Sep 15
What does Democracy have to do with TV? Well, I wasn’t sure democracy had anything to do with TV, until I downloaded Democracy, an internet TV viewing client.
This is one of the slickest programs I’ve seen for viewing online videos.
What you do is basically subscribe to video feeds and Democracy downloads and organizing them for your viewing pleasure. There are lots of custom settings so that it can download videos in the background and let you know when a new video is waiting to be watched. And, it cleans house too. You can tell it to delete videos that you’ve watched after a certain period of time, so that your hard drive doesn’t fill up.
It has a very clean interface and is quite easy to figure out and navigate. In fact, it looks like a program Apple would/should have built into iLife. There’s a fairly decent sized directory of video feeds you can subscribe to (Channel Frederator and Mac Break being two of my favs). It’s not Time Warner cable, but the content and quality are increasing. And, best of all, its free!
Pericles would be pleased.
Sep 06
PC Mag.com has posted a fairly decent review of Epson’s new scanner, the V750-M Pro (the “Pro” stands for “Expensive”).
The great thing about this scanner is that it has the ability to scan large transparencies using what is called a “fluid-mount kit.” This is something that you find with high-end drum scanners. PC Mag explains:
“You’ve probably noticed that some scratches—on a polyurethaned wood floor, for example—disappear when you wet the floor with a cleaning solution, only to reappear when the floor dries. If you took a photo of the floor when it was wet, however, you wouldn’t see the scratch. The fluid-mount kit works much the same way. Put the mounting solution—available from Aztek—on the mounting kit’s glass plate, place the negative on the fluid to fill in the scratches, and put a few more drops on top of the film, a piece of Mylar (also available from Aztek) on top of that, and scan.”
Go over to PC Mag.com and read the full review.
[By the way, if anyone gets a chance to test out this scanner in person, please email me the results so I can post some samples here. Thanks]
Sep 01
This is a slightly advanced topic, so the novices amongst you might want to hire me to explain it to you (sorry about the shameless plug here)
When I speak of RAID, I’m not taking about the bug spray. RAID (in geek speak), as defined by Wikipedia is:
…the acronym RAID (originally redundant array of inexpensive disks, now also known as redundant array of independent disks) refers to a data storage scheme using multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives.
At the very simplest level, RAID combines multiple hard drives into a single logical unit. Thus, instead of seeing several different hard drives, the operating system sees only one.
Boiled down, it’s a great way to either speed up your hard drive storage or create built-in redundancy, specifically for purposes of back-up.
A great RAID program for the Mac is SoftRaid. I just found a very informative review of SoftRaid by the folks over at AMUG (Arizona Mac Users Group). If your interested in the nitzy details of this program, read the review and learn what you can do with this cool program.
Aug 30
If you are a speed demon and just have to know how fast everything goes, well, this website is for you.
Speedtest.net will let you choose a nearby server and test your current Internet connection speed. I’m not sure how accurate it is or if you can use it as evidence against TIme Warner for screwing you with their broadband service, but the little speed gauges are certainly pretty neat.
Aug 24
This is important news, although nothing to panic about.
With the recent news that Dell was recalling their laptop batteries due to a potential fire hazard, Apple has seen fit to do the same since their batteries, and Dell’s, are both manufactured by Sony.
Go to this website to find out more details about the recall.
And if you’re curious about what bad batteries can do, take a look at what happened to these Dell laptops here, here, here, and here.
Aug 07
Easy backup and restoring, coming to a Mac near you.
(images courtesy of Engadget.com)
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Aug 07
(images from engadget.com)
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Jul 10
Nikon has released a demo version of its new NEF RAW processing program, Nikon Capture NX.
It has a radical new interface and a very unusual (and intriguing) method to do localized adjustments to Nikon RAW NEF files. Download the 30 day demo here (60+ meg file, Mac version). Info about the program can be found here and a preview by Ben Long can be read here.
Read on for the press release.
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Jun 17
Amazon has a great deal on some pretty good recordable DVDs. Click here to get 100 Memorex DVD-R, 16x printable discs for only $28. And, if you can wait a few days, the shipping is free.
I just bought the same thing at Comp USA and it cost me exactly twice as much. These are great disks and they have worked for me in every DVD burner I have.
May 31
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.
