MacHeist II
2007.12.04 12:47
On the heels of last year's great scavenger hunt, we have MacHeist II. The details are supposed to start flowing later this week, so get over there and get registered.
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Mac Food
2007.12.04 12:44
There is a deal going on with some great software developers right now over here. Some European software developers have banded together to offer their wares and the rub is the more you buy the more you save. It is a great deal for some excellent software.
Grrrrrr
2007.10.27 22:37
Well, I dove in and installed on my new MBP. There are some very cool features that I am looking foward to exploring, like Spaces, but there are also a few key apps that I have come to rely on that do not work…Daylite being the most important. The new features in Mail may be able to over come some of these shortcomings, but Daylite has so many great features, I am anxious for that upgrade as well.
On first glance there are some really slick features, but the sem-transparent men bar has got to go.
How connected are you?
2007.10.18 09:00
Social connection sites are proliferating at a geometric rate. With each day it becomes harder to remember the vast assemblage of passwords and user IDs for each site. As I begin to list the number of sites I am participating in, it is easy to see how there are not enough hours in the day.
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Mashable
2007.10.17 08:12
Mashable has a list of resources for development you may find useful. After you get through the list, 250 in all, spend some time surfing around the site; I am sure you will find more useful info.
Restored
2007.10.10 08:37
iYes!
2007.08.08 08:30
The Apple event, yesterday, brought a lot of great new goodies for your favorite Apple geeks. Since I cannot afford a new machine, however, I am focused on the new updates to the iApps; iWork and iLife 08. Both of these suites have been updated with new features, functions and in some instances new applications (Numbers).
One of the cooler features, well there are tons but, the web gallery from iPhoto is something else…especially for plogs. Set up the gallery and allow uploading by email and you can update your cool web 2.0 image gallery on the go. One problem I had was not being able to publish from iPhoto and some quick research provides an update to the brand new app, already. I am guessing, since there is so little info, but there was an oversight in the handling of upgraded images. Ultimately, a quick update and restart the app and I had a test gallery up and running.
These 2 suites are some of the best values you can find and I would recommend them to anyone.
MacUpdate Bundle
2007.07.09 07:53
MacUpdate has started offering a great bundle of software for a ridiculously low price. This is also the basis for MacHeist 2, which begins today as well.
[EDIT] This is not the basis of MacHeist 2, but rather a smaller bit of joy called skunkworks…my bad.
RapidWeaver 3.6.1 is out…
2007.06.05 09:27
The team at RealMacSoftware have just release an update to RapidWeaver; their web creation application. Go get it now.
For every Star Wars fan…
2007.02.06 12:34
Only a few more hours…
2007.01.09 08:12
A couple more hours to go and I cannot wait to see what Steve announces in SF. There are tons of rumours of what will be announced today at the MacWorld show, but I hope at least we get a full screen iPod and new mobile device from Apple. A slick Apple phone would be great if they have managed to pull off the technical issues.
Oh well…tick tock.
EDIT
Well what a show it was. The Apple TV was a big deal, but naturally the item that floored everyone, especially those folks over a the CES show, was Apple's new iPhone.
Steve started the keynote talking about the new Apple TV
Apple also introduced a new Airport that offers some great features.
A lot of great technology came out of the keynote and more stuff is coming out of the show. I am looking forward to getting one of everything.
Yourhead Software's Carousel
2007.01.03 08:09
Isaiah Carew is one of the best
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MacHeist
2006.12.11 08:21
So today is the day the final bundle has been revealed from the folks at MacHeist. If you have not been following, MacHeist has been a bit of an online scavenger hunt to get great deals (read: free) shareware apps for your trusty old OS X. The bundle they are releasing is a great list of popular software that many folks would be happy to add to their Mac. They are also donating 25% of the bundle price to a charity of your choosing, from their selected list.
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D'Oh! Little gems in OS X
2006.11.14 15:25
I am an id10t. This may be something that I had forgotten, but it is a cool little feature in OS X. When typing in an app if you use the key combination option + delete, it will erase whole words rather than letters. Again, not sure if I had known this and just never used it, but I have recently rediscovered this nice feature in my favorite (read only) operating system.
Tutorial - Chrome in Photoshop
2006.10.22 23:02
Anyone who was alive in the seventies will hopefully appreciate this little tutorial. I remember airbrushing these type of effects a hundred years ago…in fact I still own several thousand dollars worth of airbrush equipment. One brush I bought for close to $700 weeks before an update to the Mac OS that made it a more viable solution for the type of work I was doing than the traditional way.
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Firefox ho!
2006.10.02 11:16
I have used Safari and Firefox for ages, but the featureset for Firefox has finally made me convert to using it as my full-time browser. I had been reluctant to make the final leap since Firefox still does not address the very handy Services menu in OS X. I use this function extensively, especially while browsing to save snippets of interest, but that was finally outweighed by the enormous amount of features available from the Firefox community.
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Tutorial - Layer Adjustment in Photoshop
2006.10.01 08:23
An often overlooked method of working with imagery in Photoshop is the use of Adjustment Layers. This provides the means to retouch an image in a non-destructive way. When you select an image and adjust its Levels or Curves you have altered that image, but using an Adjustment Layer for that identical process provides the same results but without altering the original image. This allows the ability to step back to the original image for any reason.
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Tutorial - Transparent masks in Illustrator
2006.09.18 07:48
Photoshop is the king of image manipulation. Adobe has done some great things with the app over the years and it has shown in every new release. Sometimes, however, it is not the first choice for creating imagery. Your needs may require an image that needs to be resolution independant which would lead you to Photoshop's sister app, Illustrator. Although there are overlaps between the two applications, creating similar graphics require different approaches. Read More...
Photoshop Actions
2006.09.08 12:54
One of the great things about working on a Mac is the ability to customize and script almost every aspect of your daily routine with ease. This functionality extends to every application, either by inclusion within their code or by using AppleScript. Adobe has provided Actions within Photoshop for several versions now, but many artists I know do not use them to streamline their workflow. Read More...
Tutorial - Distress imagery in Photoshop
2006.08.30 14:40
Often times we are called to create imagery that reflects a specified tone or incorporates certain imagery to coincide with other marketing efforts for our clients. Adding a sense of realism to a logo on a wall, or aging a icon on a T-shirt adds that sense of believability that makes your digital work stand out from the rest of the crowd.
This is another technique to add some more life in your digital composites using some good free textures available through a quick Google; Mayang's offers some great shots for free (limited to 20 downloads a day or you can purchase them all for $45) and where I got this background. Read More...
Tutorial - Faking 3-D in Photoshop
2006.08.27 22:28
Within the design industry we are sometimes called upon to make simple things look much better than they actually are…like a make-up artist at the Emmy's (aw c'mon did you watch the show?). One of the tricks that I have learned over the years is adding more depth to elements creates a better sense of reality to the image.
While I was working at Disney, we had to develop numerous events and broadcasts. Without the time to really develop a 3-D model, light it and render out I came up with a simple series of steps in Photoshop to provide more depth to a simple Illustrator logo or icon. These plates always seem to generate a positive response from all of the associated parties. Read More...
Flash 9 Alpha
2006.08.14 09:02
Adobe Labs has released the Alpha version of Flash 9. You must sign up to have access to downloads, but I would recommend signing up. There are some great options available from this type of pre-release software to their support forums. Read More...
YourHead Software
2006.07.17 07:33
Yourhead Software has come out with an update to their popular Blocks plugin for Rapidweaver. Blocks allows you to position elements within the page and alleviates some obvious shortcomings to RealMac Software's handy little application. It offers the ability to position elements, text, graphics raw code, anywhere on the page all from within the Rapidweaver application. Read More...
World Wide Web
2006.06.27 22:42
I have had Google Analytics running on this site for less than a week. It is interesting to take a look at the voluminous reports you can create as you analyze your site and the traffic it generates. In the week that I have had it running, I have come to discover more and more what a small planet we have and the need to communicate better through intelligent means like the web.
Just under half of the traffic to this site has been from non-English speaking countries; Japan, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, etc. As I write these opinions, insights, tutorials, they have seemed to make their way around the globe and back again. Read More...
RSS Media Redux
2006.06.15 12:13
Really Simple Syndication is a means with which to broadcast feeds (alternatively call streams, webfeed, channels, etc.) to the general public. These feeds provide content, or brief summaries and associated metadata, to the end-user with links back to the full or expanded content. The end-user uses a reader or aggregator to subscribe to a feed as well as review the content.
There have been forms of syndication, but none ever achieved a fraction of the success that RSS has obtained thus far. With the variety of rich media (blogs, podcast, photocast, vodcast, etc.) that can now utilize an RSS feed, its popularity will only increase. Read More...
3.5
2006.06.02 09:22
The latest release of RapidWeaver is slated for any moment now. RealMac Software has designed a nice little app to let you develop websites with very little training. I actually use it as a RAD tool to create wireframes of sites for clients. It allows you the ability to develop a wireframe site in no time at all to insure the user experience is optimally designed. Read More...