, click and hold the iTunes icon while it is running and you'll see Play, Pause, Next, Previous, the currently playing track, Shuffle, Repeat, and My Rating. This is great because it means that you can perform these functions in iTunes without actually switching to iTunes thus allowing you to keep focus on the task at hand. The Dock menu for the OS X Mail application offers items such as Get New Mail and Compose New Message. If you have placed a folder, perhaps your Home folder or your Applications folder in the Dock you can click and hold which will produce a nice pop-up menu allowing you to select items to open or even navigate into other folders.

Next up, Part 2: The Apple Menu, System Preferences, The Finder, and Spotlight Searching

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ]]>MacBook Pro Follow-updenny@macproductive.comReview2006-11-07T14:37:21-06:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-11-7-MacBookPro.html#unique-entry-id-71http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-11-7-MacBookPro.html#unique-entry-id-71my first post. As of this writing I've not had any problems. I've had a chance to use a few apps that I'd not used at the time of the previous post. Specifically I want to mention QuickTime, VisualHub, and FileMaker Pro Advanced 8.5, all of which are Universal Binaries. The performance, when compared to the 1GHZ G4 PowerBook and the 1.6 GHZ G5 iMac is incredible. Viewing QuickTime files, including HD clips from Apple are a breeze for the MBP. The 12" PB won't play them without constant skips. The iMac plays them but pegs the processor and ramps up the fan to high speed. The MBP plays everything I've thrown at it effortlessly.

Converting DVDs to mp4s using H.264 encoding for playback via iTunes has also seen incredible improvement. Using the iMac to convert Video TS folders with Handbrake or VisualHub requires 9-12 hours for just 1 pass encoding. During that time the processor is pegged at 100% and the fans are running at high speed. The MBP does the same job in 2 hours with both processors at 60-80%. The fan does come on and seems to run at a low to medium speed. The laptop heats up a bit but never seems to get as hot as the 12" PB gets when I push it's processor. In fact, the performance of the MBP has me wondering if there might be something wrong with the G5 iMac!

Here's another comparison. Right now the 12" PB which I've hooked up to a tv and sound system for music and movies is downloading a video podcast. The only open application is iTunes and it's running at 50 - 75% with the fans on. When I watch that videocast or any QuickTime file the processor will run at 60 - 90% depending on the size, bitrate, and encoding of the file. The benefit of this is that my PB functions as a space heater in the winter. Compare that performance to the MBP which currently has the following apps open: Safari, Vienna, iChat, Mail, iCal, Remote Desktop, iTunes, Smultron, Preview, TextEdit, RapidWeaver, and QuickTime. Active tasks include playing a song in iTunes and typing this post. The processors are, combined, hovering at 15 - 40%. I have yet to hear the fans kick on today and the palm rests are only slightly warm to the touch. While Apple does a decent job of keeping new versions of OS X and the various applications functional on older processors it only makes sense that those processors will strain a bit more with each new versions features. A good example would be iTunes 7 and its integration of Cover Flow. Great visuals but there's no doubt it uses more processor and memory resources.

Something else I've noticed is performance at idle. The PB with one or two apps open but nothing actually being done will hover at 5 - 15% and is warm to the touch. The iMac which gets a bit more use by others in the house and may have 4-6 apps open hovers at 10-50% even with no apparent tasks being performed. On both of those Macs the fans kick on occasionally during these times of no/low usage. The MBP, were I to stop iTunes and stop typing drops to 10% or less and will remain cool to the touch with no fan coming on at all. Energy use is worth noting. Computers in use range from 40- 110+ watts of energy consumption. That may not seem like much but the cumulative effect of millions of computers contributes to carbon in our atmosphere and that means a contribution to climate change. Based on what I'm seeing with the MBP can't help but think that the overall energy usage of the Intel Macs must be much lower than the G4 and G5 generations.

After nearly 2 weeks with the MacBook Pro I'm a happy camper with not a single complaint.


Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>24 hours with the Core 2 Duo MacBook Prodenny@macproductive.comReview2006-10-27T13:50:21-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-10-27-MacBookPro.html#unique-entry-id-70http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-10-27-MacBookPro.html#unique-entry-id-70
My MacBook Pro is the base model, 2.16 GHZ Core 2 Duo and 1 GIG of RAM. My first reaction was not at all surprising: WOW. This is one very fast machine. FAST! Tasks such as opening a RapidWeaver site that previously took 15-20 seconds, now take only 2-3 seconds. Most applications open up in 1 bounce. It is a bit bizarre to look up at MenuMeters and see 2 processor indicators! Thus far I've been using my usual apps: Safari, Vienna, iChat, Mail, iCal, Remote Desktop, iTunes, RapidWeaver, Smultron, FileMaker Pro, and iPhoto. Most of those are open at this very moment and the computer is cool and silent. What I've seen as that the processors are each staying at 7% or less. Compare that to the 12" PowerBook which had the processor consistently at 15 -35%. I have yet to notice the fan kick in. Lots of folks have discussed the heat generated by the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. I have no doubt that there are certain tasks that would kick the processor up and the fan would indeed come on but for my normal, day-to-day work I'm enjoying a rather cool MBP!

The keyboard is very nice and seems to be identical to the 12" PowerBook with the exception of the very cool background light. I wish there was a way to adjust when the background light comes on though. As it is it comes on in low light which means it is on quite alot. I'd rather it only come on in very low light. The speakers are very nice for a laptop though I don't expect to use them too often as I'll be using the old PB, now attached to the television and sound system as me media hub. The screen is bright and oh so nice! Not a single dead or stuck pixel. Last but not least is the built in iSight camera which is quite cool. We will eventually get a highspeed connection out in these woods and when we do I intend to use the iSight for video iChats with clients. At the moment the camera is, at the very least, fun to use with Photo Booth. I'd imagine that it would also prove useful for anyone interested in a videocast.

I have yet to notice any kind of exterior blemish or irregularity on the case of the MBP. The wireless connection to my Airport Express seems to be equal to that of the 12" PowerBook. I won't comment on battery life as I've not had enough time to condition/callibrate the battery.

The experience thus far: fantastic.


Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>FileMaker Pro, Automator, and Folder Actions increase productivitydenny@macproductive.comFileMaker Pro2006-10-17T19:08:06-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-10-17-FMP-and-Automator.html#unique-entry-id-69http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-10-17-FMP-and-Automator.html#unique-entry-id-69I discussed the FileMaker Pro invoicing solution I was creating for tracking MacProductive clients. Shortly after writing that I used Automator and Mac OS X Folder Actions to add a nifty new feature to FileMaker's ability to send a pdf. Basically FMP makes it very easy to use a script to create a pdf and then create an email that attaches that pdf. But by default this pdf file is overwritten the next time around by a new file of the same name. This is a problem if I want to save the pdf. Yes, its true that the pdf is attached in my archive of sent mail and can be easily retrieved but I like the idea of having a folder of date organized pdfs. The solution is an Automator action saved as a Folder Action script which is then attached to the designated folder. So here's what happens when I click the "Email Invoice" button in my database:

  1. The invoice status as marked as "Invoiced Emailed" and given a date stamp

  2. A pdf titled "MacProductive Invoice.pdf" is created in a folder called Invoices

  3. FMP creates a new email addressed to the client with the subject MacProductive Invoice with the invoice date
  4. FMP attaches the new pdf invoice to the email

  5. The Folder/Automator Action attached to the Invoices folder kicks springs into action and renames the pdf by adding the current date to the beginning and a trailing serial number then moves it into an Invoice Archive folder

  6. Done!


All I have to do is add a note to my client in the body of the email and click send. Each invoice is now archived and easy to find by date should I need it.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ]]>Virtual Desktops: Yes or No? denny@macproductive.comProductivity2006-09-27T16:02:16-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-27-Virtual-Desktops.html#unique-entry-id-68http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-27-Virtual-Desktops.html#unique-entry-id-68recently, I've been using virtual desktops for a while and consider them a great addition to the Mac OS X experience. I started with Desktop Manager and recently have been using Virtue. Apple plans to include their own implementation of virtual desktops in Leopard which they have dubbed Spaces and it looks good. My use of virtual desktops came about from a desire to have a bit more desktop space on my primary Mac, a 12" PowerBook. Virtual desktops allow for a sense of more space and the ability to quickly jump to a whole new screen. As someone with 9-12 applications open at all times I appreciate the ability to have a desktop devoted to specific purposes and applications. A side effect of doing things this way is that I've developed a habit of keeping each application maximized so that I can focus on that app when I'm in that desktop and get the most out of the 12" screen. Seems to make sense.

But maybe not. See, now that I'm keeping my windows maximized I can get the exact same effect of the desktop switch by using the OS X Command-Tab application switcher or the dock. If I just need quick access to the desktop I have Expose set to show the desktop via a keyboard shortcut using the "fn" key or the bottom left of my screen, either way requires a trip to the bottom left, keyboard or screen. I got to thinking about this and as an experiment I've quit Virtue for a few days. A side benefit is that the memory normally used by Virtue is now freed up for other apps and on a PowerBook with 768 MB of ram every little bit counts.

It's been nearly five days without Virtue and I think this change may stick. The only real difference in switching with Command-Tab or the dock is that I do not see the nifty transition that virtual desktop apps provide when switching. The end result is the same and it happens just as quickly. A key to making this work, as with virtual desktops, is to not use the dock for minimizing windows. Another key to making this work is the tabbed window interface in applications such as Safari, Vienna and Smultron. I do not use multiple windows for each application and that's been the case for a while. The only exception to this rule is iChat, a bit of an oddball which requires 2 windows, one for my buddy list and one for message window which is tabbed via Chax.

Still, I can think of situations in which the virtual desktop solution would make sense. Should I need to work more often from my iMac with it's larger 17" screen I would use Virtue because certain tasks such as web development would benefit by having a Safari screen alongside of Smultron window with open html files being edited. FileMaker related work also often benefits from having multiple windows of the same database open side by side.

For now though, as long as I'm working on my small screened PowerBook I'll work without virtual desktops and I'll be just as productive.

Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>Essential Mac Apps - Part 3denny@macproductive.comSoftware2006-09-15T17:34:57-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-15-Mac-Apps-3.html#unique-entry-id-67http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-15-Mac-Apps-3.html#unique-entry-id-67here.

iLife
I'm adding the iLife suite to this list because I consider it to be essential. I have the latest version and will likely continue updating with each new release because I use these apps all the time and because each yearly upgrade seems to be worth it in terms of new features. I won't go into iTunes because it is free and included on every new Mac. It's great and I use it many hours every day. Enough said.

iPhoto is another essential. I take a lot of photos and I'm always scanning in old photographs from one of the many shoe boxes of family photos. I keyword all photos at the time of import and for that I consider Keyword Assistant essential. It makes keywording even easier than the methods included in iPhoto. Another reason to use iPhoto is the tie-in to other apps: iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, RapidWeaver, Pages, and Keynote to name a few. It seems ever new application, Apple or third party, is taking advantage of the photos stored in iPhoto. Last but not least, I've now made two iPhoto books and will be making more for various gifts.

iMovie and iDVD. I love these apps. I've made numerous movies which were first put to VHS (2001) and for the past couple years, DVD. With a combination of still photos and new or even digitized archive footage I have assemble DVD and iPhoto book combination gift packages for birthdays and anniversaries.

GarageBand has various uses. I have used it for podcasting and for creating soundtracks for video projects. I wouldn't consider this one essential but it has been very useful, easy and fun to use.

Last and probably least is iWeb. I don't use it and don't consider it to be as useful as RapidWeaver. It has great potential and I'm certain that future versions will greatly improve it. My main reason for not using it is that I do not use .Mac. Yes, I know I can ftp iWeb sites but from my brief experimentation it seemed to be far more of a hassle than it should. For those with a subscription to .Mac I would certainly recommend giving iWeb a shot.

  1. iTunes
  2. iPhoto
  3. iMovie
  4. iDVD
  5. GarageBand
  6. iWeb

Maintenance
Want to save some hard drive space? Monolingual is your friend! I've saved at least 1 gig on each drive that I've used Monolingual on. It removes the various localizations from the applications on your Mac. On a small 40 gig PowerBook drive 1 gig is nothing to sneeze at! The most recent versions of Monolingual also have the option of removing the parts of Universal Binaries that are not needed. I'm on a G4 and a G5 so for me this would be the Intel code that is removed. I've not tested it on Intel machines to verify that it does the opposite for them and removes the PPC code.

OnyX is a great application for those that like to sleep their Macs at night to save energy. The various unix maintenance scripts that remove caches and logs run at night and will not do so if the computer is asleep. OnyX allows me to run them manually or set new times for them. I've set them to run during the day when I know my machines are on. It can also be used to repair permissions and set a variety of other options which cannot be set in the standard system prefs.

SuperDuper! I've tried numerous back-up utilities but ultimately chose SuperDuper! Easy to use and in my opinion the best option until Leopard's Time Machine. You do back-up.... don't you?

  1. Monolingual
  2. OnyX
  3. SuperDuper!

Preference Panes
Ah yes, preference panes. These are must haves. All of the Unsanity haxies are great though I currently only use Shapeshifter. As much as I love Mac OS X sometimes I like to mix it up and Shapeshifter seems the best way to do it. I've never had any problems with it. It eats up a bit of memory and may add just a fraction of start-up time for each application but I don't notice it. Lots of beautiful themes to choose from. The other Unsanity apps are also good though I don't always use them due to limited memory: FruitMenu and Xounds. I'm fairly certain than when I finally upgrade to a MacBook with 2 gigs of ram I'll use them all.

MenuMeters is essential. I want to see my current processor and network activity at a glance. Though I'm not using them MenuMeters also offers disk usage and memory usage. That's a total of 4 monitors that can reside in my menu, each one customizable in various ways.

Textpander was free is now shareware called TextExpander. It's a great way to create shortcuts that will expand out into all kinds of text. I use it to expand out into html tags, phone numbers, signatures, email addresses, urls, addresses, names, etc. A great timesaver and absolutely essential once you've gotten used to it.

iScroll2 enables the scrolling trackpad on older iBooks and PowerBooks. Also adds 2 finger control click. Sweet and essential for me. I rarely bother with the control click anymore.

Growl is a method of system notification that applications can use. As of now I use several of these such as Mail, iTunes, Safari and Vienna. As an example, when Vienna finds updated feeds it uses Growl to pop up a notification of the updates regardless of what application I'm using. I can customize various aspects of the display such as style, length of time that it is on my screen, as well as it's location on the screen.

ICeCoffee, listed simply as "Services" once installed in the user preferences, allows me to define a subset of the currently available application services to display in a contextual menu. No need to go to the Application>Services menu, with Services I can just control click/right click and the short list of services I have predefined is right there. A great way to really use a technology that most users never remember to use. Apple should have been doing this from the beginning.

FinderPop is one of several preference panes (the above mentioned FruitMenu also does this) that I can use to add new options to the standard contextual menu. With FinderPop I can add folders, currently running applications and more.

  1. Shapeshifter
  2. MenuMeters
  3. TextExpander
  4. iScroll2
  5. Growl
  6. ICeCoffEE
  7. FinderPop


Technorati Tags: , , ]]>Essential Mac Apps - Part 2denny@macproductive.comSoftware2006-09-11T12:54:32-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-11-Mac-Apps-2.html#unique-entry-id-66http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-11-Mac-Apps-2.html#unique-entry-id-66here.

Office
Many of this group are "office apps" but as I said in Part 1, thinking about categories of apps is tricky because so many apps can be used in so many ways. For example, as much as I love using Pages for layout for print I also have used it for creating web graphics and logos. Export to pdf and open in Photoshop or Illustrator if you need to. Very handy! For print or web, Pages has become my publishing workhorse.

Page layout and word processing
As stated above, I use Pages for all sorts of tasks, page layout and word processing among them. I'll use word if I must but I'd rather use Pages or even the Apple freebie TextEditor which will save in the .doc format. Pages also saves into the .doc format and is fully featured. There are others out there as well, some of them ported to Mac compatibility, others on the way: NeoOffice, OpenOffice.
  1. Pages
  2. Word

Presentation
Keynote is one of my favorite applications. I've not had much call to use it recently but should I need a presentation application this would be my first choice. Like Pages, it's younger sibling in the iWork suite, Keynote has enough export power to be useful beyond just presentations.
  1. Keynote
  2. Power Point

Spreadsheet
While I do have Microsoft Office on my iMac which has more hard drive space I've taken to the alternatives for my PowerBook. The perfect alternative to Excel is a new spreadsheet app, still in beta, called Tables. Not as full featured as Excel but for my minimal spreadsheet needs it's perfect. I'm still hoping Apple will introduce a spreadsheet application into the iWork suite, until then Tables will do.
  1. Tables
  2. Excel

Database
There is only one database application that really interests me and that is Filemaker Pro. There are others and a few years back I took a brief look at them just to see what was available. If you need a database I suggest FileMaker Pro as your first stop. It comes with a great set of templates to start with and, as I've said before, the folks at FileMaker have done a fantastic application that invites you in to explore, use, and develop.
  1. FileMaker Pro

Text Editor
My primary interest with text editing revolves around web development though I often use simple notes, along with iCal and Mail, to track project tasks. I've been hand coding websites since 1997 and I've tried many of these along the way. SubEthaEdit has been one of my favorites but these days I usually work solo so the sharing feature that I love so much is not of much use and as of this writing the application still lacks tabs for multiple documents. I must have tabs in my text editor. In fact, tabs are at the very top of the list. I've tried TextMate and like it but really it's a bit more than I need and I'm not too fond of the text. When I spend alot of time looking at text I want to choose a pleasing font and TextMate doesn't cut it. Smultron is my top choice and is running on my Mac everyday. Tabs, split view, templates, snippets, web page preview using the OS X WebKit, and excellent find/replace. Why pay for BBEdit or even the much less expensive TextMate?
  1. Smultron
  2. TextEdit
  3. TextMate
  4. SubEthaEdit
  5. BBEdit

Graphics
As I stated above, Pages is my workhorse. I've been using it to create a whole slew of graphics for small print projects and websites and it is a joy to use. For graphics that need to be optimized i can jump into Photoshop. I've even used Pages to create line art such as logos that can be exported into pdf and opened in Illustrator for further export to whatever format is needed.
  1. Pages
  2. Photoshop
  3. Graphic Converter
  4. Illustrator

Web Creation and Blogging
If the goal is easy and quick web development I'd go with RapidWeaver. I've also tried iWeb and Sandvox which both off to a good start but as version 1 apps they have plenty of problems and oddities. RapidWeavers been out for a while now and is at version 3.5. The maturity shows in the power and flexibility of the app. Beginners will find it easy to point and click their way to a new website using one of the built-in themes. Developers can customize the themes or build their own from the ground up. The MacProductive website you are viewing was built using RapidWeaver and a custom theme.

For blogging I wouldn't hesitate to suggest Ecto or MarsEdit. Both are great apps.
  1. RapidWeaver
  2. iWeb
  3. Sandvox
  4. Ecto
  5. MarsEdit

Video Players
Flip4Mac is a fantastic improvement for the playing of Windows Media right in Quicktime. No more need for Microsoft's cheesy player. VLC is great to have on hand as an alternative to Apple's Quicktime player. It will play almost anything you throw at it.
  1. Flip4Mac
  2. VLC


More coming soon in Part 3...

Technorati Tags: , , ]]>Essential Mac Apps - Part 1denny@macproductive.comSoftware2006-09-08T16:05:36-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-8-Mac-Apps.html#unique-entry-id-65http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-8-Mac-Apps.html#unique-entry-id-65list of essential Mac apps and as such it is shaped by the kind of work I do! In most cases I've tried each app listed but am only or mostly using the first one in a particular category. Others I've likely tried but only use as back-up if necessary or not at all though I consider them to be useful and others may prefer them. Something else about a list such as this, while I have apps categorized by usage it is worth noting that this is a very loose kind of categorization given all the potential for crossover in the usage of any particular app.

Launchers
Essential. While Spotlight search makes things a bit easier when I'm using someone else's Mac it's not really a substitute for a real Launcher. Quicksilver is my favorite by far because it is  free and with it's plugin architecture it does more than Launchbar. Another benefit is the great community of folks that can offer help in getting the most out of using Quicksilver.
  1. Quicksilver
  2. Launchbar


Virtual Desktops
Leopard will bring default, pre-installed virtual desktops to the Mac via Spaces. Until then I'll continue using Desktop Manager. I've been using this for a couple years and cannot imagine a Mac without it. If you are using a new Intel Mac you can use Virtue which is very similar and under active development though a bit buggy from what I've read. 

Edit: 9/15/06 I decided to go ahead and try out Virtue again thinking the bugs would force me right back to Desktop Manager. One week later and I've made Virtue my default. Not a single crash! What I like better about Virtue: I can save desktop space by not showing the little pager all the time. Instead I have it set to pop up via a short cut. Even better, If I just click an app in the dock or choose it via the OS X Command-Tab applications switcher it will automatically switch me to the appropriate desktop for that app. Very cool.

  1. Virtue
  2. Desktop Manager

Browsers
In terms of speed and rendering I consider these four to be close enough that they are all excellent choices. I prefer Safari for two reasons. First, with Saft I can save my tabs at a crash or quit and I can block flash advertising. Second, I love the OS X Tiger Dictionary application which can be accessed via contextual menu in Safari but not Camino or Opera.  OmniWeb is a great browser but not great enough to pay for.
  1. Safari
  2. Camino
  3. Opera
  4. OmniWeb

RSS
Vienna delivers many of the features of NetNewsWire with a very similar look. It also has the great benefit of being open source freeware/donationware. As an RSS reader it offers an integrated tabbed web interface via the OS X WebKit. It's also got a whole slew of filtering/viewing possibilities. It really is an excellent reader with a great feature set and interface. Regarding Safari, I've come to appreciate Safari's built in RSS and used it before Vienna. If you are a heavy user of RSS I'd suggest trying a Safari-Vienna combination. If you read just a handful of RSS feeds Safari's RSS would likely be enough for you.
  1. Vienna
  2. Safari
  3. NetNewsWire

Torrent
I don't really have a strong opinion on this.
  1. Azureus
  2. Bitrocket

Sharing
There are other Gnutella/Limewire clients but this one is freeware/donationware and has worked great for me. 
  1. Acqlite

FTP
My first website built in 1997 was ftp'd with Fetch... ah what fond memories! I've not used it in a while but the last time I did it was rock solid. For the past couple years Transmit has been my favorite by far. 
  1. Transmit
  2. Fetch
  3. Cyberduck

Email Client and Plugins
Over the years I've tried them all or most of them. From the days of the Classic Mac Os through X, I've used: Mulberry, PowerMail, Mozilla, Mailsmith, Eudora, Entourage, and Apple's Mail. I think I'm forgetting one. In any case, I've tried the last two versions of Entourage but never left Mail and don't plan on it. It has been, for the most part, everything I need in an email client. With add-ons such as those listed here, I could not be happier. Actually, I will be with Leopard Mail because having those to-dos and notes built in will be oh so sweet.
  1. Mail
  2. JunkMatcher
  3. MailTags
  4. Act-On
  5. MailAppetizer

Chat
Tried them both and love them both. I've settled on iChat for quite sometime because Adium does not handle file transfers well. In fact, it has almost always crashed for me with any kind of file transfer. Given that everyone I want to chat with has an AIM or .Mac account I don't really need Adium's ability to handle other services. With the new features coming in Leopard iChat there is no way I'll be taking it off my dock.
  1. iChat
  2. Adium


More coming soon in Part 2...

Technorati Tags: , , ]]>Creating and managing multiple iPhoto libraries in iPhoto 6denny@macproductive.comiLife2006-09-03T00:11:01-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-3-iPhoto.html#unique-entry-id-64http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-3-iPhoto.html#unique-entry-id-64iPhotoIs your hard drive filling up with an iPhoto library full of photos? Here's a bit of advice. First, don't be afraid to delete images that are near duplicates. I can't tell you how many hundreds of megabytes I've seen wasted because someone was either afraid to delete photos that were nearly identical or just never took the time. Go ahead, do it. It's a great rainy day project... or a good any day project. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy your pictures as you work through them. If you have not added keywords to your images now would be a great time to do that too.

Once you've taken this step to remove photos you don't really need you may find that you still have too many images to host on your Mac's internal drive. If you have an external drive you can create a new libraries there or just move your current library. Here's how. If you just want to move your current library copy the folder, "iPhoto Library," (which is usually in the Pictures folder of your home directory) over to the external drive. When you start iPhoto hold down the option key and keep it down until you get the iPhoto dialog window. Yes, it's that simple. You'll be prompted to create a new iPhoto library or to choose an already existing library to open from. At this point you can choose your library in it's new location or, if you are keeping the original and creating a new library choose that option from the buttons presented. Easy. The next time you open iPhoto it will choose the last library you used. If you have opted to start a second library just hold down the option key during iPhoto startup anytime you want to open the previous library.

Back it up! If you have so many photos that you are using an external drive to move your current library or are creating new libraries you should be thinking about where you will back-up. Do you have a second external drive that can serve as a backup for the 1st external drive which will now be hosting photos? If not I'd suggest going back to the beginning of this tip. Delete the photos you really don't need. Don't expand or move your iPhoto libraries until you have a separate drive you can back-up to. This means at least 2 external drives... on for your iPhoto libraries and another one for backing up.

One other note of caution that I'll mention since I'm on the topic of iPhoto libraries. While this hint discusses moving the folder "iPhoto Library" so that you can save space on your internal drive, do not, ever, for any reason, move or delete files or folders inside of the iPhoto library. Never. The contents of this folder are not for you, they belong to iPhoto. If you want to work with images that are in the iPhoto library you use iPhoto. No exceptions.

Technorati Tags: , , ]]>Invoicing with FileMaker Prodenny@macproductive.comFileMaker Pro2006-09-02T10:10:15-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-2-Invoicing-with-Filemaker-Pro.html#unique-entry-id-63http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-2-Invoicing-with-Filemaker-Pro.html#unique-entry-id-63FMP InvoicingI finally sat down and created an FileMaker Pro invoicing database for myself. I've been experimenting for a while with a combination of the OS X Address Book, iCal, Pages, and Spotlight to track projects, tasks, and invoices. It works very well for everything except for the invoicing. I wanted to try this first because I like having everything tied in by Spotlight and FileMaker Pro data is not. Alas, even with keyword tagging the invoicing was just not working. I'm still going to track task and project job time with iCal but will output that to FileMaker for all aspects of invoicing.

I used the nice Pages invoice as the basis for my printed invoice in the invoice table then added tables for contacts/clients and line items. Pretty basic but it works well for my needs. I'm sure I'll customize it a bit more as I use it and save it as a template for any future client that needs invoicing. As it is now I can track outstanding balances much more easily and send off a pdf invoice via email with a single click.

One final note. I think I'm getting better at the visual aspects of FMP database design. Of course there's plenty of room for improvement!

Technorati Tags: , , , , ]]>Web Development tip: use TextEdit to export valid XHTMLdenny@macproductive.comHow-to2006-09-01T23:06:33-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-1-TextEdit.html#unique-entry-id-62http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-9-1-TextEdit.html#unique-entry-id-62some folks to help with a form that would create a Vcard from the web. From there it has evolved into a regular web maintenance and content update gig. Early on in the process I suggested that we move the code over to valid xhtml and possibly refresh the design in the process. Well this past week I've been updating the code to valid xhtml and wouldn't you know it just as I was preparing to convert a large and messy table I came across this hint at MacOSX Hints which details using TextEdit for converting text to valid html or xhtml. I code most of my sites by hand using Smultron so this caught my eyes as a great potential time saver and particularly helpful for converting this table.

From the hint:
...if you work in a native Cocoa application like TextEdit using only the tools Apple provides for word processing (which admittedly take some getting used to, and handle only basic formatting needs -- much like basic HTML itself), you can easily work in a WYSIWYG mode and then convert the file to clean HTML that you won't be embarrassed to call your own.

Until yesterday, I thought TextEdit's HTML conversion ability was on a par with that of Word and Pages. That's probably because in its default mode, it is. However, unlike those apps, the surprisingly powerful TextEdit provides some very handy, simple options to produce clean HTML when you need that. Here's a brief set of steps to take advantage of this capability:

1. Copy and paste your Cocoa-formatted text into a new TextEdit document. (Hint: TextEdit provides an Application Service (New Window Containing Selection) in the Services menu for this once you select the text in the originating app.)

2. Open TextEdit's Preferences and select the Open and Save tab.

3. Change Document Type to either HTML 4.01 Strict or XHTML 1.0 Strict, depending on whether you want your code to be XHTML compliant or not.

4. Change Styling to No CSS. Note that this will strip all font and style information from the file, except for the basics like bold and italics.

5. From the TextEdit menubar, select File/Save As.

6. In the Save As dialog box, give your file a name and hard disk location. Then, change the File Format selection to HTML, and click Save.

7. Now, when you click on your new HTML file in the Finder, it will open with your default web browser. If you examine the source code, you'll see nothing but simple, pure HTML (or XHTML).


I set TextEdit's prefs to export with no css and copied the table in question directly from the page and pasted it into a new TextEdit document and sure enough after export to html I had a lean and mean valid table with all of the garbage stripped out. Wowza! Saved me oodles of time and I have a hunch it will be a handy trick I'll use again for other quick edits.

Technorati Tags: , , , ]]>Leopard: Time Machine and the Knowledge Navigatordenny@macproductive.comOS X2006-08-23T13:26:55-05:00http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-8-23-Leopard-TM-iChat.html#unique-entry-id-61http://macproductive.com/Blog/files/2006-8-23-Leopard-TM-iChat.html#unique-entry-id-61Time Machine and iChat.

Time Machine
Perhaps the most talked about new feature is Apple's useful implementation of 3-D as an easy to use and very attractive interface for the most mundane of tasks, file back-up. They call it Time Machine and it does indeed look to be an important feature of the next version of Mac OS. It's no surprise that Apple could transform back-up and file restoration into a task that is not only reliable but one which users will easily understand. I have little doubt that Time Machine will prove to be quite a hit.

Navigator 1
But there were other forms of time travel happening when Steve took the stage on August 7, 2006. Back in 1987 Apple produced a 5 minute video, the Knowledge Navigator. Twenty years later, in 2007, we'll be seeing many elements of the Apple Knowledge Navigator come into daily use. Les Posen of the excellent CyberPsych Blog also makes this connection and describes the Knowledge Navigator very well:

Set in 2010, it shows a Berkeley professor coming home, and opening his diary on his desk.

But this is no ordinary diary. It's an Apple Navigator.

As he opens, it we hear the familiar Apple bong so beloved of Mac Plus owners.

Soon enough an electronic "valet" speaks to him, reminding him of appointments and missed phone calls, which becomes a running joke.

Navigator 2
We learn that the good professor needs to give a lecture that afternoon to students on deforestation in South America, in particular Brazil, and so calls up some statistics.

But he's also reminded of a female colleague doing similar research in Africa on dwindling forests, and just like you might in iChat, is connected with her and a videoconference commences, with each comparing their own research findings.


iChat screenshare
Welcome to the future. With Leopard we'll see Apple take a big step towards intuitive and effortless collaboration and sharing. Take a good look at that video, the device and the technology. The device has a built in web cam which should look familiar if you've seen any of the new Macs. With the new version of iChat users will be able to share screens, iPhoto albums, and Keynote presentations. I'd guess that is just the next step in turning iChat into a cornerstone of the sharing process and there will likely be much more about sharing in other Leopard technologies. As a consultant to small businesses, non-profits, and home users I'm always searching for new ways for users to share and I'm thrilled to see that it's going to get better.

As much as I enjoy the power and convenience of email, I often rely on iChat for immediate, real-time communication and file sharing for work and play. In fact, just moments ago I helped a client with her FileMaker Pro database via iChat and last week I collaborated on a logo revision via iChat. I can easily envision a time when iChat and it's expanding abilities becomes a key element in education and business. For many that time has already arrived.

Links of interest:
In October 2003 Jon Udell revisited the Knowledge Navigator.
The Knowledge Navigator entry at Wikipedia.
You can view the video here or here.

Coming up next time, Apple Mail and iCal.