So the truth is I never really seem to blog unless I am trying out some new way to post to my blog. So here I am blogging which of course means that I must be trying something new. Truth is I am. I am trying the WordPress application for the iPhone. Isn’t it amazing what you can do with an iPhone? Anyway no need to be verbose after all this is only a test.
So recently I purchased yet another great software bundle of Mac software. This bundle was the “Back to School Bundle” from MacUpdate. This bundle included a number of interesting applications, among them is one called MacJournal. Now I don’t know too much about MacJournal, but my basic understanding is it is an application that lets users keep personal journals. It also supports blogging from my understanding….so I decided to try it out to see if I could easily post a blog entry using it. That is what this is entry is all about…. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Ok so I was able to easily get this posted to my blog even through I wasn’t given a choice for WordPress blogs (odd). I did have a few formatting issues 1) any quotes were not rendered properly (this is a character code issue) 2) couldn’t figure out how to align my images, but sure with more than 5 minutes I can figure this out. Anyway looks like it has potential…I’ll keep checking it out.
About a month ago I decided to try MarsEdit, a desktop blogging application for the Mac. The idea behind MarsEdit was to provide a better interface for creating,editing and managing blog post. As someone that maintains and writes for multiple blogs, this was something that sounded interesting. After all the web interfaces were often somewhat less than ideal, especially if you write for several different blogs. There were passwords and URLs to remember and lets face it even the best web interfaces are still not as responsive as a good ole desktop application.
Overall I was quite impressed with MarsEdit. Yes there were a few small things that I didn’t like, but overall I thought it was a far superior experience to the multiple web interfaces I was using to provide content to several blogs. In fact so impressed was I that I was ready to go ahead and purchase MarEdit, but before I did I thought it would be worthwhile to check out the competition.
Perhaps the best known competitor in the desktop blogging space on the Mac is a program called ecto by Adriaan Tijsseling of infinite sushi. I had seen several positive reviews on both MarsEdit and ecto, so I thought I would give the trial version of ecto a spin, before I purchased either.So that is exactly what I am doing – I am writing this post using ecto the feature-rich desktop blogging client for Mac OSX. The trial version of ecto is a 21 day trial (9 less than MarsEdit or the typical 30 day trial), so I will give it whirl and see which one better suits my needs. I do see some promising aspects to ecto, like the Amazon integration. I did download the newest release, which is ecto 3, which is still a beta today as I write this entry. At anyrate I’ll post my thoughts once I have used ecto for a few weeks and let you know which one I decide to buy.
One of the things I really love about my Mac is all of the really great software available for it. It’s kinda of ironic that before I moved to the Mac platform I had the impression that there wasn’t as much software for the Mac. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. There are many small and mid-sized Mac software development shops that really seem to get it – producing highly polished, usable software at an affordable price.
One of the ways that I have discovered many great Mac software applications has been by purchasing software bundles. Recently I purchased the MacHeist software bundle that included 14 great applications for $49 – what a deal. There were many great applications in the bundle, some in fact that I already owned (fortunately with MacHeist you can gift the license if you already own it – which is what I did). When I purchase software bundles I typically find that there are a couple applications that I really want and others that I know little or nothing about. In the case of the recent MacHeist bundle it was SnapZ Pro, AppZapper and ChaChing that really motivated me to buy the bundle. I already owned CSSEdit and Pixelmator, which are both fantastic. However sometimes it is the hidden gems that turn out to be really exciting.
Last week I was staying at a hotel while attending a training class. It seemed like a good opportunity to try out one of the other applications that came with the MacHeist bundle – Awaken 4.0. Awaken is basically an alarm clock for your Mac. I never really thought about wanting to turn my Mac into a fancy alarm clock, but suddenly it seemed like a good time to try it out. You know what? It is very useful and worked quite well. The program allows you to set multiple alarms and wake up to your choice of music or sounds. It also has a simple egg timer and sleep timer as well. The program will first wake your computer, then launch iTunes and then slowly start the music and wake you up. It is simple and works flawlessly. Anyway if you find you need to turn your Mac into an alarm clock check out Awaken 4.0.
This week I am off to Virginia to take a four day class on Model-Glue, a popular ColdFusion framework. The class is being conducted by Doug Hughes president of Alagad, a member of the Model-Glue team, a contributor to the Model-Glue framework as well as the author of the Reactor framework. We are currently on the second day of a four day class and I have already benefited significantly from the class. Doug is a really good instructor and offers a nice mix of lecture and hands-on activities.
We have covered a lot of ground in the first two days and laid a solid foundation for some of the more advanced topics coming up tomorrow and Thursday. I am looking forward to gaining a better understanding of ColdSpring and actionpacks – should be interesting. Anyway I’ll try to post my overall impression of the course once it is completed.
Well well well it has been some time since my last blog entry. Why you might ask? Well no good excuse other than I have been very busy over the course of the last several months. In November I got involved with a large project for a nationally known American magazine. Not a project that I can discuss at the moment, but something that could be very interesting. Of course the holiday season is always busy as well. I also was working on preparing the curriculum for a class that began teaching in January (more details coming soon on that one). So now that I have given a few excuses the truth is that sometimes blogging is just too hard….it takes time and when one gets busy it is sometimes one of the first things on the chopping block.
What if blogging could be easier? Well thanks to some software from Red Sweater Software it might become a little easier. Red Sweater makes a piece of software called Mars Edit. Mars Edit is basically a desktop application that lets you write and post blog entries. Why would you need that – not like it is difficult to get online and use WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type, etc… That is true, in fact I have a couple blogs running on WordPress and it is a pretty nice system. The advantage of something like Mars Edit is that you can manage many blogs from one desktop interface. Rather than having to log on to each of my blogs individually I can set them up in Mars Edit and quickly post to any and all of them. The interface is nice and fairly intuitive – and of course it feels like a desktop application (as it should). If you are not connected to the Internet – you can still write, although of course you can’t post until you are back online. It also makes it very easy add media from iPhoto or even Flickr. We commonly use Flickr to post to our son’s blog, but it is not the best process posting from Flickr. I often find that postings from Flickr need some pretty significant editing. Anyway Mars Edit looks like an interesting option, one I am sure will be especially interesting to those that post to more than one blog on a regular basis.
At this point I have downloaded a free trial to give it a spin. If it proves to be worthwhile I will certainly purchase a license. How will I determine if it is worthwhile? See if it gets me to blog more! Anyway it looks promising – check it out!
I have had my iPod Touch now for a couple weeks and thought I would post a mini review. The very short review – it’s amazing. Could it be more amazing? Yes and I think it will be, but we’ll get to that in a second. Let me begin by giving you my initial impressions. First of all the iPod Touch is all about the user interface and as always Apple does a great job on it. To truly appreciate the genius of the multitouch interface you have to try it, but in a nutshell multitouch is a simple intuitive touch screen user interface.
There are so many things to love about the iPod Touch. For starters it really is the best iPod ever. Really it is, it may not be the largest capacity, but it is definitely the best. The screen is beautiful, the user interface is incredible and the features are great. Of course it is a great music player. It has many ways to navigate your music, including a nicely implemented version of coverflow. Video looks, to quote Steve, absolutely gorgeous, really magnificent. Perhaps one of my favorite features is the built in Wifi. Setup is a breeze and the built in Safari browser is incredible. This is the first mobile device I have seen that really makes surfing the Internet a pleasure not a compromise. Of course the built in Wifi also enabled the implementation of the iTunes store – great addition. The iTunes store works seamlessly on the Touch, great addition.
One of the common criticisms that I have heard about the iPod Touch is the capacity. While I would love an 80GB iPod Touch, I think Apple did the right thing by sticking with solid state flash memory. I think a hard drive version would lack some of the performance of the current Touch. Will we see bigger ones? Sure I would guess by this time next year we will see a 32GB model. Flash memory is expensive – but the price is always coming down. A 16GB solid state expresscard drive runs about $299 right now…. so the 16GB iPod Touch at $399 seems reasonable. My previous iPod (still in service) was a 40GB iPod Photo. So going from 40GB to 16GB might seem like a big change and it is, but you need to consider the way you use the device. The 40GB iPod enabled me to carry just about all of my music all of the time. Truth be told I probably only listened to 10% of it 90% of the time, but it was a nice feeling to be able to carry your whole library. So what has the change from 40GB to 16GB meant to me? It has meant that I must prioritize. My solution was to rate all of my music (which I have always wanted to do) and make smart playlist so that I can always carry my best music with me. Now I only carry my best stuff (which really makes random fun again). At the present I have all my 4 and 5 star music, a bunch of my new music (in a list I call music discovery), a bunch of home movies, a couple TV shows and a whole lot of podcast. Trust me when I say 16GB is more that you need even if you have a large collection if you set your priorites. It is not a device to carry your whole library, but certainly very capable of carrying the best of your stuff.
One other thing I want to address. The iPod Touch is not an iPhone. While the two share a common platform and many features, they are in fact different devices with different capacities. I have seen a lot of reviews where people complain about the things the Touch does not do that the iPhone does. In some cases it is hard to determine why it was decided not to support some features on the Touch, but at the end of the day if the iPhone better suits your needs buy an iPhone. I probably would have bought an iPhone if it had been supported on Verizon. While I am not crazy about Verizon, they do have the best service in the area I live. I don’t think much of most of the cellular companies – but that’s a whole other rant.
Apple recently announced that a SDK (software development kit) was being developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. What does that mean? It means third party applications will soon be supported on the iPod Touch. Things will get really exciting when that happens and the iPod moves beyond just being a portable media player to being a mobile computing platform… exciting stuff!
In closing I highly recommend the iPod Touch! It is truly amazing, but the best part? It is going to get even more amazing in the future. The next generation will be larger capacity and once the SDK comes out it will revolutionize the portable media player space.
I have long been a fan of Amazon.com. Not sure I remember when I made my first purchase from Amazon, but I recall doing a good portion of my Christmas shopping there in the late 90’s. Over the years I have bought many things there from books to electronics. When I heard that Amazon was launching a new online music store I was cautiously optimistic, but not expecting much. My low expectations were not because I didn’t have high expectations from Amazon, but rather it seems that many tried their hand at the digital music business, but few have succeeded.
Why have so many failed in the digital music business? In part I think the music industry is to blame for the failure of many of the failed efforts. High prices and restrictive digital rights management (DRM) have certainly not helped the digital music industry. Campaigns and lawsuits from the RIAA that treat consumers like criminals certainly don’t help either.
Apple’s online music store, iTunes, has been one of the few success stories in the digital music realm. The success of the iTunes music store is in large part due to the iPod. Apple created an easy to use ecosystem with the combination of iTunes and iPod. Apple also managed to work deals with the music industry that were favorable to the consumer. iTunes allowed consumers to buy individual tracks for .99 cents. As the iPod gained up to 80% of the market for digital music players, iTunes continued to prosper.
Today I decided to try Amazon.com’s new Mp3 download service to see what t was all about. It sounded good – DRM free music that would work with my iPod. So I downloaded three songs and here is what I found to be the advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Overall I like the Amazon Mp3 store, but I don’t see it becoming my primary source for online music. When I want to buy a single song I continue to look on iTunes first, it is quick, easy and convenient. I also belong to eMusic, which I use for music discovery and I trade CDs on Lala. I will certainly look at Amazon’s Mp3 store when I want to buy complete albums. If I can buy an album at a higher bit rate and DRM free I will certainly opt to do so – and Amazon seems to be a good choice. I would love to see both iTunes and AmazonMp3 get more DRM free music from all the music labels.
One thing that bothers me about Amazon’s new service is that is really in part an effort for Universal Music to undermine iTunes. While Universal has agreed to sell DRM free music on Amazon they are not offering their DRM free music on iTunes. Why? In part perhaps because Univeral wants more control over music distribution and are not happy with their agreement with iTunes. Again the music industry doesn’t get it…
Prior to switching from Windows based PCs to OS X on the Mac I was under the impression that there wasn’t as much software available for the Mac platform. However, I can honestly say since I moved to the Mac I have purchased more software than all of my years on Windows. Why? A number of reasons, but I think one of the overwhelming reason has been that there is a lot of great software written for the Mac, it seems like I am always discovering great new programs for the Mac.
One of my recent discoveries was a program called ArtText from BeLight Software. ArtText is a simple yet powerful application that allows you to do all sorts of interesting things with text and graphics. With ArtText you can create logos, banners, buttons, icons and more. In ArtText you have materials such as glass, plastic and metal that have various properties and you apply the material (or the texture) to your text and vector images. The result? You end up with highly stylized text and graphics. Want a fancy web 2.0 badge? Use ArtText’s built in glass material to make a cool badge. Need to make a simple text logo? ArtText has plenty of options – you can even create your own materials. I would recommend you download a trial version and give it a spin.
Looking for a quick way to make beautiful images for the web? Well if you have a Mac Picturesque from Acqualia software might be for you. Winner of the best Mac OS X student product for the 2007 Apple Design Awards, Picturesque was written entirely in Cocoa by Zac Cohan and Nik Youdale.
Picturesque is a very simple and intuitive image enhancing application that does a few things and does them well. With Picturesque you can simply drag and drop images into the staging area and with a few clicks of the mouse easily apply a number of polished effect including: reflection, glow, shadow, rounded corners, stroke, fade and resize. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now for the graphics for this blog and have found it to be very useful.
Take a look at this very short video to get a feel for what you can do with Picturesque. Download a demo from the Acqualia web site, decide to buy it – good news it is only $19.50 – nice price for a solid product.