I spent the week dabbling in new software. Pixelmator is out of beta and available now so I looked at that. Still reminds me a lot of Photoshop Elements, lots of palettes. The so-called HUDs are really just transparent palettes. Both are nice but Acorn has more than I currently know how to use and the price is great ($40) so I decided to go with Acorn. Pixelmator is $59. I suspect they may keep leapfrogging each other in terms of features and ease of use and I doubt either [...] Read the rest »
Apple Updates iWork, iWeb, iTunes (Windows) & Firmware
Hot on the heals of yesterday’s iLife updates Apple has released updates to four applications and a bunch of firmware. iWeb 2.0.2 was released. You’ll need the iLife Support 8.1 update that was released yesterday before you can install this one. It’s a 18.4MB download through Software Update (Intel) and a 17MB standalone download. Apple tells us… This update to iWeb addresses issues with upgrading iWeb 1.x websites, and fixes some common publishing problems, and supports general compatibility issues. All three iWork Apps were updated. Numbers went to version 1.01. [...] Read the rest »
iLife ’08 Updates
Apple released 5 updates for various iLife ’08 applications. First there’s iLife Support v8.1 which is a 10.3MB download through Software Update (for Intel) and 7MB as a standalone download. You need to install this update before the other updates. Apple tells us: This update supports system software components shared by all iLife ’08 applications, improves overall stability, addresses a number of other minor issues, and supports general compatibility issues. It is recommended for all users of iLife ’08. iPhoto Update v7.1 is the largest update. It’s 61.8 MB through [...] Read the rest »
iPhoto Library Manager Updated to 3.3.1
iPhoto Library Manager is a great little app for, you guessed it, managing iPhoto Libraries. It can now copy hidden photos in iPhoto 7 and includes several bug fixes. While you can copy hidden photos you need to go into iPhoto 7 and unhide them. If they are hidden then iPhoto won’t make them available to any external apps. Click the thumbnail to see the release notes. Update Sept. 27th: Yesterdays release of iPhoto 7.1 broke yesterday’s release of iPhoto Library Manager 3.3.1. IPLM has been updated to version 3.3.2 [...] Read the rest »
Security Quest #3: Intellitxt and PDFs
One of the most popular posts on the Spam Chronicles site was my post on blocking IntelliTxt ads from back in April. I’ve decided to reprint it here. The company offering them is Vibrant Media. They do allow a way for users to turn off the ads, although this feature has to be implemented by the webmaster and my experience is that not many do. If your at a website that has these ads first check to see if there’s a link to turn them off. If there’s not and [...] Read the rest »
Pixelmator Released
http://pixelmator.com/ Another Photo Editor for the Mac has been released into the wild. Pixelmator, the much talked about GPU-based photo editor has left beta and version 1 is available to purchase for $59. Read the rest »
Apple Aluminum Keyboard (USB)
I needed a new USB keyboard for my iMac. Long story short – can’t boot from CD, alternate disk, or alternate partition with a wireless keyboard by holding the option or “c” keys. It’s a real pain to move a USB keyboard around and with Boot Camp being added to the iMac it was time for a change. A wireless mouse makes sense for me, but the keyboard cable won’t be in the way. My existing USB keyboard was bought for emergencies and was therefore the cheapest I could get. [...] Read the rest »
Mint – Slightly Bitter Taste
When I first heard about Mint I wondered what website analytics software was doing getting into finance. Then I realized it was a different Mint. Then I found they already had established competition and weren’t so unique. Most info I saw about Mint came from blogs and seemed to be more of the “press release” type. Heavy on adjectives and short on details. There were exceptions. So I decided to give Mint a try. I had problems from the beginning. I was able to create an ID OK but my [...] Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #8
Another short update for the log. I spent some time trying to install Boot Camp on my iMac. It couldn’t resize the existing partition to make room for boot camp. I could image to another drive, then erase and image back. But I decided to try out iDefrag and explore the whole OS X doesn’t need defragging thing. My 500GB drive with about 250GB of data had 0.5% fragmentation, after being used for about 9 months. As expected (because they’re large and written to often), the Parallels VM drives were [...] Read the rest »
Jungle Disk & Amazon S3
I’ve been looking at Jungle Disk for online storage and backup and so far I like what I see. Jungle disk is a good example of a software developer that has built a service on the infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. In this case it’s the Amazon Simple Storage Service. Amazon S3 for short. Jungle Disk runs under OS X, Windows and Linux. I’ve only used the Mac version and everything in this article is related to the Mac version. Jungle Disk isn’t typical backup software and they rightfully [...] Read the rest »
