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!

---

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."