Rosario Tech

Well, don’t take the title literally. Please. But, sometimes you find yourself in need of a piece of paper just to write things down on. The trouble with paper is that it’s just so… yesterday.

Well, here’s Paper 2.0! That’s not the real name. Actually it’s called the Pocket Mod and it can be found here. Essentially, this is a user-modified printing template where you can customize a single sheet of paper into a mini organizer. Add a to-do list, weekly calendar, a SoDuKu puzzle, a lined page, a shopping list, and many other pages. Then, just print, fold and cut and fold again (instruction are on the web site).

Suddenly that little scrap of paper in your pocket is an eight page mini organizer. This is a really cool idea.

Give it a try.

Looking to do great slide shows? Fed up with iPhoto? Want more transitions? Want to keep your audience from falling asleep?

Well, look no further. FotoMagico from Boinx (where did they come up with those names?) is one fantastic slide show program. Laid out like iMovie, you import your fotos and do magico on them. Very simple to use and also has a lot of depth. Add music and great transitions and you’ll be the next Ken Burns.

Click here to see a sample slide show I made in just ten minutes on my Powerbook (It’ll open a browser window - let it load for a couple of minutes, it’s a big file, about 12 megs).

Okay, this is just plain weird.

Go to this site and click on the “Rouge Sauvage” link at the bottom and then report back here.

Those of you who do will then understand the title of this post.

When you have about an hour to spare (while you’re eating your baked potato), read this site and see what these crazy cool folks did to the Best Buy store in Chelsea, NYC.

Talk about having too much time on your hands.

Well, if you know what RTFM means, you might be able to decipher WTFITFM? If not, I’ll give you a hint:

You want to make a baked potato in your microwave oven, but you don’t know what to set the power and timer to. So you start digging around in that kitchen drawer that has all of your leftover soy sauce, old chop sticks, bendy straws, matches, pizza store magnets, and other assorted crap stuff. Then, as you start tossing the crap stuff onto your newly cleaned kitchen floor, you scream out to your room mate/partner/spouse/dog, “Where the ____ is the _____ing manual?!”

“Well,” they calmly say back to you, “Just go to this website and STFU.”

What a pain in the @$$ it is when, after you print your incredibly cool label onto your just-burned DVD, you touch it and get a fingertip full of wet ink!! Then you go and type on your brand new white Mac keyboard and it suddenly looks like detectives have been dusting your keyboard for fingerprints. How I hate that!

So, it looks like Imation has come up with a solution (I hope). Aquaguard printable DVDs supposedly are quick drying and smudge proof. “An industry first!” Imation boasts:

“Imation’s new inkjet printable CDs and DVDs with AquaGuard™ surface offer a powerful new advantage—the ability to print fast-drying custom graphics that won’t wash away and are smudge and smear-resistant right from CD/DVD inkjet duplicating equipment or desktop disc printers.”

I, for one, will be giving them a try. They can’t be any worse than the discs I’m using already. And maybe then I can have a clean keyboard.

So you remember to back up your hard drive every week, right? You don’t!? Shame!

Now, for the low price of $70, you can have a no-brainer hard drive backup system. BounceBack Pro is a great backup program that makes backing up your hard drive as simple as plugging in an external drive and sitting back and having a cup of coffee. Or, you can continue to surf the web as BounceBack works its magic in the background.

So, now you have no excuses anymore. Go and backup, or else.

Apple is opening a new flagship store at 767 Fifth Avenue at the old GM building (between 58th and 59th streets) on Friday, May 19th at 6pm.

Get there early and get a (yawn) t-shirt. Maybe also win great prizes. But go there to check out the amazing 2-story tall glass cube that tops the store.

This is the first entry into a new category that has nothing to do with Photoshop, digital photography or Macintoshes. Sometimes I find neat-o gadgets and stories that I just have to share with everyone. So here we go…

Check out this personal luxury submarine. Dubbed the “Phoenix 1000,” this is a 213-foot personal luxury sub built for Ernst Stavro Blofeld an unnamed client for an undisclosed price 78 million bucks. 5000 square feet of living space and it even has its own diver lock-out chamber and mini-sub for all those secret missions fun excursions.

Download the brochure here and read up on all the coolness this baby has to offer.

And if you find any nuclear warheads or Largo’s missing cufflinks aboard, please return them to S.P.E.C.T.R.E. headquarters as soon as you can. Return postage guaranteed.

Deke McClelland, the Photoshop Man, has posted a little video tutorial about how to scan money into Photoshop.

Those of you in the know will know that starting with Photoshop CS, you were unable to scan, or open any scans, of many different currencies. This was Adobe’s way of telling us that we were not allowed to do with money. Well, Adobe is full of s–t! We are allowed to use images of currency in our artwork as long as it conforms to the usage rules posted at the Treasury Department’s website (or, for other countries, look here).

Anyway, Deke has discovered a nifty little run around so that you can get Photoshop to open images of currency. View it here.