EXIF editor for Windows

RoboPhoto v3.1 - EXIF Editor.

Exif Jpeg header parser and thumbnail remover (OS X)

Exif Jpeg header parser and thumbnail remover

The only program I've heard of that can attach an EXIF header to an existing JPEG. I wonder if it can fix duplicate rotation tags!?

They reference this article -- one of the very few anywhere on the EXIF file format

http://park2.wakwak.com/~tsuruzoh/Computer/Digicams/exif-e.html

I liked the explanation of the EXIF orientation tag from the reference:

The orientation of the camera relative to the scene, when the image was captured. The relation of the '0th row' and '0th column' to visual position is shown as right.

0x0112 unsigned short 1

Value 0th Row 0th Column
1 top left side
2 top right side
3 bottom right side
4 bottom left side
5 left side top
6 right side top
7 right side bottom
8 left side bottom

ZVOX: powered speaker units -- legacy of the iPod

ZVOX Stereo and Home Theater Surround Sound System For Your TV, PC, CD or MP3 Player - Built-In Speakers, Amplifier and Powered Subwoofer!

This looks like a product niche with a future. The amplifier and speakers are an integrated compact unit. Clearly the expected input is an iPod or other hard drive device (cell phone etc).

A bit big for the kitchen unfortunately.

iPhoto comment focus/type lag bug

Apple - Discussions - Type lag on comments - is this a common bug?

A problem with entering comments in iPhoto after typing a title.

I HAVE found where the cursor goes wrong. It goes to the image.

So if one follows this sequence:

1. Type title (need to type a full title to get the effect.)
2. Hit tab -> Highlights Date field
3. Hit tab -> Cursor in comment field -- BRIEFLY. Then vanishes.
4. Hit delete -> IMAGE disappears. (implies image has focus at that point)

or, instead of #4 do this:

4alt. Hit arrow key -> selected focus changes to NEXT photo.

So the image grabs focus from the comment field after one tabs from the date field into the comment field. Focus only rests briefly in the comment field.

Here's the question for iPhoto users who don't have this bug --

When you TAB out of the date field, where is your 'focus'?

Merging iPhoto Libraries: yet more techniques

macosxhints - Reunite iPhoto libraries with Rendezvous in iPhoto4

Update 1/05: I now have a much better discussion of this on my personal digital photography/iPhoto page.

Merging iPhoto Libraries, the easy way:

1. Make sure you have enough free space two times the size of your library to merge in on your hard drive.

2. Using DiskUtility (in OS X 10.3), create a disk image large enough to hold your library once. Name the opened volume 'iPhoto Library'.

3. Using TextEdit, create a file called IPHOTO.XML and place it inside the library. The file should contain this text:

(xml removed because it's invisible in blogger -- see original posting)

4. Copy your library to this disk image and name it 'iPhoto Libary'. If you're done, the folder structure should look like this:

iPhoto Library (Disk image)
\- IPHOTO.XML (Textfile)
- iPhoto Library (folder, containg all your iPhoto stuff:)
\- ThumbJPG.data
- Thumb32.data
- Thumb64.data
- Albums (folder, pretty empty)
- iPhoto.db
- AlbumData.xml
- Dir.data
- Library.iPhoto
- 2004 (folder, containing subfolder for each month day)
\- 05
\- 31
\- DSCF0001.JPG
- ... (many more pictures)
- Data (folder, containing files '1.attr' and '1')
- Thumbs (folder with Thumbnails)

5. Inside Disk Utility (in OS X 10.3), choose the menu 'Images > Convert...' to create a read-only copy of your disk image.

6. Mount that new image and iphoto is happy! drag-and-drop the CD onto your library to import your photos!

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This great thread described several techniques, this one resembles the iPhoto image technique I described some time ago. What's new here is the creation of the xml document!

Nikon is making my camera ... now

PhotographyBLOG -:- Home

I was hoping someone would make this camera -- next year. Nikon has really stolen a march on Canon with this one. It's not an SLR (I don't want an SLR), but it's a CMOS sensor and the camera incorporates vibration reduction. Too bad it's not JPEG2000!

This really raises the bar. Wow.

ManOpen for OS X

ExtraBITS: "
So, if you're like me, and occasionally need to refer to a man page but are annoyed by the user experience of working with man pages in a Terminal window, check out Carl Lindberg's ManOpen 2.4, which is a free Mac OS X application for viewing man pages in normal Macintosh windows. It's a simple program, but has a number of useful features, including:

http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html "

Photokina: toys for boys

Introduction: Photokina 2004 Show Report: Digital Photography Review

A bit odd -- this show is every 2 years -- not yearly. Manufacturers currently track it with their releases. So the next giant leap in digital photography will be Sept 2006.

Macintouch: DataViz MacLink Plus announcement

MacInTouch Home Page: "DataViz released MacLinkPlus Deluxe 15, the latest version of its file conversion software. This release adds text extraction from PDF files, a new graphics translator for Photoshop, improvements to other graphics translators (BMP, JPG, PICT, TIFF), conversion of word processing and PDF files to text and transport to an iPod or iPod mini, decompression support for StuffIt X, and updated translators for Word 2004 Mac, Excel 2004 Mac, and WordPerfect 12 for Windows. MacLinkPlus Deluxe 15 is $79.95 for Mac OS X 10.2 and up."

Enough storage to load most of Microsoft Office 2020 ....

Sun Microsystems - Feature Story - ZFS File System

Sun engineers wondered if the 64-bit capabilities of current file systems will continue to suffice over the next 10 to 20 years. Their answer was no. If Moore's Law holds, in 10 to 15 years people will need a 65th bit. As a 128-bit system, ZFS is designed to support more storage, more file systems, more snapshots, more directory entries, and more files than can possibly be created in the foreseeable future....

... To efficiently use all of this capacity, file systems grow and shrink automatically as users add or remove data. Administrators can set quotas to limit space consumption and reservations to guarantee future availability of space. ZFS also provides compression to reduce disk space and I/O bandwidth requirements.

Logically, the next question is if ZFS' 128 bits is enough. According to Bonwick, it has to be. 'Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans.'

When you need to think outside the trap

Normal For Us: The Miller Twins - About the Film . OPB

Ok, so these are not "average" parents. Maybe most of us can't rise to this level. On the other hand, when one feels trapped and doesn't want to "take it any more" ... here's inspiration.

If you can't win, then change the rules.

Jon Udell: LibraryLookup: place library order via Amazon page

Jon Udell: LibraryLookup (Build your own bookmarklet)

Jon Udell is brilliant. I've been a fan since the glory days of BYTE where he was a senior editor. Now he's got a bookmarklet that orders library books from Amazon pages. Jon has always written that we've yet to fully leverage the web opportunities that we've had since 1999 or so -- here he again proves his thesis.

(Bookmarklets, are coming into their own, probably because most browsers now finally support a core portion of JavaScript -- the new universal cross-platform language. Brendan Eich (sp?) must be very amused.)

Very big Dantz Retrospect bug (OS X)

MacInTouch Home PageJust a quick warning to Mac OS X users running Retrospect 6.0.178. If you're backing up an entire drive and hope to restore it one day, do NOT do an incremental backup. This version of Retrospect doesn't recognize when symbolic links have changed the file to which they point. So it doesn't back them up.

This is unlikely to cause problems for personal home directories and such, but it has a disastrous effect when restoring a complete Mac OS X install, if you've done any software updates after your first backup in the set. You'll need to reinstall the OS.

The easy solution (until Dantz issues a fix) is to force Retrospect to backup ALL files, not just changed files.

(The technical reason for the problem is that when Apple updates frameworks in software updates, they update symbolic links named 'Current' to point to the new version. Retrospect backs up the new version, but fails to back up the updated symbolic link. Thus, on restore you end up with the new version, but the old symbolic link -- pointing to a no-longer-present version.)

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Wow. I wonder if this is true for older versions too. Maybe I should give up on using Retrospect for a full system backup -- and focus on a data only backup. I can use CarbonCopy Cloner to do a clone periodically, and otherwise only backup the user directory.

Airport Express and Third Party Routers

Airport Express and Third Party Routers

An elegant web site dedicated to Airport Express interoperability with 3rd party routers.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Americans flee as hurricane nears

Tim Forster, of the UK charity Oxfam, on the island of Grenada, said: 'This is the worst devastation I have ever witnessed.

'Ninety percent of houses have been torn to pieces and there is waste strewn across the whole island.'

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I've read that this season represents a return to historic hurricaine patterns, and that the global warming component is relatively small (but growing). I wonder how confident climatologists are in those statements.