Jay Savage

Accessories

Accessories By Jay Savage

Delkin eFilm ExpressCard 34

Finally, something to do with the ExpressCard slot on your MBP. Storage and digital photo accessory supplier Delkin Devices today announced their eFilm ExpressCard 34 is available for pre-orders. To be officially unveiled at Photokina and shipping Oct. 16th, the EC-34 is the first Compact Falsh-to- ExpressCard converter. It is plug-and-play on both Macs and PCs in both 34mm and 54mm EC slots, and will allow photographers and others to transfer photos and other data directly between their CF cards and computers at 20MB/s without the need for external USB readers. All I can say is: Delkin, where were you when I came back from vacation this Summer?From the press images, it looks like there is also an eFilm EC-34/8GB CF Card combo pack in the works, but it's not listed in the store yet.

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News By Jay Savage

FairPlay: coming to a classroom near you?

We haven't talked about iTunes U here in a while, but it's been on my mind lately, as I'm heading up my U's roll-out. It's a long, tortuous process--because of our internal bureaucracy, not Apple's--but, despite the fact I haven't been talking to our official reps (the extent of those conversations has been "we're still working out the details"), I have had the opportunity to sit down with some people from Apple and talk about the project. One of the topics of discussion was the direction of iTunes U 2.0 development. Apparently Apple has significantly increased the personnel dedicated to the project and has a number of enhancements planned. The person I was talking to couldn't tell me what, exactly, but he said that they were looking at community feature requests. Naturally, my next question was "well, what features have people requested?" The answers surprised me. Among the most requested features is on-site storage. This was a little bit of a shock, since one of the selling points for me was letting Apple handle the potentially multi-terabyte storage requirements and not worring about managing--not to mention funding--a SAN of that size myself. I can understand, though, that people want to keep control of their own information, and have on-site backups, etc. Closely following that was e-commerce capability. Again, a bit of a surprise. I wouldn't expect a free service to allow me to charge for access. on the other hand, I suspect that some professors would like to include materials that require royalty payment, so some vehicle for processing that will be required eventually, I suppose.The #1 request, though, completely floored me: DRM. In fact, it is so in-demand that it has apparently been the deal-breaker for the majority of universities that had been approached about iTunes U and refused. That revelation literally left me speechless. It's one thing to realize that not everyone is as rabidly anti-DRM as I am, but DRM in the classroom flies in the face of not only my general IP position, but everything I like to believe about academic freedom. I've heard of cases, of course, where universities have claimed faculty-developed course materials as work-for-hire and property of the university, but that's never been the case at any university I've been associated with and I've generally understood that those were fringe cases. The idea that a significant number of universities would refuse to participate in iTunes U because of a lack of DRM is just...staggering.Of course, that doesn't mean that FairPlay or any other DRM will find its way into iTunes U. But if Apple is dedicated to the project and the one of the biggest stumbling blocks seems to be DRM, well, you do the math.And the worst part? If FairPlay does show up it won't be Apple's fault, or even the RIAA's. The universities will have done it to themselves.Update: just wanted to clarify that second sentence a little. It's come to my attention that the original wording led a couple of people to jump to incorrect conclusions. You guys remember the bit about "assume," right?

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Computing By Jay Savage

Mac users created, not born?

By this time it is a well-worn cliché that there are 10 kinds of personal computer users: those that get this joke, and those that don't Mac users and PC users. For the most part, we, particularly Mac users, want to see this distinction as personality-driven. We chose Macs because we're creative, rebellious, cutting-edge, or, if we believe the ads, just plain cool. To the PC world, we're ridiculous spendthrifts, wasting our money on overpriced hardware that dooms us to a life of marginalization and incompatibility.Personally, I see it as matter of genetic superiority. In a race for survival of the fittest, Mac users will win every time. We're infinitely adaptable. We're used to a constantly changing OS and set of core applications that we further rearrange with scores of hacks and utilities. The majority of PC users, on the other hand, got lost when Microsoft moved the "Programs" item from the middle of the "Start" menu in Win95/95/2k to the bottom of the "Start" menu in XP, and added a green arrow. The outcry against the ribbon interface in the new Office betas--the most innovative and useful UI modification to come out of Redmond in years--was so strong that the developers were forced to remove it. Meanwhile most Mac users are not only coping with OS X's mutability, but keeping up with PCs on the side; the fraction of Mac users who use only Macs is pretty small.Chris over at Restiffbard, though, sees things differently. He's decided that it's the OS that makes the user, not the other way around. For him, it all comes down to the functionality of a single interface button: the maximize button. On Windows, you can't easily resize a window larger to a 'best fit' like Mac OS X can. Sure you can drag the bottom corner, but it's much easier to just hit maximize and go full screen. This leads to Windows users becoming task-oriented users by default. For Mac users, on the other hand, it's difficult do get a full-screen window in most applications. The green "+" button resizes the window to the size of the document, not the screen. This means that Mac users almost always have multiple windows and application visible. We can switch easily between them and, probably more importantly, they're always there, reminding us of their existence, nagging us. We naturally become multi-taskers.I'm not sure how much of this I buy. I mean, really: are you going to tell me that you can take any old group of PC users in front of Macs for a couple of years and they'll just naturally become as cool as me, or Steve in a bowtie? I don't think so.But it's an interestingly fresh take on a decades-old question.Update:if (($tongue{'position'} eq 'cheek') or ($sarcasm > 0)) {$tongue{'position'} = 'notcheek';$sarcasm = 0;print <<ENDGuys, check the categories, you'll see "Humor" and "Cult of Mac." No, I don't really think Mac users are genetically superior. And I don't think I'm nearly as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. In fact, I don't think Steve is as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. In fact, I don't think anyone is as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. Ok, maybe Woz, but that's about it.And just for the record, I don't think those of us who were weaned on Macs are cooler than "Switchers," or anyone else. If I'm cooler than you, it's just because I was born that way. :p~END;

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Reviews

Reviews By Jay Savage

First look: EndNote X

This is probably of interest to a very small segment of our readers, but for that segment, it's exciting. Thomson ResearchSoft has finally released their flagship EndNote X bibliographic package for the Mac (PC users have had it for several months already), and I took it for a spin this weekend. The biggest changes are under the hood. EndNote X features a new compressed file format that allows libraries to be stored in less on-disk space. The compressed format also save libraries as single files, enabling easier sharing of libraries with your colleagues. Potentially more exciting, EndNote X features drag and drop management for embedded PDFs, so you can include articles right in your bibliographies. Combined with some stability and speed improvements, particularly combined with a shiny new universal binary, this makes for a very good upgrade. Thomson has added in some eye candy and other fun stuff, too. Most noticeable is a new set of aquafied icons, but if you go to the tools menu, you'll find that they've also added customizable menus to almost every window, as you can see in the full screenshot.Retail is $239.95 or a $89.95 upgrade for current users. Many colleges and universities provide it free to students and faculty, so ask. A 30-day demo is available.Read on for a full on screenshot.

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Apps

Apps By Jay Savage

Photoshop Universal Binary? Not so fast.

I have to admit, I was pretty excited when I saw the screencap of an Adobe order confirmation email above from TUAW reader Craig. Despite Adobe's repeated official refusal [pdf] to do anything for Intel Mac Photoshop users until CS3, it looked like there might be big news on the Photoshop front. A closer look, though, shows that the rumor mill has gotten ahead of itself on this one, and here at TUAW, we believe in quashing this sort of thing in the bud. It's "Macintosh, Universal English," not "Macintosh Universal, English." That one little comma is huge. It's the difference between a universal binary, and a product that isn't localized specifically for British, American, or Canadian English.

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Computing By Jay Savage

Command line target mode

You really do learn something new every day. Today, it was that EFI Macs can be set from the command line to boot into FireWire target mode on their next reboot (Open Firmware macs can do it, too, but it's more complicated). Nifty. Why would you want to do this? A couple of reasons. One, if you, like me, tend to be doing two, or three, or ten, things at once, holding down keys at startup can be a pain. I often hit 'reboot,' figure I have enough time to finish off a task on another machine, get caught up in the new task, and miss the window of opportunity to start the first machine in target disk mode, switch the startup disk, or whatever it was I wanted to reboot for. with the command line, it's "no muss, no fuss," just:sudo nvram target-mode=1That will set the machine to boot in target disk mode at it's next start-up. It only works for the next start-up, and can't be unset. That's a actually a bit of a pain: habitual command line users expect that '1' will toggle a behavior, and '0' will untoggle it, but that isn't the case here. Any value, even zero will work. Another potential use is for a disk you suspect is corrupt, or to unstick a frozen system. Often, you can ssh in from another machine (assuming you have remote login turned on) even when finder crashes and a machine appears to be frozen. Just toggle target mode, issue a quick sudo shutdown -r now, and you can plug the offending machine into another computer and run your diagnostics. That, and it's a cool party trick.Thanks to Matt for pointing this out.

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Apps

Apps By Jay Savage

PodcastConverter Automator action: automatically turn your podcasts into audiobooks

The other day, I said that slowing down podcasts sounded like a great job for automator. TUAW reader Dave agreed, and sent us a link to his PodastConverter (jpg) Automator action. Dave takes the long way around and follows the conventional wisdom of turning the podcasts into audiobooks rather than using QuickTime to manipulate the MP3s directly. The advantage to this approach is that the 'casts will be listenable at much higher speeds. Many people claim to be able to listen to most podcasts at 2.5x or faster. That's almost twice as fast as what you can get from QuickTime, where things start to sound garbled around 1.5x in most cases. On the other hand, converting a bunch of podcasts from MP3 to AAC takes time, processor power, and storage space, so YMMV.Dave hasn't posted the action for download, but he has posted a JPEG of the entire action, complete with detailed instructions. So in addition to being a useful little app, this is also a great introduction to Automator if you aren't already familiar.

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Apple By Jay Savage

Apple not big on trees? Greenpeace releases "green electronics" report

Over at Download Squad today, we're talking about the report on "green electronics" and "e-waste" that Greenpeace released this morning. It's no secret that environmentalists have been unhappy with Apple--despite their claims to be an eco-friendly company--for a long time. This is the first time, though, that a big environmental group has gone out and ranked some of the major players, and Apple came in 11th out of the 14 companies rated. More disappointing than the ranking--somebody's got to be last, right?--was Apple's overall score: 2.7 out of ten. Companies were scored on a number of factors, from recycling programs, hazardous materials usage, and Apple came up wanting in just about everything. The good news? Many of the issues are easy to fix. For instance, Apple has a lousy recycling program. They only accept consumer takebacks in five markets, and then only with purchase of a new Apple machine. They could change that policy tomorrow to accept any used Apple product for recycling, free of charge. In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't cost that much and it might keep some Lithium and Mercury-laden computers and batteries out of the trash. They could also start accepting any machines as trade-ins. Bring in your old ThinkPad and leave it at the Apple Store when you walk out with your new MBP. They already do this for for corporate and education customers. Heck, if you're a school they'll even give you money for a trade-in on your old Dells. Why not at least offer to accept consumer equipment, and make a point of publicizing the fact. Apple also needs to make a public and transparent commitment to banning hazardous substances. They've said they're committed to stopping the use of toxic PVC parts and Bromine Fire Retardant (BFR) coatings. But when? Just give us a date, Steve. Nokia stopped using PVC in 2005 and will be BFR-free by 2007. The parts that go into a MacBook aren't that different from the parts that go into a Nokia 770. There are more of them in the MB, but they're not that different. The other thing most companies seem to be able to do that Apple can't be bothered with is actually publishing a list of all the materials in their products. On that issue, transparency would itself be a huge step in the right direction.And finally, they need to stop passing the buck when it comes to their partners. We know that Apple employees are environmentally conscious, and 1 Infinite Loop is a pretty green place. Even Greenpeace acknowledges that. It's time Apple starts holding its suppliers, contractors, and manufacturers to the same high standards.There's no reason the answer to "Who will be first to go green?" shouldn't be "Apple." And since they've got one of the smallest manufacturing operations of the companies surveyed and they already claim to be eco-friendly, it'll actually be kind of sad if that isn't the answer.

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Apple By Jay Savage

Apple fires employees for Leopard downloads

According to Think Secret, Apple has fired at least five retail Apple Store employees for downloading leaked copies of Leopard. The employees were overheard discussing Leopard--and how they obtained it--with co-workers. Word got back to Cupertino, an investigation was launched, and the employees were fired. "Dozens more" may be getting pink slips soon. Based on TS's interview with one of the ex-employees it sounds like there may be more to the story, though. The person they chatted with mentioned violating the terms of an NDA, and it's not clear to me how, exactly, downloading software violates anyone's NDA. The NDA is violated by the people who post pirated software, not the people who download it. How can Apple claim these people violated an NDA unless Apple itself gave them the software on the condition of an NDA? Either there's more to the story, or something got lost in translation.This is an interesting situation for Apple to be in, though. You want your employees to have a certain amount of obsession, or at least zeal, for your product. But where do you draw the line, and what do you do when people cross it? In this case, fire them, but I suspect this is a problem Apple and other companies are going to have to wrestle with more and more as their marketing departments keep starting the buzz about new products farther and farther in advance of release dates. It will be interesting to see how many people eventually get fired, and on what grounds. I would think a reasonable policy would be this: discipline employees who possess pirated software, terminate ones who help distribute pre-release software or tell others where to get it, which it seems like these five may have been doing.[via DLS]

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Streaming

Streaming By Jay Savage

Listen to podcasts at high speed

More hours of podcasts in your feed bin than hours in the day? Phil Windley feels your pain. He's even figured out how to speed things up a bit without converting all his podcasts to audiobooks: Right-click the show in iTunes and choose "Show song file." Open the selected song file with Quicktime (right-click again and select Quicktime). Choose "Show A/V Controls." Move the "Playback Speed" slider at the bottom of the window to your preferred speed. His method seems to work pretty well, and most podcasts are remarkably listenable at speeds up to about 1.5x. Much beyond that, though, and you start expecting someone to scream "Alvin!" in the background. Whether it's worth the effort, though, is a different matter. If you routinely listen to many podcasts, the time it takes to modify the files will become an issue in its own right. Sounds to me like a job for Automator.

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Computing By Jay Savage

Why your school doesn't want boot camp

A trend I'd like to see go the way of the dodo: every time Apple introduces something new that doesn't seem to appeal to the average home user, the net lights up with wild speculation that it's for the education market. Most of the time it's not, and Boot Camp is no exception. The reaction to Boot Camp from MacEnterprise and other education and business Mac communities has not been positive. It's ranged from "wait and see" to "why me?" with most of the responses at the "why me?" end. Boot Camp is, in the words of University sysadmin and TUAW reader Jason Young, quite possibly "any IT staff member's worst nightmare come true." And here are just a few of the reasons I think he's right:First, we live in a very imperfect world. Heterogeneous networks are messy, messy things. Sure there are protocols for Active Directory, Open Directory, LDAP, DHCP, etc., but vendors do one of two things: fail to implement the spec properly, or add a bunch of proprietary bells and whistles that aren't part of the spec, are technically add-ons, but still seem to mysteriously cause hardware or software to fail when they aren't present. Throw a couple of DNS forwarding issues, some CISCO equipment and maybe a Radius server into the mix, and things get ugly fast. What's the admins final line of defense against complete network chaos? Hardware addressing. Figure out what hardware is sitting at which MAC address, and build policies based on that. It's not ideal, but it's the the way the real world works. If you can't predict the OS type from the MAC, your job becomes 10 times harder in a flash.Second, nobody actually wants to reboot. It's time consuming, stressful on the hardware, and just generally not too much fun. It also means getting users in the habit of interacting with the firmware, which is something sane sysadmins want to avoid at all costs. What admins, and others, want is real virtualization. Not dual booting. Not emulation and compatibility layers. Real virtualization. When Apple delivers that, there will be partying in the streets.Third, there's no support and it doesn't look like there's ever going to be. Unlike the rest of us peons, large education and enterprise clients spend a lot of money on premium AppleCare services. They have reps who know them by name, and part of what makes Macs appealing is that you call one number and get integrated hardware and OS support. If Apple won't support Windows, dual booting will mean buying a second support contract for the same machine. hat more than negates the cost benefit of a single machine solution. Beige boxes are cheap and procurement already has contracts with HP and Dell. There is, of course, a potential for third parties here to step up and become Apple Authorized Resellers offering pre-configured machines with support, but that's a niche market. Most organizations that buy Macs want to deal directly with Apple.And then for education tech support, there's the added fun of personal machines that people use to connect to the network....Individual admins, of course, are thrilled. Being able do dual boot, say, a MacBook Pro means only needing one machine to administer everything. But supporting it for users? That's a different story.

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Apple By Jay Savage

Apple Terminal Server in the future?

Chris Howard over at Apple Matters thinks so, and he thinks the new iMac is the warm-up. The problem with the new iMac as Chris sees it--and I agree--is that it's an inelegant solution to the media center problem. It's one thing to have iTunes video on your personal computer to watch Lost episodes while you're procrastinating, but once the computer becomes a media center, it's no longer personal. It becomes, well, a center; communal property that the whole family wants in on. Some people want to watch videos while other people are working. Others want to listen to music while others are watching videos while others are trying work. And I want them all to go away and stop reading over my shoulder and let me check my livejournal friends list in peace. The new iMacs, though, like all their predecessors, are fundamentally single console machines: only one person can be sitting in front of the computer at a time, running a single application in the foreground. If someone else in the room wants to use iTunes, I have to give up my spot at the desk and go do dishes or something. As long as the only way to use the computer is to sit in front of it (or across the room from it), then a media center PC isn't much of a media center...or much of a PC, as far as that goes. There are ways around some of these issues (X-forwarding, VNC, NFS), but for the most part they aren't really for public consumption and require at least one extra computer and a lot of free time. But it doesn't have to be this way.

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Computing By Jay Savage

1.5 finger scrolling

Since the support for two-fingered trackpad scrolling in response to yesterday's survey has been so overwhelming, I thought I'd pass along this tip from TUAW reader dude yo: 1.5 finger scrolling. Apparently, with two fingers on the trackpad, you only have to move one of them to get the scrolling effect. The advantage is that, assuming you start scrolling somewhere in the middle of the pad, you can put down the second finger, flick it to scroll, and then pick up mousing with your the original finger, all without losing your position on the pad, or ending up down at the bottom of the pad with no room to maneuver. Neat. In fact, I may have to rethink my position on trackpad scrolling.

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Accessories

Accessories By Jay Savage

Silly Sunday Survey: trackpad scrolling?

We've been kind of lax on the whole Silly Sunday Survey(tm) thing around here lately, so after an afternoon of having my iBook click when I want it to scroll and scroll when I want it to click, I thought I'd ask: is anyone finding the two-finger scroll function on the latest round of PowerBook and iBook trackpads useful? Personally, I'm about ready to disable it.

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Computing By Jay Savage

Unix for the Beginning Mage

If you want to learn the OS X command line, but find the available books intimidating, bristle at the thought you should read anything for "dummies," or just worry that you may by eaten by a grue while plumbing the depths of /dev/random, Unix for the Beginning Mage may be just what you're looking for. The book, available as a free PDF download, takes a humorous approach to learning some basic features of the unix shell and environment. The premise is that you are a mage in some D&D inspired world learning to cast "spells" from the command line. The better your spellcasting becomes, the farther you advance through the "Tower of Nix." Best of all, the example commands are all executed in the OS X Terminal.app, although it's basic enough the examples should work without too much effort on other unices as well. So if you've been avoiding the command line, you're officially out of excuses; drop by and read this very, very gentle introduction to Unix the Unix Mages have put together.Just keep a Scroll of Kill -9 ready and watch out for that grue. [thanks Scott!]

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Apple By Jay Savage

Apple press conference scheduled for Oct. 19th

Just got word that Apple has scheduled a press confernce during the preview for next week's PhotoPlus Expo 2005 to unveil their "latest professional innovations." No details yet as to what they might be showing off, but if I had to guess I'd go for a Final Cut update centered around h.264 and the Quick Time upgrade. It would be interesting, too, if Apple were to announce some professional still photography tools at the show, since that's a market they haven't really entered into themselves yet. We'll see, but I'm not expecting anything too big so close on the heels of of Wednesday's announcements.

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Computing By Jay Savage

The seen and the unseen; invisible files and the command line

Since C.K.'s post on invisible iPod files got so much response over the weekend, I though I'd do a quick rundown this morning on the different ways to handle invisible files in OS X. The first thing to understand is that there are three ways to make a file invisible in OS X. The first, and least used, is the .hidden file. This is a file that sits at the root of the filesystem and keeps track of which files should be hidden. It's a holdover from Classic and the original HFS filesystem, and isn't included by default on volumes formatted by Tiger's Disk Utility. The OS will, however, honor it if it's present. The second way to hide a file in OS X is the traditional Unix method: start the filename with a '.'. If you run ls -a at the command line in your home directory, you can see this in action. You'll notice a number of files and directories with names like .bashrc that aren't visible in the finder or via the normal ls command. The final way to make a file invisible under OS X is to modify it's HFS+ extended attributes.Making the first two kinds of files visible is easy:

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News By Jay Savage

Revenge of the dogcattle: ClarusX2005

Since the response to last week's discussion of Clarus and her dogcow relatives was so overwhelmingly pro-dogcow, I thought I'd share one of my favorite little tools that lets you bring back the dogcow in OS X. ClarusX, now ClarusX2005 for Tiger, is a little haxie that combines some simple scripts and system images to let you change the icons in Page Setup. You can choose from the traditional dogcow, a modernized dogcow on the OS X paper icon, a variety of aquafied dogcattle, or, um, Steve Jobs' head. If you get tired of your dogcow, you can always switch back to the appropriately named "BoringGuy". The current version is only for Tiger, older versions should still be available via Versiontracker.

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Big Tech

Big Tech By Jay Savage

Google Apple Macintosh

Google may not be keen on delivering software for Mac users, but the've got a beta search engine just for us lurking down in their "Specialty Searches." Google Apple Macintosh selects just the Mac-related sites out of Google's index and searches them for your search terms, which means no more apple pie recipes and Fiona Apple fan sites cluttering your result sets. Unless, of course, it happens to be a Fionna Apple fan site talking about her exclusive iTunes tracks. Then you're still out of luck.

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News By Jay Savage

Tech Note 31 offline; no moof is good moof?

A moment of silence, please, for some pieces of apple lore that seems to have fallen victim to the unlink() of history and been relegated to the /dev/null of developer.apple.com. Last night I was trying to explain the concept of intersections of the canine and bovine coordinate systems to my (remarkably tolerant) girlfriend and went looking for the canonical dogcow reference, Macintosh Tecnical Note #31: The Dogcow (a.k.a. tn31). Imagine my surprise when it wasn't there! Nor were the first known recording of dogcow in the wild, or Brian Bechtel's A nest of dogcattle. They don't appear to have been relocated in the new scheme, either, just rm -f'd. tn1031, History and Peregrinations: The Dogcow Goes QuickTime VR is still available, as is the Clarus 'SICN' resource in tn1019. But tn31, where we were first introduced to dogcow habits and habitats, first learned Clarus' name, and first heard the 'Moof!' of a real, live dogcow seems to be gone forever. fortunately for Clarus fans, most of the information conained in tn31, along with Mark Harlan's subsequent "History of the Dogcow" parts 1 & 2, is available at the the "official dogcow website,' Moof in Mind, and Freek Dijkstra has archived the original tn31, complete with 'Moof!' QT audio at MacFreek.

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News By Jay Savage

Podcasting Hacks

Got the latest installment of the monthly O'Reilly newsletter today, and there were, of course, a couple of new Mac-related offerings. The first was Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud, which covers everything from "Set Up a Basic Home Studio" and "Pick the Right Microphone" to advanced topics like "Train Your Voice" and "Build a Simple Sound Cart for the Macintaosh" [pdf]. If the sample hacks are any indication, the book should be a winner with both novices and pros. "Choose the Right Audio Tools" [pdf] is certainly a must-read for anyone thinking about purchashing software.

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Computing By Jay Savage

Make your Mac sing

Apparently August was audio month at O'Reilly, because the newsletter also announced two more recent audio offerings. The first is David Pogue's Garage Band 2: The Missing Manual. Basically, it's exactly what it says it is: a manual for Garage Band that doesn't involve the infuriating and less than useful Help menu. The second music offering is Making Music on the Apple Mac. This is a broader overview covering getting started with Garage Band, but also setting up audio and MIDI devices, making CDs, and publishing music files and feeds over the internet.

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News By Jay Savage

Podcastcon this weekend

For those of you who, like me, missed the announcment, the UK podcasting SIG BritCaster is running Podcastcon, the first ever conference dedicated exclusively to podcasting, this Saturday, September 17th, in London at Berner's hotel off Oxford Street. Confirmed talks include:Chris Kimber; Head of Radio Interactive, BBC – podcasting from a public broadcaster's perspectiveNeville Hobson; For Immediate Release - podcasting as a tool for business communicationsChris Ritke; 49 Media / Outhink.comMark Hunter; The Tartanpodcast – using and promoting music in podcastsRichard Vobes; The Richard Vobes Radio Show – developing creative content for your podcastJames Cridland; Head of Strategic Development, Virgin Radio – podcasting from a commercial broadcaster's perspectivePaul Nicholls, lawyer and podcaster (podcastpaul.com) – podcasting, legal issues, is speech really free? DefamationMilverton Wallace; Managing Director, Quixa NetMedia – podcasting, blogging and social mediaChris Skinner, Simulacrum – a live version of Chris's legendary Simulacrum podcast The complete list of attendees is on the wikki. Attendance is capped at 140 and there are 128 people registered to date, so if you want to go and have the £30 to spare you should sign up quickly.

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News By Jay Savage

NYPD podcasts

Heard about this on NY1 this morning: The NYPD has started podcasting. The first 6:44 podcast gives details of traffic rerouting for this week's UN General Assembly, some advice on preventing identity theft (nothing new to most, but a nice touch), and a phone interview with the commander of the 300 NYPD officers in New Orleans. The plan is to make this a regular feature for advisories and news about the NYPD. The news, of course, is a little biased, but it's nice to see the outreach effort, and being able to listen to the street closings on demand in the car is a great thing.

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Science

Science By Jay Savage

Nano subway maps

William Bright over at iPod Subway Maps has the first pocket guide for the Nano online: NYC. Getting everything to display well on the tiny, though surprisingly hi-res, screen was unsurprisingly difficult, but he seems to have squeezed it all in there and promises the full set of iPod subway maps soon. If you're wondering about the ribbon in the pic with this post, Bill got the map up on Sunday and suggests that, with everything going on in the world right now, everyone who has an iPod take a minute to be thankful that we're in a postion to spend time with our superflous toys, and remember those who aren't so lucky. Sounds good to me.

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