FileMaker Pro updated - April 2006

FileMaker 8.03 update is available.

Check you library books

If your library is supported, this seems ingenious:

Library Books - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

... menu item that tracks the books that you have checked out of the library

With 3 kids we're always in trouble ...

Ars Technica likes Aperture 1.1.1

Ars didn't like Aperture 1.0. The reviewer thought it would get better - eventually - but that it was not suitable for use.

Now he's surprised by how much better it is:

Aperture 1.1 review : Page 8

Aperture 1.1 is everything that Apple should have released for 1.0 and at US$300, it's hard to say no now to this program.

Now if Apple would only process my iPod battery settlement credit correctly ...

dotMac (.Mac) has a blog

One entry describes: New easy iDisk Public folder web address

Now I can learn more and figure out if I want to try .Mac (awful name btw, can't search on it well. dotMac is what most of us write.) Smart blogs are the key to good value-added product marketing (to geeks anyway).

A LONG list of personal OS X software favorites

I love seeing lists of software that an expert user actually uses. It's worth more than a hundred 'software review' articles. It's how you find excellent software that's mature and changes little.

I know a lot of the products on this list: ReelSmart.com: My Favorite OS X Only Software but there are few new ones I'll check out. The ones I know of are excellent.

iWebSites: now I need to look at iWeb

This donationware utility (via Macintouch) reminds me that I iWeb came with my iLife 06 package. I'd sort of forgotten about it since it was so .Mac centric (which meant I had to decide whether I cared for .Mac, which could take me years at my current cycle capacity). Thanks to iWebSites I can assess iWeb on its own merits.

iWebSites Home

When Apple introduced its clever iLife web design software, iWeb, they left out one important feature: the ability to load and save multiple web sites. There isn’t even an “Open” menu item under the File Menu! You can create multiple “sites” that are somewhat independent of each other, but they still exist as one file (”Domains.sites”) and cannot be separately uploaded onto different web servers or into different .Mac accounts.

Gigapixel wars: how much information is really out there

A photo of Delft is over a gigapixel resolution. You can do quite a bit of cropping of such an image.

Pick any spot, then zoom in. Eventually you'll get to the image limit. It's easy to read the license plates of cars that are barely visible in the original view. Imagine being able to search a mountain for a lost person by taking a single image, then allowing thousands to search it by computer.

There must be tens of thousands of 'screens' in this image at the highest resolution. Delft is a quiet town, but somewhere in there one must be able to find something at least a little bit improper. Try picking a street, then walking it using your mouse. Let me know if you find anything!

LaunchBar 4.1 is out

TidBITS has a nice summary. I've been using 4.1beta for ages, I guess I'll get around to updating. Every so often I adopt a new Launchbar feature, but the core functionality is hardwired to my fingers. A terrific product, I've never really been tempted to try anything else. Why mess with perfection?

How to crater XP: print a google map from IE

Here's how I cratered XP. It didn't just lock up, it died. Nothing worked, no keyboard entry, nada. I had to power cycle.

1. Enable the obscure print background setting for IE (advanced options).
2. View a Google Map in Hybrid view (sat and map).
3. Print to Adobe Acrobat (probably works for regular printer as well but I don't have time to power cycle my desktop.)

When you do the same thing in Firefox you get a smear of blurred color, but neither FF nor XP craters. Interesting lesson about the stability of IE.

The best printing browser, hands down, is Safari. IE and Firefox used to be tied, but I'd say FF is ahead now. I'll have to try this experiment with FF and Safarin on my Mac and see what happens there.

I think Google Calendar might generate PDFs to print via a PDF viewer. Given the state of the browser, Google Map probably needs to do same thing.

StickyBrain and Yojimbo: CoreData is the key difference

StickyBrain 4.1 beta brings serious features to the table - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

My main question when comparing the two will be which uses a more accessible data store. Yojimbo uses OS X CoreData, StickyBrain uses its own database store. Point and game to Yojimbo.

No more single vendor data stores. CoreData is something we can get at.

Aperture: good news

Two pieces of good Aperture nows.

First, Version 1.11 is out. I hadn't expected it for a month yet. Given the history of this product a 1.11 release weeks after the 1.1 release is a sign that Apple is serious about squashing the quality issues.

Second, Gruber has a believable story on why the 1.0 release was so awful and why it's likely Apple will get on top of the problem.

Automator does something useful? iPhoto browser

macosxhints - 10.4: System-wide iPhoto browser

Mail.app imap disaster - retracted?

This was transiently scary.

My wife's email is setup on two computers. Both use IMAP.

On the iBook, running OS X 10.3.9, her Mac OS X - Mail (Mail.app) IMAP account is set to view messages and delete permanently when deleted on the iBook. Since 'store sent on server' and 'store draft on server' don't work with our ISP's IMAP implementation, every message she sends defaults cc to herself. BTW, if you drag a message from a local store to the inbox it vanishes forever. God knows where it goes.

On the iMac, running 10.4.6, her Mail.app IMAP account is similary configured. The idea is she drags messages from her inbox when she's done with them to a local folder on the iMac. The messages are thus removed from the IMAP server.

She can thus work her email from two machines, but archives it at one machine.

Except today, after doing some IMAP work, every archival message on the iMac displayed the same error message -- basically saying that only the header was stored locally, the message itself was on the IMAP server and I needed to reconnect. Except, of course, it wasn't.

I quit Mail.app and went for a walk. When I returned I tried again. All of the messages were back again.

Weird.

PS. I've never done much with Mail.app. Today, when configuring my wife's email, I started using Smart Folders. The ability to create and chain these Boolean queries (iTunes can chain queries, Mail.app can chain queries, iPhoto cannot) is very impressive. Thanks to Spotlight they update instantly. I'm setting up her email to work rather like Gmail, but Mail.app is missing Gmail's ability to attach tags to messages. On the other hand Mail.app has a far superior query language and powerful rules, which can include AppleScript extensions. Mail. app may not be rock solid, but it is certainly very powerful.

My RAW image workflow

Once I decided to keep wait for Aperture 1.11 or later, I decided to see what I could do with iPhoto's 6.02's RAW capability (OS 10.4.6).

Actually, pretty well. I'm pleased. Not only that, but my new workflow is more efficient than my old one. Background details are in this post. Here's what I do:

1. All images are shot RAW. I set white balance to auto and ignore it. With those CR2 RAW files (12 bits of color) I can fix the color balance later.

2. I import all images into my 'intake' iPhoto Library. (I use iPhoto Library Manager to switch libraries, but if you option-click launch iPhoto it will ask for the Library location.)

3. Edit in iPhoto, cropping, adjust color balance, sharpness, etc. (I plan to buy Noise Ninja, that will change my workflow, more later).

4. Export as JPG (this drops color bits to 8, so it's important that the white balance has been fixed.

5. Rename using a A Better Finder Rename (this is not necessary for most.)

6. Import into my main Library, add comments, etc.

7. Put Intake Library images in the trash. Next time I use it I'll empty the trash.

I get significantly better results than I've been getting with in-camera JPG, and this workflow is really quick.

Update 5/3/06: Alas, I've come across a very annoying bug. I set iPhoto to save edited raw as TIFF 16bit/channel. When I did this and exported JPG the metadata was missing. GRRRRRRRRRR. I've turned off the 'save edited RAW as TIFF' option.

USB speakers review

Playlist's review of USB speakers is well done. I ended up liking the description of the Creative TravelSound Notebook 500, but the price is over $80. For that much I'd like to see them first. I like using iPod speakers powered by the USB cord -- less to carry!

(Note these are not USB speakers, they are USB powered! I need them for my iPod, so I don't want to waste money on an unused D/A converter.)