iMovie '08: It's so unfinished that ...

iLife 2008 iMovie is so unfinished that there's no help entry for "join clip". "Join Clip" is the name of an item on the Edit menu.

iMovie 2008 would have been ready around October. Yech.

OS X 10.5, btw, won't be ready until April 2008. My prediction.

Update: The string "join clip" doesn't appear in the PDF tutorial either. It's as though the feature wasn't implemented, but Apple forgot to remove it from the menus. I'm starting to feel like the Emperor has no clothes and I'm the only one who's saying anything ...

Update: I figured out by experimentation what split clip does. If you move a clip to a project, then click and drag to select a portion of the clip, you can then split that portion out. If I could ever figure out how to select more than one clip at a time I could probably join them, but again the help file is useless.

How to uninstall an iPhoto plug-in

I had no idea there was an official uninstall, I'd previouslly opened the package and deleted inside the plug-in folder:

Picasa Web : Frequently Asked Questions

We hope you love Picasa Web Albums Exporter for iPhoto, but we won't be mad if you want to uninstall it. Here's how:

* Quit iPhoto if it's open.
* In the Finder, open the Applications folder.
* Click iPhoto once to select it.
* Choose File > Get Info to open an Info window.
* Find the section of the Info window labeled Plug-ins. If necessary, click the little triangle for Plug-ins to see the list of items in that section.
* Scroll through the list until you find PicasaWebAlbums.iPhotoExporter. Click that entry to select it.
* Click Remove.
* In the scary alert box that appears, click Continue.

Apple needs more QA testers: Version XIXXIII

Apple doesn't have enough QA people. Maybe Apple's culture disdains the entire idea of QA testing. Grumph!

Latest episode. The Child account on our machines has a locked Dock. When I installed iPhoto 2008 Apple's own installer stuck an iMovie icon on the locked Dock. I can't remove it unless I escalate the Child account privileges, remove it, then restore them. A real nuisance.

Apple needs a knock on the head about QA.

iPhoto 7.02 breaks the old double-arrow scrollbar hack

I've had double arrows at the top and bottom of my scrollbars since I implemented this 10.1 hack:

macosxhints.com - Scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bars [10.1]:

... OS 10.1 adds an option in the General prefs to have double-scroll arrows at the bottom of the scroll bar. Scott R. wrote in with a quick preferences hack to enable double-scroll arrows at BOTH ends of the scroll bars. If you'd like to enable this feature, simply start a terminal session and type: defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth You then need to logout and login (or, perhaps, simply force quit the Finder) to see the effect ... but once you've done so, you should have double-scroll arrows at both ends of your scroll bars.

....To return to the normal mode, use: defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant Single (or you could just open the [Appearance] pane in the System Prefs and check 'At top and bottom') or defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleMax to put them together only at the bottom (again, this is equivalent to clicking 'Together' in the General prefs panel for scroll arrows).

Alas in 10.4.10 with iPhoto 7.02 one sees odd gaps at each end of the scrollbar. I turned off this old hack and iPhoto's scrollbars appear normal again. I'm not sure they don't have some new behaviors though ... they feel somewhat Leopardish.

The dead quality desktop webcam market

It's a sad truth that the primary market for webcams has always been "adult entertainment". This favors cheap devices with optics that leave much to the imagination (example, Microsoft's disappointing LifeCam VX-6000). Bad news then for business users who need a sub $300 desktop solution that will work with a typically stressed corporate LAN/WAN.

Until a year or so ago Mac users had a uniquely only good solution -- the Apple iSight. Firewire, not coincidentally. Even Apple couldn't make money off this market though, and they downgraded to a cheap embedded solution that won't work for sharing whiteboards (newer iMacs have a slightly better camera, but it still doesn't focus).

PC and Mac users alike had another solution -- about 3-5 years ago. Back then Canon (and others?) sold firewire connected digital video cameras with a "network mode"

...You can turn your Optura camcorder into a powerful webcam. Both the Optura 400 camcorder features a Network Mode that enables you to remotely control your camcorder through the DV Messenger2 software application. Control the focus and zoom of your camcorder from a computer while streaming the video via its IEEE 1394 terminal...

Those were the days of good articles on using a camcorder as a webcam and software to fill in what vendors left out. Not any more! I can't find anyone who sells a digital video camera with this kind of capability today.

So, basically, USB and lack of customer interest killed the mid-range high quality PC webcam market, and the Mac market may be little better*. I hope Cringely is right when he says that new teleconferencing solutions are just around the corner. There's nothing to do now but wait ...

*Andrew is going for his iMac soon, so I'll have an update on how well Apple's new embedded webcam works. A used iSight, btw, sells today for about what it sold for brand new.

Screencasting for XP: BB FlashBack Express $30

I'm quite happy with iShowU for OS X screencasting (screen video capture), but the XP equivalents I've seen have been quite expensive or poor quality. I've got a new one to try for my employer projects (XP): BB FlashBack Express for $30 with an excellent trial policy. It looks quite promising, I'll update this post with what I learn.

Update 8/30/07: That was quick. A complete flop. It died without a notice after the first trivial video capture and left a hung process I had to kill manually. I suspect it doesn't like dual monitor configuration. At least it didn't waste much time. I'll try doing XP video captures using an old digital camera from my closest, and if that doesn't work I'll run Windows remote desktop from a Mac and use iShowU to capture the XP video.

ConceptDraw can import MindManager files

The ConceptDraw MINDMAP application for OS X and Windows ($200) claims to be able to import MindJet MindManager files:

ConceptDraw MINDMAP: mindmapping and brainstorming tool overview

.. MindManager Import You can seamlessly open files created by MindManager users on both Windows and Mac OS...

MindManager is definitely the market leader (alas, Inspiration, you peaked too early -- though I do hope you hang in there) in this segment. It's a fairly expensive product however, and it's very much a "lock-in" play. You put your data in MindManager, you'll never get it out again.

Until now. MINDMAP looks like it's aiming for the MindManager market, and it supports OPML export. They need to drop the price though if they want to get serious -- MindManager 7 for Mac is $130! There's no way MINDMAP can charge $70 more than MindManager and be a serious alternative.

I suggest they think about charging $130 for a dual platform license -- for the same price as MM get the right to use both the Windows and OS X versions on all machines one uses.