OS X Audio MIDI Setup Utility has extra sound control options

macosxhints - A workaround for no sound in non-Apple applications: "I've had sound problems before which affected both Apple and non-Apple programs. To fix them, I opened up the Audio MIDI Setup Utility, which is an Apple-provided program in my main Utilities folder. It has all sorts of settings which might help people. It's like a more detailed version of the Sound control panel in System Preferences. My particular problem was loss of stereo sound, so I had to select 2ch-16bit from a drop-down (and equalize the volume of the two stereo channels)."

Merging iPhoto Libraries: more problems

John's Digital Photography Page: Merging iPhoto Libraries

I really don't understand what's going on with Product Management for iPhoto. There are people satisified with iPhoto, I think they fall into a large category of software users that simply have pretty low expectations. They don't really expect software to work very well, and as long as they don't lose too many photos too often they can live with that.

Here's some more problems related to keywords and iPhoto that I learned of from KF - someone who knows a great deal about iPhoto keywords. I shall have to add them to the page I link to here:

...There is badness if libraries do not have identical keywords lists.

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- create a new library Library 1
- add a photograph Photograph 1 to Library 1, and assign it keyword "a"
- create a new library Library 2
- add a photograph Photograph 2 to Library 1, and assign it keyword "b"
- merge Library 2 into Library 1 with the disk image technique

Result: Photograph 2 has keyword "a". It should have keyword "b".
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I believe this is explainable. iPhoto is storing keywords by ID number instead of name, and IDs are assigned to new keywords sequentially...

Burning a disk from within iPhoto is worse. I'm not sure what happens there, but it's strange. Here's a test case I sent to Apple:

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- create a new library
- add two photographs to the library
- create two new keywords using the 'Add' button
- assign the first keyword to the first photograph and the second keyword to second photograph
- drag the second keyword above the first in the preferences
- burn disc

Result: On reading the library from the disc, the first photograph has the second keyword and the second photograph has no keyword.

OmniOutliner Extras - sample documents, AppleScript

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Extras

When I purchased OO Pro I was surprised I didn't get any sample documents. This is one heck of a powerful application and some examples would help. I requested they provide some, I think I got an acknowledgement.

Now they've added a site for both scripts and sample documents. Yay!

OS X screen capture: Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4

I've been doing image capture the OS X way, using Grab.app.

I just learned that ancient Classic methods still works, and it still creates a PICT image. Not much understands PICT any more, but Omni Outliner Pro still does.

So hit Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4. Highlight the area to image. The PICT is now in the clipboard. Paste it into OO Pro.

Visit the world, from your couch

NASA just keeps giving and giving and giving... | MetaFilter

Free Windows-only software to browse the world via images. We don't have rocket packs, but otherwise this is starting to feel like science fiction.

Google's Keyhole may do more but it's not free and used to be picky about hardware. (Also Windows only.)

Too much map and imaging stuff is Windows only. One of my favorite pieces of software, Microsoft Trips and Streets, is (surprise) also Windows only.

Two Macintouch software updates of interest (to me)

MacInTouch: "Amadeus II 3.8 is a disk-based sound editor and processor, with visual waveform editing, live recording, sampling, analysis, sound repair/denoising tools, a parametric equalizer designed for restoring old vinyl recordings, and other features. This release includes the latest version of the FLAC encoding engine and fixes a number of bugs from Version 3.8. Amadeus II is $30 for Mac OS X 10.2 and up and Mac OS 9.

OmniOutliner 3.0.1 updates the Omni Group's outliner and organizer with stability and performance improvements, enhanced importing and exporting, and minor interface and usability changes. OmniOutliner 3 is $39.95 ($69.95 Professional) for Mac OS X 10.2 and up."

New Canon Digital Rebel: light sensitivity yes!

Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT: Digital Photography Review

This camera is just out.

The EOS 350D Digital features a newly developed, second generation, extremely low noise APS-C size 8.0 Megapixel CMOS sensor – the fourth new CMOS sensor from Canon in just twelve months. It is powered by the same DIGIC II image processor found in Canon’s professional series D-SLR cameras, and features 3 frame per second, 14 frame burst operation, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface, simultaneous RAW and Large JPEG writing and 0.2 second start up time. The camera is more than 10% lighter and 25% smaller by volume than the EOS 300D.

Here's the key feature

The low noise of the second generation CMOS sensor delivers clean images from ISO 100 through to ISO 1600.

ISO 1600. That means indoor pictures without flash given a reasonable lens.

No vibration damping though. I'm told another vendor (Konica/Minolta?) has a patent lock on sensor based anti-vibration support. Nikon and Canon do vibration damping in the lens, which means prohibitively expensive lenses.