AAUG Reviews

by Guy A. Mofley, AAUG Member

4. Four. What’s the difference between these to items? One is a visual representation of something imaginative (a number) the other is a word given to number. Numeric expressions are perhaps the oldest and best example of graphically representing something. I would much rather do my addition and subtraction using numbers. Writing out each word and trying to make sense of it would be very difficult and non-intuitive. This is the basis, in my opinion, why OS X is so powerful. It gives users and developers both the power to work with visual representations of often very complex ideas.

Enter Übercaster and the team of developers from Pleasant software. They have taken what can be an uber-complex process and made it entirely visual, if not mostly iconic. 4 also has meaning in this program. It represents the 4 simple steps required to produce a podcast. My hat is off to the visual designers who sat down and thought out the ingredients in a podcast and came up with these 4.

Prepare
Record
Cut
Release

They also took it a step beyond and graphically represented their ideas as a dial. Using this dial you can go between the 4 modes with great ease. Pleasant software also gave great thought to how best represent the various elements of podcasting. (more…)

by Bruce M. Herman, AAUG Member

One of the things that all computer owners owners think about is the time when they will have to sell their computer. The value of some computers, particularly laptops, depends on their physical appearance. Lots of scratches suggests heavy use and lower the value of the computer. So anything that protects the appearance of a computer without diminishing its usability is obviously worth considering. The Palm Guard by Moshi is designed to achieve this goal for 15” MacBook Pro laptops by covering the area where your hands rest on the computer. It also covers the touch pads.

The PalmGuard is a piece of adhesive backed plastic that applies easily. Simply peel the backing off and lay it in place. Be aware however, that if you need to lift and reposition the PalmGuard, it will significantly discolor. The PalmGuard has a very different feel from the bare metal. There is somewhat more friction as you move your hands across the computer. This will change your typing tempo while you adjust to the slightly extra effort of moving your hands. The PalmGuard comes with separate pieces to cover the touch pad and mouse button. They have an insignificant effect on the use of the touch pad.

The PalmGuard is thin enough that it does not effect the closing of the laptop. It fits exactly where it is supposed to.

Moshi’s claim on the package is that the adhesive leaves no residue when it is removed. (more…)

by Chuck Maas, AAUG Member

This is an initial review of LightZone 3.0, one of the “new breed” of middle-level digital image editing and management software programs designed to be both efficient and effective without breaking the bank or take years to learn. Iíve been working with it for only about three weeks and my sense is that for serious photographers this is a program one ought to really pay attention to. Itís fairly new, and has already gone through several significant iterations, comes from a small but very aggressive internet-based company, and has very lofty intentions; only time will tell whether it is actually a paradigm-shifter or just another capable imaging tool vying for the dollars of picture-taking enthusiasts.

I also recognize that as often is the case with truly elegant designs, there is much more below the surface than is evident at first glance. In this first look Iíll describe what LightZone is intended to accomplish, and make some comparisons with other competing programs in the Mac genre. In follow-on pieces Iíll be digging more deeply to see how LightZone fits, not just in appeal to the masses, but as a specific tool for the advanced photographer in a kitbag of specialized applications.

Businesses aim at markets to make money. Light Crafts believes that among somewhat advanced photographers only 4% own and use Adobe Photoshop, the undisputed industry standard for digital image editing; that leaves another 96% to aim for. The primary reasons they cite for this situation is that Photoshop is very expensive, exceedingly complex, and has a learning curve about as steep as a vertical rock face. (more…)

by David Enders, AAUG Member

Have you ever thought of animating your favorite childhood character ? Well Toon Boom Studio can help your dreams come true. Toon Boom Animation Inc. is a Montreal based company that offers a complete family of animation software packages for the beginning animator to those animators who brought you Madagascar. Toon Boom Studio is a 2D animation software package that is available for the Mac and Windows Platform.

Toon Boom Studio is marketed as the ideal solution for individuals looking for an all-in-one animation solution. The system requirements are listed at the end of the review but with the power of this package it has relatively low hardware requirements by todays standard. Toon Boom studio ran fine on my MacBook with the integrated video chipset. This leads me to believe that the software code for their products is very robust.

Once I had the software installed on my MacBook, I watched the Quickime videos on their website before starting out using Toon Boom Studio. There are seven videos. The feature I liked the most was the lip synching tool. They have developed a software algorithm that will automatically sync your audio to the drawings. This is cool. Animating elements is very easy. You can animate scale, position , rotation and skew. The Drop Shadow effect which is new in version 3.5 creates shadows on a static or dynamic basis allowing very realistic animations. The Scene Layout and Camera FX are what makes your animations come alive and are well documented here. (more…)

by Elaine V. Robinson, AAUG Member

Spring Cleaning is advertised as an all-in-one cleaning and privacy solution that finds extraneous files and frees up disk space. The manual says Spring Cleaning can boost performance by cleaning out stray or forgotten files, protect information by creating encrypted archives on your Mac, and see all of the changes that an update or installer made on your Mac and more. I found the manual (or I should say 7 page pamphlet) not to be much help other than instructions on installing/uninstalling and a list of features. There is a Spring Cleaning Guide found in the top menu under [Help] that is very thorough. The table of contents scrolls on for 3 screen heights. I don’t like to do lengthy screen reading. I prefer .pdf files where you can print selected pages. I know I can cut & paste to a text editor but then I miss out on the images unless I want to work overtime.

Spring Cleaning installed very easily as you follow the installer instructions. There is a newer version 9.0 so I am not quite sure why I was asked to review version 8.0. Version 9.0 has added four more features that I could find but I am not reviewing 9. To view all the featuresof 8.0, please see this page.

The Spring Cleaning 8.0 folder contained the actual Spring Cleaning 8.0, and the following included applications: Quick Compare, SC Super Access (? just opens Spring Cleaning), SC Menu (would not launch), and System Snapshot. (more…)

by Steven Aufrecht, AAUG Member

How can I write a review of a book I haven’t read? Well, when I thought about it, I realized there are probably lots of book reviews by people who hadn’t read the book. Do I try to fake it or just be honest about it? Well, I can’t fake it, that’s just not me. So let me tell you why I’ve been fighting this book and the review.

I have a blogspot blog. That means it came pretty much ready to go. It also means I’m pretty much stuck with the prepackaged templates and things. Since the blogger tools on Safari are limited (insert picture, spell check) I’ve learned the html for links, bold, italics. (Yes, these are all automated in Firefox, so I use that more often now.) I can even change the color of the font. I really, really wanted to put a picture in the header. And I’ve found sites that give instructions on how to do that, but they always say, “Backup your template first.” I figure I know just enough to be dangerous and rather than risk losing everything, I chicken out.

So I mentioned to Guy that I’d like a book so I can learn some html to work on the blog. And a few days later at the next meeting he gives me 250 HTML and Web Design Secrets. But in the days in between, Blogger posted a new trick - an easy way to post pictures in your blog header. Which I did. So the problem is solved. Sort of. The picture was much too big and my trial and error technique has managed to get it smaller, but it doesn’t yet have the look I want.

So I turn the HTML sections of the book. (more…)

by Chris Tofteberg, AAUG Member

This was my first foray into a strategy-style game and I must say I quickly learned what the draw is to these games.

Age of Mythology, from the same folks that brought us Age of Civiliation, is a game that involves commanding armies of soldiers, villagers and, best of all, mythological creatures and gods.

The game included an installer which performed fine. There was an update available for AOM, but unfortunately it was not a Universal patch as I had hoped. System requirements are fairly modest, requiring only OS X 10.2.6 or later, a 16 MB video card, 450 MHz processor, and of course a CD drive. That’s not to say the graphics were anything to sneeze at. Perhaps not as rich as today’s games like World of Warcraft (AOM was released on the Mac in 2004), but certainly respectable.

The Age of Mythology install disc included GameRanger, a program that allows the player to test their skills against other players online. I did not test this feature, I chose to review the game only as one player. One downside to games that use GameRanger is that one can only play against other Macintosh players. Windows players can not be in your game as they can in a game like World of Warcraft.

Fortunately for beginners like me, there was a tutorial level for beginners. The tutorial guides you through the various tools, weapons and features of the game with a female voice describing what you are seeing or doing. (more…)

by Chuck Maas, AAUG Member

OK, it’s time for everybody to wake up! Welcome to the post-modern, Web 2.0 age of hype. Author/Photographer/Online Entrepreneur Martin Hurley has put together an eBook (in PDF format) which you can download from his website for a mere (discounted) $47.00. When you do, you’ll have in your possession a litany of admonitions, aphorisms, and emotional exhortations urging you to make money by getting on board the internet and selling your imaging wares. You don’t need to be a top level, professionally skilled photographer; all you need is to think more like an entrepreneur, think deeper and wider than just photography, and use the web to build a niche site with a human touch, original content, and lots of affiliate product links that garner commissions to make yourself into a successful info-preneur to take advantage of those thousands upon thousands of daily internet searches for exciting digital images. Diversify your traffic by using YouTube, MySpace, eBay, forums, e-mail lists, and stock agencies to create multiple recurring passive income streams based on your individual creativity and uniqueness. You can do it by simply sorting out what you’re really good at, being original, taking action, and applying yourself. But time out; perhaps, just maybe, do you think you’ve heard this get-rich-quick approach at least once or twice before?

That’s not to say the information contained in this eBook is all bad or inaccurate. Perhaps it’s the sort of collection that a certain type of person needs to get started in this direction (assuming of course that this is the direction one wants to go) ñ if that’s the case, maybe the $47.00 would be well spent. (more…)

by David Enders, AAUG Member

By default we all have used Preview included with the Mac to view pdf files. Generally this is acceptable if you are just reading or printing a pdf. But what if you want to edit it, extract pages or add your own content ? Well you could buy Adobe Acrobat for $299 (or the Professional version for $499) but it is my opinion that this is more than the casual user wants to spend. The other alternative is to produce it in an application and print it as a pdf. This works but adds another layer to the process when performing revisions. I would recommend that you consider PDFpen or PDFpen Pro as an affordable and quite capable solution. I will cover the differences in the Pro version at the end of this review.

With PDFpen I was able to read, create and edit pdf files. If you are editing an unprotected document you can add comments,notes and simple drawing shapes. What I discovered was that companies are likely to protect their owners / installation manuals from being edited. That can be checked by performing a Get Info command on the document and checking the Security information. This will prevent you from altering these pdf’s. You can sign documents by importing your scanned signature or using the scribble tool and fill in forms including everyones favorites from the IRS which offers fillable forms online. You can also add your frequently used graphics to the library for quick retrieval later.

I liked the choices available in to view the document. (more…)

by Guy Okada, AAUG Member

With the start of summer I began a walking/jogging regimen. My iPod video and my dog are my trusty companions. I use Griffin’s RadioShark to record my favorite talk shows from the radio and Internet and I like to listen to them while walking or jogging. I found it challenging to run and fiddle with my iPod so it was time to give AirClick a try.

Griffin Technology’s AirClick with dock connector will work with 4G, iPod photo, and the 5G iPod with video. It uses RF signals that travel through walls (does not require line-of-sight) and can control an iPod from up to 60 feet away. A small receiver the width of the iPod, an inch in length and about 3/8 inches in depth attaches to your iPod’s dock. The remote control is about 1/4 larger in length and width. AirClick also comes with a holder for the remote control with a small Velcro strap so you can attach it to a belt, steering wheel or bicycle.

AirClick has five buttons: play/pause, forward, back, volume louder, volume softer. I wish there was a menu selection button but there isn’t. You are limited to the selection you’ve made and you can switch songs within that album, pause, or adjust the volume. The feature I use most is the forward button to skip over commercials. The volume buttons sometimes have a momentary lag so I found myself clicking it a couple of times before it responded. There is a hold switch on the side of the remote. (more…)